Wild Analysis in Politics

This commentary provides a critical discussion of Crouse and Stalker's (2007) attempt to psychoanalyze right‐wing authoritarian beliefs. The psychological inventory used by Crouse and Stalker for this purpose, The Right‐Wing Authoritarian Scale (Altemeyer, 1998), has dubious validity characteristics, and the conclusions reached by Crouse and Stalker regarding the origins and characteristics of right‐wing political beliefs and attitudes may be more reflective of the authors' political prejudices than of a serious psychoanalytic study of different personality structures. In the present article, the author demonstrates not only the flaws associated with the measuring instrument used, but also the left‐wing biases in the Crouse and Stalker analysis. Unfortunately, these prejudices against individuals with conservative political beliefs may be extensively present in the psychology and psychoanalytic communities and serve neither an appropriate clinical nor scientific purpose.     

Politics and Generosity

ABSTRACT This paper argues that generosity as a moral virtue is only consistently and fully possible to practise in the kind of polity that upholds natural individual human rights, including the basic negative right to private property. The paper sketches a characterisation of generosity and explains the sense in which it can be a moral virtue. Some of the assumptions underlying the concept of moral virtue are considered and it is argued that contrary to some recent claims, it is possible to conceptualise as well as to practise moral virtues in our age. Yet it is also shown that certain political prerequisites are necessary for practising generosity. Furthermore, it is shown that there cannot be any generosity involved in a polity in which one is forced to share one's wealth with those who might be the beneficiaries of generous conduct. Finally, it is argued that even in a polity with a very limited government some acts of official generosity are possible.     

Origin Stories: Same-Sex Sexuality and Christian Right Politics

In this paper, we examine dominant Christian conservative narratives of the origins of same-sex sexuality. Critics of the Christian right usually focus on a narrative of choice that Christian right organisations and activists use to explain the origins of same-sex sexuality. A choice narrative grounds a range of political positions and, in many contexts, effectively neutralises both claims of discrimination and public support for potential legal remedies. On the other hand, a narrative of development receives less attention from critics of the Christian right. Although it cannot be reduced to its political efficacy, the narrative of development has a political as well as therapeutic function. Indeed, this narrative circulates tacitly through a different set of public debates than those usually associated with the narrative of choice, including debates over programmes geared to eliminate antigay harassment in public schools. The two narratives create tensions within Christian conservative thought that can destabilise antigay social and political projects.     

Art,Politics, and the Pedagogical Relation

In recent years the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has addressed the predicament of artists and curators who, in their eagerness to convey a critical message or engage their viewers in an emancipatory process, end up predetermining the outcomes of the experience, hence blocking its critical or emancipatory potential. In this essay I consider Rancière’s writing on this topic and draw out the parallels with the predicament of teachers and curriculum designers who have critical and emancipatory objectives. The risk of education that strives for emancipation is that it can become so directive in steering students to the “right” outcomes that it does not leave these students any intellectual room. Rancière’s work is helpful in reminding us that teachers and curricula with explicitly critical, political, emancipatory objectives can defeat their own purposes and become stultifying if they do not leave the student room to use her or his own intelligence.     

On the Relationship between Truth and Liberal Politics

This paper examines the relationship between truth and liberal politics via the work of Bernard Williams and Richard Rorty. I argue that Williams is right to think that there are positive relations between truth, specifically a realist understanding of truth, and liberal politics that Rorty's abandonment of the realist vocabulary of truth undermines. At the heart of this concern is the worry that abandoning the realist vocabulary opens up the possibility that the standards of justification for our true beliefs can be manipulated by those with the power to do so in order to further their own political ends. The political benefit of realism is that it fixes the standards of justification and makes them immune to manipulation by the use of power. However, I suggest that there is a form of realism available that Rorty can accept which would deliver the political benefits of the realist vocabulary without requiring him to accept the thick realist metaphysics that he wants to avoid. My conclusion is that there is a positive and important relationship between truth and liberal politics, a relationship that can be sustained without any necessary commitment to realist metaphysics.     

The Politics of Self-Respect: A Feminist Perspective

Recent liberal moral and political philosophy has placed great emphasis on the good of self-respect. But it is not always evident what is involved in self-respect, nor is it evident how societies can promote it. Assuming that self-respect is highly desirable, I begin by considering how people can live in a self-respecting fashion, and I argue that autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of one's own life plans is necessary for self-respect. I next turn to the question of how societal implementation of rights may affect self-respect, and I urge that discretionary rights, which allow people to decline the benefits they confer, support self-respect more effectively than mandatory rights, which forbid people to refuse the benefits they confer. I conclude by examining the import of these contentions for feminist theory. I believe that my arguments are of particular concern to women because women have traditionally been victimized by a mandatory right to play a distinctively “feminine” role which has undermined their self-respect.     

Pathogens and Politics: Current Research and New Questions

The emotion of disgust has been linked to more conservative social attitudes and to self‐placement on the left–right political spectrum. This relationship seems to be robust and general: It has been observed by multiple labs, using diverse methods and measures, in a variety of countries and cultures. However, why disgust should be associated with social and political attitudes is still an open question. We first review the evidence for a link between disgust and political attitudes and then outline competing accounts of why there should be a relationship between the two in the first place.     

READING HAUERWAS IN THE CORNBELT: The Demise of the American Dream and the Return of Liturgical Politics

In this paper I examine criticism of Hauerwas's critique of American democracy and liberalism, and of American violence and war, as sectarian and politically irrelevant. This twin account has the merit of engaging his critics from left and right. I show that his critique of American Christians, and their support of America's ways of promoting justice and freedom at home and in the world, has analogies with Foucault's genealogical project in France, and represents a more powerful critique of American imperialism and militarism, and of a compliant church, than efforts to sustain the purchase of rights talk or liberal justice in contemporary theological ethics.     

Introduction: Desiring Politics and the Politics of Desire

What does thinking and acting with desire make possible that might otherwise and all too often be foreclosed? How might desire help orient action toward a horizon of becoming across which collective struggle can effect affective reparation and a more capacious politics? In some ways, desire seems to be taken for as much granted as space – that is, it's everywhere, but often difficult to articulate or analytically pin down. For us, what makes desire distinct, but not discrete, from the vocabulary of affect and emotion is that it operates as both absence and lack, on the one hand, and as a profoundly productive motor and motivating force, on the other. Desire moves in ways that presuppose, exceed, and complement the range of expressions that are taken up by scholarship in this journal. In this special issue, we privilege desire, in both senses, as central among the (dis)organizing, affective forces shaping political life.     

Politics and the Contingent: A Plea For A More Embedded Account of Freedom as Independence

This contribution defends Ripstein's attempt to reconstruct Kant's political philosophy as entirely and consistently grounded on the idea of people's innate right to freedom as independence, in particular with respect to charges of circularity raised by other contributors to this symposium. However, it also argues that, if the concept of freedom as independence is to provide a foundation for a full‐blown account of political justice, a richer interpretation of it should be provided. In other words, we must be willing to make controversial and empirically informed claims about what counts as a threat to our freedom as independence under specific circumstances. We must have a more embedded account of freedom as independence, one that engages with the contingencies of politics and of the human condition.     

Personality,Religion, and Politics: An Investigation in 33 Countries

The relations of HEXACO personality factors and religiosity with political orientation were examined in responses collected online from participants in 33 countries (N = 141 492). Endorsement of a right‐wing political orientation was negatively associated with Honesty‐Humility and Openness to Experience and positively associated with religiosity. The strength of these associations varied widely across countries, such that the religiosity–politics correlations were stronger in more religious countries, whereas the personality–politics correlations were stronger in more developed countries. We also investigated the utility of the narrower traits (i.e. facets) that define the HEXACO factors. The Altruism facet (interstitially located between the Honesty‐Humility, Agreeableness, and Emotionality axes) was negatively associated with right‐wing political orientation, but religiosity was found to suppress this relationship, especially in religious countries. In addition to Altruism, the Greed Avoidance and Modesty facets of the Honesty‐Humility factor and the Unconventionality and Aesthetic Appreciation facets of the Openness to Experience factor were also negatively associated with right‐wing political orientation. We discuss the utility of examining facet‐level personality traits, along with religiosity, in research on the individual difference correlates of political orientation. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Religion as Politics not Law: the Religion Clauses in the Australian Constitution1

Abstract

The Australian Constitution provides for the protection of religious freedom and prohibits establishment in very similar terms to the United States Constitution. Yet while Australian judges have often stated the importance of religious freedom in a democratic state and have defined religion in a broad, culturally sensitive way, they have taken a narrow approach to the scope of religious freedom and to the meaning of establishment. The end result is that the courts have played very little role in determining the boundaries of acceptable government or legislative behaviour in the regulation of religion. Instead, the key decisions have been left to the political branches of government, which have been given a broad scope of power to engage in all but the most direct and egregious breaches of religious freedom. This article begins with an overview of the history of the drafting of the religion clauses of the Australian Constitution and then gives a detailed analysis of the way in which those clauses have been interpreted by the High Court. It concludes that the approach of the High Court in interpreting the religion clauses narrowly, as a constraint on government power rather than a right, has limited the capacity of the Court to participate meaningfully in the key legal questions around religious freedom. While this approach might have been workable in the past, the growing complexity of regulating religion means that the courts need to be able to develop more sophisticated legal approaches to questions of religious freedom.     

Politics and participation: Some antecedents of young people's attitudes to the political system and political activity

The antecedents of political disaffection and political activism have been extensively studied in adult populations, producing two models of political protest, the ‘dissatisfaction model’, suggesting that protest action is rooted in political disaffection, and the ‘resource model’ which bases interest in politics in a sense of political self-efficacy. There has been a dearth of research extending this theorizing to young people of prevoting age. The present study presents the results of regression analysis applied to longitudinal data collected in a U.K. Programme of research and economic and political socialization, the ESRC 16-19 Initiative. The analysis relates ‘lack of interest in politics’, ‘intention not to vote’ and ‘political activity’, to attitudes, personality characteristics, experience and circumstances measured earlier. It is concluded that political disaffection including lack of interest and intention not to vote, is strongly associated with a growing cynicism about politics rooted in poor educational performance and a working class family background. The connections with activism are negative but much weaker, suggesting the potential for protest activity across a wider spectrum of youth. This lends support to Marsh's (1990) view that given the right circumstances, protest action under both the ‘resource model’, and the ‘dissatisfaction model’, can apply.     

Statelessness and the Politics of Misrecognition

This article focuses on the account of disrespect found in Honneth’s theory of recognition. In it, I am particularly interested in the form of misrecognition or disrespect which is the negation of respect, and which is clearly represented by statelessness. Respect, for Honneth, is closely connected to legal recognition. Guided by Honneth’s view of critical theory as ‘not entirely without a foundation in social reality’, the article puts together an analysis of the political dynamics of his model of disrespect. This analysis is used to challenge certain aspects of Honneth’s political theory and in particular the implications of his conception of the state. The article argues that the way in which the state is used has the effect of obscuring significant political obstacles to recognition, and in particular, the way in which the state limits respect.     

Work and the Politics of Misrecognition

In this article we examine the idea of a politics of misrecognition of working activity. We begin by introducing a distinction between the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s identity, and the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s activity. We then consider the political significance of the latter kind of recognition and misrecognition in the context of work. Drawing first on empirical research undertaken by sociologists at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, we argue for a differentiated concept of recognition that shows the politics of misrecognition at work to be as much a matter of conflict between modes of recognition as it is a struggle for recognition as opposed to non-recognition. The differentiated concept of recognition which allows for this empirical insight owes much to Axel Honneth’s theory. But as we argue in the section that follows, this theory is ambiguous about the normative content of the expectations of recognition that are bound up with the activity of working. This in turn makes it unclear how we should understand the normative basis of the politics of the misrecognition of what one does at work. In the final sections of the article, we suggest that the psychodynamic model of work elaborated by Christophe Dejours and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris can shed light on this matter; that is to say, it can help to clarify the normative significance and political stakes of the misrecognition of working activity.     

Clergy and the Politics of Gender

Using data from a new survey of mainline Protestant clergy, we explore the extent to which a political gender gap exists between male and female mainline Protestant ministers. Analysis reveals major partisan, ideological, attitudinal, and participatory disparities among clergymen and clergywomen. Women are far more liberal than their male counterparts, and even though they face the constraint of being a professional minority, clergywomen tend to participate in politics at higher rates than clergymen.     

组织政治认知对员工行为的影响

组织政治是组织生活的现实反映,是一种普遍现象,员工对组织政治现象的认知对其行为、态度有诸多的不利影响。本研究运用自行研制的组织政治认知调查问卷,通过对29家企业共1647名员工的调查,探讨了在中国文化背景下员工的组织政治认知的结果变量,可望为各类组织的人力资源管理实践提供理论依据。     

Feminist Organizing and the Politics of Inclusion

This paper examines the attempts of one mainstream women's organization to organize and include women of color. Using the approach to social organization developed in the work of Dorothy Smith, I aim to make visible the complex of relations within which the work of this organization is embedded. In mapping the institutional relations structuring the activities in a local setting, the concern is to articulate how activities in the local setting are organized by and in relation to others. My analysis takes as its point of departure my work involvements with this organization over a period of two years. Beginning with my own activities and others' within the setting, the analysis problematizes the concepts of "organizing women of color" and "inclusion/exclusion." What comes into view are the ways in which "organizing" and "inclusion" are ideological constructs brought into service to account for the practices in which various members of the organization were engaged. Their ideological character came to be unveiled in the "troubles" the organization encountered in its attempts to "organize" women of color. The inquiry shows that those troubles arose out of the organization's location at the juncture between private foundations, grassroots women, and the state. On the one hand, the activities of the organization are articulated to an understanding of what funders might be willing to support, and on the other hand the organization's activities have to be seen as serving women of color by both women of color and others. Displayed through the mapping of institutional relations is the deep mismatch between the institutional characterization of what it means to be "organized" and the actual activities women of color were engaged in. I argue that the activities and practices of the mainstream organization embedded in a complex of relations with funding agencies, public policy makers and so on actually produce the definition of women of color as "unorganized."