Political Identity

"This paper proposes a model of dialectical development of the society, created by the dialectical schemes and formulas based on a binary notation (dialectic model of East and West, the political economy model, and others).
Предлагаются модели диалектического развития общества, созданные с помощью диалектических схем и формул на основе двоичного счисления (модели диалектики Востока и Запада, политэкономические модели, и другие)."

"It was after the United States presidential election race of 2008, and the night of the inauguration of Barak Obama the first "social media president", when I simply registered a page for a “politician” on Facebook in the name of Mir Hossein Mousavi. As a result of a campaign based on the organizing principle of social networking that managed to make the most out of new media and virtual networks, he took office as the first African American president. His campaign understood and harnessed the power of interaction through online social media platforms not only to get out his message, but also to engage diverse communities into action.
At that time, the socio-political environment of Iran was still foggy. As the new political coalition of the president and the supreme leadership was about to establish, the reformist coalition was still negotiating for its candidate for a race who turned out to be Mousavi in late March 2009. Until then, a small community became “supporters” of that page who noticed Mohammad Khatami’s references regarding who to become candidate. When Mousavi announced his candidacy, he called for the slogan “for each citizen, one camp” and introduced “the book of the green government” which was a comprehensive multilateral strategic plan to stabilize the country’s economical, social and political fragile situation.

In this context and inspired by my methodological observations of the use of social media platforms I realized the power and focused on utilizing different aspects of web technologies to build a network of interacting activists who are trying to frame their visions and demands from the future government. But it wasn't just virtual social media, it was the whole social network that worked in conjunction with one another, complementing each other and promoting the same singular message of the change that can happen if people on these platforms helped to elect Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Many supporters engaged in creating and producing media content as well as in organizing actual events and gatherings such as the 2 Khordad (May 23rd ) meeting, and the green human chain from Tajrish (North Tehran) to the train station (south Tehran). Political organizations along with local and international supporters connected, collected, cultivated and channeled during the time of the campaign, while the expensive campaign of Ahmadinejad only managed to collect supporters with instrumental commitment who had immediate benefits.

Mousavi spent the last two decades mostly on art rather than on politics after he was pushed out after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, and rejected the offer to run as the reformist candidate several times. Starting with his announcement, he approached a “counter- framing” of the collective Iranian identity, with a decentralized strategy which strengthened the role of collective meanings and let the content of the frame of the collective identity, including demands and visions, be negotiated outcomes generated by active participants through an interactive and discursive process. As a result, the color symbolism suggested by some of his religious supporters not only overtook the symbolic representation of the campaign, but later manifested itself in the name of the first new media based social movement in the region: The Iranian Green Movement.

His person enjoyed charismatic influence as a result of his prototypical position; as a “conservative reformer” he best embodied the behavioral patterns, to which others members from both camps (Conservatives & Reformists) were conforming. But the “master” frame designed to be constructed of “shared” rather than “set” meanings was differently perceived by various groups and yet the joint dissent was with falsehood, irreverence and immorality of the governing regime.

Both the statistics of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard’s Likes and user interactions show a vast growth between May 10th when he gave remarkable introductory speech at the Ministry of Interior while officially registering for candidacy, and June 20th when Neda Agha-Soltan’s death was captured by the international media as the face of a movement. During this time, international attention was drawn to the doubted results of the election and the reaction of the governing regime to questions and dissent. The first violence broke out near a Basij militia headquarter near Azadi Square, where millions took to in silence on June 15th 2009. 

After the 29th of June, the idea of attending a government run demonstration pushed its way through the mainstream of the active networks, who were still connected and were able to organize (such as the Facebook Page of Mousavi), demonstrations were held nearly each month. Rafsanjani’s in his last Friday prayer advocated for the rights of political prisoners and dissidents of the election results, where Mousavi & Green Movement supporters showed a strong presence remembering him that “if you keep silent, you are a betrayer” by their chants. Further, September 18th, the “Qods day” and December 27th, the “Bloody Ashura” remarked examples on how the collective dissent could show up, framed as a collective identity with symbols, slogans and a code of conduct, in government backed ceremonial days while Mousavi and Karroubi in some cases announced to “join the crowds”.
The “Trojan Horse” strategy suggested by activists for the (31st) anniversary of the revolution, prevailed the strategy suggested by Mousavi who suggested to "attend the rally with the spirit of togetherness while maintaining our identity" on February 11, 2010. The regime offensively prevented any show of force by the Green Movement, who failed to uncover. Of course, the circulating records of violence especially at the Bloody Aashura strengthened the atmosphere of fear too. As a result, no demonstration of the Green Movement could be organized for about a year, especially due to the fact that the regime was non-negotiable for possibilities to recognize the dissent and to tolerate any protest.

With the start of the Arab spring, Mousavi in a statement warned the regime about the consequences of the continuation of the policy of domination and terror, and that strategy would finally turn into its own opposite rendering “the day of anger” and days of national fury inevitable. He remarks that “the Pharaohs usually hear the voice of the people when it is too late”. Consequently, Mousavi & Karroubi, the two accredited leaders of the green movement asked for a permit to hold a public demonstration on Monday Feb 14th 2011 in solidarity with the freedom-seeking movements of the people of region, especially the brave and courageous movements of the people of Tunisia and Egypt in fight against dictatorship. But as the government refused to give official permit, supporters still promoted for the demonstration, which took place sporadically under the heavy shadow of security forces who were openly threatening with violence.

Eversince, the collective dissent about the election results moved into the background and Mousavi and Karroubi together with their wives were held under house arrest with strict control over their contacts to the outside world. The Green Movement, as captured by Mousavi in many of his official statements, interviews, comments and letters, is being reviewed by some supporters while others still strive to find a way to mobilize. Yet the range of dissent between Iranians has steadily diverged. This can be observed both in political developments within the power structure, as well as in social developments within the discourse of The Green Movement.

Virtual activism allowed authoritarian societies in the Middle East to collect their dissent, and to frame a new identity and discourse online. But actual networks still seem to have their roots outside of the cyberspace. However, the key to mobilizing leadership remains the perceived credibility of the source, be it virtual or real."

During the tumultuous closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the prospect of democracy loomed and as intensified global economic and strategic competition reshaped the political imagination, British thinkers grappled with the question of how best to organize the empire. Many found an answer to the anxieties of the age in the idea of Greater Britain, a union of the United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and southern Africa. In The Idea of Greater Britain, Duncan Bell analyzes this fertile yet neglected debate, examining how a wide range of thinkers conceived of this vast "Anglo-Saxon" political community. Their proposals ranged from the fantastically ambitious--creating a globe-spanning nation-state--to the practical and mundane--reinforcing existing ties between the colonies and Britain. But all of these ideas were motivated by the disquiet generated by democracy, by challenges to British global supremacy, and by new possibilities for global cooperation and communication that anticipated today's globalization debates. Exploring attitudes toward the state, race, space, nationality, and empire, as well as highlighting the vital theoretical functions played by visions of Greece, Rome, and the United States, Bell illuminates important aspects of late-Victorian political thought and intellectual life.

"In un tempo in cui la divisione sociale del lavoro muta a ritmo inaudito e in cui tutti i valori tradizionali sono dis-integrati dal potente moto acceleratorio della tecnologia, l’identità individuale subisce attacchi sempre più profondi e radicali.
Ci si chiede – a volte – se in un mondo che cambia così velocemente, abbia ancora senso costruirsi una identità – e quindi necessariamente riconoscersi in una storia sociale, politica, filosofica – quando le vere identità sono sempre più trattate dai poteri dominanti come un ostacolo e un fardello in un sistema-mondo che richiede la massima disponibilità del corpo e la minima rivendicazione identitaria."

In this paper I explore the social, political and cultural work the traitor’s body publicly exposed and executed body was doing in the highly unstable and rapidly changing context of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England. Specifically, it considers a number of spectacular executions where the traitor’s body emerged as a particularly potent site of disruption and challenge to the gender and status-bound categories of ‘knight’ and ‘nobleman’. Under the formal codes of late medieval civil and common law, as well as the informal chivalric code that shaped noble values and guided elite male behaviour, the traitor was constructed as a man who violated intimate bonds of love and blood between men. In the elaborate rituals of execution, the traitor’s body was fatally marked and rejected as the perverse, monstrous, and feminised ‘other’ of the idealised aristocratic masculinity embodied by the ‘good knight’. However, the cases I examine in this paper in fact exposed the inherent tensions and instabilities within those very foundational categories of nobility, knighthood, and elite masculinity through which the late medieval political community was structured and functioned. In these cases, the traitor’s executed body failed to serve its intended purpose as a site where the masculine body politic was re-integrated through the process of division and excision of its demonstrably deviant members.  Instead, it unexpectedly became a powerful signifying site where deep conflicts over aristocratic, urban, and royal claims to authority were made manifest, destabilising late medieval claims to ‘natural’ privilege and power that rested on an ambiguous and conflicted combination of noble blood and lineage with a certain performance of aristocratic masculinity based on the chivalric code.

In 1415, just prior to Henry V’s departure on campaign in France, the English noble Henry Lord Scrope of Masham was executed for treason. Like most traitors, Lord Scrope was charged with having betrayed his king and his Christian duty, but the records of his trial also include a more unusual accusation, that he had betrayed ‘the tongue in which he was born’. The idea of treason as a betrayal of tongue was reflected in other fifteenth century treason cases, and it leads one to question what ‘tongue’ signified in a context where the lines between being ‘English’ and being ‘other’ were becoming more sharply drawn in response to endemic war. This paper uses treason as a cultural lens through which to explore how communal identity was being constructed and contested in medieval England. In particular, it asks whether we can read the discourse of tongue in treason accusations as an indicator of the formation of a distinctive sense of national identity during this period, and examines the ways language was intersecting with other key categories of identity such as gender and religion.

Recent scholarship on English state formation has argued that from the later fourteenth century, identity as an English subject was increasingly aligned, politically and legally, with a cultural conception of nationality that was located in birth and language. In this paper, I investigate one aspect of this process by examining the records of a series of treason trials held in London in the early 1400s. Using trial documents from King’s Bench alongside ‘popular’ forms of political expression such as bills and circulated letters, I consider the interplay of language, speech, and agency in the construction of political subjecthood, with particular attention to the way discourses of true and false manhood interacted with concepts of ‘tongue’ in the construction of and resistance to charges of treason.

Written by Jonardon Ganeri, University of Sussex, UK. A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason, this new book surveys in a lively and accessible style the nature of practical and public reason in India. It provides what is missing in Amartya Sen’s widely admired The Argumentative Indian: detailed discussion of the thinkers—dissenters and heretics, as well as mainstream voices—whose astonishing ideas so enrich contemporary discussion.

Demosthenes, I’ll show, has a realistic, non-ideological sense of the elemental flaws of democracy: The ambition and cunning of the few (politicians, etc.)(F1); the want of courage and smarts in the many (ordinary citizens)(F2); the general imprudence and equal fallibility of all (F3); the basic lack of human self-sufficiency (F4). Given the last two, he would find the idea of basing politics on the sufficiency of either moral virtue or expertise dangerous—blue-eyed anyway. Because the first two could be said to be inherent traits in all majorities and elites, any straightforwardly authoritarian or paternalistic scheme is ruled out in fact. Instead, the defects are to be counteracted by making sure all citizens have the best information available and by strengthening their basic capacity for critical thinking and ethical choice. Demosthenes is that rarest of creatures: An intellectual who actually believes popular rule is better than other forms of government.

"This study examines the roles of partisanship, partisan media use, and political discussion in the development of belief gaps. Using national survey data, we construct models of political identity, media use, and discussion factors predicting beliefs on five contested political issues, and find that ideology and partisanship are generally stronger predictors of beliefs than is education. Notably, each has independent effects on belief outcomes. Contrary to some concerns that the Internet especially promotes partisan clustering, use of partisan traditional media – television and radio – is by far the strongest information-related predictor of belief outcomes, while partisan social media use and partisan discussion are relatively weak and inconsistent. These findings suggest that political elites continue to exert significant influence over the perceptions of rank and file partisans.

Keywords: belief gap, partisan media, social media, political discussion, public opinion "

"Multiculturalism is now seen by many of its critics as the source of intercultural and social tensions, fostering communal segregation and social conflicts. While the cultural diversity of contemporary societies has to be acknowledged as an empirical and demographic fact, whether multiculturalism as a policy offers an optimal conduit for intercultural understanding and social harmony has become increasingly a matter of polarised public debate.

This book examines the contested philosophical foundations of multiculturalism and its, often controversial, applications in the context of migrant societies. It also explores the current theoretical debates about the extent to which multiculturalism, and related conceptual constructs, can account for the various ethical challenges and policy dilemmas surrounding the management of cultural diversity in our contemporary societies. The authors consider common conceptual and empirical features from a transnational perspective through analysis of the case studies of Australia, Canada, Columbia, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Uruguay.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, international studies, multiculturalism, migration and political sociology."