bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sociopolitical Change and Cannabis Control
Authors: Brewster David
Published: May 2023

Chapter 3 provides historical context of sociopolitical culture and its intersection with cannabis control in respect of the two empirical cases of England & Wales and the Netherlands. Drawing on David Garland’s The Culture of Control, the chapter first explores the broader conditions supporting penal-welfarism and its relationship with manifestations of cannabis control. It then goes on to discuss the social, economic and political changes associated with a transition to late modernity and how each of the cases has adapted and reacted to these conditions in respect of cannabis policy. The chapter concludes by reflecting on control culture in comparative perspective and identifies a set of components – namely, structural relations and political culture – which form an important foundation for subsequent analysis chapters.
The ‘Primeval Soup’ of Policy Proposals
Authors: Brewster David
Published: May 2023

Chapter 5 examines the second stream in Kingdon’s (1995) multiple streams model: the policy stream. The focus is on the so-called primeval soup of policy ideas and how the development and selection of policy proposals emerged in relation to political feasibility, research and expertise and technical feasibility. The empirical cases of England & Wales and the Netherlands are discussed in turn, through examination of two national policy movements (the 2009 reclassification of cannabis in England & Wales and the 2012–13 changes to coffeeshop policy in the Netherlands). The chapter then considers recent policy changes in Spain and Australia to further elucidate, clarify and contrast the selection of policy ideas I those countries.
The Political Environment and Windows of Opportunity
Authors: Brewster David
Published: May 2023

Chapter 6 examines the third stream of Kingdon’s (1995) multiple streams model: the politics stream. This chapter considers the political environment and the ways in which different social actors and groups have been able to mobilize resources and advance agendas within windows of opportunity. Three main components are discussed: changes in administration, the national mood and organized political forces. The empirical cases of England & Wales and the Netherlands are discussed in turn, focusing on two national policy movements (the 2009 reclassification of cannabis in England & Wales; and the 2012–13 changes to coffeeshop policy in the Netherlands). The chapter then moves on to examine recent policy movements in Uruguay and New Zealand, to further elucidate, clarify and contrast the political environments which facilitate opportunities for policy change.
Cultures of Cannabis Control
Authors: Brewster David
Published: May 2023

Chapter 8 synthesizes the findings of previous chapters, critically assessing the nature and extent of convergence and divergence that can be seen in cannabis policy-making processes and why policy change has occurred through the identification of a set of mechanisms and factors which condition these processes. This includes discussions of policy processes in cannabis control and political institutions and relations of power. A focus on England & Wales and the Netherlands forms a substantive part of the chapter, but the global case exemplars that have been woven into the preceding chapters are also brought together to compare and contrast policy-making processes in cannabis control. This allows for an articulation of factors which facilitate more punitive directions as well as those which hold the potential for a diverse range of control strategies.
Conclusions and Future Directions
Authors: Brewster David
Published: May 2023

Chapter 9 concludes the book by highlighting the core findings and propositions made in the preceding chapters in terms of their implications for understanding patterns of convergence and divergence in cannabis policy-making processes across and within different countries and the need to recognize the potential for variegated cultures of control. The chapter goes on to discuss the challenges faced by experts and the role that expertise ought to play in shaping policy-making processes in democratic societies under contemporary conditions. Finally, the chapter offers a critical reflection of the study and methodology which informed the findings of the book, before finishing with a consideration of future directions in comparative criminology.
Temporary Older Workers in Belgium as a Demonstration of a Paradoxical Situation
Authors: Burnay Nathalie
Published: May 2023

Public policy developed since the early 2000s in Belgium has fundamentally changed the view of end of career in society. Indeed, the recent transformations of public policies towards older workers fall within a framework of neoliberal conception and especially the expansion of individualization. The chapter is based on 36 semi-structured interviews in two Belgian temporary employment agencies. The results show that older workers find themselves in a paradoxical position where they are pushed by the political authorities to remain in the labour market but they are also victims of forms of discrimination that exclude them from the labour market. Temporary employment is often likely to be the only solution offered to them to combine these contradictory imperatives.
Attempted Transitions from Unemployment in Italy
Authors: Garavaglia Emma
Published: May 2023

This chapter is the product of a qualitative research based on 15 in-depth interviews with upper-level managers in Italy who lost their job when they were in their 50s. The research aims to contribute to an understanding of social processes that shape the lived experience of attempted transitions from unemployment among older workers. Drawing on the interview materials, it shows how age discrimination and common discourses about ageing and work in the contemporary Italian labour market limit the options available to older workers to successfully revive their career. Being discriminated against on account of age was described by interviewees as a frustrating experience that led them to construct a negative stereotyped character that they used to describe older workers and to distance themselves from this identity. Consistent with neoliberalism, work-related problems that may occur when one experiences late-career job loss were attributed by interviewees to an assumed decrease in the usefulness of workers as they age, and the responsibility for finding a solution to these problems was laid entirely on individuals’ shoulders.
The Role of Space and Place in Learning Disabled People’s Experiences of Disablist Violence
Authors: Daly Ellen , Smith Olivia
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the hostility, harassment and violence that disabled people experience. In particular, the chapter focuses on the harmful impacts of ‘low level’ microaggressions, such as intimidatory behaviour and abusive language. Such ‘disablist’ acts create a widespread sense of fear, that forces people to navigate and avoid certain spaces and sites. The chapter argues for the use of the term ‘disablist violence’ instead of ‘disability hate crime’ to better represent entrenched exclusionary social attitudes and behaviours. The chapter draws on a study with people with learning disabilities to examine the lived experiences of hate, in a range of spaces. The chapter applies feminist theoretical ideas from the field of ‘street harassment’ to make sense of disablist violence and harassment, demonstrate that hate crime is a rights issue, and to identify opportunities for resistance.
Safe Spaces or Spaces of Control? Racial Tensions at Predominantly White Institutions
Authors: Goerisch Denise
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores minority students’ experiences university-sponsored safe spaces and programmes designated for students of colour, to develop a deeper understanding of the complex pathways students of colour must navigate and negotiate to survive at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in the US. Many minority students appreciate the goals of these spaces and programmes to promote diversity and inclusivity at PWIs. However, many also question how these may act as a mechanism to segregate, thus potentially rendering the experiences of racialized discrimination and violence invisible to the larger campus population. The chapter draws on an ethnographic study of a population of ethnic minority students at a university in the US Midwest, and the role and use of safe spaces in how they navigate their presence in the institution. The chapter concludes that universities need to openly acknowledge that racism and hate exists on campuses, and work with students of colour to develop measures to alleviate hate.
‘It’s Not Hate to … [Say] That Gay Sex Leads to Hell’: Contesting Hate, Reiterating Heteronormativities
Authors: Browne Kath , Nash Catherine Jean
Published: May 2023

This chapter cites evidence from Ireland to examine how heteroactivists try to challenge references to hate in accounts of their activities by casting it as supporting moral values and, indeed, a sign of their love. The chapter first sets out the key tenets of heteroactivist ideologies and practices. Then, drawing on a participant observations and newsletter emails, the chapter explores how heteroactivists frame objections to sexual and gender equalities while pushing against or working to avoid accusations of ‘hate speech’. The chapter shows how they frame their arguments as motivated by love and related representations of themselves and those who agree with them as innocent citizens subject to the dangers of both formal sanctions and the social and political consequences of being associated with and perpetuating hate speech. It finishes by suggesting considerations ‘beyond opposition’.
Rethinking Responses to Hate: Towards a Socio-ecological Approach
Authors: Hall Edward
Published: May 2023

Current hate crime policy and practice is dominated by a criminal justice approach, focused on reporting and prosecuting acts of harassment and violence. While this is crucially important for victims and wider communities, it does not address the micro and local contexts, and wider structural factors, that contribute to the production of hate. The chapter adopts a socio-ecological model to examine the different scales of influence that shape the incidence of hate, and to identify potential points and spaces for intervention. This model draws on an emerging public health approach to hate, emphasizing preventative measures. The chapter discusses examples of prevention, including Community Safety Partnerships, safe spaces, addressing broader causal factors or ‘atmospheres’; and non-criminal justice responses, including restorative justice, community-based initiatives to improve social relations and celebrate diversity, and information and education campaigns.
Middle Powers in Asia Pacific Multilateralism
Authors: Teo Sarah
Published: May 2023

Middle powers and multilateralism are often regarded as concepts that go well together, but what makes middle powers behave the way they do in multilateral platforms? Drawing from insights offered by differentiation theory and power politics, this book puts forth a new framework to explain middle power behaviour in Asia Pacific multilateralism. It argues that differentiation, as constitutive of the international political structure, interacts with forces of power politics to generate middle power behaviour in multilateralism. This process results in middle powers pursuing a dilution of major-power stratificatory forces as well as functionally differentiated roles for themselves in multilateral diplomacy. By incorporating differentiation – a concept that is typically taken for granted in the study of middle powers but thus far not addressed in a theoretical manner – into the framework, this book introduces a novel perspective towards middle power behaviour. This differentiation-based framework is applied to examine the behaviour of Australia, Indonesia and South Korea in the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum as well as the formation and expansion of the East Asia Summit (EAS).
Formation of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
Authors: Teo Sarah
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the circumstances that led to APEC’s creation in 1989 and its early years. Amid declining Cold War tensions and the collapse of global bipolarity, Asia’s economic rise, as well as the anxieties over extra-regional trade blocs, the behaviour of Australia, Indonesia and South Korea contributed towards diluting major-power stratificatory forces and enabling them to assume functionally differentiated roles. The actions of the three middle powers helped to shape a more inclusive and equal decision making in the region, and demonstrated the functions of middle powers – building on their material and ideational attributes – as initiators of or mediators within the new platform.
Conclusion
Authors: Teo Sarah
Published: May 2023

The book’s concluding chapter underscores its contribution towards two bodies of literature, first, on middle power theory more broadly, and second, on middle powers in Asia Pacific multilateralism. In contrast to views that non-major powers do not matter in international politics, the book has demonstrated the value of an alternative structural perspective – specifically one based on differentiation – in the study of middle power behaviour, and highlighted how the differentiated structure may interact with power politics to generate middle power behaviour in multilateralism. Based on the book’s findings, the chapter also highlights key areas for further research.
LGBT Embodiment: Queerness, Homonormativity and Anti-Discrimination Law
Authors: Garland Fae , Travis Mitchell
Published: May 2023

This chapter outlines the ways in which intersex embodiment has been framed through an LGBT approach. This results in two contrasting perspectives: a ‘queer’ approach that problematizes heteronormative and binary institutional accounts; and a homonormative approach that tends to replicate existing institutional structures. It is this latter account of LGBT that has seemingly influenced policy makers in their framing of intersex issues. This chapter traces these tensions through Australia’s Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act (Cth) 2013. The chapter outlines how, despite myriad contributions, petitions and commentaries to the contrary, the Australian government failed to challenge the disorder narrative of intersex embodiment and subsequently was unable to change the behaviours and practices of medical practitioners in this area.
Intersex as Acceptance and Emergence: Can Psychosocial Frameworks Disrupt Medical Embodiment?
Authors: Garland Fae , Travis Mitchell
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores how psychosocial care within healthcare is an essential element of reframing intersex embodiment and care for intersex people away from paradigmatic medical narratives ‘fixing’ a ‘disorder’ and towards supporting a person. Many biomedical accounts of intersex as a ‘disorder’ remain prominent in psychosocial provision with care often been offered as an ‘afterthought’ or an ‘emotional repository’. Such approaches fail to consider the transformative effect that psychosocial care can have on the intersex experience. Such care can offer support to ensure that intersex people and their families are equipped to deal with the structural challenges that they will face as a result of their intersex variations. These transformative approaches construct intersex as a contextual, situated and dependent individual in need of support in order to overcome the structural issues that they will be faced with. These insights are read alongside shifts in legal theory towards notions of ‘embodied integrity’ in order to outline a thicker conception of legal embodiment.
Conclusion: Intersex Embodiment
Authors: Garland Fae , Travis Mitchell
Published: May 2023

This chapter outlines intersex embodiment as inherently pluralistic in its production through materiality, institutions and cultural knowledge that are contingent to particular times, places, contexts and regulatory frameworks. These different intersecting dimensions produce diverse understandings of intersex embodiment at different times and places. This chapter highlights that understanding these different approaches and how they, in turn, are understood by intersex people remains an important task for all researchers, legislators and policy makers. This chapter closes by articulating a conception of intersex embodiment that goes beyond traditional categories of disorder and identity in order to outline a more situated, contextful and considered account of intersex people.
Agenda Triggering
Authors: Taylor Seamus
Published: May 2023

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was very little debate about the need to address Disability Hate Crime in England and Wales. Significant problematization and activism occurred to socially construct disability hostility as a problem worthy of political–policy attention. The introduction of new legislation addressing disability hostility is explored, noting the range of contributions to the securing of Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and particularly the critical political interventions by ministers and other politicians behind it. A strategic coupling occurred between activism and the political arenas enabled by policy entrepreneurs, who identified a policy window of opportunity in the form of the development of the 2003 Act and successfully created a hate crime policy domain for Disability Hate Crime. In doing so, they homogenized Disability Hate Crime as simply another strand in the hate crime domain. Without significant problematization efforts by activists and critical interventions by some political actors, expansion of the hate crime policy domain to include disability hostility would not have occurred.
Towards Agenda Institutionalization?
Authors: Taylor Seamus
Published: May 2023

This chapter analyses the policy journey that embeds and institutionalizes Disability Hate Crime within the hate crime domain in terms of law, policy and daily practice. The development of this agenda is explored in the three streams of ‘activism’, ‘politics’ and ‘policy’ (Kingdon, 2011). The evidence in this chapter points to policy development, policy institutionalization and evaluation of Disability Hate Crime taking place simultaneously at times. These do not take place in discrete, sequential stages. The evidence presented here illuminates the ways in which policy becomes, or fails to become, embedded within criminal justice system business. It points to the importance of criminal justice actors, namely police, prosecutors and judiciary sharing a common understanding of and focus on Disability Hate Crime.
The Problem with the Current Agenda: Focus on Vulnerability
Authors: Taylor Seamus
Published: May 2023

The issue of vulnerability has posed significant challenges to agenda institutionalization of Disability Hate Crime. It has functioned to substitute protection and safeguarding for rights, justice and equality. At other times, it has been suggested to better capture the range of disabled people’s experiences of victimization. It is argued that vulnerability is embedded as the master stereotype of disabled people in criminal justice policy and practice and that this undue focus on vulnerability is impeding delivery of justice in Disability Hate Crime cases. This chapter analyses the three streams of activity in relation to vulnerability – the political, the policy and the activist streams. The shifting understanding of vulnerability in relation to Disability Hate Crime is evolving largely in response to activists’ concerns and reviews external to the criminal justice system. Recent policy statements from the criminal justice system presents what is still an unsettled position in relation to vulnerability.
An Agenda Item Yet to Fully Speak Its Name: Ableism and Disability Hate Crime
Authors: Taylor Seamus
Published: May 2023

This chapter assesses the context of disabled people’s experience of disadvantage and discrimination, and the persistence of prejudice against this population today in a wide range of social and institutional contexts. The dual problematization of welfare versus rights by state institutions gives a framing to Disability Hate Crime which sets a high standard for considering ableist crime. This chapter explores the extent to which this prejudice is reflective of the ableism impacting the Disability Hate Crime agenda itself. It is argued that in failing to recognize disability prejudice and ableism and their impacts on Disability Hate Crime, there is a failure to recognize and name the issue appropriately and, as a consequence, to deal with Disability Hate Crime justly.
Colonial Continuities and the Commodification of Mobility Policing: French Civipol in West Africa
Authors: Stambøl Eva Magdalena , Jegen Leonie
Published: May 2023

The chapter investigates how the historical intertwinement between colonialism, corporate interests and policing is mirrored in the current ways that Europe attempts to control migration from West Africa. It first considers the role of public-private relationships and surveillance during and in the aftermath of French colonization. Building on this, it goes on to explore the case of Civipol, an agency specializing in the capacity-building of African countries’ internal security co-owned by the French state and major European security companies, which has gained a prominent role as a main implementing partner of EU funds to control migration. Looking especially at Civipol’s engagement in the building of national civil registries, it is argued that colonial continuities can be traced in present mobility policing, and that corporate interests co-shape the securitization of Europe’s relations with Africa.
The Practice of ‘Sanctuary’ and Refugee Protection in India
Authors: Chowdhory Nasreen , Poyil Shamna Thacham
Published: May 2023

India has had a rich tradition of providing sanctuary to the vulnerable individuals who seek refuge within its territory. The practice of sanctuary attempts to consolidate not just the act or exercise of providing sanctuary, but also the customs and principles based on which such sanctuary is sought and accorded. But the visible ambivalence of the state towards refugees has been conditioned by the notion of hospitality which habituates certain humanitarian concerns. The chapter introspects the practices of sanctuary in postcolonial India through the framework of citizenship as belonging to ascertain how provision of sanctuary is based on state performativity of hospitality. While engaging with the historicity of citizenship laws to understand the notion of belonging and state orchestrated hyphenation with protection, the chapter argues that it has evolved from vulnerability-based to identity-centric vulnerability, resulting in alteration of Indian practice of sanctuary to calculated political acts of selective protection.
Singing Historical Reparations: Alabaoras Challenging the Spectacle of Forgiveness in Communities Affected by Deracination in Colombia
Authors: Vergara-Figueroa Aurora , Marino Jerónimo Botero
Published: May 2023

This chapter analyses attempts made by different armed actors to ask forgiveness from the Bojayá community after it suffered immense violence. Through internal (coerced) movements, Bojayá had been constituted in a variety of ways, but always as racialized and as other. The chapter analyses ‘the Black Christ of Bojayá’ gifted to the community by members of FARC as a symbol of this positionality, and to analyse how political forgiveness can be a manifestation of the power of a victim, but also a reconstituted form of racial domination. This analysis shows that even if the concept of forced migration can be useful for formulating policies of temporal protection, it is not for understanding intersections of structural, institutional, and everyday developments. Accordingly, through socio-historic and ethnographic interventions, the case of Bojayá and the Black Christ illustrates the reproduced coloniality at play in understandings of belonging dominating the Colombian peace process.
Précarité and Precarity: The Amazing Transnational Journey of Two Notions Unable to Form a Proper Concept in English
Authors: Barbier Jean-Claude
Published: May 2023

In 1989, the International Labour Organization commissioned a path-breaking report (Rodgers and Rodgers, 1989) to test the relevance of the term ‘precariousness’ (a presumed English equivalent of the French précarité). In parallel, French and British sociologists coined a neologism for their own use, namely ‘precarity’ (Gallie and Paugam, 2000). Later, in various English-speaking forums, the term precarity was picked up and circulated unevenly. In 2022, it has actually become an accepted neologism in English and appears in various dictionaries as well as in mainstream labour market research (economics and sociology). When a second important cross-national research report was funded by the European Union in the early 2000s (the European Study on Precarious Employment, ESOPE), the researchers working on the report were deeply divided as to the interpretation of their data, qualitative and quantitative alike. Despite all these unexpected developments, the term precarity has now become well established in sociological and economic English-language literature. This certainly does not mean that the meaning of the new English term qua concept has been clarified in the process. Few users of ‘precarity’ are aware of this, and the term’s currency is hardly affected by it.
Above-Below, Inside-Outside: Precarity, Underclass and Social Exclusion in Demobilized Class Societies
Authors: Dörre Klaus
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes as its starting point the three-decades-long growth of vertical, class-specific inequalities. At the bottom of the social hierarchy large social groups are forming who are excluded not only from regular gainful employment but also stripped of basic social and democratic rights; from the perspective of mainstream society, they simply appear ‘superfluous’. But how can this structural heterogeneity of social dislocations and disparities be conceptualized in a scientifically accurate and helpful way? It is obvious from countless debates that sociology and the social sciences currently lack adequate theoretical concepts and analytical tools to capture the confusing melange of social divisions, social polarization, widespread precarity and exclusion. This chapter attempts a step towards a resolution of this issue by considering the key concepts of ‘exclusion’ and ‘precarity’ in a way that carves out both their differences from and intersections with the concept of class.
The Problem with Precarity: Precarious Employment and Labour Markets
Authors: Choonara Joseph
Published: May 2023

This chapter opens by discussing the diverse, often mutually unintelligible, conceptions of ‘precarity’ in recent academic literature. It is argued that ‘precarious employment’ offers a more meaningful object of investigation in exploring changes to employment since the beginning of the neoliberal period. Data are presented showing the evolution of temporary work, short-tenure work and labour protections across five major OECD countries. The results do not reveal a simplistic, universal burgeoning of precarious employment but rather complex patterns that must be explained, in each specific context, through an appeal to a theory of labour markets. Such a theory, drawing on Marxist political economy, is proposed. Labour markets must be understood through different levels of abstraction, beginning with the capital–labour relation and developing through successive, more concrete, layers to reconstruct and explain the trends identified.
Precarious Workers and Precarity through the Lens of Social Movement Studies
Authors: Mattoni Alice
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses how precarious workers engage in contentious collective actions outside the realm of institutional politics. It draws on the scholarly work of social movement studies to address three relevant dimensions of social movements: collective identity, organizational patterns and protest repertoire. In so doing, the chapter uncovers the challenges that precarious workers’ movements and the related movement organizations must face when organizing collectively to engage in contentious politics. Additionally, the chapter presents some reflections on how the three above-mentioned dimensions become relevant when considering an emerging yet growing type of precarious worker: platform workers.
Infrastructure as Symbolic Geopolitical Architecture: Kenya’s Megaprojects and Contested Meanings of Development
Authors: Kimari Wangui , Lesutis Gediminas
Published: May 2023

Through investments in large-scale connective infrastructures in Kenya since 2009, this chapter shows how megaprojects emerge from national and regional development visions, while simultaneously functioning as material and symbolic articulations of geopolitical influence – as well as their contestation – within transcontinental inter-state arrangements. Their importance on a local and global scale enables them to represent what we call symbolic geopolitical architectures of development, which are advanced through China’s Belt and Road Initiative but also pursued because of US anxiety to counter Chinese influence. It demonstrates how, despite complementary Kenyan, African, and Chinese infrastructural visions, such developments encounter contestation at multiple levels. This includes politicized public attempts to confront China’s global influence, most prominently by US actors, even if the material effects of such strategies are yet to materialize in Kenya. The chapter shows that megaprojects are symbolic geopolitical architectures through which citizens, non-citizens, and even representatives of foreign states narrate their anxieties. This demonstrates how Kenya’s infrastructure development functions as a symbolic geopolitical field in which China and the US are set to compete in the future. Actual infrastructures, therefore, unfold through complex multiscalar politics, registered by the national critiques of megaprojects and the emerging discursive responses from the US that map onto and are interrelated with these public debates. Ultimately infrastructure in Kenya is not only the articulation of competition between global powers, but it is also shaped by a domestic politics directed by ordinary citizens.
Centralizing Infrastructure in a Fragmenting Polity: China and Ethiopia’s ‘Infrastructure State’
Authors: Huang Zhengli , Goodfellow Tom
Published: May 2023

This chapter argues that Ethiopia has received so much finance from China (both before and after the announcement of the BRI) partly because of Ethiopia’s potentiality as an ‘infrastructure state’, due to its relatively centralized state structures and hierarchical governance processes. It therefore begins by examining why and how Ethiopia became such an important partner for China in Africa, and how Sino-Ethiopian infrastructure relations thrived partly due to the relative affinity between Chinese and Ethiopian governance processes and their shared spatial objectives. It then examines how Chinese infrastructure finance has facilitated the restructuring of state institutions to deliver major transport infrastructure projects and Ethiopia’s industrial parks strategy. Here we show that Ethiopia has drawn on China’s own experience of infrastructure governance and territorial integration, but also argue that it is far from being a powerless partner in its dealings with Beijing and with Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Finally, we turn to the recent period of political crisis, particularly since 2018, and show that US engagement in the Ethiopian infrastructure sector offers potential opportunities and risks. The future of the ‘infrastructure state’, developed partly through Chinese assistance, remains uncertain as the Ethiopian government struggles to consolidate territorial integration and control, and political fragmentation threatens to unravel a centuries-long project of centralization. Moreover, it is not clear whether the finance provided by a new range of actors with an interest in Ethiopian infrastructure will contribute to centralization or undermine it.
Indonesia’s ‘Beauty Contest’: China, Japan, the US, and Jakarta’s Spatial Objectives
Authors: Tritto Angela , Silaban Mary , Camba Alvin
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the changing degrees of influence of the US and China in Indonesia by considering the influence of a third power, Japan. It argues that Indonesia is hedging against the US–China strategic competition, leveraging Japanese capital to attain greater benefits in the negotiations of Chinese capital and carefully detach Indonesia from US influence. First, through the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed railway, the chapter shows how Indonesia attained a better deal from China by leveraging Japan’s initial proposal. Second, it illustrates that the government has consistently followed Japan’s position to hedge against the US-led Freedom of Navigation Operations. Both cases illuminate how Indonesia has relied on Japan’s influence to carve out new state spaces in response to US–China strategic competition. This chapter ultimately demonstrates that, although US–China competition establishes parameters of action for other states, it does not determine outcomes. Jakarta’s project-specific hedging strategies in the context of the US–China rivalry demonstrate that it enjoys a measure of agency that can be translated into the achievement of spatial objectives.
Vietnam’s Spatial and Hedging Strategies in Response to Chinese and Japanese Infrastructural Statecraft
Authors: Liao Jessica C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter illustrates Vietnam’s political balancing act by examining the country’s state spatial strategies around its infrastructure policy, particularly as Vietnam collaborated with both Japan and China over the past three decades. It suggests that the dynamics of infrastructure finance in Asia are rooted in long histories of regional competition and makes three key contributions. First, studies of international relations have divided security and economy in their research agendas and have thus evolved into two distinct fields of literatures in international security and international political economy. Instead, this chapter makes it clear that the nexus of security and economic policies is an important research agenda. Second, the impact of geopolitical competition between great powers needs to be considered alongside the agency of small states. How Vietnam assesses its respective relations vis-à-vis Japan and China determines how the China–Japan economic statecraft competition plays out. Third, competition creates benefits and challenges for small states in their state spatial strategy crafting. It is increasingly delicate, if not impossible, for the governments of these countries to strike a balance between their developmental priorities and their relations with great power counterparts and domestic constituencies.
Wronged and Dangerous
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

Is populism fueled by a feeling of manhood under attack? If gender is the impetus, are there better ways to respond? This book upends prevailing wisdom about contemporary populism. Whereas most attribute its global rise to socioeconomic shifts, this book makes the case for a different cause by taking seriously the prevalence of certain men and manly energies in today’s populist politics. Aggrieved masculinity is the shared feeling at the heart of these movements, and their worldwide outbreak should be reread accordingly—as a sign that a seething sense of “manly right, wronged” has gone viral and global. COVID-19 delivered a stark warning about this pandemic of manly outrage: It endangers public health. This book introduces “viral masculinity” as a novel way to meet that growing threat by tackling the deep connection of our social and physical worlds. Leading with gender without leaving class, race, and other vital factors behind, the book develops a new course of action toward populism today. It compels us to ask not what populism says, but how it spreads, and to realign our efforts accordingly. You need not know or care about gender to get invested in this analysis. You need only be invested in our common future.
From Binary to Biodiversity
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter develops a sociophysical model of gender. It starts by condensing the purposeful venting from the previous chapter into five ‘bad’ habits of gender analysis and ways to break them. It then explains how these habits hold us back, by affirming a foundational binary that values certain people and things over others, to the detriment of all involved. The chapter captures this harm with concepts crucial to the rest of the book, such as the practice of “Othering” and the gender binary’s sacred trinity, which consists of the “universal subject,” “Western Man,” and “the self-contained individual.” These are three renditions of the same fantasy, a quest for impermeable Man that is not sustainable because our bodies are, in fact, permeable. In place of the gender binary, the chapter advocates gender biodiversity and builds a corresponding model of gender as a defining force in the world. This approach sensitizes us to the daily contact we make with gender and its less conscious, sensory aspects. Where Chapter 2 deconstructs, Chapter 3 reconstructs in order to equip the reader with fresh gender knowledge and skill.
Of Masks and Men
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter exercises the analytical ‘muscles’ developed in the previous chapter. It applies the sociophysical approach to a second narrative about gender during COVID-19: “mask-ulinity,” or the notion that men resist face-covering more than women. The chapter analyzes a mask-ulinity incident that went viral in 2020 and rejects the popular reading that toxic masculinity, or ‘bad’ gender ideology, is what leads men to such actions. A sociophysical approach rereads mask-ulinity like this: Wearing a mask stirs an unnerving physical sensation of permeability for bodies accustomed (or ‘entitled’) to feeling impermeable. The chapter illustrates how feelings of gender come upon us, such that ‘the smile makes the woman’ and ‘the outburst makes the man’—reversing how we usually think of it. People are not entirely aware or in control when it comes to feeling gender.
This Is Populism
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

Armed with a new sense of gender from Part I, this chapter delves into that ‘thing’ called populism which is growing around the globe. The chapter sets the task of Part II: to develop a better ‘feel’ for contemporary populism. Key questions include what sort of feeling defines populism, whether it’s cause for concern and what kind, who are ‘we’ to say so, and are expressions of concern inherently anti-populist? Following the thread from the COVID-19 lockdown protests through the January 6 US Capitol riot, an energetic signature is discernible: victimized anger in search of more outlets. Is this a populist uprising, after all?
New Populism
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter specifies the sort of populism on the move today, dubbing it “New Populism” for ease while stressing its plurality and contextual variation (populisms). The guiding question is: What is both familiar and novel about New Populism? New Populism exhibits all five “clues” from Chapter 7, but with significant twists, including close ties to democratization, intensified antagonism, a (re)possessive attitude toward democracy, a focus on electoral victory, governance through anti-government, commiseration with a besieged leader, reliance on sociotechnical infrastructures and their ‘viral’ affordances, and a priority on feeling over ideology—specifically, the feeling of “aggrieved entitlement.” Overall, the chapter defines New Populism not by what it says but what it does, which is alter how democracy operates around the world.
Anger, Downrising
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter checks the portrait rendered in the previous chapter for anti-populism, a condescending response to ‘The People’ that basically proves their point. Situated in the January 6 US Capitol insurrection, it takes a closer look at the ‘we’ who critique New Populism. Anti-populism is rejected as oblivious to its own implication in populism; namely, it induces aggrieved entitlement in the act of critiquing it. The chapter calls everyone to reflect on their participation in New Populism. Countering the usual depiction of populist uprising, it introduces the notion of downrising to reveal the fuller scope of contributors and complicities. Even the left plays a role, when casting ‘the base’ (rank-and-file supporters) as the new ‘white trash.’ In step with the mask-ulinity episode in Chapter 4, the chapter rereads the Capitol riot as evidence of the increasing communicability of feeling. Sensations of aggrieved entitlement are more in charge than most care to admit.
Class and Culture, of Course
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

The work of Parts I and II bear fruit in Part III, which revisits the cause of New Populism. Most analysts point to socioeconomic and demographic changes as the decisive stimuli for the populist surge. This chapter systematically unravels that analysis of cause in three turns. It challenges economic (class-mainly), socioeconomic (a combination of class and cultural marginalization), and socioeconomic ‘plus’ (racial and religious resentments) explanations. Even when expanded beyond its reasonable limits, the concept of class cannot well explain New Populism. Class-forward analysis, any assessment that leads with socioeconomic unrest, breaks down.
Identity Politics for the Universal Human
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter elaborates the core argument that New Populism is identity politics for the universal subject, that manly figure posing as the generic human. Populism is the perfect air-freshener, beard, or gender-laundering service for aggrieved masculinity. It sanitizes the feeling, gives it the legitimate face of ‘The People,’ and opens it for others to absorb. Through New Populism, dominant masculinity hijacks class to do its bidding. To catch this sleight of hand, we need gender-first instead of class-forward analysis. Gender-first analysis begins with gender to crack the binary code by which aggrieved masculinity travels the globe: MANLY RIGHT, WRONGED. It then registers all the other factors (race, class, religion, sexuality, and so forth) through which New Populisms vary. The US case is informative but not paradigmatic. Aggrieved masculinity takes regionally specific forms.
Identity Politics 2.0
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes a closer look at how viral masculinity works, using the “critical race theory” (CRT) scare—a New Populist campaign to discredit any US diversity curriculum that induces white discomfort. The chapter traces how this campaign was made in the manosphere. Even as it breeds fear that ‘they’re coming for our kids,’ it places straight white men in the crosshairs of CRT, its most tragic casualty. The CRT scare is not traditional identity politics but, rather, a branding campaign. It runs on “sense bites,” or feeling shorthand engineered to elicit physical responses that gather energy. Like this, New Populism plays identity politics on a different field. It creates and diffuses “senses of self,” bodily reflexes that supply direction and momentum beyond full awareness. Cultural warfare of this kind aims for We the Sleepwalkers.
We the Sleepwalkers
Authors: Ashcraft Karen Lee
Published: May 2023

The conclusion returns to key questions that opened the book, such as what aggrieved masculinity is grieving, and whether this might be addressed without giving in to its grievances. The chapter answers, respectively, (a) the dying myth of self-containment and (b) yes, by finally addressing the fact of our permeability. The New Populist pufferfish must go, which means the circuits of aggrieved masculinity must somehow be interrupted. To do so, the chapter proposes a partner for critical thinking: critical feeling, which adopts a pandemic frame to mitigate the transmission of viral masculinity. Whereas critical thinking confronts communication at the ‘front door’ of awareness, critical feeling confronts communicability through the ‘side doors,’ those peripheral bodily entrances that are both less conscious and less guarded. In this way, it enacts lateral empathy. Critical feeling is the next front of cultural warfare. Neither hard nor soft, it melts their distinction. This is ‘critical’ indeed, a show of respect to our sociophysical world.
Introduction
Authors: Andrews Sam
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides a brief overview of the development of counterterrorism in the United Kingdom post-7/7. Alongside this, it give an overview of the methodology of the book, providing thoughts on grounded theory methodology and doing research as an outsider.
Bridging Neoliberalism and Hindu Nationalism
Authors: Lall Marie , Anand Kusha
Published: May 2023

India will soon be the world’s most populated country and its political development will shape the world of the 21st century. Yet Hindu nationalism – central to contemporary Indian politics – is not well understood outside India, and its links to the global neoliberal trajectory have not been much explored. This important book provides in-depth insight into contemporary Indian politics and the wider societal acceptance of India’s Hindu nationalist trajectory. The authors show how education was the vehicle that linked neoliberalism with Hindu nationalism and allowed to it permeate through Indian society. Eight years of Modi rule have failed to bring about the developments that were promised, yet they have seen India’s rapid change from a largely inclusive society to one where minorities are denied their basic rights.
Hindu Nationalism Versus Secularism and the Social Realities of Discrimination
Authors: Lall Marie , Anand Kusha
Published: May 2023

This chapter opens by describing the rewriting of history in new textbooks as part of the BJP-led NDA government’s education policy, which was rolled out under the slogan ‘Indianise, nationalise, spiritualise’. It describes how the content is used to underpin Hindu pride and disparage India’s Muslim heritage, drawing battle lines between those who believe India is a secular country and those who want to redefine India on Hindu lines. The chapter goes on to look at how between 2004 and 2019 school textbooks became a political football, changing according to which party was in power across state governments (Lall, 2008), and how the new Congress-sponsored textbooks did not alter the Hindutva approach offered in many schools. The chapter turns to the effects of Hindu nationalism, including the Ghar Whapsi campaign, love jihad, and the cow slaughter ban, as the new Hinduized identity became increasingly acceptable amidst widespread anti-Muslim rhetoric across social media. The chapter then briefly reviews how specific Delhi education reforms have brought in the Happiness Curriculum and the EMC, both of which have direct links to Hindu traditions. It ends with an analysis of the NEP 2020, which also reflects some of the Hindutva discourses and approaches.