Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

Skonieczny, Amy

doi: 10.1177/030437541003500101pmid: N/A

Recent and past events indicate that the meanings, effects, and outcomes of globalization are highly contested. Despite this, an underlying assumption of inevitability characterizes dominant globalization discourses. How is it possible that inevitability claims persist despite multiple contestations? In this article, the author makes two arguments. The first corrects a pervasive problem in the literature that separates contingency and inevitability as two competing logics of globalization; the second proposes a new analytic approach, based on a postcolonial critique, that more appropriately challenges teleological arguments while explaining their persistence. This approach is illustrated through an examination of an encounter that took place during an antiglobalization rally in Washington, D.C., in April 2000 and in a rethinking of our current economic crisis and the “new thrift” that has changed US consumer behavior.

Joseph, Jonathan

doi: 10.1177/030437541003500102pmid: N/A

Are international organizations using the issue of poverty reduction as a new way to approach global governmentality? This article recognizes that serious problems are involved in so approaching the idea of global governmentality, given the lack of success these strategies have. It is suggested here that such strategies operate not to improve the condition of populations but as a means for regulating states and their governments. Once states, not populations, are recognized as the main targets, it can be seen that features of governmentality are working from a distance to responsibilize state conduct through ownership, partnership, and continuous monitoring. KEYWORDS: governmentality, Foucault, poverty, PRSP, World Bank

Demmers, Jolle; Mehendale, Sameer S.

doi: 10.1177/030437541003500103pmid: N/A

This article argues for the need to identify and grapple with the complexities of the relation between xenophobia and neoliberalism. In the case of the Netherlands, the rise of xenophobia is part of a larger process of a mostly market-controlled reclaiming of symbolic forms of collectiveness in an increasingly atomized society. The 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker-provocateur Theo van Gogh played a crucial role in cementing a “culturalist,” anti-Islam regime of truth. The analysis of the van Gogh murder informs about how, in the atomized market society, the search for new forms of togetherness has translated, in the Netherlands, into a turn to the ethnos, with fantasies of purity and the moralization of culture and citizenship. Where the neoliberal project has, largely unnoticed, abolished the collective standards and solidarities of the post-World War II era, the faces of immigrants have served as ideal, identifiable flash points for new repertoires of belonging and othering.

Lappalainen, Pertti

doi: 10.1177/030437541003500104pmid: N/A

In this article, “the basic idea is to introduce the idea of style as an approach to (political) activity and, especially, as an alternative practice to ideological activity.”Using the example of animal-rights activism, the author posits something “decidedly new” in Finnish civic activity, which traditionally has been channelled through institutions: Finnish movements have been state-oriented, with demands being addressed to the government, and have emphasized knowledge-based rationality as the measure for competent activity. The author categorically rejects “the notion that, in politics, style is anything more than a superficial curtain, behind which the true contents of politicking can be found,” and argues that the traditional style of activity has changed recently toward one called action. The most essential dimension of this action style is unpredictability. Choosing this style means making a (political) judgment, situation by situation. The repertoire of collective activity has enlarged, and actors are now ready to act in the most radical and surprising style.