SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.02.2022
Rhian E. Jones
{"title":"Levelling up versus democratic localism","authors":"Rhian E. Jones","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.02.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.02.2022","url":null,"abstract":"The Johnson government's pledge to 'level up' in response to regional inequality has been derided for its continuing lack of political substance. Responses from the Labour Party leadership have tended to ignore the development in several parts of the UK of approaches focusing on democratic\u0000 localism or 'community wealth building', in which local leaders, groups and communities in neglected or 'left behind' areas are not only achieving central aspects of what 'levelling up' promises, but doing so with more progressive principles and intentions than those that underpin the Tory-led\u0000 project. The obvious example of this is the 'Preston Model', a project brought in over the past decade by a Labour-led city council. While some criticisms of the Preston Model and community wealth building are misconceived, others are valid areas of question or concern for the left, in particular\u0000 those that centre on the democratic nature of these economic experiments, and the risk that their focus on the spending policies of local or regional authorities ignores the potential for genuinely democratic community decision-making. This article looks at the extent to which community wealth\u0000 building has integrated or accommodated these concerns; the potential for doing so in future iterations of the strategy; and how a focus on these alternative strategies could offer a path to renewal for the Labour Party nationally.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"91 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89271828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.07.2022
Glyn Ford
{"title":"Korean Peninsula: is a turn from armistice to peace possible?","authors":"Glyn Ford","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.07.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.07.2022","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the current prospects for peace on the Korean Peninsula. It argues that denuclearisation will be the final step in any peace process and cannot be seen as a precondition. There needs to be an understanding that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) sees\u0000 nuclear deterrence as guaranteeing its survival as a country, which means that surrendering it will only be possible at the end of multilateral peace process with strong security guarantees. The rigour, robustness and resilience of the Iran Deal and its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)\u0000 is seen as a model. The start of talks is likely to be bilateral, but security and economics will make the later stages collective. Obstacles along the way include a lack of understanding on both sides; President Biden's reversion to Obama's playbook and the potential difficulties of getting\u0000 any agreement through Congress; and recent elections in South Korea, which have seen the election of a hawkish President. The only good news is that, since Fumio Kishida became president any initiative by China to return to Six Party Talks is no longer stymied by Japanese intransigence. As\u0000 with any peace process, there is a need for recognition by both sides that the journey is as important as the destination; an 'End of War Declaration', to replace the armistice, would be a good starting point.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73702229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.05.2022
S. Iliffe, J. Manthorpe
{"title":"The many pieces of the Covid-19 jigsaw: some reflections on waves one and two","authors":"S. Iliffe, J. Manthorpe","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.05.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.05.2022","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on insights from psychology, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, health economics and medical ethics, this article explores two linked aspects of the management of the Covid-19 pandemic during its first and second waves in the UK. The first aspect is the range of cognitive and\u0000 emotional responses to the imminent collapse of authority early in the crisis, and how these played out in public and private. Ultimately, the NHS fallback response was the 'Rule of Rescue', the requirement to rescue identifiable individuals in immediate peril, regardless of the cost. The\u0000 second aspect is the meaning of heroism in the context of this pandemic. This includes the Clap for Carers initiative - and its function as an endorsement of others' deeds; the use of war imagery and war resources in mobilising against the infection; and the possibilities for different objects\u0000 of applause to appear when seen from different standpoints. Linking these two aspects together we argue that the potential collapse of authority helps explain responses that seek heroes in the war against the virus and see war strategy and tactics as deserving of our support. We also ask what\u0000 will remain of the pandemic in public memory.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88464790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.reviews.2022
Hannah Hamad
{"title":"Power, rape and the media","authors":"Hannah Hamad","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.reviews.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.reviews.2022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"134 5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75284563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.09.2022
Marina Prentoulis, Ó. G. Agustín, Ana Santamarina Guerrero, D. Featherstone, Lazaros Karaliotas
{"title":"Reflections on the spaces of populist politics in Europe","authors":"Marina Prentoulis, Ó. G. Agustín, Ana Santamarina Guerrero, D. Featherstone, Lazaros Karaliotas","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.09.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.09.2022","url":null,"abstract":"A discussion of the record of left- and right-wing populist parties in Europe in response to the austerity policies that followed on from the financial crisis of 2007-8, focusing both on the populist right and on the trajectories of Syriza and Podemos. Questions discussed include: the\u0000 issue of definition - whether populism is more than a mobilising strategy/understanding it as a hybrid political practice; what happens to left populist parties when they come into government; what the difference is between left social democracy and populism; the different geographies of populism\u0000 - how it operates at the local, national and transnational levels; right-wing populism in Spain, including the Partido Popular as well as Vox, particularly in Madrid; authoritarian populism; populism and nationalism, especially in relation to hostility to migration; right-wing populism in\u0000 Greece.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84379708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.01.2022
J. Littler, Véronica Gago
{"title":"We want ourselves alive and debt free!","authors":"J. Littler, Véronica Gago","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.01.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.01.2022","url":null,"abstract":"Verónica Gago is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and author of Neoliberalism From Below (Duke 2017); Feminist International: How to Change Everything (Verso 2020); and, with Lucí Cavallero, A Feminist Theory of Debt (Pluto, 2021).\u0000 She is an active member of the grassroots feminist movement Ni Una Menos, founded by a group of artists, activists and academics in Argentina. Ni Una Menos has described itself as a 'collective scream against machista violence'. It has regularly held protests against femicides, and has connected\u0000 femicide to a range of other issues, including sexual harassment, abortion and reproductive rights, transgender and sex worker rights, the gender pay gap, gender roles, neoliberalism and debt. Its first demonstration was organised in the wake of a 14-year old pregnant girl, Chiara Paez, being\u0000 beaten to death by her boyfriend, in Buenos Aires in 2015. This brought together 200,000 people. In 2016 the movement came to wider attention on social media through the hashtag #NiUnaMenos, and protests spread throughout Latin America, particularly in Chile, Uruguay and Peru, where it prompted\u0000 what has been described as the largest demonstration in Peruvian history. In 2016 Ni Una Menos launched a national women's strike. After sustained campaigning, in 2020 abortion became legal in Argentina; and in 2021 a law was passed giving employment rights to travestis and trans people. Its\u0000 campaigns to reclaim rights and resources continue. In this interview, conducted in July 2021, Jo Littler talks to Verónica Gago about Ni Una Menos, her work and activism.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85711168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.06.2022
Moshe Behar
{"title":"Entanglements: the IHRA, Jews and non- White minorities","authors":"Moshe Behar","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.06.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.06.2022","url":null,"abstract":"The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism - whether intentionally or not - has had the effect of separating antisemitism from other forms of racism. Of the eleven illustrations that the IHRA definition marshals to exemplify antisemitism, seven relate to post-1948 Israel. As a result,\u0000 the Zionist/Arab matrix dominates the definition, and the examples come across as concerned more with the protection of Israel than the protection of Jews, let alone non-Israeli Jews. The right's campaign for its imposition as the sole acceptable definition, together with its focus on antisemitism\u0000 to the exclusion of other forms of racism, has significantly undermined potential solidarities with other minority groups. In an expansion of the instrumentalisation of accusations of antisemitism for right-wing conservative ends, since October 2020 there has been a campaign by the UK government\u0000 to demand that University Vice Chancellors in England formally adopt the definition. The aim of this article is to offer an explicitly non-white Jewish perspective on the post-2015 trajectory that underpins the drive for universities to adopt the IHRA definition. This involves, first, a discussion\u0000 of some of the wider arguments about antisemitism, including the problems of the IHRA definition and its use by the Israeli government and its allies as a means of silencing critics; and, second, an exploration of the ways in which the Tory focus on antisemitism, accompanied as it is by downplaying\u0000 other forms of racism, is so unhelpful for Jews labouring to cement common ground with other minority groups.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90035662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.04.2022
A. Standring, Matthew Donoghue
{"title":"Moral crisis/moral critique?","authors":"A. Standring, Matthew Donoghue","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.04.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.04.2022","url":null,"abstract":"The crisis of neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy has a genesis stretching back a decade or longer. Why is it that, until now, socialists and those on the left have struggled to articulate a coherent counter-hegemonic discourse? We argue that at least part of this failing comes\u0000 from an ambivalence about making the moral argument for socialist transformation. Both a moral critique of the existing order and the articulation of socialist future grounded in a distinct moral order are necessary components of transformative change: they are able to fix substantive policy\u0000 initiatives - whether a green new deal, universal basic income or the nationalisation of essential services - within a broader vision of how society and the state should function, and on whose behalf. Morals are important in the functioning of any socio-economic order - communicating meaning,\u0000 providing rationale and generating expectations regarding the practices of ourselves and others. They construct and stabilise contingent social orders and hierarchies. The current social contract is characterised by increased individualisation, responsibilisation and the moral imperative towards\u0000 competition and consumption. Morals are what allow people to tolerate current conditions. But as contemporary capitalism becomes increasingly uninhabitable, a moral critique - that is the ability to both unpick what stabilises the current conjuncture and offer an alternative - becomes all\u0000 the more urgent. We look at a number of initiatives and movements, most but not all lodged in the anti-austerity protests of the past decade, for examples of such political strategies. In such movements we see how material criticisms of capitalism are grounded in concrete struggles for justice\u0000 and emancipation but framed in a counter-hegemonic moral framework that explicitly challenges the status quo.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"129 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81715982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.03.2022
C. Zografos
{"title":"The contradictions of Green New Deals: green sacrifice and colonialism","authors":"C. Zografos","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.03.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.03.2022","url":null,"abstract":"The focus in mainstream Northern versions of Green New Deals (GNDs) or Just Transitions is on ameliorating the implications of low-carbon transition upon communities within Northern economies - not upon the communities, most often in the global South, that will be adversely affected\u0000 by the solutions that are being proposed, for example those based on mining for transition minerals, constructing damns for hydro-electricity or projects for the large-scale harnessing of solar power. Yet adverse impacts on the environment are expected to occur across the whole chain of provision\u0000 of the resources required by GNDs: the transportation of materials, assemblage of green production infrastructure, siting of facilities to produce energy, and dealing with waste at the end-of-life of green infrastructure. The areas involved in this chain are becoming Green Sacrifice Zones.\u0000 Assumptions about race and social difference provide the underpinning for a tendency to downplay or render invisible consequences for local communities. Furthermore, the extraction of resources often involves contemporary colonial practices, including land encroachment and highly exploitative\u0000 labour relations. Resource-seeking multinational companies present themselves as offering the benefits of modernity to people living in green sacrifice zones - in the form of 'employment opportunities' and 'economic development'. Some of the more peripheral or 'disadvantaged' areas within\u0000 Europe are also at risk from transition resource extractivism. To go beyond this mindset, there is a need to start listening to what frontline and vulnerable communities themselves say when they speak about just transition and GNDs: this will involve challenging leadership assumptions about\u0000 which people and what frameworks should guide a just decarbonisation.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79808411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.3898/soun.80.08.2022
Sivamohan Valluvan
{"title":"Cosmopolitanism in the 'provinces'","authors":"Sivamohan Valluvan","doi":"10.3898/soun.80.08.2022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.80.08.2022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":"144 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89021723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}