women as individuals were still subordinated to the masculine-controlled interests of the group, ‘which aimed to prevent any divisions that could be provoked by the spouse’, through arranged, endogamous marriage of young brides who could be easily controlled, and subjected to the strict regulations of gender segregation and seclusion.9 Kin networks also operated like clientele systems to gain access to political power, for example through relatives in local government who could fix access to jobs, land and favourable planning decisions.10 This patriarchal model held
opponents (leading to or deepening internal political conflict). As such, when resources are held purely in the public-political realm they are seen as a potential source of conflict. Privatisation is seen as a way of removing the possibility of such political abuse of resources. Its aim is to ensure that political (and therefore potentially violent) competition over resources is replaced by a more neutral mode of competition based on the efficiency of competing private interests which are focused on maximising financial wealth as opposed to maximising political power
Luhmann’s periodization of the emergence of modern functionally differentiated social systems).9 Rather than trying to discover the biology of politics, or the politics of biology, Foucault argued that one should study the historical development and deployment of multiple strategies and technologies for the political administration of biological life as normalized phenomena. For Foucault, biopolitics came to mean a new form of political power (added to his famous though fuzzy typology of sovereign power, pastoral power and disciplinary power),10 the object of which is
dichotomies. Those able to facilitate urban development projects were immediately positioned as those with power and influence and, as a consequence, the transformation of urban landscapes secured political power. Gaps in marginal regions result in a vacuum, filled by a range of documentary practices, including the face of martyrs on billboards, lamp posts, walls, commemorative structures and across public spaces.11 Such zones of indistinction thus become zones of possibility wherein agency can be exerted amid efforts to regulate life. Urban development and the
. The community was experiencing a multitude of health and local environmental challenges due to the daily dosings associated with life in close proximity to a petrochemical facility. Residents sought a radical solution to their predicament: they wanted the company that operated the facility to relocate the entire population of their small town, yet the community lacked sufficient public or political power to leverage their neighbor to the negotiating table. Enter the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LBB), a non-profit situated within the chemical corridor of Louisiana that
suggest) had his own agenda in the composition, will be a matter for 58 MUP/Champion_03_Ch2 58 27/2/03, 10:17 am Communities of readers debate. What is manifest is his intimacy with the agents of political power. Writing could make a difference. Toland was proud of his abilities to influence public debate: indeed he forwarded to Harley evidence of the reception of the Memorial by the dissenting minister John Shower who regarded it as ‘the most judicious and seasonable of anything lately printed’. So much was Shower impressed that he intended to buy twenty
appears that she sometimes agreed in the end simply to save face. She could not be the Great White Queen, for she lacked the political power – the efficient capacities of Walter Bagehot’s English Constitution – to do much more than advise, even in matters that involved her children and grandchildren. On the public stage, she played the role masterfully, but she struggled, unsuccessfully, to manage
socio-political order that determined everything from socialisation of children, gender relations, property ownership and economic activity, to social networks and political power. While some attempts to transform the position of women involved long-term change, most notably access to education, others, including the personal status law, leant themselves more readily to interventionism and attempts to bring about or impose radical transformation from ‘above’. This explains why the French moves to reform family law proved to be such an extremely sensitive issue. Most
authority (‘the rule of law’), ensuring the non-repudiation (or at least predictability) of contracts, and procedures for ensuring the non-violent transfer of political power are all now standard referents for what is meant by ‘institutions’ (Clague 1997). In development policy circles, these items are usually grouped together as part of a broader discourse on the importance of ‘good governance’. In conjunction with, indeed fuelled by, the comprehensive expansion and refinement of efforts formally to measure institutions,21 these renderings (or variations thereof) are now
. Contrary to seeing privatisation as a source of national pride, 43.6 per cent of respondents declared that they were dissatisfied with the programme compared with 18.9 per cent who declared satisfaction. Additionally, 57.3 per cent of respondents supported demands for a parliamentary debate on the issue (only 9.8 per cent did not). The HDZ secured a large part of the ‘private’ economy for its members through privatisation. It was able to put itself in positions of economic power in regions (such as Istria) where it lacked local political power. Moreover, because of the