tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12941582255673536092024-03-14T08:07:47.543-07:00Reasonably RagingThor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-89716940616711399942020-02-24T04:59:00.001-08:002020-02-24T04:59:12.916-08:00Human Camps: Silence and Denial in a New Era<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<img height="640" src="https://campalbum.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img013-1.jpg" width="484" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;">Image from <a href="https://camp-album.com/">Camp Album Project</a>, depicting "</span>daily reflection of a Xinjiang person" and "perpetual silence, stigma, and representational violence they always have to face alone". The project
documents lived experience, trauma, and resistance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When Eugen Kogon published the English-language version of ‘<a href="https://archive.org/details/EugenKogonTheTheoryAndPracticeOfHell/page/n5/mode/2up">The Theory and Practice of Hell</a>’, the first book written from inside the German concentration camp system, U.S. publishers cited “apathy on the part of the public” to explain its small print-run. 5 years after the fall of the Third Reich and Holocaust survivors still had to work hard to find intelligent and creative ways to have their stories and the facts heard. If “never again” is to mean genocide should never happen again, it will help to remember that we only remember the Holocaust even happened because its survivors made an unreceptive world listen. Little has changed since 1950. People in Xinjiang have experienced the largest, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-chinas-systematic-tracking-arrests-of-uighurs-exposed-in-new-xinjiang-leak/a-52397824">ethnically targeted</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html">internment of minority groups</a> since the second world war. Yet even renowned experts of China struggle to name a real, living person from Xinjiang, despite their growing calls to be heard <a href="https://shahit.biz/eng/">online</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-51532812/uighurs-in-china-i-didn-t-even-know-if-my-mum-was-alive">across mainstream media</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The comforting lie that we could never commit such exceptional evil fuses with the shock that such things are still possible in the 21st century, making our era a perplexing one where people say “never again” while watching it happen again. In 1940, Walter Benjamin warned that “<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html">the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule</a>”. Silence from the majority who consider themselves unaffected while minority groups are targeted as threats is tragically normal. Naively believing that fascism was an exceptional period aids its return because it prevents us from recognising it until it’s too late. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-grossly-misunderstood-banality-of-evil-theory-1.5448677">Hannah Arendt</a> famously described the “banality of evil”, that people can choose to retreat from reason and free themselves of responsibility in the refuge of bureaucratic determinism, normalising and routinising violence against groups deemed worthless to their political goals. That people can commit such violence as a routine through a sense of inevitability is more psychologically and philosophically challenging than thinking of fascism as exceptional and dismissing its manifestations. For Benjamin, every document of civilisation is also a document of barbarism.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Why such silence? In a digital age, the evidence from Xinjiang has not only been more compelling and more rapidly available than ever, but also clearer that <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/features/which-european-companies-are-working-xinjiang">all global consumers are implicated</a>. While working on the topic, many people who do not tell me why the issue is unworthy of their attention. The reasons I’ve been given, even in 2019, was that “we need more evidence”, at a time when the evidence available included <a href="https://medium.com/@shawnwzhang/detention-camp-construction-is-booming-in-xinjiang-a2525044c6b1" target="_blank">visual satellite images </a>displaying rapid growth of the camp system, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02634937.2018.1507997">official documents outlining funding channels</a> including military equipment, and <a href="https://believermag.com/weather-reports-voices-from-xinjiang/" target="_blank">multiple testimonies of people released describing their experiences</a>. When discussing the consensus among scholars of the subject that the camps and related practices constitute cultural genocide according to the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crimeofgenocide.aspx">U.N. Convention on Genocide</a>, one friend dismissed the experts, “but there’s no chimneys with fumes of the dead bellowing out”. To focus on the quantity of deaths, in many respects, misses the camp’s purpose and their significance: dehumanisation of peoples towards promotion of the state’s goals. Germany’s “extermination camps” for mass annihilation (Vernichtung) were only one specialised form of concentration camp (Konzentrationslager) and not all concentration camps contained gas chambers or furnaces. Yet all camps were designed to identify, dehumanise, and isolate groups viewed as incompatible with the state’s goals of reviving and producing a romantic vision of an ancient, culturally pure society. The conversation reminded me of an exchange with a Dutch student who proudly told me how Mein Kampf was banned in the Netherlands to ensure fascism could never repeated, before using logics from its pages that his town was being “taken over” and “infected” by immigrants from “outside western civilisation”. Learning about that uncomfortable history would help people recognise its recurrence. This is the engagement Benjamin called for in his Theses on the Philosophy of History; an engagement with history, not a recollection of the past but an attempt to make sense of and respond to the present. Ironically, a talk from a Dutch resistance fighter at primary school, telling the class to “forgive but never forget”, inspired me to read Mein Kampf so that I could just do that.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Since existence of the camps became widespread knowledge, outright denial narratives shifted to downplaying the issue’s significance. Many people say to me, “it comes down to whether it affects us”. Everyone who has lived there or has long-term connections to people who do is affected every day. When they even hear or read the words camp or “training centres”, they are reminded of people they love and people they are disconnected from, not knowing if they are safe, not knowing if they are being <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/26/dispatch-day-life-inmate-xinjiang-internment-camps/" target="_blank">tortured</a>, <a href="https://bitterwinter.org/rape-in-xinjiang-camps-the-tibetan-precedent/">raped</a>, or put to <a href="https://supchina.com/2019/09/04/how-companies-profit-from-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/">forced labour</a>. That affects us. Widespread existential anxieties about the environment, terrorism, and impending world wars circulate in popular culture. Yet what Benjamin called the “stubborn faith in progress”, blinds us to the uncomfortable reality that we are accepting concentration camps and genocide against stateless groups as banal, inevitably parts of life in the 21st century. Concentration camps not only challenge the belief that the world is progressing but the very idea of progress itself because they are so depressingly familiar. The shock that this could still be happening in the 21st century is useless, unless it shocks us into realising that we see history through the lens of the present and learn that evil can emerge when humans choose to retreat from reason into inevitability.</span></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-39292048233412028282020-02-18T05:52:00.000-08:002020-02-18T05:52:02.115-08:00An Open Letter to the BBC: What's Islam got to do with it?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjplQ6JZLW7-slXstnQDgoVk5fuvVfvU6xCJOmduzt0fPsYkTfh7NQT3O2SBaR7srM9KLpVDI-NvFLDsCs10IZBlGjNXZkRu-ghDw4HFk8q-qwaAi-I6T4iHZQeGWY5SEXjiQFCtm-x1JM/s1600/Figure+2.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1379" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjplQ6JZLW7-slXstnQDgoVk5fuvVfvU6xCJOmduzt0fPsYkTfh7NQT3O2SBaR7srM9KLpVDI-NvFLDsCs10IZBlGjNXZkRu-ghDw4HFk8q-qwaAi-I6T4iHZQeGWY5SEXjiQFCtm-x1JM/s640/Figure+2.tif" width="547" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear BBC,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Xinjiang research community is
delighted that you continue to cover such pressing humanitarian disasters as cultural
genocide and internment camps. However, your coverage of the Xinjiang, <a href="https://www.jpolrisk.com/karakax/" target="_blank">Karakax papers</a> on the 17th February 2019 fell somewhat short of the rigorous standards associated with your organisation that should continue to be both publicly accountable and funded. I hope these comments are received in the spirit of civic engagement and support to improve your important work with which they are intended.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The key factual problem in the reporting
was the representation of the operation of camps and assimilation policies in
Xinjiang as focused on targeting religion per se. The expert literature on state
and non-state violence in the region by <a href="https://www.eastwestcenter.org/system/tdf/private/PS011.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=32020">Gardner
Bovingdon</a>, <a href="https://www.eastwestcenter.org/system/tdf/private/PS006.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=32006">James
Millward</a>, and <a href="https://www.publicanthropology.org/self-perpetuating-conflict-how-the-global-war-on-terror-has-supported-autocrats-and-created-more-terrorists-by-sean-roberts-2/">Sean
Roberts</a>, who have published on the topic for over 20 years, has demonstrated
it was only after 9/11 that religion was adopted as an official public-image
focus, re-representing what the party-state has always openly termed the “ethnic
problem”. Policy documents throughout the 1990s did not even mention religion or
extremism yet these events are re-described this way today. BBC journalists do know
this, so it was unusual that in your main bulletin, the issue was represented in
a manner considerably closer to the perspective of CCTV rather than the BBC or
the global research community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Your own data points to how ethnic targeting
does target religion but only as one of multiple indicators of ethnic identity.
Some of the key reasons for interning people include plans to travel outside China
and the entirely arbitrary “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51520622">untrustworthy</a>”
judgement. Preventing religious observance is one aspect of these policies but
they also target language use, travel abroad, friendship with non-Chinese
citizens, and general ‘cultural’ demeanour described as “manners education” in
the leaked documents. The work of <a href="https://twitter.com/grosetimothy/status/1173435050614038528">Timothy
Grose</a> even shows how narratives of “hygiene”, paralleling more well-known historical
instances of ethnic targeting, justify destruction of traditional Uyghur furniture
from people’s own homes. Uyghur language has long been <a href="https://www.academia.edu/165512/_Bilingual_Education_and_Discontent_in_Xinjiang">removed
from the school curriculum</a> and according to the scholars and NGOs you work
with, it is constantly monitored in camps as an indicator of extremism and
general untrustworthiness. Religion is only one facet of identity and governance
in the region, which I hope my work helps show have been <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article/27/4/739/140692/Minor-Events-and-Grand-DreamsEthnic-Outsiders-in">described
in official documents as a problem of “backwardness” for decades</a>. In 2009,
textbooks for middle-school children taught the concept of <i>minzu xiaowang </i>(</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">民族消亡</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">) to celebrate that “backward” minority
groups will <i>disappear. </i>Ethnic unity and Patriotic Education textbooks
explicitly celebrate the “disappearance” of minority languages as <i>progress</i>.
Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking groups are always represented as behind the advanced
“settler culture” (<i>tunken wenhua </i></span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">屯垦文化</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">) of the majority and in need of their guidance, as
illustrated in the images above taken from official exhibitions. This is
essential background knowledge to make sense of current policies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These are not intellectual quibbles
over minor details! The framing of these issues has real concrete impact, particularly
when presented in mainstream media on an area generally considered specialised.
So why does this matter? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking minorities
say it matters and ultimately, it’s their identity we are talking about! Uyghur
diaspora groups and scholars have been calling for journalists to take heed of
the fact that “this is not a war on Islam but a war on Uyghurs”, according to
one Uyghur scholar, and “we are not all Muslims” according to another. There is
much diversity among Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking groups in Xinjiang. They
feel you are misrepresenting their identity and they are worried about the concrete
effects of that misrepresentation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Audience reception. The reality is that
in an age of popular anxieties about terrorism and Islam, your audience is considerably
more sympathetic to a “war on Islam” than cultural genocide or camps for people
arbitrarily deemed untrustworthy. In my line of work, I encounter British
people of left and right-wing persuasions telling me they are not interested in
this issue because they “don’t like Muslims” or “don’t like religion”. Your
coverage does not cause that intolerance but it cannot reach those people. It
may even embolden them with another example of “Muslims behaving badly” and does
so by misrepresenting basic facts about people’s identity and governance of the
region. Uyghurs in the UK and across Europe are concerned that representation
of this issue may encourage discrimination here and give greater global support
for the party-state to pursue what they describe as cultural genocide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I commend that you cover this issue but
recommend that you more fully engage with people from the region and consult a
broader range of scholars with long-term experience in the region. This will help
avoid misrepresenting such an important and complex set of issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yours sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr David Tobin
(University of Manchester)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-7824882290276713742014-09-16T08:37:00.000-07:002014-09-16T08:37:23.721-07:00Fuck Scottishness. I'm Voting Yes.<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQDO8QOb9vPVtKdYna8BurRa8lT4q98NE_pgMZwTCC7S1QO6L8dOtwv1l4fDMinnLG60Q4Fh0kLma2UcjbqHWxvzAlp5gHIBWIAR_q3roiMMU1Pi9oW_EptyXer8s7BhB0mTFsXwWuN8/s1600/Wallpaper-braveheart-32189752-1920-1080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQDO8QOb9vPVtKdYna8BurRa8lT4q98NE_pgMZwTCC7S1QO6L8dOtwv1l4fDMinnLG60Q4Fh0kLma2UcjbqHWxvzAlp5gHIBWIAR_q3roiMMU1Pi9oW_EptyXer8s7BhB0mTFsXwWuN8/s1600/Wallpaper-braveheart-32189752-1920-1080.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To paraphrase </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/303809?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104695730223" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;" target="_blank"><b>Allen Chun</b></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> who said the
same of China, something called "Scotland" unquestionably exists,
but, more importantly there is a multitude of expressions to denote different
aspects of Scotland and Scottish-ness. There is no room for these multiple
perspectives in our official political debates right now as Scotland continues
to be represented through flags, whiskey, and mountains by British and Scottish
nationalists. Impartiality is impossible so let me explain how my biases and
personal experiences shape my politics and my choice to vote yes to Scottish
independence. I was born in Scotland and I have lived for several years in
England and in China. My father was born in London but left the UK's supposedly
cosmopolitan capital because it was "too parochial" and because north
of Watford is not barbarian country. His father was from Waterford in southern
Ireland and came to London to escape his own involvement in a civil war which pitted
brother against brother in a battle for control of the nation against the
British empire. He was then told "</span><a href="http://www.the-latest.com/landlords-return-no-blacks-no-dogs-no-irish" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;" target="_blank"><b>no dogs, no Irish</b></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">" on arrival, so
he had to start his own small business. He married a woman from England who I
was lucky to grow up with and who I can't recall even mentioning countries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My mother was born in Clydebank
outside Glasgow into a family of migrants from Donegal. They arrived in
Scotland with Irish as their first language and we spent every summer in the hills
of Donegal. My grandmother was an Irish catholic and she read the Bible. My
grandfather was an internationalist socialist and read the communist manifesto.
The first time I ever wore a Scottish football top as a 7 year old, I was
called a "mongrel" with "no right to wear that" by my
protestant neighbour. I attended a "non-denominational" school which
sent us to the Church of Scotland for every Christian festival! Almost every
day of primary school I was called a "fenian bastard" and almost
every day I responded in kind to call them "orange bastards" in
return. I grew up being teased by my dad for being a "fenian" for
supporting Celtic and had to suffer in silence listening to friend's dads
calling people "English bastards". Even as children we discussed our
identity at school. It's impossible not to given our history. I was always told
I'm British because my passport says so yet this inclusion made me feel more
excluded than ever as it offered no concern for how I understood myself, the
daily reality of mutual exclusion, or my family history. The idea that my
identity or anyone's identity could simplify and gloss over these contestations
and simply return to being British or being Scottish feels foreign to me.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7d-aG3t7QElfCD2VSD_Jc8Izkz30E2xYb6cmlzP76tmxB-BDsAevbj7HZw-8svtRCb7jHZFf34xBT0MtpMiAhKnS-Y0aaxBnzPoEsafhYYY50Xlt8FAhozLWySxgfRLtIbQlXGlHfj90/s1600/highlander_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7d-aG3t7QElfCD2VSD_Jc8Izkz30E2xYb6cmlzP76tmxB-BDsAevbj7HZw-8svtRCb7jHZFf34xBT0MtpMiAhKnS-Y0aaxBnzPoEsafhYYY50Xlt8FAhozLWySxgfRLtIbQlXGlHfj90/s1600/highlander_0.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ethnic majorities have a
responsibility to understand minority and in-between experiences. They tend to
forget they have their own identity attachments because they are surrounded by people
with seemingly similar ones. Telling someone to be above nationalism when they
have been marked their whole lives as different and foreign is not progressive,
it's an unconsciously ethno-centric view of the world which seeks to detach
themselves from all responsibility from the complex realities of colonialism,
marginalisation, and discrimination. To witness the scandal that is the
official debate on the subject which frames Yes voters as nationalists and then
fails to deconstruct any of the ideological assumptions of why people vote no
or feel British, feels like everything I've just written and the colour and
fuzziness of the identity politics I know I have lived through is meaningless. The
political debate makes a politics lecturer want to withdraw from politics. To
have to justify why I am not a nationalist to people who have thought about
these things for a few hours when I have been forced to think about these
things every day since I was a boy is tiresome and worrying. You are no or you
are yes, you don't like the SNP or you do, you are with us or you are against
us. The party political machines have the real victory here not because people
want to vote no but because it is impossible to have a debate without relying
on these childish binaries, which most children know are imagined. Their
victory is society's loss because instead of sharing my hopes and fears with many
English friends I'm forced to justify why I'm not anti-English instead of
discussing how to make things better. Instead of being excited by politics, I
feel like it is nothing to do with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The political parties have long converged
on a neoliberal consensus: the Conservatives are cowboy capitalists, Labour is
whatever the Conservatives say with a smile and a tax rebate for working
families, and the Lib Dems are part of an illiberal coalition presiding over
declining civil liberties and freedom of speech. There is no debate. They are
willing the "end of history" to insist we all agree on values, we
just differ on detail. The discourse of "austerity" overshadows every
possible political discussion. The rapid growth of food banks since 2008 and
the media and politician's unwillingness to fully tackle the issue should be
the scandal of our age. The value of humans and their right to be seen as good
British citizens is judged solely by their contribution to GDP as the most
vulnerable in our society are called scum and gazed upon in human zoos such as
Benefits Street. There is no hope of any alternative being offered outside this
discourse and it is a guarantee of further economic inequality and political
disengagement. I'll be voting yes not because it guarantees social justice but
because it is the only offer on the table of doing anything whatsoever about
it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The referendum does not ask us how we
identify ourselves or how do we understand our history. It asks "do you
think Scotland should be an independent nation?". I wanted to say no so I
could reject the need for nations altogether but the best way to do that is to
say Yes. A no vote simply confirms we are happy to move to the next general
election with excluding everyone who isn't British and or economically viable the
dominant motif. Leaving the EU and the "threat" of immigrants are now
top of the very unconsciously nationalist political agenda which dominates the
UK's political discourse. I'll be voting yes because I have never been British
and I would like to have a meaningful debate about how colonialism, including
the participation of Scots, shapes how we view ourselves and the outside world.
The smaller the state the easier it will be to ask how are people being
marginalised and stigmatised in Easterhouse, Calton, and East Kilbride, places
I've yet to hear being mentioned by our "leaders" crippling the
debate. I want to be able to look beyond Scotland V England and look at how we
marginalise people on our own doorstep. I want to say Fuck Scottish-ness and it mean something. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-31878948769068386112013-11-08T03:22:00.003-08:002013-11-08T03:51:40.171-08:00Xinjiang Dreams: Worrying About Ethnicity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwBmeuzGxwbQ6w3526zbijAlBn963-Tl49esmNg0cwXIoTqTyYD9Xn2D-XzkJ3_evVTIiBCKfllsqh4e3Drcw0yp_VWPERYLH1-zDPR4fxGRe7mDVSUQ6kigkc2SegcfcLlkf_LCXUX8/s1600/ChinaXinjiang090709_432-420x210.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwBmeuzGxwbQ6w3526zbijAlBn963-Tl49esmNg0cwXIoTqTyYD9Xn2D-XzkJ3_evVTIiBCKfllsqh4e3Drcw0yp_VWPERYLH1-zDPR4fxGRe7mDVSUQ6kigkc2SegcfcLlkf_LCXUX8/s1600/ChinaXinjiang090709_432-420x210.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
The ethnically targeted violence of July 2009 in Ürümchi overshadowed the lead-up to the 60<sup style="line-height: 0;">th</sup> anniversary of the founding of the PRC. Uyghurs and Han were both victims and perpetrators and official figures claimed 197 people were killed (See <u><a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/witnesses-07172009121028.html" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a></u>, <u><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02634930903577128?journalCode=ccas20#.UnOHcfm-30s" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a>,</u> and <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/inas/2011/00000013/00000001/art00005?crawler=true" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a>). The violence suggested that ethnic relations remain an important issue in people’s daily lives in Xinjiang and for the capacity of the party-state to provide “stability”. July 2009 brought to the fore concerns that China’s ethnic minority polices need rethinking in part because they are constructed without significant input from ethnic minorities themselves. The events of July 2009 lead the then Guangdong Party Committee Secretary and now 3<sup style="line-height: 0;">rd</sup> ranked Vice Premier, Wang Yang, to suggest that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/30/us-china-xinjiang-idUSTRE56T1XJ20090730" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">China needs to re-adjust</a> its ethnic minority policies or there will be further “difficulties”. These comments sparked a debate in Beijing’s elite universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua, and the Chinese Academy of Social sciences (for instance, <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/folder/292573-1.htm?utm_source=China+Policy&utm_campaign=0025fe4449-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://thediplomat.com/china-power/can-china-have-a-melting-pot/" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a>). Chinese scholars of ethnicity put forward their competing perspectives on the future of ethnic minority policies and the relationship between ethnicity and nation in China. James Leibold has shown that radical policy change in the short-term is highly unlikely but <a href="http://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/private/ps068.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">calls for reform</a> have now become the mainstream among officials and public intellectuals.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
The events at Tiananmen on October 28<sup style="line-height: 0;">th</sup> 2013 will again stimulate discussion of China’s ethnic minority policies in the lead up to the 3rd Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee. In many senses the 2012 debate centered on whether to emphasise the plurality or the unity in Fei Xiaotong’s <a href="http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/fei90.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">famous conceptualisation</a> of the “plurality and unity” of the Chinese nation. The debate was ostensibly between proponents of the “first generation” of ethnic minority policies who wish to maintain China as a multi-ethnic state of 56 different <i>minzu</i> groups and the “second generation” who seek to transform China into a mono-ethnic race-state (<i>guozu</i>). We simply do not know what happened on October 28<sup style="line-height: 0;">th</sup> at Tiananmen, but these events have been officially explained in the same way as July 2009. With no verifiable evidence provided, Chinese media outlets are instructed to <a href="http://reasonablyraging.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/chinas-insecurity-problem-whats-islam.html" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">frame the issue through “the Three Evils”</a> of “separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism”. Dong Manyuan of the China Institute of International Studies is one of the few Chinese scholars to have spoken out thus far and he <a href="http://english.cntv.cn/program/china24/20131031/105169.shtml" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">immediately blamed</a><u> “the Three Evils”</u>. His comment that policy is “correct” suggests that more introspection and open debate are necessary if we are seriously attempting to understand the future of ethnicity in contemporary China.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
The “first generation” of the inter-generational debate have argued that a shared national identity will <i>naturally </i>emerge with economic development. Scholars such as <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/293073-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Wang Xi’en</a> and <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/296438-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Hao Shiyuan</a> of the “first generation” explicitly rely on the scientific inevitability of Marxist dialectics to chart the future of ethnicity in China. Wang (2012) and Hao (2012) both argue that Chinese Marxism and economic development will naturally produce a unified nation over time. For these thinkers, ethnic (meaning <i>Minzu</i>)<i> </i>differentiation and the regional autonomy system for ethnic minorities are central to China’s tradition as a socialist nation. However, these policies are framed as temporary measures to deal with remaining historical leftovers of discrimination from feudalism. These thinkers argue that development will <i>naturally</i> resolve the “ethnic question” (<i>minzu wenti</i>). According to their reading of Marxist dialectics, ethnicity will wither away so that all ethnic cultures will naturally <i>evolve</i> into national Chinese culture before merging into a global class consciousness. This stream of thought resolves the tension between ethnicity and nationhood through the Party-state’s Leninist discourse on cultural evolution: culture can be normatively measured because stages of cultural development are superstructural to economic development.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Political economist <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780815704799" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Hu Angang</a> and social anthropologist <a href="http://efetedc.ac.uk/cpi/documents/discussion-papers/discussion-paper-21-ethnic-relations.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Ma Rong</a> of the “second generation” suggest that a shared national identity can be produced through conscious human design. This self-dubbed “second generation” argue that the party-state must actively promote “fusion” (<i>jiaorong</i>). The “second generation” support “fusion” into a mono-cultural race-state (<i>guozu</i>) through monolingual education policies and the abandonment of formal <i>minzu </i>differentiation, including the regional autonomy system. Ma Rong (<a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/293002-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/293094-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">here</a><u>)</u> argues that it is culture and not ethnicity which define social distinction in China. Ma claims that the distinction between “civilisation” and “barbarians” in ancient China is the basis on which the nation ought to be ordered and that the “ethnic” category (<i>minzu</i>) was merely a temporary policy measure copied from the Soviet Union. For Ma Rong, the barbarian/civilisation distinction is not between <i>different</i> civilisations but between “highly developed and less developed ‘civilizations’ with similar roots but at different stages of advancement”. This draws from theories of cultural evolution like the “1<sup style="line-height: 0;">st</sup> generation” but it normatively frames Han Chinese culture as the apex of civilisation. Modernisation and Han culture are thought of as the same thing, thus, “barbarians” can become developed by <i>learning</i> Chinese culture (<i>jiaohua</i>).</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Political economist <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/293093-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Hu Angang</a>, argues that since the 2010 Xinjiang Work Forum, ethnic minority policies have moved from managing a multi-ethnic society and the use of <i>minzu</i> categories to one of fusion (<i>jiaorong</i>) and actively producing a race-state (<i>guozu</i>). Hu Angang tells us that to bring the “dream” of building a rich and strong China (<i>fumin qiangguo</i>) to fruition requires the development of “ethnic regions”. Hu’s central concern is how to make China strong at the international level. He suggests that all “great powers” (<i>da guo</i>), namely the USA, have used a “melting pot” model and all collapsed empires (Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) used a “salad bowl” model. Hence, China must now focus ethnic minority policies, education, and language policies on producing shared identification into a race-state to achieve the China dream. Hu follows the party’s announcements from the 2010 Xinjiang work forum to propose “great leap development” (<i>kuayueshi fazhan</i>). “Great leap development” will supposedly enable Xinjiang to leapfrog over the stages of development set out in Marxist theory. Human agency will allow Xinjiang to leap across stages of development in the way proposed by Mao Zedong during the great leap forward period. The official slogan “contact, communication, fusion” (<i>jiaowang</i>, <i>jiaoliu</i>, <i>jiaorong</i>) tends to suggest this will be a long-term historical process along the lines of the arguments of “1<sup style="line-height: 0;">st</sup> generation”. However, Hu Angang uses this to suggest that this is not only part of the “direction of history” progressing towards the “great renewal” of the Chinese nation but that the direction of history towards <i>guozu</i> can be accelerated by state policy. Hu Angang’s dream is for China to surpass the US to become a “new type of superpower” but his dream first requires minorities to abandon self-identification through ethnicity.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
Xinjiang’s position in China is articulated through internal boundaries which mark the region as economically and culturally inferior to the East of China. Both generations agree that ‘fusion’ is needed to make China wealthier and more powerful. The “first generation” thinks this should left to the anonymous inevitability of Marxist dialectics where the “second generation” believe they can socially engineer a shared Chinese identity. The difference between the two approaches is a difference not over whether materialist accounts explain identity or if fusion is a desired end state. The debate is over how to achieve that end state, either through the ‘natural’ means of socialist development (‘cultural evolution’) or through human design and planned state policy. The two “generations” do offer different policy recommendations (eg bilingual vs monolingual education). Yet, the reason the debate stimulates so much commentary is that they offer different visions of the Chinese nation: multi-ethnic VS mono-ethnic. <a href="http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/Home/report/296438-1.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Hao Shiyuan</a> of the “1<sup style="line-height: 0;">st</sup> generation” has even gone so far as to challenge Hu Angang by suggesting that it was not ethnic minority identities that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union but the nationalist chauvinism of the majority (<i>da minzu zhuyi</i>). This amounts to accusing Hu Angang of being a Han chauvinist and indicates a real schism amongst Chinese scholars over the present and future of China. The debate reveals tensions in contemporary China between competing ideas of nationhood: China as an inclusive multi-ethnic state where different ethnic groups live in harmony and China as a Han nation with a singular model of national belonging.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: Verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
The day after the Tiananmen incident, one Uyghur student on twitter asked “why is everything we do terrorism?”. He reminded his Han nationalist debating partners that a Han Chinese man <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10378999/Chinese-petitioner-jailed-for-setting-off-Beijing-airport-bomb.html" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">set off a bomb</a> in Beijing Capital International Airport with no calls of “terrorism”. Discontent among Han is framed as a less severe threat and is rightly seen within its social and individual context. However, Uyghur discontent can be de-legitimised and presented as a national security threat by activating the discourse of “the Three Evils”. The authors of China’s ethnic minority policies in the inter-generational debate frame a common Chinese national identity as a prerequisite to China’s international strength. Ethnic minority identities are frequently framed by the CCP and Chinese intellectuals as a source of backwardness and insecurity for the Chinese nation. This is the “patriotic worrying” Gloria Davies referred to in <i>Worrying About China</i>: the critical reflexivity of intellectuals is constrained by the need to contextualise academic discussion of the subject not in terms of how to deconstruct and understand a problem but how authors can help to construct China as a perfect civilisation. This sets enormous limitations on how to discuss practical problems and solutions when they have to be framed in terms that are unreflexive and focus on perfecting something which may need rethinking. One obvious way to broaden the debate on ethnic minority policies in Xinjiang and to enable it to respond more effectively to the implications of policy on the ground would be to include hitherto unheard Uyghur perspectives on the subject. However, there is so much worrying about ethnicity in China that Uyghur scholars who attempt to contribute to these debates can be be treated as a <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/uighur-scholar-ilham-tohti-in-ugly-confrontation-with-security-agents/?_r=0" style="border: 0px; color: #535353; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">national security threat</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>This article was originally published for the <a href="http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2013/11/06/xinjiang-dreams-worrying-about-ethnicity/" target="_blank">China Policy Institute</a> at the University of Nottingham.</i></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-8863619656206503352013-10-31T06:43:00.000-07:002013-10-31T06:43:56.249-07:00China's Insecurity Problem: What's Islam Got to Do With It?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrE3O1BJyDXXUkFuIrWKQmq5T4dxkVWDvj6jWcyHGPIlnS1gj67RNjXnGcU81vk-EOyfuICM_iGAUzJARdrJTyJGUwNV74nuBOmXZZZyT8Xhx0XKv-84jfRSSRb2d2hrun2dY-kX8Pyg/s1600/Screens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGrE3O1BJyDXXUkFuIrWKQmq5T4dxkVWDvj6jWcyHGPIlnS1gj67RNjXnGcU81vk-EOyfuICM_iGAUzJARdrJTyJGUwNV74nuBOmXZZZyT8Xhx0XKv-84jfRSSRb2d2hrun2dY-kX8Pyg/s320/Screens.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Following the 1995 Oklahoma bombing
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmkfvzmLdU" target="_blank">Edward Said</a> was invited for interview by the US media. As an expert on the
Middle East, the media assumed he would have insight into how this “terrorist”
incident bore the hallmark of “Muslim extremists”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. The perpetrator later turned out to
be Timothy McVeigh, a former Gulf War veteran who sought to <a href="http://www.culteducation.com/reference/mcveigh/mcveigh6.html" target="_blank">avenge the actions of the US federal government</a> at Waco and Ruby Ridge</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. The assumption was this was an
attack so barbarous it could only be attributed to “Muslims” and not to the
complex range of social and individual factors which lead people to kill
themselves to draw attention to their unheard or less heard political claims. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The incident at Tiananmen Square on
the 28th October 2013 saw a Jeep driven into a pedestrian area before 3 passengers
set the car alight killing themselves and 2 innocent tourists as well as
injuring <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2013/10/29/the_tiananmen_square_car_fire_is_st.php" target="_blank">38 pedestrians</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. The incident appears to be a
relatively crude attack with no complex co-ordination or sophisticated weaponry
(they carried knives, machetes, and petrol). The <a href="http://uyghuramerican.org/article/world-uyghur-congress-wuc-urges-calm-and-caution-after-beijing-incident-october-28-2013.html" target="_blank">World Uyghur Congress</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> and Uyghur scholar under house
arrest <a href="http://www.uighurbiz.net/archives/20740" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Ilham Tohti</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> have called for calm until we have
real information to work with and so that this incident is not used to increase
repression in Xinjiang. The central government has thus far released very
little information except to say this was a “carefully planned, organised, and
premeditated attack” which included carrying flags with “<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-10/30/c_132845415.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">extreme religious content</span></a>”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. What this actually means is unclear at best. The
fact that the passengers were a man, his wife, and mother suggests there is a
lot more to this story and international terrorism does not appear to fit the
facts. International media has a remarkably hard job on its hands making sense
of it all because the security apparatus was so quick to conceal the entire
incident with large <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/439649/Mystery-over-deadly-Tiananmen-crash" target="_blank">police screens</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. This means it may be impossible to
verify any narrative the party-state decides to tell. <a href="http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/PS006.pdf" target="_blank">Experts on Xinjiang </a>have
long considered these official accounts to be problematic at best and
deliberately <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/88927946/Imaginary-Terrorism-THE-GLOBAL-WAR-ON-TERROR-AND-THE-NARRATIVE-OF-THE-UYGHUR-TERRORIST-THREAT-Sean-Roberts-The-George-Washington-University-March-2" target="_blank">misleading at worst</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. International journalists, such as
AFP, have had their<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/china-tiananmen-square-crash-beijing" target="_blank"> photographs seized</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, domestic media have been <a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/10/minitrue-jeep-crash-tiananmen-square/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">given instructions</span></a> to follow the official line in framing the issue as “terrorism”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, and posts on the subject have disappearing
from Weibo, China’s largest social media network, <a href="http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/10/horrific-day-for-tiananmen-tourists-is-banner-day-for-chinese-censors/" target="_blank">as quickly as they are posted</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A police notice issued to hotels instructed
them to watch out for "<a href="https://twitter.com/mranti/status/394854987160768512" target="_blank">suspicious people</a>" and Xinjiang registration plates</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. It named two suspects with Uyghur
names from the Piqan (<i>shanshan</i>) and Guma (<i>pishan</i>) counties. The
statement was printed online with some media outlets simply adding in the
presumption that they are <a href="http://blog.dwnews.com/post-378403.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Muslims</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. Zachary Keck of the Diplomat</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> went further with the irresponsible
article ‘<a href="http://thediplomat.com/china-power/al-qaeda-in-xinjiang-autonomous-region/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Al-Qaeda in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region?</span></a>’ which offered no
consideration of perspectives from Xinjiang. The USA Daily ran with the
headline “<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/30/china-tiananmen-terror-attack/3312251/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28USATODAY+-+News+Top+Stories%29" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;"><i>Muslim</i> family led Tiananmen suicide attack</span></a>”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. No one knows the religion of the
perpetrators or if it bears any relevance to their actions. Nevertheless, it
appears racial profiling has already begun in Xinjiang with warnings to
residents of Shanshan county to be on guard for anyone “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24739270" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">suspicious with a big beard or burka</span></a>”</span>.<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Identifying the men simply as
Muslims obscures a huge ream of complex social factors and controversial
policies in Xinjiang which have ethnicised social tensions and sparked small-scale
incidents of violence in the region. In recent years, such policies have
included <a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/classes-09212011173731.html" target="_blank">discrimination in employment</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, the <a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/language-10272010181614.html" target="_blank">eradication of Uyghur language</a>
as a medium of instruction</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, the <a href="http://www.pen-international.org/newsitems/china-renewed-demands-for-information-about-the-welfare-of-leading-uighur-writer-nurmuhemmet-yasin/" target="_blank">persecution of writers as“separatists”</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, the <a href="https://uhrp.org/press-release/briefing-refusals-passports-uyghurs-and-confiscations-passports-held-uyghurs-indicator" target="_blank">confiscation of Uyghurs’ passports</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, the <a href="http://docs.uyghuramerican.org/3-30-Living-on-the-Margins.pdf" target="_blank">demolition of old Kashgar</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, as well as <a href="http://uhrp.org/press-release/new-rules-issued-hotan-company-discriminate-against-uyghur-women.html;%20http://www.uscirf.gov/images/2012ARChapters/china%202012.pdf" target="_blank">growing restrictions</a> on <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/08/201281113456325751.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">fasting for Ramadan</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> and <a href="http://autonomousregion.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/hospital/" target="_blank">wearing Islamic clothing</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">If it is true that a group of Uyghurs
were responsible for the car attack then we will need to consider how the
party-state’s approach to security works in the region. The <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-tiananmen-square-china-leaders-20131029,0,359829.story#axzz2j7jLqlpS" target="_blank">LA Times</a></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> suggests this attack at the heart
of Chinese power “has raised doubts about the effectiveness of its security
apparatus”. Experts on Xinjiang have raised doubts about this for a long time.
However, the weakness lies not with the number of troops posted in Xinjiang or
Tiananmen or with the number of armoured vehicles patrolling Uyghur
neighbourhoods. The weakness lies with thinking that long-term security comes
down the barrel of a gun. The party chief for Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian,
unveiled a plan last year to have armed police every 100 metres in urban
Xinjiang. This does not suggest that the party-state is in control but that it is
very insecure and has to use violence to maintain the position of Uyghurs as an
ethnic minority in China. These methods which are supposed to improve security
(ie restrictions on religion, monolingual language policies, and arresting
authors of fiction) make Uyghurs feel their identities and their individual
well-being are threatened. If we want to take security seriously, then a more
pertinent question is how to make Uyghurs feel more secure and to give them
channels to express their insecurity so that they do not feel the need to turn
to violence. The policies above and the incidents they sparked suggest that the
more the Chinese government focuses on “security”, meaning surveillance of
Uyghurs, the more insecure Uyghurs feel, and the higher likelihood of further
violence. The best way to address this security issue would be to listen to
those who feel most insecure in Xinjiang and deal with their concerns. These voices
can offer perspectives on the issue beyond relying on lazy essentialisations of
Islam to frame an as yet entirely unexplained act of violence.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-14242077276444943322013-05-23T11:04:00.000-07:002013-05-23T11:04:07.878-07:00Identity and Empathy in the Logics of "Terror"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGW7ykNp3KTmJTO7f02DAU4Sa7vMDZVnkdXSu2wevsGM6Gna9EpZa8BPiqIcXjf2rbosCg8iNUAYkYB66mplYo30Ca_bfQ-Xw7cE2AR5YXBCwqLGe1b6gp9jTmI4SOon_cKszk7ui5u_g/s1600/id-theft1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGW7ykNp3KTmJTO7f02DAU4Sa7vMDZVnkdXSu2wevsGM6Gna9EpZa8BPiqIcXjf2rbosCg8iNUAYkYB66mplYo30Ca_bfQ-Xw7cE2AR5YXBCwqLGe1b6gp9jTmI4SOon_cKszk7ui5u_g/s1600/id-theft1.jpg" height="320" width="139" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When <a href="http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/51092450285/man-killed-in-horrible-london-machete-attack-racist" target="_blank">Islamophobia</a></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> explodes across England because an
individual who happens to be a Muslim commits an act of violence, it suggests our
Kingdom is not as United as our politicians like to think. In the wake of the
murder of a British soldier in Woolwich, we would do well to take a step back and
turn a critical lens on our media before we feel the need to lock ourselves in
our homes for fear of the terrorists in our midst. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“In the life of a nation, we’re
called up to define who we are and what we believe”</span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">George Bush uttered these famous words
in defence of the US decision to send military forces to Saudi Arabia during the
Persian Gulf crisis. Bush, like most politicians, was linking identity to national
security by saying identity is something we must define, enclose within national
boundaries, and send troops abroad to kill and die in the name of its assumed
unity. In these types of state-centric narratives of identity, we do not and must
not identify with the suffering of those outside our national borders. There is
the nation and there is outside the nation. “The boundaries of a state’s
identity are secured by the representation of danger”</span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. It is through danger
which we define who we are because danger is intrinsically Other and outside
ourselves. It is a representation of what we do not want to be and what we do
not want to happen to <i>us</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Danger is not an objective
condition. It is not a thing which exists independently of those to whom it may
become a threat”</span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;">3</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. Acts of violence are represented in
different ways which tell us a lot about how we define ourselves. When the
English Defence League assaulted police in Woolwich last night, this was
represented by the mainstream media as a <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1094547/woolwich-edl-protests-as-mosques-targeted" target="_blank">“protest”</a> and the damaging of mosques
were “attacks”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. These are dangers but of a lesser and
local order. There is no link to <i>national</i> security in the way the incidents
are reported and discussed. On the other hand, a British soldier being murdered
by a Muslim has been immediately labelled “terrorism”, a supposed threat to the
very existence of our nation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So <i>who</i> is under threat? For David
Cameron, this was “an attack on Britain – and on the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-david-cameron-statement" target="_blank">British way of life</a>”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> and that “people in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hX9mcqwMt4" target="_blank">every community</a>
will utterly condemn this attack”</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. Why is this incident an attack on
the “British” way of life? Why are <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/news/deaths-with-a-known-or-suspected-racial-element-2000-onwards/" target="_blank">racially motivated murders</a> not elevated to
this level of threat</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">? Why are the lives lost to violence
in working class council estates all across the UK not seen as a “threat” to
our nation? These are stories of threats to people’s lives which occasionally make
the news but are never seen as matters of <i>national</i> security. These lives
are not deemed as valuable as those of British soldiers because they are not
seen to embody the nation and so they are represented as local problems of an
altogether less threatening nature. This is simply not the type of nation many
British people want to live in and it only reinforces existing divisions over
class and race to simply pretend they do not exist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The way the Woolwich violence is
represented frames our identity in a way which obscures competing perspectives
on the violence and on who we are. It demands we see this attack as a threat to
ourselves in a way which racial assaults and violence against young working
class men are not. It demands we empathise with the victim and that we must not
empathise in any way with the perpetrator. Otherwise, we are excluded from this
conceptualisation of “community” which is “sickened” and intellectually paralysed
with feelings of condemnation. So we are told we must <i>feel </i>a certain way
about this <i>because</i> we are British. When David Cameron says “this attack
sickened us all” he may be right but it sickens people in very different ways
and for very different reasons. Can we not be sickened by the attack, the
nationalist response, and the militaristic UK foreign policy all at the same
time? Yesterday, one BBC interviewer even asked “what is that is so <i>annoying</i>
about having British troops on their soil?”. To frame British troops invading other
countries as an annoyance yet one murder in Britain as a threat to our nation
exemplifies an utter dearth of empathy in Britain’s historical and current role
in initiating and fomenting violent conflict, simply because it has hurt one of
<i>our own</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Condemning comes very easily but
trying to understand why this happens takes effort, even empathising with
people who you may find disagreeable. Some media coverage has worked to deny
British people the right to make up their own minds. The video of one of the
attacker’s speech was edited to deny our right to empathise by cutting out the parts where he attempts to empathise. <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-05-22/exclusive-video-man-with-bloodied-hands-speaks-at-woolwich-scene/" target="_blank">Here</a> is a slightly extended version where he says:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Remove your governments, they don’t
care about you. Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street
when we start bussing our guns? Are your politicians going to die? No, it’s
going to be the average guy like you”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You may hate the messenger but it is working
class persons who are sent to wage the wars which this man himself highlighted
as his reasoning behind the attack. Perhaps not going to wars in the name of
national identity might make the people we choose to kill in its name feel more
secure. If they felt more secure, they may be less likely to want to wage what
they see as very similar wars to what happens when British troops leave our
shores in the name of “freedom”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Bush, George (1990) “In Defense of
Saudi Arabia” in Sifry, M and Cerf, C (eds) <i>The Gulf War Reader: History,
Documents, Opinions</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2. Campbell, David (1998) <i>Writing
Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">3. Campbell, David (1998).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-82976736363100998602012-11-13T14:26:00.000-08:002012-11-13T14:26:03.643-08:00China's Divided Leadership, China's Divided Society<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCvG5-MFWxXIsGu7qyb4BKIcDHVAen7vDl_rTDVqsVIxJ5WSPJ20XZNh6LG_4lCzjceeKziEhIBMWzoWeRiiCuihU5TOULqrimjAUjRQ66UhMqfmT0UpQrVzW57JkUVt6T81nmXltZF8/s1600/chinese_beggar_global_risks_economic_disparity_rtr3gme_ah_54290.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCvG5-MFWxXIsGu7qyb4BKIcDHVAen7vDl_rTDVqsVIxJ5WSPJ20XZNh6LG_4lCzjceeKziEhIBMWzoWeRiiCuihU5TOULqrimjAUjRQ66UhMqfmT0UpQrVzW57JkUVt6T81nmXltZF8/s1600/chinese_beggar_global_risks_economic_disparity_rtr3gme_ah_54290.jpg" height="155" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
under Hu Jintao has emphasised building a “<a href="http://english.people.com.cn/90002/92169/92211/6274603.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">harmonious society</span></a>” at home and a “<a href="http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6824821.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">harmonious world</span></a>” at the international level. Given that official figures tell us that China
experiences approximately <a href="http://world.time.com/2012/06/07/chinas-simmering-discontent-the-biggest-challenge-to-social-harmony/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">500 protests per day</span></a>,
it is safe to conclude that the party’s emphasis on harmony represents the
awareness that contemporary China is anything but harmonious. Today’s China may
enjoy double-digit growth figures on paper but it is also rampant with
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/08/hu-jintao-china-communist-congress" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">corruption</span></a>,
struggling to address a <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/02/content_9521611.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">growing wealth gap</span></a>,
and has a state-media increasingly viewed as a form of “<a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/xinhua-10162012182634.html?searchterm=xinjiang" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">brainwashing</span></a>”.
One of the party-state’s greatest concerns following the end of the Soviet
Union was an “ideological vacuum”. However, its greatest challenge is not a
vacuum but its own irrelevance in the face of competing alternatives in an
increasingly diverse China. The party’s inability to offer a genuine economic
model to meet people’s needs is placing strains on its legitimacy. Furthermore,
its inability to speak to ordinary Chinese people and share in the meanings they
give to daily life is driving its own demise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The present leadership handover has
been less than harmonious as we have seen with the arrest and expulsion from
the party of one of China’s potential future leaders, Bo Xilai. Bo Xilai is
seen as a representative of China’s “new left” and one of the architects of the
“<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/16/us-china-chongqing-idUSBRE82F0H120120316" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Chongqing model</span></a>”.
Bo’s “cake theory” of economics was now that China has a big enough cake, the
pressing concern is how to divide the cake. Bo Xilai’s concern for inequality ought
to be easily incorporated into the discourse of a nominally Communist party.
However, factionalism within the party is so rife that discussion of inequality
has become a political sensitive issue. The website of the <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/04/chinas-maoists" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Utopia bookshop</span></a> was shut down this year because it supported Bo and his redistributive
policies. As one media executive put it, “we don’t mention Chongqing. I don’t
eat Chongqing hotpot. <a href="http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118054998.html?cmpid=RSS|News|FilmNews" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">I won’t even date Chongqing girls</span></a>”.
When Mao Zedong said that “the Chinese people have stood up”, it was not his
intention that protesters who respectfully knelt down in front of his portrait
should be <a href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/mao-07102012104455.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">arrested as happened earlier this year</span></a>!
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The politics of contemporary China appears
all the more bewildering when we see the <a href="http://tv.cntv.cn/video/C39896/20121107101823" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">opening of the Party Congress</span></a> with a
very orthodox celebration of the party’s communist heritage and use of
communist symbols.
The party has long wished to present itself as the only Chinese voice the world
should listen to and <a href="http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinapolicyinstitute/2012/11/12/navigating-china-a-reflection-on-the-cctv-special-performance-for-18th-ccp-congress/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">this performance was no different</span></a>.
However, thanks to a global telecommunications revolution we know Chinese
people are already posting <span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article3595971.ece" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">sarcastic and dismissive remarks online</span></a> </span>where
“harmony” is talked about as something that is done <i>to </i>the people and
not by them.
The <a href="http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/strange-things-banned-chinas-party-congress-explained" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">ban on knife sales</span></a> in Beijing lest the proletariat turn on the dictatorship reflects the party’s awareness
that public performances of harmony have yet to produce harmony. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The expulsion of Bo Xilai led many to
speculate that Wang Yang’s “<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21540285" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Guangdong model</span></a>” of “free-markets” would be the new path for China. Wang Yang’s response to
“cake theory” was that China “<a href="http://china.dwnews.com/news/2012-04-13/58701653-all.html#page1" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">must bake a bigger cake before dividing it</span></a>”.
His claim that small and medium size enterprises are inefficient and should be
allowed to be <a href="http://www.ukchinese.com/www/22/2008-11/2149.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">eliminated by the market</span></a> is closer to what one would expect from Mitt Romney than a Communist Party
leader. This debate on the future of China is not simply about party
factionalism but the very heart of daily life in today’s China where the divide
between the 128 million people who live on roughly <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57547444/from-forbes-top-ten-to-a-dollar-a-day-chinas-new-leadership-faces-growing-wealth-gap/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">a dollar a day</span></a> and the number of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8746445/Chinas-billionaires-double-in-number.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">dollar billionaires</span></a> is growing. Most of the 500 protests a day in China are focused on economic
issues such as evictions, property redevelopment, and labour rights. Educated
people in China have always corrected my Chinese to tell me that “class” (jieji;
</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: SimSun; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">阶级</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">) does not exist in today’s China,
only “status” (<i>jieceng</i>; </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: SimSun; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">阶层</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">). However, those
on the bottom rung don’t blink when I mention China is a classist and unfair
society. In the words of one taxi driver “China is a capitalist communist
country. We don’t even know who rules us anymore because they are hidden away
in luxury apartments and plazas buying diamonds and playing on computers. We
are slaves.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Wang Yang’s <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/asia-pacific/chinas-politburo-to-be-revealed-on-thursday" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">alleged removal</span></a> from the
Politburo Standing Committee has raised questions regarding the influence of Jiang
Zemin and Conservative elders.
What appears to be happening is that factional politics inside the party meant
that ousting some of the leading proponents of the left and the right was
necessary for a workable political compromise for the leadership selection. How
long can this uneasy compromise last? <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/william-callahan/who-is-xi-jinping-and-where-will-he-lead-china" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Xi Jinping</span></a>, who will take over from Hu
Jintao as the party General Secretary, is a careerist who is happy to jump from
left to right to gain power,
so this choice may work for now. However, the ongoing pretence of “building
socialism” coupled with no transparent debate amongst officials, the party-state
appears to be atrophying into its own ideological vacuum while the rest of
China diversifies and conducts heated political debates outside official
channels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hu Jintao’s statement that “<a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/09/content_15899337.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">we will never copy a Western political system</span></a>” will speak to nationalists but it continues to define China in terms of what it
is not and uses a mythical, homogenised Western Other to do so. Factionalism
and multiple ideologies are good things for China but unless the party can find
a way to make itself relevant to the daily lives of citizens, these ideologies
will blossom and be turned against them. The party is increasingly backing
itself into irrelevance by performing Communism yet pursuing a state-led
capitalist model of development. <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/chen/index.htm" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">Chen Bilan</span></a> had to live in exile from 1945 after warning the party that if they did not
democratise rapidly the dictatorship of the proletariat would degenerate into a
self-interested, bourgeois bureaucracy. It turns out that she was right as
today’s China has in the words of Yang Jisheng become a “<a href="http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/03/29/11205/" target="_blank"><span style="color: orange;">power-market economy</span></a>” where rent-seeking and corruption are not
threats to the system as such because they are the system itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-77672229386243524842012-11-01T15:54:00.000-07:002012-11-01T15:54:18.993-07:00Is Scotland a Threat to Global Security?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjS1VaWbhJpacglyQRJ_kejiSIBhGSTHp12bm_8cEpeumRCydnSNJEFxxbU2S6N4zBnHqFGSgo1jPtpd3zqHf61z7kA_a4lDmJT4oBD7P9C8fktnXJM7j1xLQqRb1GkOdwX64sc_mKzFA/s1600/braveheart460.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjS1VaWbhJpacglyQRJ_kejiSIBhGSTHp12bm_8cEpeumRCydnSNJEFxxbU2S6N4zBnHqFGSgo1jPtpd3zqHf61z7kA_a4lDmJT4oBD7P9C8fktnXJM7j1xLQqRb1GkOdwX64sc_mKzFA/s1600/braveheart460.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The issue of Scotland’s potential
post-independence approach to international relations is playing less of a role
in public debates on independence than ought to be the case. However, t</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">he
editorial board of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/scottish-independence-vote-is-part-of-worrying-trend/2012/10/30/4c320fb2-1896-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html" target="_blank">Washington Post </a></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/scottish-independence-vote-is-part-of-worrying-trend/2012/10/30/4c320fb2-1896-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html" target="_blank">(WP)</a>
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">caused somewhat of a stooshy today</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
across Scotlan</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">d by claiming that the referendum on Scottish independence is part
of</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> a</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> “worrying trend”</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Their main concern lies in how Scottish
would affect “global security”, specifically that: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“An
independent Scotland would significantly weaken the foremost military and
diplomatic ally of the United States, while creating another European
mini-state unable to contribute meaningfully to global security”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If Scotland became independent then perhaps
the UK, a leading ally of the US, would indeed be militarily weakened. This
would mean no bridge between the US and the EU and less support for US military
projects of “regime change” and “nation-building”. This would be a good thing
for security and may force the US government to engage more diplomatically with
states which offer alternative approaches to bombing the Middle East into ‘democracy’.
The concern of the WP here is of course not the security of the globe. The WP
is concerned about the ability of the US to maintain a position of power where
it can pursue “security” projects abroad through military might and the support
of key allies instead of through multilateral negotiation. This is about securing
the hegemony of the alliances between actors in the US state and its leading corporations,
which in recent years have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, privatised their
industries, outlawed trade unions, and then seemingly expected democracy to
spontaneously emerge. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Washington Post acknowledged that “more
local government can be more efficient, more democratic” yet also that “a
weaker Europe means a less stable world and less leverage for the democracies”.
Their political priorities are fairly clear here: we ought to choose to be less
democratic in turn for more “collective strength”. However, if it made Scotland
more democratic and the world less unipolar, then independence could only
promote global security.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-64407304561330180522012-02-22T02:55:00.004-08:002012-02-22T02:59:56.353-08:00Cowboy Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Part 2: A View from the Street<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio81kABrnYjnqXVQ93-3HZQMRpTX3w0-p1LSydcFY_X_fiBYWlHzBaSa4KJqrZ2LLKgspAEKR6sTWKLDmTkomlUQPHdFXVBz69Mf-WqcyL7F7sjSJtbVSeFXkqB2jNr26Rh_unZM5oSfg/s1600/mao-money.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio81kABrnYjnqXVQ93-3HZQMRpTX3w0-p1LSydcFY_X_fiBYWlHzBaSa4KJqrZ2LLKgspAEKR6sTWKLDmTkomlUQPHdFXVBz69Mf-WqcyL7F7sjSJtbVSeFXkqB2jNr26Rh_unZM5oSfg/s320/mao-money.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711912142234490610" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Despite the growth of inequality in contemporary China and the precarious means of subsistence for the lowest rung, few voices have shouted above the parapet to protect or increase the lot of the poorest. If we take Beijing, a seemingly booming metropolis, visible indications of inequality and economic problems can be found almost everywhere. In a brief walk through the prospering nanluo guxiang alleyways (</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:SimSun;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri">南锣鼓巷</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">) of the drum tower area, one can take in street after streets of trendy coffee shops and ‘international bars’, pay 40 kuai for a drink (equivalent to the daily wage of a waitress serving it), or be caught in the jam-packed streets of fashionable young Chinese shoppers dazzled by various arty, luxury consumer fashion items. In less upmarket areas 9 kuai can buy you a relatively healthy meal of noodles. Instead one can consult international entertainment guides printed in English to see adverts for concerts such as ‘progressive’ metal band Opeth for 680 kuai, about three times the price of a comparable UK concert (an upcoming Avril Lavigne concert costs 1700 kuai, about 170 UK pounds). You can then turn a corner and within seconds the streets are empty, the residents are aging, and the homes are without heating, running water, and toilets. The generation gap and the income disparities are visibly staggering. This is not simply about inequality per se but about access to the means of subsistence- a basic income, health, and education. Accessing largely privatised social services is not cheap and housing prices have exploded. For example, it costs about 400 pounds a month to rent a small studio flat with no cooking facilities in the Xiaoxitian area (a relatively affordable district adjacent to Beijing Normal University). This is much the same as a one person flat with separate rooms, a full kitchen and bathroom in Manchester, UK. Average income in the UK is $38,540 compared to China’s $4,260. No surprise then that small shop-owners still have beds in their stalls all over Beijing and rely on small heaters or electric blankets though the winter. Capitalism seems to inevitably produce winners and losers and this is perhaps most dramatic in its global phase where wealth and goods are not confined by national borders. The winners and losers here are worlds apart and there is little responsibility being shown by the winners. <span style="color:red"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Pun Ngai, author of <i>Dagongmei</i>, brings to light a serious contradiction in the claims of China’s opening up in the reform era. We ordinarily expect capitalism and wealth creation to thrive on social and spatial mobility; business and people have to be willing to move to where money can be made and profit found. However, while the Chinese system has privatised social services and to some extent opened its markets to global capital, it has not abandoned the household registration system (<i>hukou</i>). This divides citizens into urban and rural residents and ties residents to their place of birth if they wish access discounts to the most basic healthcare and early schooling still available under the system. This means the rich are increasingly mobile both in global terms (they can afford to travel abroad or go to see Opeth in Beijing) and in national terms because they can move to other cities and pay for private healthcare and schooling. This maintenance of immobility combined with skyrocketing housing prices has led to the phenomenon of what Pun Ngai termed “dormitory capitalism”; not only does the <i>hukou</i> system make the millions of migrants who move to the city de facto illegal aliens in their own country but due to the cost of housing many have to live in dormitories in basements owned by their employers rather than be made homeless. This provides a lifestyle completely at odds with representations of a rising, powerful China and in utter contrast to the nouveau-rich playing on their laptops and sipping high status coffee. Coupled with the fact that trade unions are de facto outlawed in China, this also enables the owners of such businesses a level of control over their employees such that the most marginalised (poor, rural women) are “instantly disposable” and in many cases cannot refuse to sell their bodies. Approximately <a href="http://www.china-review.com/sao.asp?id=7569">12% of China’s GDP</a> can be accounted for by the sex trade</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">I’ll offer a brief personal story of how the process of renting a house works in Beijing. This is written from the relatively privileged perspective of my partner and me. However, much can be gleaned from it to tell us where wealth goes and the attitudes towards it in Beijing today. We were advised by both Chinese and foreign friends that to find a house in Beijing, going through an agency would cost more but it would save us a lot of trouble and avoid the risk of being ripped off later. We explored the <i>xiaoxitian</i> area and discovered that there are perhaps half a dozen of such firms on every street! These firms manage large amounts of property for landlords who often own entire apartment blocks. The streets are not only decked in adverts everywhere but you can see their staff standing on most street corners waiting for clients or waiting for people to look at their adverts which also adorn many street corners. This is big business. Overhearing conversations on the street and in restaurants, housing seems to be <i>the</i> hot topic of the day- everybody needs it but most seem to be struggling to pay for it. We looked at a number of flats and studio apartments to little avail as our rough budget of 4,000 kuai (about 400 pounds) would only cover decaying flats with broken toilets or a tiny studio. Eventually we received a phone-call from an unknown number offering us help to find a flat. We assumed he was from one of the companies we had consulted but we eventually discovered he was actually a middle man to the middle men at the estate agents. He provided clients to the firms who make money finding clients for the under-rich landlords. We eventually met with him and spent the best part of a day or two chatting with him as we looked for accommodation. He offered us a reasonable deal, he said, because we were British. This was an offer he wouldn’t extend to Greeks and Italians in the Eurozone who renege on their debts! As most young men in Beijing, his life revolved around making as much money as he could to pay for housing, keep his family afloat, and save for the future. He claimed his wage for acting as a middle man to the middle men was about 10,000 kuai per month – light years ahead of the national average and equivalent to our individual incomes in the UK. When we discussed tax, he mocked the UK tax system for taking money away from people (China’s income tax is a rate of about 20% for those making more than a very healthy 5,000 kuai a month). He audibly scoffed at our suggested notion that this money could be used to help society. Socialism remains comedic and kitsch amongst China’s youth. In fact, he described life and business in China, in the same way as many here, as “people-eat-people” (<i>ren chi ren</i>; </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:SimSun; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri">人吃人</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">). Competition is so fierce here that people believe it demands that one pursues wealth and self-interest without responsibility to others outside one’s family, let alone any socialist commitment to aiding the poorest rungs of society.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">After looking at a half a dozen flats with him, we eventually had to lower our standards. We accepted a reasonably sized but decaying and concreted floored flat with a bathroom I could barely stand in. It seemed quite pleasant compared to others we could afford. When we arrived to sign the contract, a problem emerged. Every foreign national in China has to register themselves and their address with the local police station. However, the landlord insisted we register with a fake address at a different station because it would be “more convenient”. This was a way for them to avoid taxes on the rental income as well as the fee associated with this registration. They either had relationships (<i>guanxi</i>; </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:SimSun;mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri">关系</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">) with police or a landlord in another part of town. Knowing that if anything went wrong we would be the ones in trouble and would probably be sent home, we opted to find somewhere else despite having spent the better part of a week looking at houses. The only way we could both afford to live in Beijing would be in a small and relatively old studio flat. We found such a studio flat in the <i>xiaoxitian</i> area thanks to our anti-Euro middleman to the middlemen in a relatively nice apartment block. We were quite satisfied. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">At this stage we still thought our man was just an ordinary middle man but on settling to sign the contract, we realised that this wasn’t the case. An employee of an estate firmed arrived with the contract, refused to say a word, drew up the details, pointed and said ‘sign’. We insisted we read what we were signing up to. He was clearly annoyed but would tolerate this. Our man told him “don’t worry, foreigners are all like this, they just take contracts seriously”. Relationships may be more important than law in China but as travelling foreigners without any networks we opted to stick to the law. On perusal of the contract it turned out they were adding 9 days onto the 6 month lease we agreed. The company man repeatedly urged us to sign as it was “much the same” and would only grin when I said if it is much the same, then change it! After much to-ing and fro-ing I told the company man that I didn’t want to give 1,000 kuai for nothing to a rich landlord. This he found amusing. He agreed to reduce the additional time to 7 days, even though he had claimed it was impossible due to the contract he had with the company who had a contract with the landlord! We both realised this was how these cowboys make lots of money. He, along with hundreds of other agents, was travelling round town all day. If they made a free thousand kuai off every customer they were raking it in without even considering the profit from their legitimate business. After much consternation and urging us to sign, the agreement was made that the original middle man would take the additional cost out of his ‘finder’s fee’. He had of course told us that this would be reduced earlier but now there was no chance- we had to pay him a full month’s rent in cash with no tax paid just for the sake of a few phone calls. No wonder he makes a good wage. The pair of us were then hurled onto the back of a small motorbike and driven to the company office bouncing off a taxi on the way. The company man, who had seemed so aloof and high status from our first meeting, refusing to even engage with our middle man, was suddenly in a different social position. He was being shouted at by his boss and providing us with a place to sit and a drink in this bustling office where multiple deals were being negotiated all round us. The boss grilled him on how much he had got for the flat. He seemed pleased with the 3,500 kuai per month we agreed to pay. All of a sudden, the rate seemed like it had been negotiable and we guessed that the company weren’t just making money as a set fee from the landlord but were probably creaming extra cash off by charging us a higher rate than what they were telling him. I would doubt the taxes are being paid. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">The inconvenience of all this was tiresome but quite amusing and a good learning experience. The real story is that so much money is slushing around, tax-free and destined for landlords’ pockets, that multiple middle men can still make a healthy, largely tax-free living by knowing the market but doing very little. This opportunity would not be available to the additional illiterate 30 million adults who merely happened to be born in a poorer <i>hukou</i> (household registration area). Adam Smith and Karl Marx both agreed that under capitalism, the arduousness of labour is inversely proportional to the profit made from it. When we think back to those having to live in their shop-stalls to survive or living in dormitories and basements selling their bodies, this is clearly the case in contemporary China. National television (CCTV) devotes hours to heart-warming stories of peasants, who have to work endlessly without complaint to pay healthcare bills or send their kids to school, as examples to be admired. Perhaps regulating the cowboy capitalists and using taxes to pay for schools and hospitals, instead of mega-pr events like the Olympics or indeed a nuclear arsenal, would mean the poorest wouldn’t have to be admired for the hardship they endure.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-28762085067266154962012-02-22T02:48:00.005-08:002012-02-22T02:54:29.671-08:00Cowboy Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Part 1: The Big Picture<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCtq00szUhK9YiuT8h7WO2wRA9hzyTmYz0_Naxmkunkkfw41puQWSLmMsWlq5qNKx9J4is9iUoMMNlvpdi4KtIPUD2X2kOfHXT4c_pcosIHnNrKKrs6cvOOGBAksvZR8rsN_NDDP5Dylc/s1600/pudong-shanghai1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCtq00szUhK9YiuT8h7WO2wRA9hzyTmYz0_Naxmkunkkfw41puQWSLmMsWlq5qNKx9J4is9iUoMMNlvpdi4KtIPUD2X2kOfHXT4c_pcosIHnNrKKrs6cvOOGBAksvZR8rsN_NDDP5Dylc/s320/pudong-shanghai1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5711910237528562722" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">The end of the cold war and in particular, the effects of the global financial crisis, has led to a convergence of interests between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the US, the world’s declining hyper-power. It suits both the neo-conservatives in Washington and authoritarian leaders in Beijing to represent the new China as an economic powerhouse. US foreign policy hawks portray China as a threat to the prevailing hegemony justifying military spending and protectionism while the CCP domestically celebrates itself as the only way to prosperity (see the slogan: </span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:SimSun;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri">只有共产党才能建设好新中国</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">; “Only with the communist party, can we build a new, great China”). Since the onset of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, China has indeed enjoyed spectacular double-digit economic growth figures. The glitz and glamour image of the ‘new’ China exemplified by Shanghai’s <i>pudong</i> skyline is mesmerising for foreign investors and travellers alike. As important as these images and representations are in recreating an attraction towards the new China or what Joseph Nye called China’s ‘soft power’, there is indeed a lot more happening behind these images and on the streets of China’s ever-expanding cities let alone the hugely impoverished countryside.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">The World Bank’s <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf">2011 data</a> tell us average global income (GNI per capita) is just over 9,000 US dollars</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. According to the same stats, income in China ranks at 121<sup> </sup>of 215 in the world at $4,260. This does not diminish the impressive growth China has enjoyed over the last 40 years but it does put it in context; average income in Kazakhstan is $7,440. With economic growth, China has become one of the most unequal countries in the world- <a href="http://www.mongabay.com/reference/stats/rankings/2172.html">ranking at 36</a>, ahead of the US at 44<sup>th</sup> and the UK at 92nd</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. This should make us take a step back and ask who are the 99%? The neoliberal, capitalist United States is actually more egalitarian than the supposedly socialist China and indeed enjoys an average income of more than 10 times that of the purported threat to its global hegemony. The World Bank celebrates its own achievements and the seemingly inevitable logic of the ‘free-market’ by claiming 200 million have been pulled out of poverty across the globe since the 1980s. Chinese people constitute the majority of these yet all is not what it seems. These figures are extrapolated from a handful of booming eastern and southern coastal cities, which are not representative of China as a whole and which present an even greater problem considering the level of inequality across the nation. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">The <a href="http://www.ophi.org.uk/policy/multidimensional-poverty-index/">Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative</a> produced a spectacularly detailed set of statistics on multi-dimensional poverty (eg income, education, health, etc) which breaks down different types and levels of poverty across different regions within nations</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. China is one of the only countries in the world which did not submit regional figures, so we can’t even adequately capture regional inequality in China in ways which we can for supposedly “failed states” in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo. We know that regional inequality is a huge problem and that since the 1990s it has grown. For example, the GDP per capita of Yunnan province is about 10-15% of that of Shanghai, the image of Chinese modernity. We also know that when the World Bank revised its definition of poverty upwards to an underwhelming $1.25 a day, the number of people living in “extreme poverty” in China jumped from 130 million people to <a href="http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html">207 million</a>, about a sixth of the total population</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. This means one sixth of the population of China are neither sharing in the statistically pleasing double digit growth nor the mesmerising hi-tech appearance of the new China. Despite double-digit national growth throughout the 1990s, Shanghai as one of the fastest growing regions saw no relative income growth and the poorest lost income in absolute terms (see Huang, Yasheng (2008) <i>Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics</i>, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">The global financial crisis of 2008 laid bare the lack of regulation of capitalism had opened the most vulnerable in society to the vagaries of financial markets despite their lack of participation in them. In the UK, David Cameron calls for a “<a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/david_cameron_defends_vision_of_socially_responsible_capitalism_1_2066026">responsible capitalism</a>”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> and in the US, Barrack Obama was initially lauded by many for his goals of extending access to healthcare to all. ‘Responsibility’ to others and the pursuit of self-interest above all else under capitalism may be oxymoronic. However, the political need to attempt to reconcile them in public discourse at least indicates a broader accountability to a wider range of social interests. In China, Deng Xiaoping’s mantra, “to get rich is glorious”, sums up the attitudes of Chinese youth today who see communism as a kitsch yet backward social irrelevance and money as a cure to all ills. Of course, the great leap forward in which 30 million people died of famine, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and the gloominess of communist uniformity remain as reminders of the failures of anything but the pursuit of wealth in the self-imagination of contemporary Chinese youth. The cyclical crises of capitalism throughout twentieth century Europe and the US offer very different storehouses of imagination to that of China. Today, the Chinese government, official media, and popular discourse frequently refer to the global financial crisis as the “western financial crisis”. It is often explained it in cultural terms as a failure of “westerners” to save money and pay off their own mortgages in contrast to the Asian traditions of savings and austerity. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">What is less said in popular media, both in China and abroad, is that the housing market in China today bears many of the hallmarks of the economic conditions which led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, which ultimately triggered the global financial crisis. The <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/5971308/IMF-warn-that-Chinas-banks-face-risks">IMF</a> has warned of the economic crash that could result from soft loans with little hope of return, unregulated lending, concentrated housing ownership, and rising property prices</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. Like the US at the turn of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, this resembles capitalism at its most irresponsible and most unstable. The difference is China has even less of a social safety net than the US, let alone Europe; going to school and visiting a hospital almost universally require payment up front. Those in the most financially vulnerable positions can expect to pay for any crisis as they have in the US and Europe through tax-funded bailouts for failing financial institutions and increasingly squeezed funding for social services upon which the poorest rely. Those raised on the dogma of the pursuit of wealth are unlikely to be willing to give much of it up when push comes to shove. Given the poorest in China are considerably worse off than the poorest in the US or Europe and already lack access to basic social services, any major economic downturn would not just threaten their means of home-ownership but would jeopardize the means of subsistence for millions of people.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Yasheng Huang’s <i>Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics </i>effectively shows us that both the growth of income for the poorest and private access to credit enjoyed during the 1980s has been reversed since the 1990s. The system has now re-directed tax incentives, subsidies, and favourable terms of credit away from small private enterprise and towards large-scale foreign direct investment and businesses closely aligned or partly owned by government. This is reflected in news headlines of large-scale corruption and corporate land-grabs converting farms and poorer housing areas into property developments with little compensation and no hope of being affordable. The result has been stagnation in incomes in rural areas, a decrease in spending on social services, and growth in illiteracy (30 million more people between 2000 and 2005) since the 1990s. China appears to be maintaining the authoritarian political apparatus of ‘communism’ whilst promoting the business interests of large-scale state-owned enterprises. This is becoming the worst of both worlds as freedom for the nouveau rich in urban centres can be bought and the voices of the lowest rung go unheard. Given the lack of regulation of big business and the lack of social responsibility shown in the system, it seems fair to call this cowboy capitalism. The US and Europe pay lip-service to human rights but they say little about the poorest rungs of Chinese society. In the end, the poor are the losers in the geopolitical game, which produces images of an inevitably rising China.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-85229782893156656752011-11-30T02:34:00.000-08:002011-11-30T04:41:53.472-08:00Neoliberalism and the Decline of Global Growth<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_-kPZ3-k-sHsBHXRhmy3PK7eu9DrdapcEM4rOtB-ctRPzH5iGvq5zFfwLtoAg3fvKFSKbnxsNxuREUHPeezToF_Y3knqc-MqJk8RD5t468BYji_rZJhu8gQ8tCXXDkcfwtWV1DoGGsP4/s1600/neolibs.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5680737011742842770" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 289px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_-kPZ3-k-sHsBHXRhmy3PK7eu9DrdapcEM4rOtB-ctRPzH5iGvq5zFfwLtoAg3fvKFSKbnxsNxuREUHPeezToF_Y3knqc-MqJk8RD5t468BYji_rZJhu8gQ8tCXXDkcfwtWV1DoGGsP4/s320/neolibs.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div align="justify">The post-World War 2 world saw global growth reach 3.5% in the 1960s and even during the crisis years of the 1970s the world enjoyed 2.4% growth. John Ruggie famously described the international system of this period as ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie, 1982). Industrialised states pursued liberal economic policies but international agreements legitimised state intervention in the economy to protect the interests of labour and the socially marginalised. This was largely a compromise between the interests of labour and capital such that free-markets prevailed but the vulnerable could be protected. Neoliberalism then emerged in the midst of the 1973 oil crisis to break this compromise by prioritising capital and the interests of business primarily through privatisation of services, reduced public spending on social services, and the restriction of power of organisations which represented the interests of workers (Trade Unions). Since the adoption of neoliberalism under Thatcher in the UK, Reagan in the US and promoted globally through the IMF, the 1980s saw global growth fall to 1.4%, 1.1% in the 1990s and less than 1% in the 2000s. Meanwhile the top 1% of earners in the UK increased their share of wealth from 6.5% to 13% (Harvey, 2007). The world is getting poorer and the poor are bearing an ever increasing burden to pay to maintain a global financial system which is keeping them poor. Banks have been bailed out and nationalised because we are told we need them and this is a ‘crisis’. On the other hand, Malaria, an easily preventable disease, kills <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10520289">800,000 </a>people every year. We hear nothing of this ‘crisis’ because it occurs in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa which have little political power at the global level and limited economic value. We are now in the midst not of a debt crisis but a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8920050/OECD-UK-has-begun-slide-into-double-dip-recession.html">growth crisis,</a> which has to be paid for by previously protected vulnerable groups. This is being made worse as the UK continues on an economic course which cuts people's ability to support themselves by cutting pensions and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/29/george-osborne-autumn-statement-2011-experts">restricting public sector</a> pay so that it does not reflect inflation. Fanatical commitment to neoliberalism has meant that when growth slows, neoliberal states demand that the poor and lower middle classes get paid less in order to ‘balance the books’. This will lead people further into the debt, which is supposed to be the wiped out according to the Conservatives.</div><br /><div align="justify"><br />The Conservatives did not win the election in the UK outright and they did not outline their plans for pensions, the NHS, and public sector pay in their manifesto. They do not have the mandate to proceed with a plan that promotes the interests of capital over those of labour. Support the strikes before there are no social services left.</div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify">References:</div><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-size:85%;">Ruggie, John (1982) ‘International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Post-War Economic Order, <em>International Organization</em>, 36/2, pp.379-415.<br /><br />Harvey, David (2007) ‘Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction’, <em>Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science</em>, 610, pp.22-44.</span></div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"></div>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-629783542890781792011-11-13T07:18:00.000-08:002011-11-13T07:35:04.533-08:00Commodified Communities: Selling the Nation in a Global Age<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH53gc4b13JoWzbVhmzI2cL9waRm3QEMtz4FUD1HKOCWvtPH_oWJJDM3B_vx3fLTENzZEQzyd3b-cQs6k5lo-HDy6xPhm1DeLxo1RaXSsSH83W5wYGVqvjqwRuFl8aa2uhIJRLf6wHE0U/s1600/poppy_shopping_bag_161x158.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 161px; height: 158px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH53gc4b13JoWzbVhmzI2cL9waRm3QEMtz4FUD1HKOCWvtPH_oWJJDM3B_vx3fLTENzZEQzyd3b-cQs6k5lo-HDy6xPhm1DeLxo1RaXSsSH83W5wYGVqvjqwRuFl8aa2uhIJRLf6wHE0U/s320/poppy_shopping_bag_161x158.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5674501266542502386" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">Patriotism and consumerism appear to have no obvious connection. The nation as a bounded community of people who identify with one another appears to stand in contrast to the workings of global capital which flows across borders in the search for profit not social recognition. Production and trade have been transnationalised to the extent that ‘Buy American’ and ‘Buy British’ is impossible when buying any consumer goods made of more than a few simple parts. A single computer may be designed in Silicon Valley, built in Japan, assembled in South East Asia, and dumped in China when past their sell by date. However, we still see a growing clamour to <i>sell</i> national pride and to commercialise the boundaries of belonging. Since 9/11 <a href="http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1N1-0F50412ED0DD9BA9.html">Wal-Mart</a> expanded its sale of flag-emblazoned merchandise for sale with “respectful” and “patriotic” flag disposal services in stores for used flags positioned conveniently next to shiny new ones. In 2004, Wal-Mart was voted the most admired company in the US despite facing <a href="http://walmartwatch.org/">criticism</a> for its unfair wages for women, de-unionisation, and monopoly practices. <a href="http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1academicnews/001877.shtml">Professor Jennifer Scanlon </a>says “the American Public and Wal-Mart are complicit in a performance of patriotism in which consumerism stands in for more concrete and difficult civic work”. It is easier to buy belonging in a community than to work to make it a better place. This is a reciprocal relationship between consumerism and nationalism such that transnational companies sell the nation and the nation buys it. This dynamic where consumerism and nationalism reproduce and reinforce each other is not restricted to the US. In China, <a href="http://www.hudong.com/wiki/%E7%88%B1%E5%9B%BD%E8%80%85%5BIT%E5%93%81%E7%89%8C%5D">Aigo</a> is one of the nation’s leading electronic companies and is now a sponsor of Manchester United FC. The name Aigo in Mandarin Chinese (<i>aiguozhe</i>; <span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: SimSun; ">爱国者</span>) means “patriot” and this is not lost on Chinese consumers seeking to “buy Chinese” in an age where their consumer options are transnationalised. One of the most frequent seen adverts on Chinese state television (CCTV) between 2009-2010 was for a medicine brand which ended with the catchphrase “mother I love you, motherland I love you” (<i>mama wo ai ni, zuguo wo ai ni</i>; <span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: SimSun; ">妈妈我爱你</span>, <span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: SimSun; ">祖国我爱你</span>). Viewers are then left with the impression that loyalty to a consumer brand equates to loyalty to the nation. You can buy belonging in a national-consumer community.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">How people choose to spend their money has long been represented by states as linked to their identity as members of the nation. One of the many <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ69X1qt4sQ">propaganda cartoons</a> produced by Walt Disney in the first half of the twentieth century represented American consumers as divided between spending and saving. Scrooge McDuck tells Americans they must “save for victory” in World War 2. Spending money was un-patriotic because it helps the rise of Fascism by draining the treasury of tax resources. Of course representations of the nation have changed as capitalism becomes more and more globalised and it shifts from supply-side economics to demand-led. One of the first public addresses by President <a href="http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/bush911e.html">George Bush</a> after 9/11 was to stress the threat of terrorism to our ever-expanding consumerist lifestyle linking shopping with national security: “We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our citizens to the point where we don’t…conduct business, we don’t shop”. “We” are being defined as shoppers and the threat of terrorism is to our “we-ness” is through the danger presented to our consumer-lifestyles. More recently, <a href="http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2011/10/David_Cameron_Leadership_for_a_better_Britain.aspx">David Cameron</a> defined Britishness through our economic behaviour during the “financial crisis”: “Some say that to succeed in this world, we need to become more like India or China, or Brazil, but I say: we need to become more like us. The real us. Hard-working, pioneering, independent, creative, adaptable, optimistic, can-do”. In practical terms Cameron continued to stress we pay off our credit card bills, tying national loyalty to stabilising financial capitalism. It seems patriotism is emerging as a resource our leaders can draw on to demand the economy works in specific ways. “Can-do” or “stiff upper lip” means “flexible” labour protection policy and a “disciplined” labour force in the words of the IMF. Cameron is using patriotism to tell people in Britain that they are not like Indians or Chinese, we are different. We should supposedly keep it that way by paying off our credit card bills and working hard and without question in a labour market that has seen employment slump and benefits slashed since the Conservative Party came to power. To <i>be</i> British means to behave in ways which maintain the workings of capitalism as it currently works- don’t’ complain about <i>anything</i> or you aren’t “can-do” and you aren’t British. For Cameron, it also means we should identify with billionaires within our borders who benefit from inequality instead of Indians and Chinese who suffer from it.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">The recent public debates over the wearing of the poppy for <a href="http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/the-nation-remembers/remembrance-sunday">Remembrance Sunday</a> are a case in point. Turnouts at the cenotaph for actual remembrance are relatively small and co-ordinated through active organisations such as the British Legion. However, more passive consumers can now purchase all manner of goods from ties to caps to umbrellas to cufflinks to tablecloths in order to display their level of patriotic devotion and stand “<a href="http://www.poppyshop.org.uk/">shoulder to shoulder with all those who serve</a>”. Judging by the Poppy Shop’s apology on their website in November 2011 that orders would be delayed due to a high volume of orders, it appears the British public are keen to buy their community membership. However, they are less keen to do “concrete and difficult civic work”. Joining a campaign, for example, to give an hour of one’s time to look after elderly veterans who are now in Britain’s understaffed nursing homes would be of more benefit than wearing a poppy. Wearing of the poppy to symbolise national belonging, which involves nothing but a small purchase, has in recent years been mobilised to the extent that it is framed as an issue of national security. The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15663299">BBC</a> linked tragic deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan, a very real and violent conflict, to the banality of the poppy. On <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0178dpd/Question_Time_10_11_2011/">Question Time</a>, the popular British politics ‘debate’ show, Stephen Pollard, journalist and author on Israeli politics and history, claimed burning poppies should be outlawed, regardless of freedom of speech because they go to the heart of “who we are”. Identity here is framed as a security issue such that alternatives to this particular understanding of national identity are to be eliminated through force. David Cameron saw fit to demand FIFA, football’s ruling body, make the exception only for England to allow “political and religious” symbols on national football shirts in their game against Spain because it was a matter of “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/15652356">national pride</a>”. Cameron and other Conservatives stressed that the poppy was “not political”. However, it is impossible to claim England’s supposed symbols of “national pride” are “not political” but those of other nations, which are banned on national football shirts, are “political”. This representation of the poppy as a performance of patriotism may not be new. However, what is new is this vigour that defines purchase and display of a poppy as the very heart of “who we are” and a symbol which is unquestionable and beyond politics. The English national football team have played on the 11<sup>th</sup> November many times over the years and haven’t worn or asked to wear poppies on their shirts. This is but an example how of national communities become a commodified mode of self-understanding where alternatives are deemed ‘outside’ the boundaries of community. This follows the framings of how we organise capitalism and how we spend our earnings as security issues at the heart of our national identities.<b> </b>There are many ways to interpret why wars happen and whose interests they serve. However, the voices of those who see the First World War as a human tragedy which saw states across the world needlessly send millions of working class humans to their death are being excluded as un-patriotic because they don’t wish to wear the poppy. The poppy is said to represent them but it does not represent their views because it has become a symbol of “national pride” instead of remembering dead human beings. Today, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWF24Fi9KzA">identifying with humans</a> who are victims of wars waged by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond our borders over those within our nation who send them to war is deemed unpatriotic in the same way that submitting to a flexible, unregulated labour market is essential to being British. Today, capital and people flow across borders but there is still capital to be made by going to war and selling its products under the banner of patriotism. <b><o:p></o:p></b></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-44583713020914171652011-10-08T08:06:00.000-07:002011-10-08T08:22:03.087-07:00Apple and the Symbolic Construction of the Self/Other<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQi4PVxjdzkhotaGVMT_ymcCJ1DO1LoMq6iGXiNAQkopeWYpEXUXCO0G6a7ek_Q5NBf8c4s2GGgeuuYGT-Sql-g9BUIAdP4exm9tGxHH8VQmQZ3gaooPsfH9S6cTExTio4b8E5Xu0nQc/s1600/iZombie.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQi4PVxjdzkhotaGVMT_ymcCJ1DO1LoMq6iGXiNAQkopeWYpEXUXCO0G6a7ek_Q5NBf8c4s2GGgeuuYGT-Sql-g9BUIAdP4exm9tGxHH8VQmQZ3gaooPsfH9S6cTExTio4b8E5Xu0nQc/s320/iZombie.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5661139322421291042" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>It is not unusual to send condolences to family and friends of a recently deceased loved-one. What is unusual is when people are moved to grief for someone they have never met. It is not unusual to enquire why this is so. The death of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, led to a global outpouring of grief in the form of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gallery/2011/oct/06/steve-jobs-apple-shrines-world?fb=native">shrines</a> from Beijing to California and from Seoul to Sydney. However, these are globalised, metropolitan centres where people who can afford to buy Apple’s exuberant products are concentrated. This is not reflective of some human community transcending divisions of geography and social class. These are relatively fortunate people commemorating the death of an incredibly wealthy man. Nonetheless, this public outpouring goes way beyond brand loyalty or the usual arguments that Macs are faster than PCs. These are highly symbolic rituals which tell us about who and what we value and who and what we do not. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/06/steve-jobs-world-more-beautiful">Jonathan Jones</a> of the Guardian gushed that Apple products “made the world more beautiful” and “more human” such that Steve Jobs changed how “we” see the world. “We” refers here to people in metropolitan centres with enough disposable income to be part of this in-group. The inevitably corresponding “they” are the rest of the world, “outside” this group and presumably <i>less</i> human for their inability to enjoy these products. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>It is tempting, as <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7290970/the-cult-of-jobs.thtml">Alex Massie</a> does in The Spectator, to dismiss these outpourings of attachment, grief, and worship for the CEO of a company whom they never met as "members of a cult that's just as stupid as any other and equally deserving of scorn and pity". However, this downplays the social significance in terms of both sheer numbers of people involved and the transnational scale on which unbridled admiration for the contribution of Apple to people’s lives we have witnessed. Massie also called this phenomenon <i>iReligion</i> and this seems a fairly accurate description given the blind faith and ritualised shrines we have witnessed. The Apple logo and Steve Jobs have become powerful symbols people express loyalty to and through which they identify themselves as free-thinking, modern individuals. Apple personifies something people want to be. The long running <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEkxtOz4Js">Mac advert series</a> on UK TV exemplified this personification of the brand. It successfully anthropomorphised PCs to be like their users: old, traditional, and behind the times. Mac users then are symbolically articulated as young, fresh, and driving the times. The argument here is not to say Apple products are not fun to play with. They are. The argument is to say people in positions of relative fortune are investing their self-identifications in such products. These self-identifications are to the exclusion of the poor, globally marginalised Other. Ironically, these identifications are ultimately to the detriment as opposed to the enrichment of the individual.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>Anthony Cohen’s 1985 classic <i>The Symbolic Construction of Community</i> applied decades of fieldwork in social anthropology on the intersection between social and personal identities. He produced a compelling argument to explain traditional community and nationalist loyalties. However, it equally illuminates why in the contemporary world when people are bombarded by commercial advertising demanding brand loyalty, and where struggles over local, ethnic, religious, national, transnational, and global forces regularly spill over into violence, we are still constantly trying to discover and rediscover where “we” belong and who “we” are:<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>“(symbols) ‘express’ other things in ways which allow their common form to be retained and shared among the members of a group, whilst not imposing upon these people the constraints of uniform meaning. Because symbols are malleable in this way, they can be made to ‘fit’ the circumstances of the individual. They can thus provide media through which individuals can experience and express their attachment to a society without compromising their individuality…what is actually held in common is not very substantial, being form rather than content.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>Apple and Steve Jobs like all the most socially effective symbols have no fixed content. They are pure form and they are malleable. They mean everything <i>because</i> they mean nothing. They are so abstract and open to interpretation that they are a marketing dream. Apple allows the individual to feel as if they retain and even enhance their individuality while at the same time spending more and more of their income on products they do not need and even worshipping at shrines of a dead man they did not know. The Apple logo perhaps speaks for itself. It is just an apple, it imposes little if any content yet people wear clothes and bags emblazoning the symbol on their journeys to find who they are. The soundbites of Steve Jobs, which appeared in their thousands across Facebook and Twitter on the day of his death, are a case in point. So devoid of content are they that people can imbue their own significance in them, participate in a social ritual, yet believe they retain some sense of individuality at the same time. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” is so open to interpretation that, as Cohen says, what is being shared by repeating it across the internet is insubstantial; form rather than content. This was of course a remarkably skilful and rhetorical manipulation of human needs for social and individual identities on Jobs’ part. People could be Apple users, a group, yet imbue their own supposed individuality on what that means. All the while Jobs got richer and richer. The most powerful of all the soundbites was perhaps “don’t waste time living someone else’s life”. In other words, buying Apple products, a socially significant action, allows one to be and become an individual. The irony is staggering when millions of individuals believe that by listening to another individual telling them to be an individual and buy <i>his</i> products he spent <i>his</i> life producing is somehow living one’s <i>own</i> life. Choosing to worship Apple and reproduce its messages across the potentially limitless discourse of the internet is a fundamentally selective social activity. People can say anything on the internet yet they choose to let Steve Jobs speak <i>for</i> them as if they are endorsing individuation. Monty Python once hilariously captured the irony of how groups can be convinced they are individuals in their film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA">Life of Brian</a> yet it seems to have been forgotten by Apple worshippers.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>The power of Apple is remarkable. The internet has provided most people with staggering access to instantaneous information. This has led to unparalleled growth in global movements for social justice, human rights, and environmental protection. Yet while Twitter is used to organise the occupation of Wall Street in the world’s most “advanced” capitalist nation, we hear nothing from Apple users of Apple’s deplorable environmental record (reportedly the worst for any foreign firm in <a href="http://www.technewsworld.com/story/71696.html;%20http://www.ipe.org.cn/Upload/Report-IT-V-Apple-II.pdf">China</a>) and disregard for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/life-inside-a-chinese-gadget-factory-2009-7">labour rights</a> across the world. Apple’s power is such that this information is freely available yet people choose not to google it and then choose to ignore it when it is presented to them. Karl Marx would say the exploitative social relations behind the product are concealed but here they are not. In today’s world, the information is there, yet most of us choose to ignore it. We do not let this uncomfortable information influence our consumerist decision-making in our supposed struggle to find ourselves and “not live someone else’s life”. The people who suffer due to the policies of Apple most notably in China are simply not part of the “we” that people are choosing to become, otherwise “we” would not allow it to happen. The environmental damage and exploitation would simply not be allowed if it was in “our” country or “our” community. Where Marx was right (Capital Volume I and III) is that commodity fetishism links the subjective aspects of economic value and objective reality. The value groups assign to material objects are transformed from arbitrary social impositions into very real social forces in the form of prices, which for Apple are sky-high. Marx argued that “primitive” societies fetishised unexplainable phenomena as magical and thus they became sacred or taboo. Under capitalism, people attribute special powers to objects and imbue them with symbolic meaning which then became part of an objective reality reflected in prices. What Marx did not predict was that people would attribute special powers to brands and individuals who are powerful agents in reproducing the exploitative and environmentally destructive social relations, which Apple users celebrated on the 6<sup>th</sup> October 2011. Globally dispersed shrines to Steve Jobs do not merely fetishise products they fetishise a brand and a person as symbols of who we are and the world we want to live in. This is a world which celebrates gadgets and instantaneous yet transient pleasure to the detriment of the lives and life opportunities of the poor and globally marginalised. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>It is appropriate in all discussions of identity to ask where we-ness comes from, who it includes, and who it excludes. Here, we turn to the ancient Tibetan philosopher, Nagarjuna:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>“The essence of entities<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>Is not present in the conditions,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>If there is no essence,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>There can be no otherness-essence.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span>There can be no Self without Other and there can be no Mac user without a PC user to define itself against. Our identities have no essence. They can only be defined by what they are not. We are who we become and how we define ourselves to the exclusion of others. We can choose to become globalised citizens who take responsibility for our actions or at the very least acknowledge their implications. We are choosing not to. There is little about the symbolism of Apple which is young, fresh, and innovative. Apple is reflective of far older forms of community boundary drawing which divide people into us and them through the manipulation of symbols which demand loyalty and convince people they are all individuals. Steve Jobs was a smart man. He once said "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life". If only those worshipping at his altar could heed this advice when they ask “who am I?” and “what type of world do I want to live in?”. When we face death Apple will provide no solace.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-1039973163303492252011-09-09T08:10:00.000-07:002011-09-09T08:19:53.995-07:00Imagining Sectarianism, Imagining Scotland<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWyGJVTDkkJh0tGbSKlTt9ZgzWShE5l6q-U3MsQEYJ3GD1wx5vAYMj03UcnXPF6qw88U8yUYD8-avMH8EG4A4Ms20i49mLrJQBBDffIOXxZBOcW2WgHJANtW_9VavYbR9npl43oHmZzc/s1600/t-towel-tartan-map.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 202px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwWyGJVTDkkJh0tGbSKlTt9ZgzWShE5l6q-U3MsQEYJ3GD1wx5vAYMj03UcnXPF6qw88U8yUYD8-avMH8EG4A4Ms20i49mLrJQBBDffIOXxZBOcW2WgHJANtW_9VavYbR9npl43oHmZzc/s320/t-towel-tartan-map.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5650377895960720066" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto;text-align: justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 115%">We have frequently heard the political slogan, “One Scotland, many cultures”, since it was launched in 2007 to brand Scotland a pluralistic society characterised by tolerance of difference. However, judging by a Scottish government poll which found that more than 85% of Scots want “sectarianism” to be an illegal offence with 89% declaring it “offensive”, most Scots now freely admit that Scotland has a problem with “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-14774977">sectarianism</a>”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. Roseanna Cunningham, Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, told the BBC that sectarianism threatens the “very fabric of Scotland; we want to be tolerant, respectful, and forward looking”. Roseanna Cunningham’s comments and the first draft of the much-debated “<a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/bills/01-offbehfoot/b1s4-introd.pdf">anti-sectarianism bill</a>” reveal how the debate on sectarianism is producing ideas about what type of nation Scotland should be and what it means to <i>be</i> Scottish</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. When we talk about sectarianism and what it means to be Scottish, we are, in the words of Benedict Anderson, imagining the nation. By limiting who is and isn’t to be thought of as authentically Scottish we produce what it means to be Scottish. Sectarianism is seen as a religious problem and to protect the “very fabric” of Scotland we need legislation to stop people calling each other “<i>insert-religion-here </i>bastards” but not necessarily “<i>insert-ethnicity-or-nationality-here</i> bastards”. This creates the danger that we ignore ethnocentrism whereas we crack down on religious bigotry. Here I seek not to evaluate the extent of sectarianism or to “take sides” but to examine how the term is used and the implications for how people understand Scottish identity. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">It is a welcome change for complex issues in which history, nationalism, and religion are entangled in complex webs of self-identification to be on the front of our national newspapers instead of relegated to the sports pages. Complacency has previously allowed those discussing bigotry to reinforce national stereotypes and produce ideas about what it means to be Scottish without being challenged. For example, in 2004 the journalist Stuart Cosgrove criticised Aiden McGeady’s choice to play football for the Republic of Ireland, the country of his grandparents’ birth, instead of Scotland where he was born. Cosgrove claimed McGeady’s choice was representative of international football’s descent to the level of a “<a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Stuart+Cosgrove%3A+McGeady+will+be+the+loser+in+patriot+game.-a0126588344">Woolworths pick and mix</a>”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. How a long history of cross-border flows of people between Scotland and Ireland has affected how people identify themselves in complex ways is dismissed as “pick and mix”. In other words, mongrel-like or not “authentic”. Like many other football journalists, Cosgrove was theorising about what constitutes national identity albeit in a comedic fashion. Cosgrove, like many commentators, employed an uncritical definition of nation as the place of one’s birth to criticise how an 18 year old footballer identified himself. His idea of national identity is exclusionary: you are simply with us (people born in Scotland who call themselves Scottish) or against us (people born in Scotland who call themselves Irish). There can be no middle ground. In a liberal democracy, which seeks to reject sectarianism, this self-identification should be an individual’s decision and the individual’s decision alone. The greatest problem here is not that people have this view of national identity. The problem is that such intolerance of those who identify themselves in a different way is left unchallenged because it is seen as belonging to the realm of football and “banter”.<span style="color:red"> </span>Thousands of people tune in to similar debates on radio stations and in print- this is influence without responsibility. Such football journalists are unwittingly imagining the boundaries of the nation through their writing. They define what it means to be Scottish and frequently exclude those who choose to celebrate what they understand to be their Irish heritage.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><a href="http://irs.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/07/1012690210383787.abstract">Dr John Kelly</a> of the University of Edinburgh</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> argues that the public discourse on sectarianism constructs a unified, non-sectarian identity that purportedly “real” and “authentic” Scots should share in opposition to a set of sectarian ‘Others’. In other words, by excluding certain characteristics, this discourse imagines what it means to <i>be</i> Scottish. In 2006 the now retired pundit, Gerry McNee, dismissed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fields_of_Athenry">the Fields of Athenry</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_of_the_Old_Brigade">The Boys of the Old Brigade</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> sung by Celtic fans along with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sash">the Sash</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry's_Walls">Derry’s Walls</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">, often sung by Rangers fans, as “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RZrS3p8X0Y">Irish tosh</a>” “we need to get rid of”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. In other words, “real” and “authentic” Scots have enclosed national identities without the “sectarian” cross-border influence from Ireland. This is of course ironic. The Sash and Derry’s walls are sung by Rangers supporters and proponents of the British Union in Northern Ireland to celebrate Britishness and how they identify themselves as <i>not</i> being part of Ireland. McNee’s comments were reflective of a widespread simplistic view of complex social issues that “sectarianism” comes from some barbaric outside world which we should contrast our civilised selves against. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">Dismissing people’s views as “Irish tosh” because they sing songs to commemorate what they see as their British or Irish heritage narrowly draws the boundaries of acceptable public identification such that people feel their identities are under threat. This imagines Scotland as some enclosed, discrete community yet our history tells us the borders between Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland are very fluid and the trans-border flows of migration are a constant. Being Irish or being British does not make one a bigot but refusing to allow people to understand themselves this way does. As Dr John Kelly noted in his <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/committees/justice/inquiries/OBFTCBill/OB4.pdf">written submission</a> to the Justice Committee on the “anti-sectarianism bill”, celebration of one’s identity is not a social problem unless this involves hatred of other identities</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. People can disagree over the nationalist political sentiments expressed in The Boys of the Old Brigade or Derry’s Walls but it is difficult find anything in the songs themselves which express hatred of other identities. There are intolerable, racist songs sung in Scottish football grounds which is another issue altogether. However, it would be highly illiberal to criminalise songs because they celebrate identities which are not “authentically” Scottish or because we disagree with their political sentiments.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">National identities can be multiple, especially in the United Kingdom. As Benedict Anderson asked “to what nation does the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland refer?”. One can be Scottish and Irish at the same time- the two countries are not sealed off and people travel and have inter-married for a very long time. One can also be Scottish and British at the same time. Many will argue it is impossible to be Irish and British but is this difference really a problem? Difference is not a problem but how it is socially organised can be. If we criminalise or marginalise people not because they hate the Other but because they see themselves as Irish or British we will create resentment and create a much more serious national conflict than we currently witness. Politicians and tourist boards can imagine an enclosed, culturally isolated Scotland but our history has different stories which should be told. If we want Scotland to be a nation of many cultures we have to allow its people celebrate their many origins. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-50003941844805648502011-09-07T12:23:00.000-07:002011-09-07T13:11:44.749-07:00There is No Hierarchy of Sectarianisms<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5T5FNBqfbr5qT6lwhHyKJuf-WdHR5oylAvuXO2wYlBYEQ_6NBWETAE8zlk8VFbdWsFJYfCiNVsQvsrU-e6T_M-UBJS_cEX5RMfBD2oWwFz9FyfpoePG_xp5EIHKrl2XhxrZeznlpkJIk/s1600/Football.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5T5FNBqfbr5qT6lwhHyKJuf-WdHR5oylAvuXO2wYlBYEQ_6NBWETAE8zlk8VFbdWsFJYfCiNVsQvsrU-e6T_M-UBJS_cEX5RMfBD2oWwFz9FyfpoePG_xp5EIHKrl2XhxrZeznlpkJIk/s320/Football.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649701259394178514" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto;text-align: justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 115%">Audre Lorde once said “<a href="http://lgbtro.ucsd.edu/There_is_no_Hierarchy_of_Oppressions.asp">there is no hierarchy of oppressions</a>”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> and in Scotland we should be cautious not to create one. 2011 has seen the Scottish parliament attempt to draft and hastily pass legislation on what is publicly celebrated in the political soundbite of <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/bills/01-offbehfoot/b1s4-introd.pdf">“anti-sectarianism legislation”</a> ("Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill")</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. The rushed draft illustrates little consideration of what sectarianism means and subsequently employs an imbalanced definition. The stated purpose of the legislation is to criminalise behaviour that expresses “hatred of, or stirring up hatred against, a group of persons based on their membership (or presumed membership) of a religious group, a social or cultural group with a perceived religious affiliation”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. There are provisions for applying this to hatred against groups other than religious ones but these are sub-sectional clauses. They do not apply to section 5, a crucial part of the bill, which covers all recorded forms of speech. The emphasis is on discrimination or “stirring hatred” against groups defined by religion. The Scottish council of Jewish Communities astutely raised the problem that this “<a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/committees/justice/inquiries/OBFTCBill/OB6.pdf">risks creating a hierarchy of discrimination</a>”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. This would mean that we only discuss “sectarianism” and prejudice in terms of religion thus ignoring ethnocentrism and racism.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">No public debate over the meaning of sectarianism has taken place despite widespread <span> </span>calls for one, including from the <a href="http://politicsforpeople.org.uk/s4/committees/justice/inquiries/OBFTCBill/OB42.pdf">Harps Community Project</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">, an Irish cultural association, and the <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/committees/justice/inquiries/OBFTCBill/OB7.pdf">Rangers Supporters’ Assembly</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. There is no agreed academic definition of sectarianism but its use presumes and perhaps normatively demands a higher, enclosed form of national identification.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> One definition of sectarianism, which circulates widely in the media and on internet forums comes from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism">Wikipedia</a>: "bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion or factions of a political movement". </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">This presumes the existence of a unified group in the first place; some common identity which is being split between internal sects.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"> However, <span>the issue at hand is tension over group identification itself: people identifying with two different group categories (Irish and British) and competing for recognition and sometimes dominance. </span><a href="http://nilbymouth.org/what-is-sectarianism/">Nil By Mouth</a> the leading Scottish charity, which challenges sectarianism, defines sectarianism as </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">“Narrow-minded beliefs that lead to prejudice, discrimination, malice and ill-will towards members, or presumed members, of a religious denomination”</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">. This defines and stigmatises sectarianism as purely a religious issue. This is not an academic exercise- how we define the word could determine who is to be imprisoned for up to 5 years under the new legislation.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"> W<span>ithout an informed and public debate people will continue to conflate and confuse nationality and religion. The comments of Police Federation Chairman, <a href="http://thegreenunseen.blogspot.com/2011/04/les-gray-two-sides-of-same-coin-old.html">Les Gray</a>, typified this confusion when he is quoted as </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">conflating a 17<sup>th</sup> century King of Scotland, England, and Ireland with a contemporary religious leader: <span class="apple-style-span">"I've been in homes with King Billy on the wall and on the other side with the Pope on the wall, and both sides are just as bad."</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">.</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">This is not to say that “sectarianism” has nothing to do with religion. However, it is unconvincing to frame the violence on the streets of Scotland after Celtic and Rangers play football and amongst men who do not attend church through the prism of the “Great Schism of Western Christianity” (1378-1416) or the Reformation beginning in the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Some Celtic fans do choose to sing ‘Roamin in the Gloamin’ (“Fuck King Billy and John Knox”) and some Rangers fans choose to sing ‘<a href="http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Thornlie_Boys:No_Pope_Of_Rome">No Pope of Rome</a>’ (“No chapels to sadden my eyes”)</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">. These songs clearly emphasise religious identification and some would argue hatred of a religious Other. However, it is difficult rely on religion to explain why many more Celtic fans choose to sing The Soldier’s Song, the Irish national anthem, and Rangers fans, Rule Britannia. It seems misleading to discuss “sectarianism” or so-called “sectarian identities” without reference to nationalism and national identities.<span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">In public political debates, there has been too little mention of the competing views on what nation(s) we belong to when we see Scottish, Irish, Northern Irish, and British flags being waved at our football grounds, some of which rightly or wrongly spark antagonism.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> <span>It is this antagonism which is often at the heart of tensions we tend to describe as “sectarian”. One song sung by Rangers fans and <a href="http://celticquicknews.co.uk/?p=4027">cited as racist and sectarian</a> by Celtic fans is The Famine Song (“the famine is over, why don’t you go home?”)</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">. This song does not refer to religion. The song is about telling descendents of Irish immigrants they are no longer welcome in the nation of Scotland and that they should return to their “home” nation. Many Rangers fans and <a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2011/04/13/old-firm-cops-vow-to-snatch-hate-song-bigots-from-easter-sunday-showdown-crowd-86908-23057861/">Strathclyde Police</a> assert that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_of_the_Old_Brigade">The Boys of the Old Brigade</a></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "> is equally “sectarian”</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "> (“On Easter morn’ I sigh, for I recall my comrades all, and dark old days gone by”). The song laments the loss of life during the Easter Rising, in which Catholics and Protestants participated. The reference to joining the IRA in the song is what is cited on the blogs of Rangers supporters as “sectarian” and crucially “<a href="http://www.vanguardbears.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150:celtic-fans-attract-stasi-attention">anti-British</a>”</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">. Framing how people think about Irish history today solely through the prism of religion is problematic when people today know Protestants and Catholics alike participated in the Easter Rising. This religious prism fails to help us understand that at heart what is being criticised as sectarian in The Boys of the Old Brigade is about national boundaries not simply religious ones: “anti-British” not anti-Protestant. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">The main concern raised in the <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s4/committees/justice/inquiries/OBFTCBill/OB7.pdf">Rangers Supporters Assembly</a>’s</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "> contribution to the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee was that of the singing of “non-patriotic songs”. This presumably refers to songs which are patriotic towards Ireland over Britain such as The Boys of the Old Brigade. The Rangers Supporters Assembly claim this should be included as a prosecutable offence under the new legislation, illustrating the tensions over <i>national</i> identification being played out here. Online debates amongst Rangers fans and indeed former Rangers director Donald Findlay QC have sought to redefine the term “Fenian” from common usage on Scotland’s streets as a general slur with anti-Catholic connotations against Celtic fans to now mean Irish nationalists. “Fenian bastard” is then argued to be a permissible phrase because it insults and excludes people on the basis of their national and political identification. However, it seems unreasonable to argue that it is unacceptable to stir hatred against religious groups but it is acceptable to stir hatred against groups defined by national identification.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; ">The Harps Community Project said “preconceptions surrounding cultural expression and identity with reference to Scotland’s Irish community must be discussed out-with this enforced sectarian narrative of Catholic versus Protestant”. In other words, national heritage should not be understood within an unconsciously bigoted framing of Scottish to mean Protestant and Irish as Catholic. Singing the Boys of the Old Brigade or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry's_Walls">Derry’s Walls</a></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "> <i>may</i> reveal something about someone’s national identity or their politics but it does not directly express religious hatred and it tells us nothing about someone’s religion. </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">Hatred of the Other should not be tolerated but by defining “sectarianism” in purely religious terms we ignore the competing national identities, which are often at the heart of these communal tensions. Rogers Brubaker, an eminent expert on Nationalism, tells us national conflicts are not resolved- politicians can’t suddenly change how people identify themselves. What they can do is help create an environment in which conflict is less necessary and those identities have less political relevance. Allowing people to celebrate how they identify themselves without fear of persecution, providing they are not celebrating hatred against other groups, would help create such an environment. Creating a hierarchy of sectarianisms where we can abuse people on the grounds of national identification but not on religion may do the opposite. <span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-56198629543693134472011-08-26T16:06:00.000-07:002011-08-27T06:13:03.041-07:00Fear is the Path to the Dark Side<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRdH_ZweyF2smI8G9lg4LvZNVSpW2SCD9bi3CoyDdL0VOrncLYo3zyG45q5isN395AlxAzZ4DJFAEtMQ1cvDUgjztD8GowHGJe4VkM6sYrB_mZtu8yFwYYXl27B5tiDS6pn2bVh1gUJsQ/s1600/IMG_0001.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRdH_ZweyF2smI8G9lg4LvZNVSpW2SCD9bi3CoyDdL0VOrncLYo3zyG45q5isN395AlxAzZ4DJFAEtMQ1cvDUgjztD8GowHGJe4VkM6sYrB_mZtu8yFwYYXl27B5tiDS6pn2bVh1gUJsQ/s320/IMG_0001.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5645305000622830642" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Be it fear of the Jew, the Communist, or the terrorists in our midst, fear clouds people’s judgment and drives them to demand that something, anything, must be done to alleviate that fear. Fear is used by politicians in democracies round the world to win votes and indeed by journalists to sell their writings. One could be forgiven for fearing that Britain was on the verge of the apocalypse given the sensationalist media coverage of the August riots, much of which emphasised fear over analysis. Mary Riddell of the Telegraph wrote of how “the capital city of an advanced nation has reverted to a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html">Hobbesian dystopia of chaos and brutality</a>”. However, the looting and the subsequent response to clean up Britain’s shopping districts, both organised through social networking sites, were utterly anathema to Thomas Hobbes’ description of a frightening state of nature of “a war of every man against every man”. Such consideration though is simply less exciting and less likely to sell newspapers. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">The <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/09/nottingham-riots-police-station-firebombed-by-gang-115875-23333317/">“firebombing”</a> of<span> </span><span> </span>Canning Circus police station in Nottingham was heavily reported. What media outlets didn’t follow up with was the less frightening story that little damage was done, as the photograph above shows, and Nottingham’s city centre was bustling with shoppers the following day. There were, of course, very serious events breaking out across England. However, by reporting all news in sensationalist fashion with few qualifications and less explanation, fear would keep many of us in our homes and away from the “war of every man against every man” purportedly engulfing our “advanced nation”. This is not old news we should forget about. This fear will be re-activated in the campaign for the next UK general election by politicians looking for media-friendly sound-bites. Law and order will most certainly feature. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Of course we should not be surprised by this emphasis on fear over contemplation and the sound-bite over evidence. In one discussion of the causes of the riots, the BBC invited the likes of David Starkey, known for his deliberate courting of controversy and not for his sociological expertise, to give his ‘expert’ view. His explanation was that the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAGTE_RGN4c">“whites have become blacks”</a>. He then responded to the accusation of having no empirical evidence for his claims by saying “these are times when we need plain-speaking”. On the contrary, these are times where we need evidence and considered analysis to help us disentangle the masses of misinformation such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s admission that they “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14510329">may have misled journalists</a>” into believing Mark Duggan fired on police. The News of the World phone hacking scandal has revealed little but that there exists a murky series of relationships between the media, the police, and politicians. Our right to vote may not be under threat but our right to know how we are governed and thus what we are actually voting for is in jeopardy. This is all the more so when frightening sound-bites trump analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">David Cameron’s comments that we are walking into a “slow-motion moral collapse” reflects and helps reproduce the panic following such events.<span> </span>Sensationalism produced the emergence of countless “armchair generals”, in the language of Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde. Succumbing to fear over contemplation, these “armchair generals” demanded the use of rubber bullets and water cannons, despite their limited knowledge of why such tactics are deployed. As Hugh Orde told the media, these have been deployed in Northern Ireland, the former for self-defence in life-threatening situations and the latter for dealing with massive, unmoveable crowds. Neither of these were primary features of looting which saw gangs moving swiftly from shop to shop. This didn’t stop David Cameron from very publicly announcing his personal authorisation to use <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14475363">both tactics</a>.<span> </span>This pandered to and reproduced a climate of fear. Neither water cannons nor rubber bullets needed to be used in the end but the political drive to appear to be tough on crime and win votes was fulfilled. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">More importantly, David Cameron’s claims of “moral collapse” do not reflect any <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0fcf194e-c729-11e0-a9ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1VJUjlZJd">empirical evidence</a>. The Home Office’s own <a href="http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011?view=Binary">statistics</a> show how violent crime in England and Wales has been in near steady decline since 1996. Despite the repeated references to youth gone wild on Britain’s streets, the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/sentencing-stats2009.pdf">Ministry of Justice</a> reported a 9.6% drop in the number of 10-17 year olds convicted of crime between 1999 and 2009. On the surface, the evidence certainly suggests that David Cameron is exaggerating for political effect. He is using fear of moral collapse to build a reputation of being tough on crime yet this fear stops people from calmly considering the details of what is actually happening. What better way to garner support for a law and order driven agenda at the next general election than an electorate frightened of “rising crime” induced by “moral collapse”? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">Many of the frightened electorate have called for harsher sentences for looters and they have got them. Judges have guidelines for minimum and maximum sentencing but they also have discretion within those parameters. Judges have responded to politicians and frightened voters with unusually long sentences as both the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14595102">BBC</a> and the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/18/full-picture-of-riot-sentences">Guardian</a> have revealed. People involved in the looting are being given harsher sentences for crimes than would ordinarily be the case; 25% harsher according to the statistical analysis of the Guardian. The rule of law and equality before the law are central features of democracy. Yet here we see the application of new and unwritten rules emerging from a climate of fear and “straight-talking” instead of debate and analysis. One wonders how the imprisonment of Thomas Downey of Manchester for 16 months for taking donuts from a Krispy Kreme outlet is justifiable with reference to equality before the law. How can placing Michael Fitzpatrick, 18 in a young offender’s institution for two years and four months for drinking stolen champagne be explained with reference to codified rules of law? They can’t be. Judges in Manchester produced <a href="http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/judgments/2011/sentencing-remarks-r-v-carter-and-others">their own recommendations</a> because the guidelines they are required to work under, according to the rule of law, did not cover burglary and looting in mass riots. The sentence of two young men to four years in prison for using <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/17/facebook-cases-criticism-riot-sentences">facebook</a> to incite a riot that never even happened was not determined according to established legal guidelines because they don’t yet exist. Paul Mendell QC, a former chairman of the Bar Association warned “the idea that the rulebook goes out of the window strikes me as inherently unjust…guidelines are not tramlines…I don’t see why [magistrates] should be told to disregard these”. However, as Communities Minister Eric Pickles told the Guardian “we cannot have people frightened in their beds, frightened in their homes”. Fear then seems enough to justify ruining two men’s lives with little consideration for the implications for two of democracy’s central tenets, the rule of law and equality before it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto;text-align: justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">The separation of powers, particularly the separation of the executive and the judiciary, are pivotal to a functioning democracy. However, many of the responses of democratically elected leading politicians to the riots have revealed serious weaknesses in their commitment to this political ideal. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/17/england-riots-ministers-wrong-courts-carlile">Menzies Campbell</a> indicated this when he said “politicians should be neither cheering nor booing in the matter of sentencing. It is an important part of our constitutional principles that political influence is not directed at the judicial system”. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister saw fit to do just that by defending or cheering these tough sentences. He said it was good that courts were sending a “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14559294">tough message</a>”. We can leave to one side our feelings regarding the length of the sentences to ponder why the head of the executive sees fit to comment on and ultimately influence the future behaviour of the supposedly independent judiciary. The function of courts in a democracy is not to “send out tough messages” as the executive defines them but to apply the rule of law. It is only the place of the executive to endorse the decisions of the judiciary in authoritarian states where powers are not separated. David Cameron’s claim that he thinks “it’s right that we should allow the courts to make decisions about sentencing” is unlikely to be upheld if they feel under pressure from the Prime Minister to send out “tough messages” instead of applying rules. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Those who are struck by fear are less likely to ask what is going on and are instead more likely to demand ‘action’ regardless of the consequences. Fear is blinding us to look beyond the immediate and consider the future of a country under a government which can set the rule of law to one side if we are frightened. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeKS0gNz48">Fear is indeed the path to the dark side</a></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-7587920588347541682011-08-16T04:43:00.000-07:002011-08-26T06:40:59.816-07:00Civilising Globalisation?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNw1uXkKIGkcGI5vB4yCLSlZjy76XeFGFQKVu9M90ZbEapkR18DMf8RvFe_9TrF6A75zphDLZFDrDt3j2nXmGIQiv2xEItI9PjvMZX1s3Vgf6sQ3Qb9VG_TAl8hi_Yx9GCJVwgX2I0CTE/s1600/fit+charging.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNw1uXkKIGkcGI5vB4yCLSlZjy76XeFGFQKVu9M90ZbEapkR18DMf8RvFe_9TrF6A75zphDLZFDrDt3j2nXmGIQiv2xEItI9PjvMZX1s3Vgf6sQ3Qb9VG_TAl8hi_Yx9GCJVwgX2I0CTE/s320/fit+charging.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641418386374830082" /></a><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">During his scientific socialist phase Karl Marx predicted the <i>inevitability</i> of capitalism’s demise. He predicted that logic of capital was such that capitalist’s drive for ever-increasing returns would result in a spiralling reduction in wages. The increasing squeeze of capital from workers, who would eventually be unable to purchase the products of their own labour, would result in revolt and the seizure of the means of production. This self-defeating nature of capitalism would lead workers to reorganise the social relations of production such that wealth would be distributed more or less equally. Marx was of course writing about 19<sup>th</sup> century international capitalism not 21<sup>st</sup> century global capitalism characterised by the increasingly free flow of goods and services across national borders. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s <i>Empire </i><span>argued</span> that with the growth of the power of transnational corporations and global financial institutions, power has been taken out of the hands of the state and dispersed. As globalisation decentres power, resistance too is decentred. Today, capitalism’s discontents don’t simply seize government buildings or factories. They destroy McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other powerful symbols of transnational capital. Thanks to globalisation, it no longer makes sense to talk of the ‘1<sup>st</sup> world’ and ‘3<sup>rd</sup> world’ as fixed, national, geographical categories. Within the same cities we have pockets of economically prosperous, socially mobile, and aesthetically pleasing districts surrounded by residential areas with stagnating growth, high rates of crime, unemployment, and poor standards of health (Ealing Green/Ealing, Kelvinside/Parkhead, Beverly Hills/South Central). The World Health Organisation’s 2008 report found that in Glasgow, the postcode lottery is such that life expectancy for men living in Calton is as low as 54 years old but for those living in Lenzie, a 15 minute car ride away, life expectancy is 82. There are worlds still far away from what Michael Camdessus, the former director of the IMF, described as the civilising forces of Globalisation.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">Recent events across England have led many people ask what is the rioters’ ‘cause’ and indeed many politicians to insist that we do not even ask such questions; it is criminality, end of story. Yet ask we must. It may be that these are rebels without causes for there were no attempts to seize the means of production. But where and what are the means of production today in a globalised economy? Ford makes more money from insuring cars than building and selling them. Pieces of paper which symbolise wealth lead to a greater accumulation of other pieces of paper which symbolise wealth; much more so than actually producing anything in today’s global economy. Wealth is primarily generated through services so seizing factories would be senseless. In the age of globalisation we have seen major protests at every G8 gathering with highly symbolic sites of transnational capital, such as Starbucks and McDonalds, bearing the brunt of the anger. As power becomes globalised and decentred so too has resistance. Today resistance focuses on attacking these global nodes of power, these symbols of transnational capital. What we have seen across England in August 2011 may have started as a response to police brutality but it spiralled rapidly and morphed into something we can’t yet understand. What we saw was different to the transnationally organised protests at G8 meetings. This was not an attempt to seize the means of production or resist the transnationalisation of capital. Through the looting of clothes stores and electrical appliances brands, goods deemed to be of high status or symbolic value, we see attempts to seize the products of capitalism and bathe in the status they bestow. We don’t see a revolution to radically restructure social order. We see attempts of individuals to reposition themselves in more favourable positions within it. The seemingly chaotic mode of resistance reflects the seemingly chaotic mode of power and of social organisation we enjoy today.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">One response to this is of course to reject the very possibility of meaning behind these acts, file them under irrational, focus solely on punishment, and get back to business as usual. Another counter-argument is that not all participants are poor or even particularly socially marginalised as the prosecution of primary school teachers and the “millionaire’s daughter” attest. However, the chaotic events and the participation of individuals from various sectors of society cannot conceal that every city affected saw young, angry men who see themselves as disenfranchised take to the streets to steal and destroy high status symbols of consumerism. Are we really surprised that generations who have been encouraged to be selfish and have been told by Margaret Thatcher that “there is no such thing as society” feel little moral responsibility towards people outside of their personal, social network? If there is no such thing as society, then outside of the family and the personal network, there can be no bonds and no restrictions regulating the relationships between human beings other than legal ones. Time and time again we hear interviews with participants saying things like “we’re taking from the rich” or “we’re doing it because the government can’t stop us” (Radio 5 Live, 10/8/11, 13:07). If you tell children you have no responsibility to other people unless you can be legally stopped, then when those restrictions disappear as happened when the police lost control, people will indeed steal, rob, and hurt other people. This selfishness is not a disease of any “underclass” or a “sick” section of society as David Cameron lamented. It is everywhere. Next time you are waiting on a train, notice how half the people around you are waiting to jump in front of you. Or in the supermarket, when people park their trolleys in front of what you want to buy and don’t seem to care that you are standing waiting. These are minor, anecdotal examples but I would argue they reflect a self-centredness that is allowed and encouraged. As long as you can get away with it, anything goes- business is business after all. We normalise and we encourage selfishness into norms of behaviour such that those with power are allowed to be selfish but we call it business or profit maximisation. Most people in the UK will tell you, when bankers steal they are given bonuses and when members of parliament steal they only have to pay half of it back.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">David Cameron thankfully acknowledged that this is not simply about <i>all</i> young people in Britain simply being bad. In his terms, many young people live in fear from these supposed ‘bad’ people. But why this sudden admission? What political party has seriously addressed violence and its <i>causes</i> on our streets in the UK? Most young people I know have witnessed assaults on young men by other young men in our city centres whereby police stand on the other side of the road and wave away people’s calls for something to be done. I have visited casualty wards after being the victim of assault and all the medical staff wanted to know was how much I had to drink and then placed me at the back of the queue. This is not because I am marginalised, I am not. Nevertheless, it belies an assumption that as a young male in Britain you will be subject to violence and you are likely to cause it. It’s what young men do. However, as David Cameron admits, this is not just what young men do and often violence is impossible to avoid if one wishes to socialise in Britain’s city centres. One has to ask, why is violence against young men tolerated? It is very telling that when Miss Selfridge’s on Market Street in Manchester is in flames moral outrage is not simply expressed but demanded. However, when young men are assaulted usually by other young men every night in our cities, we hear little outcry. Is it simply that those who are morally outraged don’t see this violence with their own eyes so they leave it be? Are we morally outraged now because it interrupted our selfish desire to go shopping in our city centres and acquire more high status goods from the global economy?</span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">What we become outraged about and choose to label as violence reflects our values. When a young man sets fire to a chain-store we call it violence. These same chain-stores, which most of us buy from, operate in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.business-humanrights.org/Categories/Issues/Labour/Exportprocessingzones?sort_on=publication&batch_size=10&batch_start=14"></a></span><a href="http://www.business-humanrights.org/Categories/Issues/Labour/Exportprocessingzones?sort_on=publication&batch_size=10&batch_start=14"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; ">“Export Processing Zones” </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%">across the developing world</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. This strategy is in place to bypass national laws which regulate labour conditions, wages, and indeed safety standards to prevent violence in the workplace. So why do we call it “profit maximisation”? What is ‘violent’ about stealing an ipad but not so when apple uses microchips produced under slave-like conditions in the South of China and which irreparably damage the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7773011/A-look-inside-the-Foxconn-suicide-factory.html"></a></span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7773011/A-look-inside-the-Foxconn-suicide-factory.html"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; ">environment</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; ">?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%"> The important difference is not material, it’s ideological. It’s called socially constructed values. A young man taking a mobile phone from a looted Carphone Warehouse is theft because it is <i>called</i> theft. When Vodafone forego </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri">£</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">4.8 Billion in tax payments it’s called the “maximisation of shareholder value” because it was permitted by </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/vodafone-tax-case-leaves-sour-taste"></a></span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/vodafone-tax-case-leaves-sour-taste"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; ">HMRC</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%">. Stealing from apple is theft because it is <i>called</i> theft. However, when Apple bypass the rule of law in order to pay South East Asian workers a low wage it is called “outsourcing”. This is because we encourage people to make lots of money more than we encourage them to consider human rights. Angry young men stealing stereos is theft because it is called theft but when bankers steal, it’s called business because we value banks more than we value young men. This is normalised, permissible, and ‘civilised’ theft but it is still theft. This hypocrisy has produced a widespread, popular perception that there is one law for them and another for us. It de-legitimises the very idea of equality before the law, a central principle of democracy, such that people start to believe there is indeed no such thing as society- you take what you can unless you can be stopped. The chaotic and unpredictable power relations of our so-called global age have no written rules and have produced resistance that is equally chaotic, unpredictable, and without rules. If people wish to see ‘civilised’ resistance they had best work towards ‘civilising’ power.</span></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-31847287443007566112011-08-15T10:20:00.001-07:002011-08-26T07:07:16.831-07:00The End of Community?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY9dcA82dDGEWfiqShg11gFpH3C2HDcErD00EVYfe0SKBZWkFvtJcxAiz1glEOJUPpjEe1NOmZNo3XcXzVq7p-e0fTV8UvEnGXRez-GbUyscSVQ-3QAVTIzXRhTcGB5WpYRcha2CSr5MY/s1600/li-620-ukriots-r.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY9dcA82dDGEWfiqShg11gFpH3C2HDcErD00EVYfe0SKBZWkFvtJcxAiz1glEOJUPpjEe1NOmZNo3XcXzVq7p-e0fTV8UvEnGXRez-GbUyscSVQ-3QAVTIzXRhTcGB5WpYRcha2CSr5MY/s320/li-620-ukriots-r.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641134475942172594" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">Nearly forty years ago Maurice Stein’s classic book <i>The Eclipse of Community</i> stimulated a debate on the meaning of community. This followed from his argument that in contemporary or post-modern times we are witnessing the end of community as we know it. More recently Anders Breivik, the far right, self-proclaimed “Marxist hunter”, guilty of the murder of 69 Norwegians, proclaimed the 1950s as a time of community: “Our homes were safe…public schools were excellent…most men treated women like ladies”. It seems every generation melodramatically and conservatively laments the end of familiar forms of social organisation and ways of life to which they are accustomed. People seem to fear social change and they imbue the idea of community with a comfortable and wholly positive familiarity. However, social anthropologists such as Anthony Cohen, have long told us that while community consists of a sense of belonging and inclusion we think of as positive, it is at the same inherently exclusionary. People who do not live in Birmingham are excluded from the local community of Birmingham, those who don’t attend church are necessarily excluded from church going communities, and non-Europeans are excluded from the European community if indeed there is such a thing.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">Reviewing the media response to the August riots across England we hear constant references to community and multiple overlapping uses in the same news story. For example in the one place, we have heard of the Sikh community (religious), the Punjabi community (ethno-linguistic), the Southall community (regional/residential), the British community (national), and the civilised community (ethical). It sounds like we have a lot of community rather than a lack of it. Old and new media alike are littered with references to the response of “the community” with regard to the clean-up of Britain’s streets by ordinary people following the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/10/manchester-riots-broom-army-takes-to-the-streets-for-clean-up-115875-23334305/"></a></span><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/10/manchester-riots-broom-army-takes-to-the-streets-for-clean-up-115875-23334305/">riots</a>. Here, as in general popular usage, community is seen as something inherently positive, inclusionary, and something of which we generally morally approve. However, this conceals that belonging and social bonds are often formed through ways of life which we do not approve of and amongst individuals we may detest. One thing overlooked in popular debates on the riots is that gangs are a type of community: social groups with a sense of belonging, cohered through face-to-face contacts and the use of Blackberry messenger services in this age of global communications. As far back as 1927, sociologist Frederic Thrasher wrote in <i>The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago</i> that gangs were characterised by “meeting face to face, milling movement through space as a unit, conflict, and planning. The result of this collective behaviour is the development of tradition, unreflective internal structure, esprit de corps, solidarity, morale, group awareness, and attachment to a local territory”. Group awareness or belonging, solidarity, and attachment to a local territory are perhaps the fundamental bases of community. The speed by which gangs were able to move from one looting site to another in huge numbers connected through Blackberry exhibited both organisation and solidarity. What appeared to be gangs on Bethnal Green road chanted “Bethnal Green” as they looted Tesco. Residents of Ealing Green recounted in interviews how gangs from other, less leafy parts of Ealing chanted the names of their housing estates as they set fire to local pubs. It’s just that the media don’t feel comfortable calling gangs a community because their behaviour is often illegal, seen as negative, and in conflict with other, more ‘palatable’ forms of community, such as church-goers. One may be uncomfortable with the behaviour of ‘gangs’ but we cannot say these examples do not display a sense of belonging and attachment to where one is from. It displays a pride in one’s ‘roots’ albeit in a very different way from those who chose to sweep the streets of Britain’s city centre shopping districts following the riots.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">It would seem a huge impediment to understanding why this happened as it did and when it did if we fail to look at how this sense of belonging emerges, how it brings people together, and why people choose it over other communities. Prior to the riots, Barbara Wilding, chief constable of South Wales police described entrance to these gang communities: “In many of our larger cities, in areas of extreme deprivation…many have experienced<span> </span>family breakdown, and in place of parental and family role models, the gang culture is now <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2008/jul/02/gangloyaltyhasreplacedfami"></a></span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2008/jul/02/gangloyaltyhasreplacedfami">established<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a>". In other words, people have a need for belonging and when they do not find it at home or are excluded from it elsewhere due to deprivation they will form their own community based on its own rules. Joining a gang and partaking in its communal rituals of violence cannot simply be attributed to bad morals (they are at best a symptom not a cause). It is how some people who have to survive or feel they must succeed in specific social environments fulfil their need for belonging when other outlets are unavailable. It may be reassuring to ‘blame the parents’ such that it absolves oneself of blame but people would be less likely to join a gang if their social environment was such that they were included in communities of a different kind.</p><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto;text-align: justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">In many interviews with local residents of riot-affected areas we heard BBC and Radio 5 live presenters ask “what are <i>the</i> community doing?” as if there is only one community and if one does not adhere to its rules then one is not a member. Exclusion from a sense of community has contributed to getting us into this predicament and this exclusionary language is unlikely to help us out of it. My answer would be that some communities were looting and destroying private property while other communities were cleaning up private property. Many will say this type of focus on language, spending time discussing the meaning of community, is merely academic or beside the point. However, by failing to consider how to define contested concepts we allow the media to do so for us. We don’t always even notice they are using politically loaded definitions as they do not explicitly justify their perspective. This then shapes how we think about these matters <i>because </i>they are not explicit. We all say “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” but how many of us stop to consider the implications of this every time the word “terrorist” is used?<i> </i>The interviewer on Radio 5 live (10/8/11, 12:50) interrupted an interviewee referring to people who participated in the riots as “protestors” to say “don’t call them protesters, they aren’t protesting against anything”. One can argue this is indeed the case but why do we allow supposedly ‘neutral’ interviewers to determine the way ordinary people are allowed or not allowed to describe events and people as they see them? How can we debate if we are not allowed to describe things as we see them? Are we not allowed to even debate what terms we are allowed to use and how we use them? We see a policing of language and drawing of community boundaries through the popular media, which no one complains is academic because it is seen as in favour of the all positive, inclusive community: looters = scum, street-cleaners = community. We heard many a caller and indeed many a volunteer street-sweeper refer to ‘looters’ as <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3741881/Twitter-calls-spur-on-riot-clean-up.html"></a></span><a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3741881/Twitter-calls-spur-on-riot-clean-up.html">‘scum’<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a> but without intervention or even comment. Now “scum”, defined as “refuse or worthless matter” appears to be the very antithesis of inclusion and membership in community; the refuse we must get rid of. We are allowed to use this term to describe someone stealing a mobile phone from a shop but are we allowed to call executives of Vodafone scum for dodging <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/10/23/vodafones-tax-case-leaves-a-sour-taste/"></a></span><a href="http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/10/23/vodafones-tax-case-leaves-a-sour-taste/"><span>£</span>4.8 Billion in taxes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a> if we so desired? I doubt it. Yet in my book this was theft of <span>£</span>4.8 Billion from our public services <span> </span>which pales in comparison to the theft of a mobile phone. Some people do indeed call Vodafone executives scum in private but given that we do not hear such references on our airwaves my guess is that we are not allowed to in public debates because they are in positions of power and their theft goes on outside of our vision; they are inside the ‘civilised’ community we are all supposed to be loyal to yet “looters are scum” and must be excluded even if they stole a single mobile phone.</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left:0cm;mso-add-space:auto; text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph">The popular media don’t simply ‘report’ the news, they make the news. By reporting news in a specifically framed way they determine how we are publicly permitted to debate and think about power and violence in Britain. We can see how power works when 16 and 18 year olds are prosecuted and charged for attempting to encourage riots on their <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/09/teenagers-arrested-for-facebook-riot-posting-115875-23332312/"></a></span><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/09/teenagers-arrested-for-facebook-riot-posting-115875-23332312/">facebook pages<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "></span></a>. Yet at the same time, I lost count of the number of people posting on the same site demanding violence against or even the death of the “looters”. They both incite violence but one is a call from a marginalised community and one is from a powerful one. The law either prosecutes on the basis of codified rules or it shouldn’t prosecute at all. Permitting the promotion of violence against looters but not against private property cannot be justified by reference to verifiable rules. It reflects an ideological commitment to a singular, un-contestable community which, if you are not part of, you are “scum”. One may not like the new forms of community emerging in today’s world but this does not mean we can dismiss them or exclude them without any reasoned debate. Exclusion got us into this mess and this exclusion will make things much worse.</p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1294158225567353609.post-12035050976894855002011-08-12T07:39:00.000-07:002011-08-17T10:21:54.989-07:00Boris Johnson: We need less rational enquiry and more moral outrage!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGTt-u5ci6s8QZ9YAfe7gqKaqlisdwPcqG1CN5kf_5pZWPfA0BzPDxmH2UtuFAowdmC6pA4sHwWzt9LdwhvTSKIn0ZK7YTm-PtLk7B-R4B8YlXyfbcq-IvwUUV7qMiPa-_DTu6m18nBCU/s1600/Boris-Johnson-addresses-t-007.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 192px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGTt-u5ci6s8QZ9YAfe7gqKaqlisdwPcqG1CN5kf_5pZWPfA0BzPDxmH2UtuFAowdmC6pA4sHwWzt9LdwhvTSKIn0ZK7YTm-PtLk7B-R4B8YlXyfbcq-IvwUUV7qMiPa-_DTu6m18nBCU/s320/Boris-Johnson-addresses-t-007.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5639979697411611090" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; ">Mayor of London, Boris Johnson announced to the assembled crowd in devastated Clapham that he had “heard too much sociological explanation and not enough condemnation”. That is too much “explanation” of the protests, riots, looting, and violence in the wake of the as yet unexplained shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan police officers. This belied an emerging dichotomy in popular media and everyday discourse in England. We are being told that the ‘Right’ are condemning violence, while the ‘Left’ are justifying it. The ‘Right’ want law and order back and they blame the individual and bad parenting for these events. As David Cameron tells us, “this is a moral problem” and it illustrates the “lack of responsibility” shown by individuals. On the other hand, the ‘Left’ in their efforts to find causes for and meaning behind seemingly random and meaningless chaos are being labelled apologists on 'neutral' radio phone ins and the notorious online comments now widely attached to newspaper articles. Presumably the ‘Left’ then includes Emeritus Professor at Leeds university and pre-eminent Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who claimed that in today’s Britain our identity revolves round the mantra “I shop therefore I am” such that “these are riots of defective and disqualified consumers”. The participants are not starving but many are the disenfranchised in a society where status and prestige are acquired through displays of spending and consumption (Social Europe Journal, 9/8/11). Dr Sean Carey, research fellow at Roehampton University argues <span class="apple-style-span">that “what we are witnessing is a significant symbolic statement about the way power -- the power of life and death exercised by police officers as well as the power to consume -- is arranged in British society”</span> (New Statesman, 9/8/11). Carey is not claiming that the individuals involved necessarily or consciously seek to make symbolic statements but that the overall patterns of these actions nevertheless do.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">In one sense these diverse responses reflect the understanding of human beings by the ‘Right’ and the ‘Left’- atomistic individuals versus social creatures. The ‘Right’ thus need not look far for causes of behaviour because all responsibility lies with the individual. The ‘Left’ on the other hand look for social origins, primarily the socio-economic, in seeking to explain why we do what we do. However, in another sense this can also be framed as a straight-forward categorical error pitting two ideas against one another which are not about the same issue and cannot be compared. Seeking to understand why people do what they do does not amount to condoning it. Otherwise all social scientists are of the ‘left’ and I dread to think what that would say about myself, a student of authoritarian politics and ethnic boundaries in China’s north-west. One can be an existentialist when it comes to morality but still seek to understand why people do what they do. Sociological explanation and moral evaluation are not mutually exclusive. Or as Professor John Brewer put it, sociologists seek to explain social behaviour not explain it away (The Guardian, 12/8/11). If we want to solve problems in our society, and presumably everyone now admits there are many, we have to devote time and resources trying to understand, explain, and address their causes. Moral outrage and calls for retributive punishment are understandable, particularly towards those who destroyed small scale family-run businesses. However, rising passions should be the spark of a rational enquiry not the end. Boris Johnson's outrageous call that he has heard enough "sociological explanation" is tantamount to saying it is wrong to enquire into the causes of these events.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">Since the first night of rioting the phrase ‘mindless criminality’ has been heard across the airwaves, in print, and on the street. As have statements such as “this is not political, it’s just pure opportunism”. We certainly have seen a lot of opportunism and criminality in the last few days but we still have to ask why. Why is this happening now? What makes it happen at all? And what can we do so it doesn’t keep happening? The answers won’t come overnight and certainly not in dismissals of further enquiry. Whether we explain social phenomena in terms of atomistic individuals or social groups, or a plethora of other alternatives which will hopefully emerge in the coming days,months, and years, we still have to explore why people do what they do. That is indeed if we are serious about addressing such problems rather than releasing media-friendly sound-bites in a political game to be elected. The answer that “because they are bad people” or “their parents are bad people” is not enough. Why are they bad people and what has made them behave in that way? These events have involved different types of people doing different things for different reasons. This seems evident in the first convictions including a primary school teaching assistant, an undergraduate student, and the “daughter of a millionaire” to quote the tabloids. However, there are patterns already emerging that are highly symbolic- every city affected had their centres of consumerism, their shopping centres attacked by gangs of young men wishing to seize what they understand to be high status goods.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">We also have to ask why we are encouraged to immediately and without equivocation condemn the actions of un-convicted individuals. The shooting of Mark Duggan and the nature of the police involvement remain under investigation and as was reiterated on Radio 5 live (10/8/11) whenever the subject was breached, “we can’t talk about that”. Of course this is couched in terms of respect for an ongoing investigation and how we are yet to have the full facts but this respect is not accorded to ordinary people. It belies the hypocrisy and inequality inherent in social relations in Britain today which is certainly not the only problem here but it is a particularly glaring one. Bonuses for bankers, Vodafone’s tax scams, and unaccountable tabloids are all topics which have recently provoked great anger across the UK and all which threaten the legitimacy of the very idea of equality before the law. Is there anyone left who actually thinks that material wealth and political power don’t afford people greater legal rights? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">Educated at Eton and Oxford David Cameron will have little if any first-hand experience of the social environment in Britain’s most deprived areas or those where gangs are as much social safety networks as they are a form of ‘criminality’. This in itself is not necessarily a problem but he like all of us ought to listen to those who do live in such areas if we want to understand them. However, our Prime Minister is yet to show that he wants to listen to the big society he claims is his “passion”. He is yet to respond to the claims of inequality and police brutality on our streets. Riots on the scale we have seen reflect deep-rooted problems. If you want them to go away, the carrots of inclusion are as crucial as the sticks of exclusion. So Minister of State for Housing and Local Government Grant Shapps will have to seriously think through the consequences of his proposed plan to evict from social housing any family who had a single member involved. It seems unlikely that making rioters homeless will make them less likely to steal or make Britain safer. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin">An anonymous 25 year old involved in rioting in Liverpool shows us how the supposedly mindless participants understand the causes behind these events as nothing new. This is despite the political drive to represent these events as something no one could have predicted: "Fuck the police, man. They are not all bad but most of them are. No-one around here has got any liking for the police. Fuck them. Police patrol these streets every night of the week and we only get to riot every few years. They can't come here laying down the law like they do all year round. People are rioting because the riot is finally here" </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin">(The Guardian, live feed, 10/8/11). Let us ask those who commit such crimes why they do what they do not because we need to ‘pander’ to their every whim but because their perspectives will help us understand what is happening more than those of people whom have never even been to where they live.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p>Thor's Bearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16590436673539789545noreply@blogger.com0