Struggles against Injustice:: Contemporary Critical Theory and Political Violence

This article investigates a significant problem in contemporary critical theory, namely its failure to address effectively the possibility that a campaign of political violence may be a legitimate means of fighting grave injustice. Having offered a working definition of ‘political violence’, I argue that critical theory should be focused on experiences of injustice rather than on ideals of justice. I then explore the reasons as to why, save for some intriguing remarks on retrospective legitimation, Jürgen Habermas has not addressed this issue directly. While Axel Honneth's recognition theory may have greater potential here, the absence of explicit consideration of the matter by him leaves considerable work to do. I introduce five questions in the concluding section that provide a starting point in setting out an appropriately stringent, normative test for claims that support violent action against injustice.

Social Identity and Youth Aggressive and Delinquent Behaviors in a Context of Political Violence

The goal of the current study was to examine the moderating role of in-group social identity on relations between youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggressive behaviors. Participants included 770 mother-child dyads living in interfaced neighborhoods of Belfast. Youth answered questions about aggressive and delinquent behaviors as well as the extent to which they targeted their behaviors toward members of the other group. Structural equation modeling results show that youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior is linked with increases in both general and sectarian aggression and delinquency over one year. Reflecting the positive and negative effects of social identity, in-group social identity moderated this link, strengthening the relationship between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggression and delinquency towards the out-group. However, social identity weakened the effect for exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community on general aggressive behaviors. Gender differences also emerged; the relation between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior and sectarian aggression was stronger for boys. The results have implications for understanding the complex role of social identity in intergroup relations for youth in post-accord societies.

MacIntyre and Havel as green political thinkers: Unreasonable thinking in turbulent times

Purpose This chapter explores the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre and Vaclav Havel and what these two thinkers can contribute to green political theory. Design/methodology/approach This chapter includes examination of some of the key works of Havel and MacIntyre and analysis of these works from the point of view of green political theory. Findings The section ‘Havel and the Imperative to “Live in Truth”: Dissent and Green Politics’ explores Havel’s thought with a particular emphasis on his ethicised notion of political action and critique (‘living in truth’) and his focus on the centrality of dissent (both intellectually and in practice) as central to political critique and action. The section ‘MacIntyre as a Green Thinker: Vulnerability in Political and Moral Theory’ offers an overview of MacIntyre interpreted as a putative green thinker, with a particular emphasis on his ideas of dependence and vulnerability. The Conclusion attempts to draw some common themes together from both thinkers in terms of what they have to offer contemporary green political thought. Research limitations/implications What is presented here is introductory, ground clearing and therefore necessarily suggestive (as well as under-developed). That is, it is the start of a new area of exploration rather than an analysis based on any exhaustive and comprehensive knowledge of both thinkers. Practical implications This chapter offers some initial lines of exploration for scholars interested in the overlap between green thinking and the work of Havel and MacIntyre. Originality/value This is the first exploration of the connections between the works of Havel and MacIntyre and green political theory.

Rape Myths, Law, and Feminist Research: 'Myths About Myths?'

In an article recently published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the legal scholar Helen Reece argues that the prevalence and effects of rape myths have been overstated and the designation of certain beliefs and attitudes as myths is simply wrong. Feminist researchers, she argues, are engaged 'in a process of creating myths about myths' in a way that serves to close down and limit productive debate in this 'vexed' area. In this article we argue that Reece's analysis is methodologically flawed, crudely reductionist and rhetorically unyielding. We locate Reece's analysis within the wider theoretical field to show how her failure to engage with feminist literature on rape other than in the narrowest, most exclusionary terms, yields an approach which impedes rather than advances public understanding and panders to a kind of simplistic thinking which cannot begin to grapple with the complexity of the phenomenon that is rape. We conclude by emphasizing the continuing commitment of feminist researchers carefully to theorizing and (re)mapping the fraught field of progressive legal strategizing in order to identify and counter the kinds of risks and shortcomings of political activism with which Reece is rightly concerned.

Who was Andrea? Writing Oneself as a Feminist Icon

This article explores the construction of Andrea Dworkin as a public persona, or a ‘feminist icon’, revered by some and demonized by others. It argues that in both her fiction and non-fiction, Dworkin engaged in a process of writing herself as an exceptional woman, a ‘feminist militant’ as she describes herself in the subheading of her 2002 memoir, Heartbreak. The article illustrates Dworkin’s autobiographical logic of exceptionalism by comparing the story told in Heartbreak to the story of Dworkin’s major novel, Mercy, which features a heroine, Andrea, who shares Dworkin’s name and significant biographical details. While Dworkin has insisted that Mercy is not an autobiographical novel, the author undertakes a reading here of Mercy as the story of Dworkin if she had not become the feminist icon of her own and others’ construction. In Mercy, Andrea unsuccessfully attempts to escape the silent, victimized status that Dworkin has insistently argued is imposed upon women. In her repeated victimization, Andrea functions for Dworkin as an ‘everywoman’ who both embodies Dworkin’s world-view and highlights how Dworkin’s own biography exists in tension with some of her central assumptions about women, gender and contemporary society.

Legislating for political gender quotas in Ireland

In July 2012, legislation on political party funding and candidate gender quotas was enacted by the Irish Parliament. The Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012 provides for a 30% gender quota for party candidates at the next general election, rising to 40% seven years thereafter. Non-compliant parties will lose half of their annual state funding. Informed by insights from feminist institutionalism, this paper will consider the question: why did Irish political parties, who have always been so reluctant to tackle the question of women’s under-representation, suddenly do a volte-face and introduce such a radical measure as legislative gender quotas? In answering this question, we argue that the political reform discourse that emerged following the recent Irish economic crisis was a significant factor in the adoption of legislative gender quotas in the Republic of Ireland. It signified, and made visible, the divergence between politicians and the public on the issue in a context where political representatives were under question, and political institutions being criticised, for ineffective political management. We contend that Ireland is an example of how apparently enduring and immutable gender norms can be overcome. We suggest that feminist institutionalism enables an unpacking of the messy complexities of institutional resistance to change and reveals the power of informal institutions to shape outcomes leading to a major formal rule change.

Unmasking the ‘Elderly Mystique’: why it is time to make the personal political in ageing research

This article uses feminist scholarship to investigate ‘the elderly mystique’ – which contends that the potential of old age is masked by a set of false beliefs about ageing (i.e. ageism) which permeate social, economic and political life (Cohen, 1988).
The article presents a theoretical model which explores the extent to which institutionalised ageism shapes the trajectory of life after 60. The hypothesis under-pinning the model is simple: The challenge for ageing societies is not the average age of a given population but, rather, how age is used to structure economic, social and political life. An inter-disciplinary framework is used to examine how biological facts about ageing are used to segregate older from younger people, giving older people the status of “other”; economically through retirement, politically through assumptions about ‘the grey vote’ and socially through ageist stereotyping in the media and through denial and ridicule of the sexuality of older people. Each domain is informed by the achievements of feminist theory and research on sexism and how its successes and failures can inform critical investigations of ageism.
The paper recognises the role of ageism in de-politicising the lived experience of ageing. The paper concludes that feminist scholarship, particularly work by feminists in their seventies, eighties and nineties has much to offer in terms of re-framing gerontology as an emancipatory project for current and future cohorts of older people.

Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: A Feminist Perspective

Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe combines a feminist critique of contemporary and prominent approaches to cosmopolitanism with an in-depth analysis of historical cosmopolitanism and the manner in which gendered symbolic boundaries of national political communities in two European countries are drawn. Exploring the work of prominent scholars of new cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany, including Held, Habermas, Beck and Bhabha, it delivers a timely intervention into current debates on globalisation, Europeanisation and social processes of transformation in and beyond specific national societies.

A rigorous examination of the emancipatory potential of current debates surrounding cosmopolitanism in Europe, this book will be of interest to sociologist and political scientists working on questions of identity, inclusion, citizenship, globalisation, cosmopolitanism and gender.
Contents: Introduction: gendered cosmopolitanism: the scope of this book; Who belongs? Who is the Other?; Recognition, social equality and the current EU anti-discrimination policy; Kulturnation and the homogenised notion of community belonging: Jürgen Habermas's and Ulrich Beck's approaches to 'European' cosmopolitanism; Global trade, the city and commercial cosmopolitanism: David Held's and Homi K. Bhabha's approaches to new cosmopolitanism; About dead-ends, one-way streets and critical crossroads; Transversal conversations on the scope of new cosmopolitanism beyond the Eurocentric framework; Bibliography; Index.

Raymond Geuss’ radicalization of realism in political theory

Raymond Geuss has been viewed as one of the figureheads of the recent debates about realism in political theory. This interpretation, however, depends on a truncated understanding of his work of the past 30 years. I will offer the first sustained engagement with this work (in English and German) which allows understanding his realism as a project for reorienting political theory, particularly the relationship between political theory and politics. I interpret this reorientation as a radicalization of realismin political theory through the combination of the emphasis on the critical purpose of political theory and the provision of practical, contextual orientation. Their compatibility depends on Geuss’ understanding of criticism as negative, of power as ‘detoxified’ and of the critical purchase of political theory as based on the diagnostic engagement with its context. This radicalization particularly challenges the understanding of how political theory relates to its political context.

The Dark Side of Nudging: The Ethics, Political Economy, and Law of Libertarian Paternalism

Libertarian paternalism, as advanced by Cass Sunstein, is seriously flawed, but not primarily for the reasons that most commentators suggest. Libertarian paternalism and its attendant regulatory implications are too libertarian, not too paternalistic, and as a result are in considerable tension with ‘thick’ conceptions of human dignity. We make four arguments. The first is that there is no justification for a presumption in favor of nudging as a default regulatory strategy, as Sunstein asserts. It is ordinarily less effective than mandates; such mandates rarely offend personal autonomy; and the central reliance on cognitive failures in the nudging program is more likely to offend human dignity than the mandates it seeks to replace. Secondly, we argue that nudging as a regulatory strategy fits both overtly and covertly, often insidiously, into a more general libertarian program of political economy. Thirdly, while we are on the whole more concerned to reject the libertarian than the paternalistic elements of this philosophy, Sunstein’s work, both in Why Nudge?, and earlier, fails to appreciate how nudging may be manipulative if not designed with more care than he acknowledges. Lastly, because of these characteristics, nudging might even be subject to legal challenges that would give us the worst of all possible regulatory worlds: a weak regulatory intervention that is liable to be challenged in the courts by well-resourced interest groups. In such a scenario, and contrary to the ‘common sense’ ethos contended for in Why Nudge?, nudges might not even clear the excessively low bar of doing something rather than nothing. Those seeking to pursue progressive politics, under law, should reject nudging in favor of regulation that is more congruent with principles of legality, more transparent, more effective, more democratic, and allows us more fully to act as moral agents. Such a system may have a place for (some) nudging, but not one that departs significantly from how labeling, warnings and the like already function, and nothing that compares with Sunstein’s apparent ambitions for his new movement.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Tool for Concept Clarification, Typology Building, and Contextualized Comparisons in Gender and Feminist Research

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

State power matters: power, the state and political struggle in the post-war American novel

This article is concerned with resituating the state at the centre of the analytical stage and, concomitantly, with drawing attention to the dangers of losing sight of the state as a locus of power. It seeks to uncover the relationship between two related lines of critical inquiry: Marxist and Foucauldian theories of the state; and the attempts by three postwar American novelist (Ken Kesey, William Burroughs and E.L. Doctorow) to determine the nature and extent of this power and to consider under what conditions political struggle might be possible. It argues that such a move is needed because recent critical analysis has been too preoccupied by corporeal micropolitics and global macropolitics, and that the postwar American novel can help us in this move because it is centrally concerned with the repressive potentiality of the US state. It maintains that the resuscitation of Marxist state theories in early 1970s and a debate between Poulantzas and Foucault is intriguingly foreshadowed and even critiqued by these novels. Consequently, it concludes that these novels constitute an unrecognized pre-history of what would become one of the key intellectual debates of the late twentieth century: an engagement between Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of the power and resistance.