The cultural politics of racism in the Brexit conjuncture

Critiques of racism figure prominently in debates about Brexit’s causes and consequences. But while racism is often theorized in its social and political dimensions, it has received little attention as a concept that has become entangled in a cycle of contestations, denials and affirmations. By looking at racism’s conceptual dimension, with its multiple contested meanings, this article examines the impact that racism-related critiques and counter-critiques of Brexit have had on people’s political subject-positions. Drawing on case studies of both Leavers and Remainers, it is argued that the common binary view of Brexit as either racist or legitimate fails to resonate with the multiple and complex experiences of people on the ground. The article concludes with a call for a renewed conversation about Brexit on the basis of context-specific experiences and pathways to better futures for communities across the country

Community and prosperity beyond social capital: The case of Newham, East London

Researchers and policymakers working on prosperity, happiness and wellbeing in the UK have recently reworked GDP-centred notions of progress and identified community and belonging as major determinants of a good life. The dominant notion of community in most writing on this topic draws on Putnam’s work on social capital as measured by trust and/or civic engagement. This approach, however, captures only the social aspect of community, without addressing the symbolic dimension of political discourses and their national and local effects. Using data from Newham, London, this article argues that a narrow focus on social capital obfuscates the complexity of community dynamics, leading to misconceptions about the causes of social fragmentation. In the case of Newham, we show that while survey data on social capital suggests that diversity is detrimental to community life, a more nuanced analysis reveals that it is in fact an important part of community cohesion

Brexit’s identity politics and the question of subjectivity

This article is about the socially divisive consequences of the UK’s 2016 referendum on membership in the European Union. Rather than redressing the country’s long-standing class divisions, the referendum has exacerbated them by fuelling negative stereotypes and mutual accusations between Leave and Remain supporters. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, the article argues that support for Leave and Remain is structured by circulations of affect, fantasies of the good life and psychic investments in different experiences of immigration, nationalism, and social and economic inequality

What is prosperity?

This working paper is about why we need new theories both about what prosperity means and entails in the 21st century. To redefine prosperity is to challenge both the structural features of our economies and the value premises on which they are built. We are concerned here with how a redesigned prosperity opens the door not just to innovative ideas, but to new practices, allowing us to address inequalities in novel ways. Searching for the means and mechanisms through which these new frameworks and activities may be operationalised quickly reveals that we need fresh approaches to how systems change and knowledge is shared. We begin then with three points of reference: the value of the economic in our lives, the purpose of sharing knowledge, and the means of operationalising change

Super-diversity and the prosperous society

This article asks if and under what conditions ethnic diversity could become the foundation for a prosperous society. Recent studies on ethnic diversity and social cohesion suggest that diversity has a negative effect on social cohesion and therefore is detrimental to the social prosperity of individuals and communities. This article argues that although such a negative correlation may apply to contexts with well-consolidated ethnic groups, it does not necessarily apply to ‘super-diverse’ places with multiple small ethnic groups and multiple social, legal and cultural differences that cut across ethnicity. Drawing on ethnographic material from East London, the authors contend that, in super-diverse places, ethnic diversity could become a valuable aspect of community life, while inequalities in social, cultural and symbolic capital become central points of social antagonism to the detriment of prosperity

Britain, Bulgaria and benefits:the political rhetoric of European (dis)integration

This chapter considers the political controversy in Britain over the lifting of restrictions of freedom of movement on European Union (EU) citizens from Bulgaria and Romania in January 2014. The response of the then Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government centred on altering the rules on the payment of welfare benefits to potential new EU immigrants such that they would not be entitled to claim these benefits for 3 months after entry to the United Kingdom. This policy led to a split in the coalition, with the Liberal Democrat leadership claiming that it was a panicked move by the majority Conservative coalition partner, and moreover that it was a blatant attempt to appeal the electorate in an effort to be seen to be doing something to stop the welfare benefit system from being abused by ‘foreigners’. The backdrop to this political fracas centred on the economic contribution of East European immigrants to Britain and the claim and counterclaim over the issues jobs, welfare benefits and services such as English language support in schools. These contentious issues are examined in terms of an analysis of online comments to posted in reaction to a political interview with Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, who claimed that the Conservatives were attempting to placate public disquiet over immigration as a response to the rising popularity of the United Kingdom Independence Party

R-matrix presentation for (super)-Yangians Y(g)

We give a unified RTT presentation of (super)-Yangians Y(g) for so(n), sp(2n) and osp(m|2n).Comment: 9 page

Analytical Bethe ansatz in gl(N) spin chains

We present a global treatment of the analytical Bethe ansatz for gl(N) spin chains admitting on each site an arbitrary representation. The method applies for closed and open spin chains, and also to the case of soliton non-preserving boundaries.Comment: Talk given at Integrable Systems, Prague (Czech Republic), 16--18 June 2005 Integrable Models and Applications, EUCLID meeting, Santiago (Spain), 12--16 Sept. 200