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.

Getting Close to the Action: The Micro-Politics of Rural Development

This article identifies and positions micro-politics within rural development practice. It is concerned with the hidden and subtle processes that bind groups together, including trust, power and personal perceptions and motivations. The first section of the article provides a theoretical context for micro-political processes which reveals subtle distinctions from social capital. The section following describes the ethnographic approach that sets the methodological framework for the research. The findings reveal how micro-political processes manifest in a rural development group affect norms and relations both positively and negatively. Finally the causes of and factors affecting micro-politics are considered before concluding with a discussion on how micro-politics may be managed in rural regeneration.

The New Face of Global Hollywood: Black Hawk Down and the Politics of Meta-Sovereignty

This paper uses Ridley Scott’s 2001 film blockbuster Black Hawk Down to examine the claim that popular film is the ‘newest component of sovereignty’. While the topic of the film – the 1993 UN/US intervention in Somalia – lends itself to straightforward politicisation, this paper is equally interested in the film’s production history and its reception by global audiences. While initial reactions to the film focused on its ideological commitments (e.g. racism, collusion between Hollywood and the Pentagon, post-11 September patriotism), these readings continually posed an imagined ‘America’ against ‘the world’. This paper argues that Black Hawk Down is not about sovereignty as traditionally conceived, that is, about national interest shaping global affairs. Rather, Black Hawk Down articulates, and is articulated by, a new and emerging global order that operates through inclusion, management and flexibility. Drawing on recent theoretical debates over this new logic of rule, this paper illustrates how Black Hawk Down invoked much more diffuse, complex and deterritorialized categories than national sovereignty. In effect, Scott’s film goes beyond traditional notions of sovereignty altogether: its production, signification and reception deconstruct simple notions of ‘America’ and ‘the world’ in favour of what Hardt and Negri call ‘Empire’, what Zizek calls ‘post-politics’, and what we refer to as ‘meta-sovereignty’.