What’s missing? Gender, reason and the post-secular

This is the author's post-print PDF version of an article published in Political Theology. The article can be found at www.politicaltheology.com/PT/This journal article discusses the role of gender in the contemporary debate around the post-secular

Locating the post-national activist:Migration rights, civil society and the practice of post-nationalism

Theorists of post-nationalism examine the (re)configuration of national identity, membership and rights. Yet while normative scholarship has conceptualized post-nationalism as an ongoing practice of discursive contestation over the role of national group membership in liberal democratic societies, more empirical studies have tended to overlook these features to predominantly focus instead on top-down legal and political institution-building as evidence of post-nationalism. In this article I argue in favour of an empirical conceptualization of post-nationalism which more effectively captures micro-level practices of discursive contestation. Specifically I posit that post-national activists, or actors engaging in post-national practices of contestation from within the state, are a key focus of analysis for scholars of post-nationalism. I develop this claim through the analysis of data collected with individuals working on civil society campaigns for migration rights in Europe, Australia and the USA who–I demonstrate–embody many of the characteristics of the post-national activist

Conversación con heidegger

Martin Heidegger acaba de celebrar su octogésimo aniversario. Es a la vez ilustre y desconocido. Ilustre, para todos aquellos que, en todo el mundo, han tenido el gusto, la facultad y el tiempo suficiente para interesarse en la filosofía y penetraren una obre de rara dificultad.  Podrá medirse su influencia sobre el pensamiento actual si se tiene en cuenta que mas de 3.000 trabajos se le han consagrado.  Desconocido para ese sector inmenso constituido por los que no han podido, ni en Francia ni en otras partes, tener acceso a la enseñanza de la filosofía, ni tampoco a su lenguaje.  Publicando la conversación que Martin Heidegger ha tenido a bien conceder, ya que vive alejado de toda vida pública, a nuestro colaborador Fréderic de Towarnicki, acompañado de Jean-Michel Palmier (autor de los "Escritos políticos de Heidegger"), el Express no pretende vulgarizar el contenido de una obra inmensa, sino por el contrario,  aportar un documento muy especial y en ningún caso exigente, sobre el pensamiento del hombre que fue sin duda el primero en elevar la técnica al rango de un cuestionar filosófico esencial. Es considerado frecuentemente como uno de los pensadores de la "era literaria, caracterizada por el reinado mundial de la técnica".  Una buena parte de su obra es una interrogación apasionada por el mundo moderno.  Nacido en Messkirch, Martin Heidegger no ha abandonado jamás la SelvaNegra. Es en la Universidad de Freiburg donde ha enseñado toda su vida.  Es también en Freiburg donde trabaja aun hoy día.  Fue elegido rector de esta universidad en 1933, fecha en la cual se sitúa el episodio trágico que ha ensombrecido su vida. Durante algunos meses creyó sinceramente que el "partido nacional socialista obrero aleman" podría reducir y transformar la miseria de Alemania.  La desilusión fue rápida y total.  Numerosos son aquellos quienes jamás le perdonaran su error, mientras que otros no están interesados en revivir los hechos.  En el homenaje colectivo que le fue ofrecido para su 70 cumpleaños, físicos tales como Werner Heisenbergy Carl Friedrich von Weizzäcker tomaron parte.  Admirado o detestado, a menudo temido, he aquí a Martin Heidegger, a los 80 años, en su retiro, "solitario, pero no forzosamente amargado"

Participatory politics, environmental journalism and newspaper campaigns

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Studies, 13(2), 210 - 225, 2012, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1461670X.2011.646398.This article explores the extent to which approaches to participatory politics might offer a more useful alternative to understanding the role of environmental journalism in a society where the old certainties have collapsed, only to be replaced by acute uncertainty. This uncertainty not only generates acute public anxiety about risks, it has also undermined confidence in the validity of long-standing premises about the ideal role of the media in society and journalistic professionalism. The consequence, this article argues, is that aspirations of objective reportage are outdated and ill-equipped to deal with many of the new risk stories environmental journalism covers. It is not a redrawing of boundaries that is needed but a wholesale relocation of our frameworks into approaches better suited to the socio-political conditions and uncertainties of late modernity. The exploration of participatory approaches is an attempt to suggest one way this might be done

Political Contest and Oppositional Voices in Postconflict Democracy:The Impact of Institutional Design on Government–Media Relations

The media are considered to play a crucial democratic role in the public sphere through representing political issues to the public (Gelders et al. 2007); facilitating deliberation, public opinion formation and political participation (Habermas 1989); acting as the 'watchdog' of powerful societal institutions (Norris 2000); and in assisting in the development of civil society in politically fragile and divided contexts (Taylor 2000). Journalists are expected to perform their news reporting within the framework of public interest values, such as objectivity, impartiality, public service, autonomy, and a critical questioning of power (Street 2001). Yet, it is acknowledged that political, cultural, organisational, economic, and relational factors affect this journalistic ideal (Davis 2010). In deeply divided, post-conflict societies, ethno-political antagonisms are fundamental to almost all aspects of civic life, yet there is limited research into how government-media relations operate in such contexts. Most media-politics studies focus on Western majoritarian parliamentary or presidential systems - that is, any system that has clear ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ after elections - and where institutional factors are considered, the focus is largely on how party systems impact on journalism (e.g. Çarkoğlu et al. 2014; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Sheafer and Wolfsfeld 2009). This focus however, neglects important institutional variables, such as mandatory coalition, proportionality and special cross-community voting arrangements, which pertain in more constitutionally complex democracies and which may have a significant impact on media-politics relations