Political Change

במאמר מוצג המושג "כללי המשחק" בהקשריו הפוליטיים, מתוך כוונה להתמודד בעזרתו עם השאלה האם וכיצד שינוי בשדה הפוליטי הוא מן האפשר. בְּעולם משולל עוגנים טרנסצנדנטיים. החשיבה על המשחק
(game/play)
מסייעת לי להציג מודל שבו שלושה טיפוסי משַחקים השונים זה מזה ביחסם אל כללי המשחק; יותר מכך – היא מאפשרת לי להראות עד כמה פרומים ועמומים הגבולות שקיימים לכאורה בין הטיפוסים האנליטיים השונים של המשַחקים.
שאלת היתכנותו של שינוי חברתי מעסיקה את ג'ודית בטלר בספרה "טענת אנטיגונה". עבור בטלר, אנטיגונה היא מופת למי שמצליחה לא רק לקרוא תיגר על חוקי המשחק של הסדר הסמלי, אלא גם לפרוץ מגרש חדש ותקדימי – שכן על אף שהיא מתה, "המעשה שלה נחקק בשפה". במאמר אני מבקשת להרחיב את דיונה זה ולהאירו באמצעות מושג המשחק, כפי שפוּתח בכתיבתם של הפסיכואנליטיקאי דונלד ויניקוט ושל הפילוסוף לודוויג ויטגנשטיין.
אף שהתחום החברתי-פוליטי הוא לא בהכרח המגרש הביתי של שני הוגים אלה, לטענתי יכולה להיות לכתיבתם על משחק תרומה חשובה לסוגיה שמעסיקה את בטלר ורבים אחרים. בין תחומי המחקר של ויטגנשטיין וויניקוט ישנו לכאורה מרחק רב, אך העיון בדיוניהם על אודות מושג המשחק מגלה כי לשניהם משותפת העמדת רעיון ההסכמה בבסיס החיים החברתיים. במאמר משורטט הקשר בין רעיונות אלה לבין רעיון הפרפורמטיביות של בטלר, אשר על פיו כל ניסיון לפעול על פי כללי המשחק הוא ניסיון פרשני שמקבל את מובנו מההקשר שבו הוא מתבצע. כפי שאני מראה במאמר, לתפיסה זאת יש השלכות מרחיקות לכת לגבי שאלת היתכנותו של שינוי פוליטי ולגבי היחס בין גישות שונות לכללי המשחק.
התרומה המיוחדת של המפגש הלא טריוויאלי בין בטלר לבין ויניקוט וויטגנשטיין טמונה בין השאר באפשרות להאיר כך את הנקודה העיוורת אצל השניים האחרונים לגבי משחק ומשמעות, המביאה אותם להתעלם מההיבטים האלימים הפוטנציאליים של המשחק; תרומה נוספת היא ההזדמנות להעמיק כך בסוגיית החריגה מכללי המשחק, ולנסח באופן פורה את האפשרות לחריגה שעדיין מצליחה להישאר באזור הגבול העמום של כללי המשחק, ושמאפשרת – כדברי בטלר – "לכתוב אותם מחדש או אפילו לכתוב אותם לראשונה".

Published as Postill, J. 2014. A critical history of internet activism and social protest in Malaysia, 1998-2011. Asiascape: Digital Asia Journal 1-2: 78-103.

NB. THIS IS A DRAFT. SEE PUBLISHED PAPER HERE: https://www.academia.edu/6023457/A_critical_history_of_internet_activism_and_social_protest_in_Malaysia_1998-2011

This article asks two related questions. First, to what extent has internet activism shaped social protest in Malaysia from the late 1990s to the present? Second, what can the history of internet activism and social protest in Malaysia tell us, if anything, about the 2011 global wave of protests? To address these questions I first compare Malaysia’s techno-political path with that of two very different ‘emerging economies’, South Korea and Brazil, in order to contextualise the subsequent discussion. I then distinguish three key moments in Malaysia’s eventful history of internet activism and social protest, namely the 1998-1999 reformasi movement, the electoral ‘tsunami’ of 2008 (in which the ruling coalition lost its two-thirds majority) and the Bersih 2.0 rallies of 2011. I argue that Bersih 2.0 is best explained as both the latest episode in a series of uniquely Malaysian techno-political events and as a local variant of the global wave of protests of 2011 – a wave in which techno-libertarians such as hackers, online journalists and technology lawyers, as well as ordinary citizens using social media, played an important part. The article ends with a summary and with suggestions for further research.

The task to reshape governments in the countries confronted with the Arab Spring prompts the question whether there are necessary conditions to realize a stable society that simultaneously seeks to eliminate the elements that have led to the uprisings. Acknowledging some constitutional rights seems indispensable in such a process. I argue that such a state of affairs is indeed the case, at least now that the ‘old’ justifications to differentiate between people do not suffice anymore. That is not to say that the countries involved will have identical laws in each respect, but merely that a common basis has to be realized, manifested in political and legal equality, so this given does not derogate from the fact that each country’s specific legislation needs to be shaped in the light of its own history. Such a basis has no ‘moral’ character, but is simply a necessary condition to prevent sedition.

RESUMEN Este trabajo observa la formación con los Borbones de una clase política ministerial y la recomposición de las jerarquías políticas y sociales que este cambio conllevó. Explora los rasgos sociales y culturales de esta clase política: su composición, reclutamiento, endogamias internas, valores, perfil ilustrado y reformista. La hipótesis general es que el cambio político del XVIII vino de la mano no de una burguesía, sino de los sectores administrativos, económicos e intelectuales más vinculados a la construcción del Estado español contemporáneo. Este cambio fue sectorial, pero más profundo de lo que se ha dicho. Su novedad se entiende mejor a la luz de la reciente revisión historiográfica sobre la monarquía jurisdiccional, cuyas permanencias llevan a reevaluar el significado del reformismo borbónico de la segunda mitad de la centuria.
ABSTRACT This work observes the formation with the Bourbons of a ministerial political class and the recomposition of the political and social hierarchies that this change entailed. It explores the social and cultural features of this political class: its composition, recruitment, internal endogamy, values, enlightened and reformist profile. The general hypothesis is that the political change of the XVIII came from the hand not of a

The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the different political-ontological approaches of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Using a methodology inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical approach, I conclude that a considerable line of difference can be drawn between Laclau and Mouffe's "ontology of lack", in which the political is only ever partially structured by incomplete and contingent articulations, and Hardt and Negri's "ontology of desire", in which society is continually produced by the desiring movements of multitude. The ontology of lack causes Laclau and Mouffe to conceptualize political resistance as something that is always already represented and articulated, while Hardt and Negri see the political resistance of the multitude as something direct, unmediated and immanent. In the final part of the thesis I evaluate the two political-ontological approaches in light of the recent European right-wing trend, and conclude that Hardt and Negri's unmediated and immanent conceptualizations of political resistance lack the theoretical tools to theorize and counteract such reactionary popular movements.

[originally published as a bachelor's thesis in History of Ideas at University of Gothenburg, autumn term 2016]

The Revista de Estudios Sociales of the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) invites the academic community to submit articles for Issue 62 (October-December 2017) dedicated to the topic of “Emotional Communities and Social Change.”

Guest Editors: Javier Moscoso (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain) and Juan Manuel Zaragoza (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)

Articles will be received from the 1st to the 31st of August, 2016

This article deals with how scholars, policy analysts and activists, striving to make sense of current political change, have turned to history for analogies and ideas for action. While it is encouraging to see the Trump presidency and other instances of upheaval leading to a strengthened interest in history, in academe and public life more generally, there nevertheless is a need to caution against facile appropriations of the historical record and the use of superficial similarity to legitimize political action. I discuss ways of historicizing the present, through some examples of historical analogies applied to the first months of the Trump presidency and other relatively current
instances of change. I start with a discussion of historical analogies and concepts, stressing how they can be understood as both first order and
second order constructs. Then I discuss the current usage of historical analogies and concepts as both first order and
second order constructs, before I conclude.

Franco died in bed on November 20th 1975. But the dictatorship was already dying from years ago. The political change, that crystallize on the 1977-1978 institutional change, had already occurred within civil society, and especially in Catalonia. Rural Catalonia, far from apathy and demobilization, lived an intense process of social transition comparable in many respects to the Metropolitan Catalonia. Resistance against the regime and struggles for the improvement of material conditions, as well as the critical cultural activism, became a space of permanent conflict over those years that were defining and increasing what was possible and what was not under the Francoism. When the dictatorship was forced to accept its «denaturalization» in the early 1977, change was a tangible reality for the most of the population.

Atıf: Kabakcı, E. (2018). Kaideden istisnaya: Gelişmecilik ve kültürelciliğin ötesinde tarihsel sosyolojinin imkânları. İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyoloji Dergisi, 38, 403-440. https://doi. Öz "İlerleme" düşüncesinin yirminci yüzyıl ortalarındaki izdüşümlerinden olan "siyasal gelişme" paradigması, İkinci Dünya Savaşı akabinde, karşılaştırmalı siyaset biliminde işgal ettiği merkezî yeri, önce işlevselci bir perspektifin hâkim olduğu nicel araştırmalara, ardından da antropolojiden beslenen kültürelci yaklaşımlara bırakmıştır. Bu makale, tıpkı toplumsal gibi siyasal değişimin de tekbiçimli ve ereksel olduğunu savlayan evrenselci "siyasal gelişme" kuramlarından, geleneğe aşırı vurgu yaparak siyasal değişim süreçlerini tikelleştirmeye yönelen "kültürelci" yaklaşımlara doğru seyreden süreci mercek altına almaktadır. Ayrıca, bu iki yaklaşıma alternatif olarak tarihsel sosyolojinin imkânlarını tartışmaya açmayı hedeflemektedir. Bu eksende; ilk olarak, klasik sosyolojiden ilham alan ve değişimin içsel bir süreç olduğunu iddia ederek toplumları tektipleştiren siyasal gelişmeci perspektif farklı tezahürleriyle incelenecektir. Ardından, sosyal bilimlerde antropolojinin giderek ön plana çıkmasıyla önem kazanan kültür kavramının toplumsal değişime dair çözümlemelere dâhil edilmesine koşut olarak ortaya çıkan, toplumların ve değişim süreçlerinin benzersizliğine vurgu yapan kültürelci yaklaşımlar değerlendirilecektir. Son olarak, bu iki kutba mesafeli duran, sosyal bilimsel bilginin interdisipliner yeni bir organizasyonunu ifade eden tarihsel sosyolojinin, toplumsal ve siyasal değişimi konu alan incelemelere sağlayacağı katkılar üzerinde durulacaktır.

Abstract The paradigm of political development, based the projections of the mid-20th century's idea of progress, left the central position it had occupied in comparative political science after World War II, first in quantitative research where the functionalist perspective was dominant, then in the culturalist approaches that were also nourished from anthropology. Drawing on theories of universalist political development, which purport social change to be uniform and teleogical just like social change, this article places the processes that directly contemplate the culturalist approaches that lean toward particularizing the processes of social change by placing extreme emphasis on tradition under the microscope. In addition, it aims to open these two approaches to debate the possibilities of historical sociology as an alternative. In line with this, the political developmental perspective, which unifies communities, will be examined through different manifestations by first claiming the field of inspiration and change to be an intrinsic process from classical sociology. Afterward, emerging culturalist approaches will be evaluated in parallel with inclusion of the concept of culture in analyses on social change, which in the social sciences has increasingly gained importance in the foreground of anthropology. Last to be emphasized will be the contributions of historical sociology, which stands out over these two poles and expresses a new interdisciplinary organization of social scientific knowledge in studies on the subject area of social and political change.

This article complicates our understanding of the cultural and political impact of the internet in non-liberal societies by foregrounding people’s socially constituted reading practices across print and cyberspace. It places internet use in the context of both social and personal reading histories, as well as in the evolving cultural field across media. I examine the reading practices of 26 Chinese individuals, who developed alternative political understandings through their internet use. Their alternative views, I found, emerged not just through their engagement with the web but as a result of a longer history. Their distinct web use patterns have roots in their pre-internet reading practices. A specific reading disposition for ‘self-development’ may have led to their continuing divergence to niche reading materials as the domestic cultural field diversified. This reading disposition, I argue, prepares people to later engage with the internet in ways that facilitate changes in their political understandings.

If federalism could be seen as a degree of decentralization, centralization would not be inconsistent with federalism; in other words, federalism could be centralist, depriving states of their rights. By broadening the federal concept to include the quasi-federal systems and those where the constituent states are characterized by their subordination to the centre (the “nonfederal”, though somewhat contradictory in terms), students of federalism have long noted the social and political forces that created varieties of federalism and concluded that federalism was a variable response to opposing demands for the dispersal and concentration of power, on specifically a territorial basis. Hence, decentralization could be seen as a variant of centralization that in turn, means the concentration of power in only one central authority. Decentralization represents the dispersal of power from this central authority to other centres of power which could be functional or territorial units. China, for instance, while highly centralized, has a public finance system that carries strong features of fiscal federalism. While it is a tendency for large countries, which tend to be diverse in the ethnic make-up of their populations and have large interregional differences in terms of demand for government services, to decentralize for various reasons, including the large diseconomies of centralized management, China has unmistakably stood out as an anomaly. This paper is an attempt to look closely at the interplay of various crucial aspects of this Chinese puzzle – ethnic fragmentation, ethnoregional disparities, the State’s regional policy, fiscal structure and reform, and political transition. <https://www.dropbox.com/s/lg0yojebpf2bke2/EmileYeoh-CopenhagenDP2008January.pdf>

Cet article s’intéresse à une situation de succession politique apparue à Nice dans les années 1990 à la suite de la fuite de Jacques Médecin et l’arrivée au pouvoir de Jacques Peyrat. Alors que les travaux privilégient traditionnellement les périodes de stabilité dans l’analyse de la gouvernance urbaine, l’étude de ce cas permet de réfléchir sur les conditions et modalités d’un changement politique. Elle croise les logiques de compétition politique et d’action publique pour éclairer la difficulté à construire un nouvel ordre politique. Elle offre l’opportunité de remettre sur le métier les enjeux de leadership et de révéler les logiques diffuses du pouvoir urbain contemporain.

מושג המשחק
והקשר שלו לאפשרויות של שינוי פוליטי /
תקציר:
בהרצאה אציג את מושג המשחק בהקשריו הפוליטיים, מתוך כוונה להתמודד בעזרתו עם השאלה האם וכיצד שינוי בשדה הפוליטי הוא מן האפשר. בְּעולם משולל עוגנים טרנסצנדנטיים. החשיבה על המשחק תסייע לי להציג מודל שבו שלושה טיפוסי משַחקים השונים זה מזה ביחסם אל כללי המשחק; יותר מכך – היא תאפשר לי להראות עד כמה פרומים ועמומים הגבולות שקיימים לכאורה בין הטיפוסים האנליטיים השונים של המשַחקים.
שאלת היתכנותו של שינוי חברתי מעסיקה את ג'ודית בטלר בספרה "טענת אנטיגונה". עבור בטלר, אנטיגונה היא מופת למי שמצליחה לא רק לקרוא תיגר על חוקי המשחק של הסדר הסמלי, אלא גם לפרוץ מגרש חדש ותקדימי – שכן על אף שהיא מתה, "המעשה שלה נחקק בשפה". בהרצאתי אבקש להרחיב את דיונה זה ולהאירו באמצעות מושג המשחק, כפי שפוּתח בכתיבתם של הפסיכואנליטיקאי דונלד ויניקוט ושל הפילוסוף לודוויג ויטגנשטיין.
אף שהתחום החברתי-פוליטי הוא לא בהכרח המגרש הביתי של שני הוגים אלה, לטענתי יכולה להיות לכתיבתם על משחק תרומה חשובה לסוגיה שמעסיקה את בטלר ורבים אחרים. בין תחומי המחקר של ויטגנשטיין וויניקוט ישנו לכאורה מרחק רב, אך העיון בדיוניהם על אודות מושג המשחק מגלה כי לשניהם משותפת העמדת רעיון ההסכמה בבסיס החיים החברתיים. בהרצאה אשרטט את הקשר בין רעיונות אלה לבין רעיון הפרפורמטיביות של בטלר, אשר על פיו כל ניסיון לפעול על פי כללי המשחק הוא ניסיון פרשני שמקבל את מובנו מההקשר שבו הוא מתבצע. כפי שאראה, לתפיסה זאת יש השלכות מרחיקות לכת לגבי שאלת היתכנותו של שינוי פוליטי ולגבי היחס בין גישות שונות לכללי המשחק.
התרומה המיוחדת של המפגש הלא טריוויאלי בין בטלר לבין ויניקוט וויטגנשטיין טמונה בין השאר באפשרות להאיר כך את הנקודה העיוורת אצל השניים האחרונים לגבי משחק ומשמעות, המביאה אותם להתעלם מההיבטים האלימים הפוטנציאליים של המשחק; תרומה נוספת היא ההזדמנות להעמיק כך בסוגיית החריגה מכללי המשחק, ולנסח באופן פורה את האפשרות לחריגה שעדיין מצליחה להישאר באזור הגבול העמום של כללי המשחק, ושמאפשרת – כדברי בטלר – "לכתוב אותם מחדש או אפילו לכתוב אותם לראשונה".
בגלל מגבלות זמן וטעמים נוספים, לא אפרוש בהרצאה סקירה ממצה של התייחסויות תיאורטיות למושג. סקירה כזאת ניתן למצוא במאמרו של יאיר ליפשיץ בגיליון 9 של "מפתח" בעקבות ההרצאה שלו על משחקיות בכנס הלקסיקלי ה-11.

In spite of the expectation of the well meaning people in India in the nineteenth century, every single social reform had to be executed through enactment; spread of education, general improvement of the condition of women, etc did not help much

¿Cuáles son las principales transformaciones que han vivido las democracias contemporáneas?, ¿tiene algún sentido diferenciar la idea de transformaciones de la democracia de la idea de transformaciones de la política contemporánea?, ¿cómo impactan en la lógica del gobierno democrático los cambios recientes de las estructuras políticas?, ¿qué significan las nuevas opciones de la democracia que son “encabezadas” en muchos casos por anti-demócratas declarados?
La democracia parece haber alcanzado una suerte de punto ciego en el proceso histórico de su desarrollo más reciente. El aumento de contradicciones, agresiones, desconfianza, odio al otro, conjugado con el primado de lo negativo y la colonización de la política por intereses particulares, nos obliga a replantear las líneas de análisis sobre las transformaciones que han sufrido las democracias en los últimos lustros, ya que por momentos se evidencia una suerte de desestructuración de sus contenidos clásicos, tales como la expansión del campo de la igualdad, de la libertad, del bien común y la profundización del pluralismo.

Using the Baltic states as an empirical example of a wider social problem of categorization and naming, this article explores the statistical categories of ‘international migrant/foreign-born’ population used in three major cross-national data sources (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat and The World Bank Indicators (WBI)). We argue that these seemingly politically neutral categories ignore historical processes of state formation and migration, and privilege the current ethnonational definition of the state. We demonstrate how, in regions with recent geopolitical changes, the international migrant category’s spatial and temporal constraints produce distorted population parameters, by marking those who have never crossed sovereign states’ borders as international migrants. In certain social contexts, applying the international migrant category to those who have never crossed international borders shapes and legitimizes restrictive citizenship poli...

Les articles réunis dans ce numéro interrogent les possibilités, modalités et conséquences de changements au sein des politiques culturelles. C’est la première fois, d’une certaine façon, que les politiques culturelles sont ainsi invitées à contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des conditions de transformation de l’action publique. https://www.cairn.info/revue-pole-sud-2014-2-page-5.htm

El propósito de este curso es enseñar al estudiante a analizar diferentes tipos y procesos de cambio político. El propósito del curso es que el estudiante desarrolle habilidades para aprender a: a) analizar procesos de cambio desde múltiples perspectivas; b) imaginar grandes preguntas de investigación, que ellos mismos estén en condiciones de formular y resolver; c) identificar perspectivas teóricas útiles para llevar adelante el análisis de procesos de cambio; d) emplear herramientas de método para llevar adelante investigaciones en torno a procesos de cambio; y e) criticar perspectivas teóricas, autores, obras y métodos, con los cuales se han analizado procesos de cambio. El curso consiste en una combinación de lecturas, medios audiovisuales (documentales y películas), discusiones y ejercicios de aplicación y análisis. Cada semana está compuesta por 1) un texto de lectura; 2) un medio audiovisual (documental o película); y, 3) una sesión de discusión.

This article takes stock of recent advances in the field of comparative authoritarianism. The four books reviewed shed light on the effects of social activism, claim-making and social protests on authoritarian resilience. Taken as a whole, they intervene in the scholarly debates that examine the rise of collective, often contentious action under authoritarian rule. In so doing they account both for how states tolerate or even encourage collective action and the extent to which, in turn, protests by distinct social groups re-shape the political system. As authoritarian institutions, democratic-looking or otherwise, have received considerable attention of late, this article calls for greater attention to the economic and ideational dimensions of authoritarianism and, more generally, a broader research agenda.

This article investigates the interrelation between law and hope in the context of constitutional change in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon ethnographic and textual data, it is shown that the constitution has acquired particular discursive importance in Kyrgyzstan each time the foundations of the state have been severely challenged or shattered. Paying particular attention to three major political conflicts, the article demonstrates how, in the aftermath of each, speeches, performances, presentations and conversations were infused with ‘constitutional faith’, binding together the political elite and ordinary citizens in an expression of their general hope that constitutional change could bring about a better future. I view constitutional faith as a practice of hope that allows people to actively engage with their being-in-the-world, particularly in times of crisis. In the aftermath of large-scale political conflict, with which I am concerned here, it can become a faith-based mode of conflict resolution.

The EU has been engaged in democracy promotion, human rights, and civil liberties in the Mediterranean countries for over two decades with results ranging from very limited success to total failure. The revolutions in the Arab world – that have caught the EU and Western countries by surprise – provide a window of opportunity for real democratic reforms in the region. The successful democratization in Tunisia will send positive messages to the neighboring countries. Why should the EU be more involved in supporting Tunisia&#39;s democratic transition? And what can the EU do to support Tunisia&#39;s efforts to build and reform its institutions and to move towards a consolidated democracy with a functioning market economy? Answering these research questions requires understanding the major failures of the EU in the Mediterranean region – the Union of the Mediterranean is on hold and conditionality (at least political conditionality) is problematic and questionable. Prior to the Dignity ...