The COVID-19 Pandemic, Academia, Gender, and Beyond: A Review

open access articleThis article aims to engage critically with the scholarly narratives and the emerging literature on the gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in academia. It outlines the key contours and themes in these scholarly discourses and conceptions, acknowledging their richness, depth and strengths especially given the short timespan within which they have developed since 2020. The article then suggests broadening and historicising the critique advanced by the literature further. In doing so, the hierarchies and vulnerabilities exposed in the academic domain by the pandemic are positioned within a holistic understanding of crisis-ridden characteristics of social relations under capitalism

Disciplining Speech, Violating Rights: Recurrent and Shifting Patterns in the Context of Turkey

The article proposes a historical account of the evolution of struggles and debates surrounding freedom of speech in the context of Turkey. The main argument is that violations of freedom of speech cannot be assessed in a manner isolated from the comprehensive remakings of politics, economy and society in the country that configure and reconfigure the contours of ‘(un)acceptability’ and ‘(un)desirability’ of speech in historically specific ways. Therefore, the article challenges mainstream approaches that treat freedom of speech within the allegedly autonomous, abstract and individualised domain of intellect divorced from its material context and situates it within the deep-seated societal transformations that both influence and are influenced by continuously contested governing strategies. After outlining key terms of the debate, the second section provides a historical overview of the evolution of controversies in this field before Justice and Development Party or Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) rule. The final section focuses on the specific evolution of the AKP-era governing strategy in its continuities and ruptures from the historically prevalent freedom of speech issues in three domains: labour rights, cultural and political rights, and gender and sexuality

Marketisation of Academia and Authoritarian Governments: The Cases of Hungary and Turkey in Critical Perspective

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article analyses the recent political repression of academia in Hungary and Turkey within the critical scholarship on globalisation and neoliberalisation of higher education. We introduce and challenge the hegemonic definitions of academic freedom that sit comfortably with the capitalist logic as well as repressive governing forms and assess the recent attacks on university communities with emphasis on both academic labour and freedom. Adopting a case study approach, we investigate how economic and political forms of repression accompany and reinforce one another within the specificities of both country contexts. We delineate the underlying structural and historical dynamics as well as emergence and evolution of methods of struggle and resistance employed by diverse university communities in their shared and divergent characteristics. Our conclusions include critical reflections on the broader implications of higher education restructuring, authoritarian interventions, and the future of systemic-level resistance

Against austerity and repression: Historical and contemporary manifestations of progressive politicisation in Turkey

open access article PIs: Dr. Ross Beveridge and Dr. David Featherstone, University of Glasgow, UK The full details of the research team members can be found here: https://antipoliticsandausterity.wordpress.com/research-team/This paper aims to explore the growing and deepening trend of politics of repression coupled with prolonged crisis and austerity politics, reflecting on the potentials as well as limitations of progressive politics in such a constrained context. Austerity policies continue pushing for anti-labour and reactionary politics in a variety of forms reflecting the unresolved crisis conditions of contemporary capitalism. While the liberal democratic state-form remains relatively intact in particular contexts, in others, it gradually evolves into repressive forms. The growing repression risks conceiving the anti-authoritarian struggles and the anti-capitalist and labour movements separate and/or mutually exclusive. This review article draws on the recent insights of (de)politicization, labour geography and history and political economy scholarships with specific reference to the case of Turkey while cautioning against the binary thinking of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in leftist and labour mobilisations. It proposes a historical perspective in order to appreciate the diversity and multiplicity of struggles against the intersecting nodes of austerity, capitalism and repression in the complex geographies of periphery

British immigration policy, depoliticisation and Brexit

This paper seeks to problematise the historical significance of the EU for British governing strategy with reference to immigration policy and the concept of depoliticisation. Situating British governing strategy in terms of the crisis-prone nature of capitalist society, this paper argues that British immigration policy has been depoliticised through, initially, the invocation of globalisation and, more recently, the EU. Through this strategy, the British state has been able to repeatedly claim that immigration policy is largely out of its hands, as they have no control over workers wishing to enter Britain looking for work. This paper makes three claims: firstly, immigration policy has been used as a means by both Conservative and Labour governments to manage inflation and labour; secondly, successive governments have sought to depoliticise immigration policy through reference to external forces; thirdly, this strategy of depoliticisation ultimately failed, politicising Britain’s relationship with the EU and creating conditions for Britain’s exit from the EU