bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
First Contact and the Next of Kin
Authors: Kirton-Darling Edward
Published: January 2023

This chapter introduces my empirical material, which is then explored further in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. It focuses on the concept of next of kin and their notification. Drawing on vignettes used in interviews with Coroners and their officers, it examines who is understood as falling within the category of next of kin, and how approaches to decisions about next of kin reveal the importance of analysing systemic decision making. It argues that two frames emerge from that analysis, which link to the historic and jurisprudential analysis in Chapters 2 and 3. These frames are ways of understanding the inquest and the role of kinship within it. One frame understands the inquest as solely a space for expert, technocratic accountability, while the other frame understands it as a process responsible for seeking to combine accountabilities – bringing together a technocratic form with a community form of accountability.
Introduction
Authors: McQuillan Dan
Published: January 2023

The introduction starts by grounding AI, for the purposes of the book, as the computational methods of deep learning and the associated institutions and ideologies. It sets out the reasons for resisting AI that are covered in Chapters 1 to 4, from its brittle solutionism and structural violence to the resulting scarcification and necropolitics. The chapter introduces the idea of an anti-fascist approach to AI as a necessary response to the contemporary combination of neural networks, reactionary politics and crisis conditions. It closes by outlining the path to overcoming existing AI, which is discussed further in Chapters 5 to 7, via feminist epistemologies, mutual aid, people’s councils and commons-based structural renewal.
Operations of AI
Authors: McQuillan Dan
Published: January 2023

This chapter delves into the actual mechanics of machine learning. It emphasizes the algorithmic operations of optimizsation as well as the dependencies on data. Moving on to neural networks, it examines the internal transformations of the data, for example through backpropagation, and the paradoxical pairing of predictive accuracy with opacity. The chapter highlights the materiality of AI and its consequences in terms of both carbon emissions and the centraliszation of control. It closes by focusing on the poorly paid and invisible workforce that underpins AI, and the continuous thread of anti-workerism that connects the origins of computing (Babbage) to contemporary applications of AI (Amazon).
Post-machinic Learning
Authors: McQuillan Dan
Published: January 2023

Chapter 5 sets out a standpoint for resisting AI based on mutuality and care. It draws from feminist and post-normal science as a way to challenge exclusionary claims to authoritative knowledge. The chapter applies feminist new materialism to interrupt AI’s configuration of reality, and to counter its operations of separation with a perspective that is fundamentally relational. It establishes a form of critical pedagogy that can be used to ‘learn against the machine’ and recover the potential of prefigurative politics, of ‘the possible against the probable’. Ultimately, the chapter recomposes the question of AI as a matter of care that directs attention to the effects of boundaries and exclusions and to the neglect of our interdependence.
Introduction: Race, Illiberalism, Central Europe
Authors: Kalmar Ivan
Published: January 2023

Illiberalism in Central Europe is not due to local cultural traditions. Rather, it is a misguided reaction to the way the area was incorporated, after the fall of communism, into global, Western-dominated geopolitical networks. In the Introduction, I discuss the basic concepts of race and illiberalism, as well as the ever-changing nature and definition of Central Europe. I also introduce some of the major personalities promoting illiberalism in the area.
How Central Europeans Became Eastern European
Authors: Kalmar Ivan
Published: January 2023

The form of racism the book calls Eastern Europeanism assumes that anything that happens in ‘Eastern Europe’ also happens in all other parts of it, and that most developments there have causes different from the West. This exaggerated East–West distinction incorporates as a matter of course Central Europe in ‘Eastern Europe’. Doing so serves the interests of Western business, seeking to exploit Central European labour within the framework of the EU free market, while also delegitimizing potential competition from local businesspeople. At the same time, the rhetoric of East–West difference helps to turn Western European labour against perceived competition from Central European migrants. Against this background, the chapter explores scholarship in ‘Central and Eastern European Studies’ that claims, incorrectly, that the East–West difference seen during the Cold War actually goes back, in much the same form, to the Enlightenment period. Like Orientalism, sometimes Central and Eastern European Studies produces its own object, and so justifies a distinction embedded in global inequalities.
Conclusion: When the Migrants Come
Authors: Kalmar Ivan
Published: January 2023

The Conclusion repeats that illiberalism is a misguided response to the damage that the unrestrained neoliberalism of the 1990s has done to relatively marginalized populations, including in Central Europe. Racially tinged white illiberalism is seen in many parts of the globe, but is more successful politically in Central Europe, not so much for cultural reasons as because of a relative lack of populations of colour who are in a position to fight back. The demographic changes brought on by migration from outside Europe have meant that in Western Europe politicians have had to begin paying attention to the non-white vote. This will also be the case eventually in the post-communist areas in the EU when, as the author argues is inevitable, more migrants from outside Europe settle there.
Postscript: Confessions of a Canadian Central European
Authors: Kalmar Ivan
Published: January 2023

I wrote this book because I am a Central European, and in spite of its severe faults I love Central Europe. To be precise, I am a Central European, but not quite. I was born in Prague, by coincidence. I am not quite a Czech, though I do hold a Czech passport (as well as Canadian). My parents survived the Holocaust in Budapest, using false names and forged documents to convince police and collaborators that they were not Jewish. Neither my father nor my mother was quite a Hungarian. He was born in Slovakia, where Jews were not considered quite Slovak. She was a Budapest girl, but her father came from some place in the Habsburg province of Galicia that no one remembers. The family called it Poland, though today it may well be Ukraine. Although my grandfather was not quite Polish, his origins caused problems for my mother’s folks. They suffered discrimination by Hungarians, including Budapest Jews. The ‘modern’ Jews there had contempt for the ‘Eastern Jews’, as they called the Orthodox Jews from the eastern regions of the Habsburg Empire. They would have been surprised to hear, in what I say in this book is postwar terminology, that they themselves were ‘Eastern European’. My father, who had studied medicine in Bratislava before being expelled as a Jew, married my mother when the war was over, and they moved to continue his studies in Prague.
Comparative and Connected Global Capitalism(s)
Authors: Smith Edmond
Published: January 2023

Capitalism, in one form or another, can be viewed as a global phenomenon. Even if processes of production, exchange, consumption and accumulation differed greatly in response to local contexts, cultures and environment, they were hardly an uncommon occurrence in any part of the world. This chapter, rather than tracing European influence into global markets, through maritime trade or empire, as a precursor to capitalist development, will instead focus on how economies and actors in Africa and Asia functioned prior and during this engagement. Drawing especially on case studies related to Chinese, Armenian and Akan ‘capitalisms’ in the early modern era, it will adopt an alternative perspective on economic development that highlights effective cross-cultural and communal, rather than national or state-driven, frameworks as a key feature underpinning global exchange. This is important not only as a means for understanding international ‘capitalisms’ in a comparative perspective, but also by contributing to changing ideas regarding how new European entrants to these regions were able to effectively integrate (or not) into pre-existing networks.
Capitalism, Imperialism and the Emergence of an Industrialized Global Economy
Authors: Lewis Colin M.
Published: January 2023

Speculating about expressions of capitalism that emerged in Western Europe, this chapter will explore the nature and impact of overseas expansion from the North Atlantic world, assessing connexions between different forms of colonialism and types of industrial growth. It offers a stylised assessment of interactions among regions of the world economy following colonial ‘encounters’ of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How did forms of capitalism and ‘models’ of industrialism interact, and the relationship between states and markets change as industry became more capital- and scale-intensive and manufacturing businesses became more integrated? Was there a correspondence between different forms capitalism (mercantile, industrial and financial), imperialism (‘old’, ‘new’ and neo-colonialism) and industrialisation (market-led, government-supported, and late or ‘very late’ driven and co-ordinated by the state)? And who offers the most plausible explanation: Smith, Hamilton-List, Marx-Lenin, Rostow, Chandler, Prebisch-Sunkel-Hirschman, Gallagher-and-Robinson, Cain-and-Hopkins, Gerschenkron-Amsden or O’Brien.
Conclusion
Authors: Casson Catherine , Rössner Philipp Robinson
Published: January 2023

This chapter reviews the findings of the book in relation to the five functions of entrepreneurship, finance, management, workers and political leaders. Entrepreneurship was driven by opportunity-seeking. It had a positive impact, aiding infrastructure development, offering consumers a wider choice of goods and acting as a source of income. But there was a negative side too, involving the exploitation of workers and entailing damage to the environment. Finance provided by pooled capital and foreign direct investment facilitated capitalism. The function of management increased worker productivity but rarely addressed worker wellbeing. Meanwhile there was notable variation between countries in attitudes to the skills of manufacturing workers and the value they added to products. Political leaders strengthened the economy through monetary and market regulation. However, they did little to address the inequalities resulting from capitalism or to provide workers with a political voice. Two additional themes emerge across the chapters: geographical dimensions and values and beliefs. The chapter demonstrates that locations in which functions emerged earliest did not necessarily continue to replicate that speed of progress. It concludes that that, in order to address inequalities, systems of power should not be able to perpetuate themselves but should be challenged.
Hateful Subjectivities: Using Intersectionality to Inform a Critical Hate Studies Perspective
Authors: McBride Katie , James Zo ë
Published: January 2023

This chapter examines experiences of hate within neoliberal capitalism through the lens of the critical hate studies perspective. In acknowledging the messy nature of overlapping and multiple identities integral to the formation of the self, intersectionality provides the capacity to explore lived experiences that extend beyond the assumptions bound up within narrow conceptualizations of identity and uniformity of experience within a given category. The chapter draws upon two distinct in-depth, qualitative research projects with Gypsies and Travellers, and with Trans people. Through an appreciation of the intersectional nature of individuals’ identities, this chapter illuminates how contemporary neoliberal capitalism has co-opted oversimplified ideas of one-dimensional identities to the detriment of a full appreciation of the lived realities of victimization and harm, and has therefore both obfuscated attempts at appropriate and effective responses to the issue and been the cause of further harms in and of itself.
Introduction
Authors: Mulvihill Natasha
Published: January 2023

This chapter sets out the aims of the book, the policy context for sex work and prostitution in England and Wales and an overview of the existing literature, including narrative and memoir style approaches.
Methods and Ethics
Authors: Mulvihill Natasha
Published: January 2023

This chapter explains how the participant sample was identified; the use of email interviews; ethics; the position of the author; the narrative framework analysis approach; and how participants were involved in the writing process. It concludes by signposting the structure of the book.
Female Independent Sex Workers
Authors: Mulvihill Natasha
Published: January 2023

This chapter presents extended narratives from five female independent sex workers working in England and Wales, as well as short excerpts from interviews with other participants. Topics covered include autonomy, harm, managing the law and hopes for the future. It also explores the impact of COVID-19 and on the experience of participating in academic and government research.
Doing Diversity Inclusively: ‘East Asians’ in Western Universities
Authors: Ma Lin
Published: January 2023

This chapter responds to the growing demand for recognising plural forms of knowledge production in higher education, by drawing attention to the inclusion of overseas ‘East Asian’ students and scholars in Western universities and host societies. While postcolonial, decolonial, multiculturalist and feminist scholars have made contributions to the emancipatory inclusion of the majority of humanity, the presence and embodied knowledge of ‘East Asians’ remain underutilised and peripheral.
In addressing these questions, this chapter initiates a discussion on the position of ‘East Asians’ in Western universities. The case of Chinese international students in Britain is used to highlight how Eurocentric research frameworks would reject certain knowledge as invalid and affirm an elitist agenda. Empirical data collected through ethnography and a survey with two groups of Chinese international students in the UK is presented. Unknown and uncomfortable complexities appear simultaneously and only by acknowledging them will academics ‘do diversity’ that follows an epistemically inclusive framework.
Pluralised Realities: Reviewing Reading Lists to Make Them More Culturally Sensitive
Authors: Thomas Dave S.P.
Published: January 2023

This chapter employs critical race theory as an analytical framework to excavate the genealogy of academic debates that theorise race, gender, and intersectionality in relation to ‘authentic knowledge’. Thomas foregrounds theoretical questions about the role of whiteness in maintaining myriad forms of epistemic inequality that is operationalised in the postsecondary education curriculum. Reflecting on a research project that aimed to broaden perspectives presented in the curriculum, he highlights how effective staff-student collaboration in reviewing reading lists can affect curricula changes by disrupting heteronormative epistemologies.
How Would a World Sociology Think? Towards Intellectual Inclusion
Authors: Spickard James
Published: January 2023

Sociology was founded in 19th century Europe and was institutionally formed in the mid-20th century United States. Its core concepts were shaped by those two historical-cultural milieux. As a result, the discipline sees the world as centred on the Global North, with the rest of humanity still embedded in ‘tradition’. Though sociologists recognize this approach’s flaws, this origin still shapes their teaching and research.
This chapter shows how concepts developed in two non-Euro-American civilizations can improve contemporary sociology’s understanding of aspects of social life worldwide. The first set of concepts comes from Confucian China; it emphasizes the important role that maintaining right relationships plays in religious life. The second set comes from 14th-century North Africa; it helps understand the interactions between ethnicity and religion in a deeper way than is possible for a sociology that puts these two things into separate conceptual boxes. These illustrate the benefit for world sociology of overcoming the discipline’s theoretical ethnocentrism.
Feminists Repairing the Self and Society
Authors: Perheentupa Inna
Published: January 2023

In this chapter the author uncovers how the activists in Russia make sense of feminism in their lives, and how they mobilize it to challenge conservative norms and identities. It is suggested that the first proposed dimension of feminist politics, reparative politics, speaks of the healing texture of feminist resistance. In reparative politics both political and therapeutic aspects are intermeshed, as it is argued that the activists orient towards repairing both the self and society. The author illustrates how feminist activism has helped the activists to work collectively on their traumatic experiences. It is argued that reparative politics relates to individual and collective dimensions of activism, both of which are elemental to activism in seeking to solve feminist grievances such as that of gendered violence. While illustrating that Russian feminist activism is not free from postfeminist tendencies, the author explicates how local logic and historical influences blend with these in way convenient to both.
Mediatized Manifestations of Feminism
Authors: Perheentupa Inna
Published: January 2023

In this chapter the author interrogates feminist mediatized practices. This focus is motivated by the fact that most political opportunities in Russia remain in the realm of the internet, whereas street protest, for example, has been increasingly curtailed. It is highlighted that some activists play skilfully with the media logic in order to attract the largest audiences possible, and can sometimes make the movement seem larger than it is. Based on the analysis, the author argues that the fourth key dimension of feminist politics is the politics of appearances, one characteristic of which is performative gestures and spectacle, which in fact seem to mirror the strategies of power holders. However, a politics of veiling is also emerging. Contrary to the politics of appearances, the latter engages in covert forms of activism, highlighting that lived culture is never simple but always formed of contradictory elements.
Gender, Development and COVID-19: More of the Same is Not Working
Authors: Grugel Jean , Barlow Matt , Lines Tallulah , Eugenia Giraudo Maria , Omukuti Jessica
Published: January 2023

The importance of gendering both development and public health policies is well established. Covid-19 has made clearer than ever the impact of gender norms, gendered institutions on policy making, gendered financing for development at national, regional and international levels, as well as the gendered differences of standard state responses to Covid-19. In this chapter, we position our contribution within wider feminist debates on gender and development and gendered political economy, paying particular attention to how gender is understood within development policies. While we problematise the narrow definition of gender commonly employed in Covid-19 policy response, we explain our decision to focus primarily on women (and girls) as a gendered category in this book. In doing so, we also highlight aspects of intersectionality and argue that we should not treat women and girls as a homogenous vulnerable group but instead we should explore this group at a deeper level of analysis to understand the vulnerable characteristics and categories within this group including: ethnicity, age, status, sexuality and or disability.
Warriors of Self-Reliance: Refugee Self-Reliance Assistance in Cold War Pakistan
Authors: Easton-Calabria Evan
Published: January 2023

This chapter demonstrates the dynamism of self-reliance as both a concept and a practice. In the 1980s, UNHCR’s biggest operation was for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and was largely focused on self-reliance and livelihoods. Contributing (at least in theory) to host country development, refugees served as ‘development pawns’ for Pakistan and donor countries alike, illustrating a broader trend of host countries seeking development and aid funding due to hosting refugees. Donor countries utilized funding for refugees as a means to fight Communism and incentivize the restructuring of Southern economies. This chapter presents four phases of self-reliance assistance for Afghan refugees, which correspond to shifts in broader economic trends from Keynesian economics to neoliberalism. The practice of self-reliance assistance promoted large-scale employment, individual income generation, and ultimately acted as a protective mechanism for vulnerable populations unable to succeed in the market-based economy. These stages of self-reliance assistance encompass periods of humanitarian and development programming focused on so-called ‘refugee dependency syndrome’ and self-reliance as psychosocial support.
Health Systems: Private or Public?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The immediate impact of the coronavirus crisis on individual well-being depends on the ability of the health system to deal with the pandemic. Countries differed widely with regard to the qualification of their health system. From a Political Economy perspective, a core question is whether a national health system should be predominantly private or public. The fate of different national health systems has demonstrated that public health systems generally fare better than private systems with the fight against pandemics, if we control for expenditure levels. Moreover, well-funded public health (and social policy) systems also provided a better protection during the pandemic than health systems with massive funding constraints, for example due to austerity policies. Correspondingly, there is a certain likelihood that the tendency towards privatization of health systems that has begun during the 1980s will be reversed and many public health systems will be better funded in the future. Finally, the experience with autonomous science-focused health agencies during the pandemic clearly indicates the primacy of politics in a situation of national emergency.
Reproductive Work: Positive Re-evaluation or the Same Old Neglect?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus crisis has led to an increased — although so far mostly symbolic — appreciation of (paid and unpaid) reproductive work traditionally dominated by women, such as care work (for the sick, but also for the very young and very old), education (home schooling) or food preparation. As people increasingly moved to work from home, the modern separation between the economy and the household has collapsed and therefore large parts of society have realized that this work is not only badly paid, but also often quite challenging or even outright dangerous. In spite of the rhetorical reevaluation of many forms of reproductive work during the coronavirus crisis, however, positive outcomes for the people performing this work are rare. Collective action with regard to better paid reproductive work hardly took place. Partially, the situation has even been aggravated, particularly for the people working in transnational care chains. Inequality with regard to the distribution of unpaid reproductive work within families increased even further. However, increased opportunities for remote working and changing social norms have some potential for more equitable gender relations in unpaid reproductive work in the long term.
Migration: Closed Borders or Open Doors?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus crisis deepens the dilemma economies in the Global North face with regard to immigration. On the one hand, the crisis created an immediate communitarian impetus, characterized by prioritization of domestic social ties and community-based solidarity. This trend undermines the public legitimacy to accept foreigners. On the other hand, the coronavirus crisis deepens health and economic divides between the Global North and the Global South. Therefore, migration pressures will increase. Next to these fundamental questions about the long-term trajectory of migration, the coronavirus crisis also raises immediate questions for migrant workers and their relatives, for example with regard the closing of borders, accommodation conditions and remittances. The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the fragility of the social and economic position of many migrant workers very clearly. At the same time, the crisis has highlighted that many of these workers perform essential services and that their often difficult living conditions can contribute to prolonging a health crisis. Finally, many countries of origin had to realize that remittances by migrant workers cannot be considered a safe source of permanent access to foreign currencies. Migration will remain a core issue in post-coronavirus capitalism.
Innovation: Frugal or Radical?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

If success during the pandemic is a criterion what will be utilized in post-corona capitalism, two innovation systems stand out. On the one side, frugal innovations typical for emerging economies such as China and India have not only flourished, but have also found their way into economies of the Global North. These innovations are called ‘frugal’, since their focus is on ‘good enough’, robust and affordable products that increase the standard of living for consumers with limited financial resources. On the other side, systems based on radical innovation have been able to make massive profits based on innovations developed before the pandemic. Particularly US digital platforms such as Amazon or Zoom have benefitted tremendously from pandemic-related lockdowns.
Foreign Debt in the Global South: Permanent Write-off or Temporary Relief?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus pandemic has substantially intensified the foreign debt problem of many economies in the Global South. This problem was already a major cause for concern before the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis. The global creditor community (assisted by the World Bank, the Paris Club and the London Club) has reacted with an initiative for temporal debt service suspension for low-income debtor countries. However, this initiative only deals with the tip of the iceberg in terms of countries involved. It also does not help in the long run. While upper middle-income countries’ governments may be able to refinance their debt on global financial markets and low-income countries’ governments benefit from creditor initiatives for debt rescheduling, particularly lower middle-income countries will face considerable constraints during post-corona capitalism.
The Political Economy of Security: Less or More Protection?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus pandemic very often is perceived as a major security threat. Although it is a health problem, it has found its way in discussions on inter-state security policies. Even more substantial are the impacts of the pandemic on domestic conflicts in the Global South, the most prevalent contemporary security challenge. However, pandemic-related security threats (and counter-measures) do not only evolve from international and domestic use of the military, but also in the field of human security. One could even argue that the tendency towards a securitization of the pandemic may lead to the comparatively gravest security threats in countries of the Global North, if measures for digital surveillance that have been introduced during the pandemic stay in place indefinitely.
Communitarian or Cosmopolitan Capitalism?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

Both the direction of political measures and of the working of capitalism during the coronavirus crisis so far favor communitarian positions. The communitarian set of values perceives human beings as social animals and embedded in their local community, with a strong focus on the nation state as protector of the latter. If early developments in public opinion are confirmed, it is likely that communitarian ideology plays a much more prominent role in post-coronavirus capitalism. Accordingly, the prospects for forceful forms of global governance as a cornerstone of cosmopolitan capitalism are bleak. Nor will the supranational elements of the European Union be strengthened in the coming years. Governments will probably control trans-border migration more strictly than before, and many economic processes will be re-shored.
Conclusion: Competing Visions of Capitalism and their Perspectives
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus pandemic will further increase the turn towards authoritarian capitalism that we have witnessed during the last decades. Neither classical liberal capitalism, nor alternative capitalism seem to command sufficient social support in order to put up a credible counter-project to authoritarian capitalism in the very near future. This leaves us with two alternatives, cosmopolitan technocratic capitalism and national social-democratic capitalism. Cosmopolitan capitalism has been the dominant model in the Global North during the last decades, but has suffered severe setback during the crisis. Correspondingly, my conclusion is that we should strengthen the national social-democratic capitalism project as a contemporary antidote to authoritarian capitalism in the next years. However, it is by no means sure that social-democratic capitalism will win the day, in particular if its representatives are unable to reverse the process of increasing inequality. The association between the current situation and the 1930s is not far-fetched — in both cases, the most popular alternatives were national social democracy (US New Deal) and authoritarian capitalism (fascism).
Invisible Victims of Domestic Abuse, Hypervisible in Gangs
Authors: Levell Jade
Published: January 2023

In this chapter there is an exploration of the ways in which children who have experienced DVA have been historically overlooked and seen as on the periphery to the abuse. Boys who have experienced DVA have occupied a space of tension within feminist organizing around DVA. In the early days of the second-wave feminist movement boys were seen as peripheral to the woman-focused nature of the movement and its related interventions. The author highlights there is still much work to be done to open up the conversation about men’s childhood experiences of DVA. This chapter also focuses on the issues for boys identified as gang involved. Gang labelling has been reductionist, racialized, and classed.
The gaps in research and policy work in this area have led to an under-examination of the ways in which masculine identities are constructed by boys and young men who live with DVA.
The Pluriversal Challenge to Global Ethics
Authors: FitzGerald Maggie
Published: January 2023

This chapter introduces the concept of the pluriverse and, through a discussion of various ethnographies, demonstrates the types of onto-epistemic differences that constitute this world of multiple worlds. It also discusses the ways in which the pluriverse challenges the field of Global Ethics as it has been conceived of thus far. That is, this chapter argues that Global Ethics can be characterized by a debate regarding the (im)possibility of universality. On the one hand, rationalist approaches purport a thick universality, while alternative approaches – via various critiques – question the very possibility of a universal ethics at all. The pluriverse ruptures this bifurcation and puts forth a compelling normative claim: every world has the right to claim its own universality. This claim points to the central question of the book: How can we rethink global ethics in the pluriverse, where differences are at their most deep and pervasive?
A Critical, Political Ethics of Care
Authors: FitzGerald Maggie
Published: January 2023

To attend to the unique challenges posed by the pluriverse (outlined in Chapter 3), a different orientation to ethics, a different understanding of morality, and a different set of tools is needed. Chapter 4 begins theorizing such an orientation and toolkit, drawing upon feminist ethics and the ethics of care. This chapter reviews the literature on the ethics of care, with a particular emphasis on its feminist relational ontology, situated epistemology, the ways in which this ontology and epistemology foreground vulnerability, and the ways in which the ethics of care reconceptualizes ethics and morality. This chapter also responds to three charges often raised against the ethics of care: (1) that the ethics of care essentializes women and cannot attend to difference; (2) that the ethics of care is only useful for particularistic and close relations, and therefore offers little value for navigating global ethical issues; and (3) that the ethics of care is not a political ethic. In so doing, Chapter 4 presents an understanding of the ethics of care as a critical and political theory that is attuned to differences all the way down.
Building the Pluriverse with Care
Authors: FitzGerald Maggie
Published: January 2023

Chapter 8 moves from the preceding meta-ethical discussion (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) and presents a final pluriversal ethical dilemma so as to outline other ways in which the ethics of care can help us deliberate and navigate specific ethical conflicts between/across worlds. Drawing upon an ethnography regarding a conflict over caring for what the modern world calls caribou and the Innu Nation calls atîku (Blaser, 2016; 2018), this chapter first exemplifies how the meta-theory developed in the previous chapters orients us to contemplate this ethical conflict. Second, and by extension, this chapter also draws out other ways in which the ethics of care can help build a pluriversal ethics. Through this example, Chapter 8 brings the argument of the book full circle: by starting with the ethics of care, it becomes clear that the pluriverse is, in fact, constituted by morality. Because of this, a pluriversal ethics does not simply refer to the application of ethics to a new global context; instead, building a pluriversal ethics, and particularly building one using the ethics of care, is the very means by which the pluriverse may flourish.
Complex Rule in Global Governance
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

This chapter introduces an understanding of rule derived from the experiences of the its critics. Based on Boltanski, it theorizes that rule always has the effect of fragmenting critique. In comparison to ‘simple rule’ which works through oppression in order to crush critique, complex rule is more difficult to detect and grants more room for opposition. Critique is legitimate within complex rule, as long as it is expressed in a specific form. This abstract hypothesis is then developed for the historical constellation of open global governance. In dialogue with a number of critical theories, three dimensions of complex rule in global governance are suggested: an ideological dimension; a discursive dimension, and an organizational dimension.
Practising Theorizing in Theorizing Praxis: Friedrich Kratochwil and Social Inquiry
Authors: Hellmann Gunther
Published: January 2023

In this chapter, Gunther Hellmann reconstructs Kratochwil’s understanding of theorizing in a tradition of linguistic-turn inspired critical reflection of praxis, which emphasizes the inherent contingency and radical openness of social action. He sides with what he redescribes, in a Rortyan vocabulary, as Kratochwil’s anti-representationalist attack on typical practices of IR theorizing which range over a broad spectrum from Waltz, Keohane and Wendt all the way to contemporary forms of theorizing in the wake of the ‘practice turn’. Instead of authorizing (presumably ‘ontologically real’) things in ‘the world out there’ to ‘make’ our theories true – irrespective of whether these ‘really real’ things come in the form of ‘pictures of reality’, ‘empirical data’ or ‘quantum minds’ – Hellmann argues that we should side with Wittgenstein’s, Rorty’s and Kratochwil’s emphasis on the inherent contingency of our currently used, presumably ‘final’ vocabulary,
Practical Constitutionalism
Authors: Lang Anthony F.
Published: January 2023

In this chapter, Anthony Lang explores the role that Aristotle plays – and could be playing – in a Praxis approach. He first shows that Kratochwil invokes Aristotle a number of times but critiques him for having an overly theoretical focus. Lang argues that Aristotle is more beneficial than Kratochwil makes him out to be for understanding the practical dimensions of international law and politics. In particular, Aristotle provides an alternative understanding of the rule of law and how it relates to the wider international political order, one that differs both from Kratochwil and contemporary international law. By highlighting these aspects of Aristotle’s work, Lang suggests that Kratochwil overly focuses on Aristotle’s theoretical side and misses the very practical dimensions of his work. As ancient constitutionalism relied more heavily on the social and the political than the narrowly legal, Lang suggests the phrase ‘practical constitutionalism’ to bring this dimension of Aristotle’s work to the fore.
Critical Engagement and SWOP’s Changing Research Tradition
Authors: Bezuidenhout Andries , von Holdt Karl
Published: January 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the research trajectory of the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) and how this was shaped by its commitment to supporting the labour movement in particular and South Africa’s liberation movement and social movements in general. The chapter maps out the institute’s research traditions as they evolved from the founding of SWOP in the early 1980s up to the contemporary era. Tensions and contradictions involved in a critically engaged research tradition are highlighted. The chapter comments on how the post-apartheid fragmentation of the labour movement subsequently impacted on labour studies itself and how SWOP responded to tensions between researchers and trade unions in flux and under attack in the post-apartheid era. In response to changing relationships with its labour partners, SWOP researchers broadened their research foci to include topics well beyond the scope of labour studies. Over time, the institute became more aware of its location in the Global South and the need to re-evaluate the critical tradition of Northern theory that had shaped its research agenda.
The Antinomies and Opportunities of Critical Engagement in South Africa’s Rural Mining Frontier
Authors: Mnwana Sonwabile
Published: January 2023

The chapter details the complex paradoxes associated with producing socially engaged knowledge in South Africa’s rural mining frontier – a social landscape characterized by power asymmetries and intense local conflict. It adopts the concept of ‘critical engagement’ to explain the tensions and challenges that a fractured local context imposes on the process of knowledge production and the ‘autonomy’ of a researcher. It discusses how the researcher responded to and navigated these challenges. Finally, this contribution argues that quality sociological knowledge produced over a long period of extensive engagement with all existing social classes and ‘social worlds’ has great potential to lead to positive political outcomes for the marginalized classes.
Feminist Participatory Action Research in African Sex Work Studies
Authors: Yingwana Ntokozo
Published: January 2023

What does it mean to be an African sex worker feminist? This chapter reflects on two qualitative studies that were conducted with African sex worker groups using the feminist participatory action research (FPAR) methodology in answering this question. It illustrates how FPAR can be used to tap into sex workers’ embodied lived experiences through body maps. It also demonstrates how the methodology offers an opportunity to critically engage with debates pertaining to sociology as a discipline. I argue that the co-production of knowledge together with sex workers using FPAR, the commitment of this form of research to social justice and scholarly goals, as well as the complex and contradictory location of the scholar activist as both insider and outsider are more consistent with the conception of ‘critical engagement’ than ‘public sociology’.
Reflections on Critical Engagement
Authors: Burawoy Michael
Published: January 2023

‘Critical engagement’, first formulated by Edward Webster, zeros in on the tension between attachment to moral and scientific principles on one side and the interests of social movements on the other. This tension is definitive of all social science that sets out from the assumption that researchers are participants in the world they study. It is clearly formulated as a founding assumption in the research agenda of the Society, Work and Politics Institute, demarcated from the alternative assumption that social science has to follow the guidelines of positivist objectivity. Given the global character of the problems the world faces, critical engagement must become the dominant principle if sociology is to retain its public relevance.
Response to Russell Foster
Authors: Mills John
Published: January 2023

In a television interview on the morning of 24 June 2016, the morning of the Brexit referendum result, then-leader of UKIP Nigel Farage stated that ‘I hope this is the first step towards a Europe of sovereign nation states, trading together, neighbours together, friends together – but without flags, and anthems, and useless old unelected Presidents’.
What Does Self-Determination Mean Today? The Resurgence of Nationalism and European Integration in Question
Authors: Delanty Gerard
Published: January 2023

Why did the EU referendum result in 2016 go the way it did? Why was Donald Trump shortly afterwards elected as President of the USA? Why are Eurosceptic political parties gaining traction all over the EU? These events are all clearly linked together. What has made all these developments materialise at broadly the same time? In my view, by far the most significant factor has been economic. It is not just that economies right cross the West have grown much more slowly since the 2008 crash than they did before, at the same time as we have seen the development of the type of populist politics we have experienced recently. It is that the result of our poor economic performance has been no increases in real incomes – and often falls – for vast swathes of the electorate – certainly over 50% in the UK’s case. In London, real incomes have, on average, just about held their own but in Wales they have dropped over the past decade by about 10% and in the North East by only slightly less.
Response to Ruth Wodak
Authors: Grabbe Andreas
Published: January 2023

On 17 July 2018, former US president Barack Obama was invited to give the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg. In his speech, he warned that: a politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move … I am not being alarmist, I am simply stating the facts. … Strongman politics are ascendant suddenly, whereby elections and some pretence of democracy are maintained – the form of it – but those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.
Obviously, Obama did not use the terms ‘illiberal democracy’, ‘neo-authoritarianism’ or ‘populism’ (or other terms which currently dominate social-science scholarship and media reporting), but he certainly put his finger on the drastic socio-political changes that have been taking place globally, including in EU member states, specifically since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018).
The Post-Marxist Gramsci: A Reply to James Martin
Authors: Den Abbeele Georges Van
Published: January 2023

James Martin astutely reads the haloed place Gramsci holds in the post-war Western Marxist tradition as exactly where strident divergences in that tradition have emerged, most particularly between those who, according to him, remain mired in varying modes of left melancholia and those who have successfully mourned the loss of what we used to call the socialist alternative. My response questions the validity of this alternative by reconsidering Traverso’s arguments in defence of left melancholia as a call to action, on the one hand, and by questioning why we should mourn the loss of real world socialism rather than seizing upon Gramsci’s pessimistic utopianism as a way to reenergise socialist strategy in an era of escalating inequality and populist authoritarianisms.
The Limits of Post-Marxism: The (Dis)function of Political Theory in Film and Cultural Studies: A Reply to Paul Bowman
Authors: Rowcroft Andrew
Published: January 2023

This reply set sets out to briefly evaluate the limits of post-Marxism in contemporary culture before turning to Paul Bowman’s innovative use of the contributions of Ernesto Laclau for considering globally popular cultural discourses on martial arts. Building upon the critical and creative openings developed by Bowman, the reply focuses on distinctions between the particular and the universal, the concrete and the abstract, in relation to martial arts practices. The focus on these concepts opens up the ability to contemplate new concrete universals.
From Domination to Emancipation and Freedom: Reading Ernesto Laclau’s Post-Marxism in Conjunction with Philip Pettit’s Neo-Republicanism
Authors: Khan Gulshan
Published: January 2023

In this paper, I bring Ernesto Laclau’s post-Marxist approach into conversation with the analytical thinker Philip Pettit, who has developed an influential neo-republican conception of freedom as ‘non-domination’. Both thinkers aim to reconfigure power and domination towards more democratic and egalitarian relations and I evaluate the political implications of their respective conceptions of domination/non-domination, emancipation and freedom. I show that despite these common points of reference, the two authors exhibit considerable differences which manifest in their respective conceptions of structure and agency. In the opening section, I compare Laclau’s and Pettit’s respective conceptions of ‘domination’ where I highlight the differences between them in two alternate readings of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. In the second section, I examine their respective understandings of ‘emancipation’ and ‘freedom’, and I demonstrate that Pettit does not model his conception of freedom as non-domination on the idea of emancipation. This stands in contrast to Laclau, for whom emancipation remains the focal point of political struggle, despite formal equality, and who maintains the idea of the possibility of a more radical transformation in the underlying structures of society. In the final section, I consider Laclau’s and Pettit’s alternative conceptions of politics where both thinkers place a premium on democratic contest in challenging and overturning arbitrary power. I show that for Pettit political freedom is a mode of contestability within the established institutions, while Laclau’s notions of emancipation and freedom functions at the level of competing hegemonic projects, and this facilitates a form of political struggle that might transcend the existing regime to instantiate a new institutional order. I conclude by amalgamating the respective strengths of both thinkers to provide a multi-layered analysis of contemporary forms of domination to better aid our understanding about the kinds of struggle needed to contest them.