Waiting for International Political Sociology: A Field Guide to Living In-Between

This paper explores the in-between positionality of International Political Sociology (IPS) and offers a field guide to help scholars, students and thinkers embrace this disposition more energetically. It makes the case for a more balanced transdisciplinarity that attends to the international, the political and the social at the same time and in equal measure. The power of this in-between approach is that it forces thinkers in IPS to constantly look at the horrors of our contemporary world without turning away. Through the ambivalent position of the ‘happy wreck’, the paper explores the need to do something about these horrors (e.g. diagnose, act, intervene) while fully acknowledging that such actions always produce new forms of violence and exclusion. To help thinkers in IPS inhabit this challenging space of inquiry more confidently, the paper makes four suggestions: (i) broadening our emotional responses to the horrors of the world; (ii) resisting resolution through non-cathartic dispositions; (iii) pursuing slow research to contest dominant rhetorics of crisis and emergency; and (iv) re-imagining shared conditions of vulnerability.

Governance and change in higher education : the debate between classical political sociology, new institutionalism and critical theories

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Political Sociology of Islam Integration: the Role of Liberal Law

In Europe and North America, migration and integration has become a busy subfield of political sociology. Of particular interest in this respect is the integration of Muslims and Islam, which has dominated the debate in Europe. Broadly conceived «political opportunity structures» have received much attention in this context. But the role of liberal law in the integration of Islam has been largely ignored, not by lawyers of course, but by political sociologists who have thus delivered far too negative and truncated pictures of Muslims and Islam in Europe. This is the deficit we sought to redress in Legal Integration of Islam; A Transatlantic Comparison (2013) (co-authored with John Torpey). Some of this study’s main ideas and findings are presented in the following.

Civic engagement and associationalism : the impact of group membership scope versus intensity of participation

The relationship between participation in civic and political activities and membership of voluntary associations is now well established. What is less clear is the relative impacts of how much time people spend on group activities (associational intensity), and the number and type of groups that individuals are involved with (associational scope). Does it matter in terms of civic engagement, for example, whether one is a member of a quilting-circle or trade union? Does it matter whether association ‘membership’ is simply an annual payment or a major commitment of time and energy? In this article, we use a large survey to explore these questions empirically by focusing on the membership patterns and civic engagement practices of 4,001 citizens drawn from eight suburbs across Greater Melbourne, Australia. Our findings indicate that, while associational intensity is positively related to civic engagement, associational scope (the number of group memberships per person), is a more influential determinant of the level of civic and political participation. The results also suggest that while all forms of associationalism are important in terms of fostering greater levels of civic activity, not all forms have the same impact.

The Agendas of The Stream

The new tech has introduced the traits of the hypermedia, interactivity and convergence in the journalism field. Moreover, it has involved the emergence of new media and changes in the informative contents. In 2006 Al Jazeera in English was created for covering the underreported regions, inasmuch as new media arise, new contents do so, thus, the research examines the agendas of The Stream, the TV show from Al Jazeera that relies heavily on social networks.

Who reads Tocqueville today?

Esta comunicação irá ser publicada no próximo número da Newsletter do RC16 Sociological Theory da International Sociological Association, em Dezembro de 2016.

Global Capitalism, Immigrant Labor, and the Struggle for Justice

Around the world borders are militarized, states are stepping up repressive anti-immigrant controls, and native publics are turning immigrants into scapegoats for the spiraling crisis of global capitalism. The massive displacement and primitive accumulation unleashed by free trade agreements and neo-liberal policies, as well as state and “private” violence has resulted in a virtually inexhaustible immigrant labor reserve for the global economy. State controls over immigration and immigrant labor have several functions for the system: 1) state repression and criminalization of undocumented immigration make immigrants vulnerable and deportable and therefore subject to conditions of super-exploitation, super-control and hyper-surveillance; 2) anti-immigrant repressive apparatuses are themselves ever more important sources of accumulation, ranging from private for-profit immigrant detention centers, to the militarization of borders, and the purchase by states of military hardware and systems of surveillance. Immigrant labor is extremely profitable for the transnational corporate economy; 3) the anti-immigrant policies associated with repressive state apparatuses help turn attention away from the crisis of global capitalism among more privileged sectors of the working class and convert immigrant workers into scapegoats for the crisis, thus deflecting attention from the root causes of the crisis and undermining working class unity. This article focuses on structural and historical underpinnings of the phenomenon of immigrant labor in the new global capitalist system and on how the rise of a globally integrated production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and transnational state apparatuses, have led to a reorganization of the world market in labor, including deeper reliance on a rapidly expanding reserve army of immigrant labor and a vicious new anti-immigrant politics. It looks at the United States as an illustration of the larger worldwide situation with regard to immigration and immigrant justice. Finally, it explores the rise of an immigrant justice movement around the world, observes the leading role that immigrant workers often play in worker’s struggles and that a mass immigrant rights movement is at the cutting edge of the struggle against transnational corporate exploitation. We call for replacing the whole concept of national citizenship with that of global citizenship as the only rallying cry that can assure justice and equality for all.

Are we keeping the bastards honest? Perceptions of corruption, integrity and influence on politics

The words of the late Don Chipp, the founder of the Australian Democrats, have a perennial relevance to politics. When Chipp talked about ‘keeping the bastards honest’, it related to a minor political party playing a role of keeping the major political parties true to their word (Warhurst 1997). Yet it is also a democratic role that citizens play on an ongoing basis, particularly through the mechanism of elections. At the ballot box, governments that are widely perceived to have acted with a lack of integrity are roundly punished. This chapter explores public opinion on issues of integrity, corruption, influence and trust in politics and politicians in Australia. The evidence paints a differentiated picture of a public which sees little sign of overtly corrupt political practices but on the other hand does not feel terribly influential and is not always confident of fair treatment from public officials...

The Healthy Trends of International Relations Research

As the end of the Cold War approached in 1989, Caroline Thomas argued: “It is important that the discipline [International Relations, IR] should address the issue of disease and more broadly, health, not simply to facilitate containment of disease transmission across international borders but also because central notions of justice, equity, efficiency and order are involved” (1989:273).1 Ten years later, Craig Murphy echoed these sentiments. Murphy (2001: 352) proposed that IR had yet to grapple with the political consequences of growing inequality between the world’s rich and poor, and areas such as health—where these inequalities were most stark—should become the field’s core business. How IR’s theories and methods would approach these issues was less clear. Bettcher and Yach (1998) cautioned that IR would be unable to develop progressive research projects that explored global health diplomacy as a global public good without adopting new perspectives and methods. Others warned that the expansion of security studies into areas such as global health would weaken the intellectual coherency of the field (Walt 1991:213). Taking its cue from the recent Ng and Prah Ruger (2011) study, this paper returns to these concerns to briefly explore key trends and potential future concerns of research in IR on health...

Young Actors in Transnational Agoras : Multi-sited Ethnography of Cosmopolitan Micropolitical Orientations

This study examines young people s political participation in transnational meetings. Methodologically the study aims to shed light on multi-sited global ethnography. Young people are viewed here as a social age group sensitive to critical, alternative and even radical political participation. The diversity of the young actors and their actions is captured by using several different methods. What is more, the study spurs us coming from the Global North to develop social science research towards methodological cosmopolitanism and to consider our research practices from a moral cosmopolitan perspective. The research sites are the EU Presidency Youth Event (2006 Hyvinkää, Finland), the Global Young Greens Founding Conference (2007 Nairobi, Kenya), the European Social Forum (2008 Malmö, Sweden) and three World Social Forums (2006 Bamako, Mali; 2007 Nairobi Kenya and 2009 Belém, Brazil). The data consists of participant observation, documents and media articles of the meetings, interviews, photos, video, and internet data. This multidisciplinary study combines youth research, development studies, performative social science and political sociology. In this research the diverse field of youth political participation in transnational agoras is studied by using a cross-table of cosmopolitan resources (or the lack of them) and everydaymakers expert citizen dichotomy. First, the young participants of the EU Presidency youth event are studied as an example of expert citizens with cosmopolitan resources (these resources include, for example, language skills, higher education and international social network). Second, the study analyses those everyday-makers who use performative politics to demonstrate their political missions here and now. But in order to make the social movement global they need cosmopolitan resources to be able to use the social media tools and work globally. Third, the study reflects upon the difficulties of reaching those actors who lack cosmopolitan resources, either everyday-makers or expert citizens. The go-along method and the use of the interpreters are shown as ways to reach these young people s political missions. Fourth, the research underlines the importance of contact zones (i.e. spaces or situations where the aforementioned orientations and their differences temporarily disappear or weaken) for deeper democracy and for boosted dialogue between different kinds of participants. Keywords: political participation, young people, multi-sited ethnography, youth research, political sociology, development studies, performative social science

Welcoming the World: Governing Hospitality in London's 2012 Olympic Bid

London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games presented a diverse, cosmopolitan city opening its arms and “welcoming the world.” This article explores the apparently benign gesture of hospitality contained in London’s official candidature files submitted in 2004 and asks how such a promise of inclusiveness is managed. We argue that London’s depiction of itself as hospitable to every kind of visitor relies on subtle techniques of governmentality in which the subject positions of “host” and “guest” are imagined and produced in ways that make them more governable. By this, we are not referring to acts of authority, coercion, or discipline that exclude subjects or render them docile bodies within a rigid panoptical city. Rather, we are referring to the delicate ways in which the official bid document imagines and produces the ideal subject positions of host and guest and in so doing enables, encourages, and incentivizes certain behaviors. This analysis of urban welcoming takes us beyond reductive oppositions of hospitality and hostility, inclusion and exclusion, self and other. It focuses instead on how London’s inclusive welcome produces a variety of host and guest positions (for example, the “Olympic Family,” volunteers, guest workers), segregates them within the city, and then “conducts their conduct” in the areas of planning, security, transport, accommodation, education, and training. By analyzing the techniques of governmentality at work in London’s 2004 bid document, this article foregrounds the enabling form of power driving the city’s inclusive welcome and exposes its inherent micropolitics.

The Other Side of the Fence:Reconceptualizing the “Camp” and Migration Zones at the Borders of Spain

This article explores the dynamics of the space of exception at the borders of Europe in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, and the neighboring Moroccan city of Oujda. Building upon field research conducted in the spring of 2008, I ask how we can understand the political space of migration not simply as exceptional, but as shaped by the mobility of the irregular migrants moving outside of the frameworks, policies, and practices of the state. By privileging the migrant narrative and making use of Rancière's conception of politics as shaped by the demands of those who “have no part,” I suggest an alternative way of understanding the politics of exception and agency of non-citizens—that is, one of disruption and demands to open up powerful potentials for change in an otherwise rigid regime.