180,789 research outputs found

    Feminism and the Critique of Violence: negotiating feminist political agency

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    The acute sensitivity of feminism to violence, in its many different forms and contexts, makes it a particularly interesting case for the examination of the relationship between politics and violence in theory and practice. Our purpose in this paper is not to adjudicate the normative question of whether feminism implies a commitment to pacifism or to the use of non-violence. Rather, we are interested in examining how the relation between feminist politics and violence is construed as feminists struggle to develop a politics in which opposition to patriarchal violence is central. We begin with the feminist critique of violence, and move to examine how particular articulations of that critique shape and are shaped by practices of feminist political agency in specific contestation over the goals and strategies of feminism. We use the well-known case of feminist debates over the Greenham Common Peace Camp in the UK in the 1980s to demonstrate how negotiating women's political agency in relation to opposition to male violence poses problems, both for feminists who embrace non-violence and prioritize the opposition to war, and for feminists who are suspicious of non-violence and of the association of feminism with peace activism. In both cases, the debates over Greenham demonstrate the fundamentally political character of the ways in which the relation and distinction between violence and politics are conceptually and practically negotiated

    Fantasies of subjugation: a discourse theoretical account of British policy on the European Union

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    The decision by the UK government to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU) marks an important development in policy towards the EU. Policy changes of this kind must be understood in the historical and political context in which they occur. This includes the framing of the policy issues within public discourse. In the UK, policies are formed in a discursive environment which is overwhelmingly hostile towards the EU. Debates are structured by a predominantly Euroskeptic discourse which emphasizes the UK’s separation and heterogeneity from the rest of the EU. Drawing on the logics of critical explanation, this article examines the structure and affective power of Euroskeptic discourses which dictate the terms of the EU debate. It presents a case study of the recent EU treaty revision process, culminating in the Treaty of Lisbon. In so doing, it enables a deeper understanding of recent policy developments

    Exit, Voice, and Disloyalty

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    Innomhuspositioneringssystem kan med fördel användas i många olika tillämpningar, allt från sjukhus till shoppingcenter. Denna rapport behandlar olika tekniker och lösningar för att designa ett positioneringssystem. Rapporten tar även upp i detalj hur ett system kan konstrueras av ZigBee kombinerat med dödräkning

    Exit, Voice, and Disloyalty

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    This Lecture begins with a puzzle about Albert Hirschman’s famous work Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Why do we make much of exit and voice but utterly neglect loyalty? It’s a question that goes well beyond Hirschman’s book. For example, much of constitutional theory is preoccupied with a single question: What doesademocracy owe its minorities? And most of the answers to this question fit naturally into the two categories Hirschman made famous: voice and exit. On both the rights side and the structural side of constitutional theory, scholars worry about providing minorities with an adequate level of influence. And the solutions they propose almost inevitably offer minorities a chance at voice or exit, ] as if no other option exists. The First Amendment, for instance, offers minorities the right to free speech (voice) and private association (exit). Similarly, structural arrangements give minorities the chance to vote in national elections (voice) and in state elections (exit)

    Realism and Theories of Truth

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    The topic of truth has long been thought to be connected to scientific realism and its opposition. In this essay, I discuss the various ways that truth might be related to realism. First, I consider how truth might be of use when defining scientific realism and its opposition. Second, I consider whether various stances regarding realism require specific stances on the nature of truth. I survey "neutralist" views that argue that one's stance on realism is independent of one's view on truth, and partisan positions that claim that one's attitude on realism is, in part, determined by one's theory of truth. Though partisan views have been popular, and defended by seminal figures such as Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Arthur Fine, I raise a number of objections for them

    'Word from the street' : when non-electoral representative claims meet electoral representation in the United Kingdom

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    Taking the specific case of street protests in the UK – the ‘word from the street’– this article examines recent (re)conceptualizations of political representation, most particularly Saward’s notion of ‘representative claim’. The specific example of nonelectoral claims articulated by protestors and demonstrators in the UK is used to illustrate: the processes of making, constituting, evaluating and accepting claims for and by constituencies and audiences; and the continuing distinctiveness of claims based upon electoral representation. Two basic questions structure the analysis: first, why would the political representative claims of elected representatives trump the nonelectoral claims of mass demonstrators and, second, in what ways does the ‘perceived legitimacy’ of the former differ from the latter

    The metaphorical understanding of power and authority

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    The political conditioning of subjective economic evaluations: the role of party discourse

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    Classic and revisionist perspectives on economic voting have thoroughly analyzed the role of macroeconomic indicators and individual partisanship as determinants of subjective evaluations of the national economy. Surprisingly, however, top-down analysis of parties’ capacity to cue and persuade voters about national economic conditions is absent in the debate. This study uses a novel dataset containing monthly economic salience in party parliamentary speeches, macroeconomic indicators and individual survey data covering the four last electoral cycles in Spain (1996–2011). The results show that the salience of economic issues in the challenger’s discourse substantially increases negative evaluations of performance when this challenger is the owner of the economic issue. While a challenger’s conditioning of public economic evaluations is independent of the state of the economy (and can affect citizens with different ideological orientations), incumbent parties are more constrained by the true state of the economy in their ability to persuade the electorate on this issue

    Trade policy with the lights on: linking trade and politicization

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    As the most hotly debated trade topic in recent history, several observers have dubbed TTIP a ‘politicized’ issue. Yet in the trade literature, there has not been much attention to what the latter concept entails, nor what its drivers and consequences are. I argue that we need to explicitly link the scholarly fields of trade and politicization, not only to explain several societal features in the TTIP debate, but also because it carries constraining consequences for policymakers on national and European level, and because this link will be increasingly relevant in the future. Through a selected review of the politicization literature, I want to show that linking these fields is beneficial in both ways. This opens up a research agenda that maps, explains and investigates the consequences of the increasing societal contestation of trade policy, manifested through public debates, mobilization efforts and rising citizen awareness
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