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- Convenors:
-
Robin Rodd
(Duke Kunshan University)
Sally Babidge (University of Queensland)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Citizenship, politics and power
- Location:
- Old Quad-G18 (Cussonia Court Room 2)
- Start time:
- 2 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
As the quality of democracy changes in the 21st century, the nature and practice of citizenship must also be reconsidered. We ask what sorts of citizenship practices, embedded in what sorts of moral economies, are surviving the neoliberal 'wavering of death'.
Long Abstract:
Theories of democracy from Aristotle to Habermas have conceived of citizenship as participation in a public sphere, while recent approaches have emphasised the moral conditions associated with citizen agency (Balibar 2014; O'Donnell 2011). As the quality of democracy changes in the 21st century, the nature and practice of citizenship must also be reconsidered. The blurring of public and private interests amidst what Povinelli (2011) refers to as the 'wavering of death' as part of 'late liberalism', raises new questions about the nature of and possibilities for civic participation. A range of anthropological and political critique has questioned how harm is perpetuated as part of the democratic state while being placed outside of the purview of ethics, and how lives and social projects endure given this situation. We ask what sorts of citizenship practices, embedded in what sorts of moral economies, are surviving this neoliberal death drive.
Latin America may have become the centre of empirical research and theoretical debate about the possibilities for citizenship within and beyond liberalism. This region has come to be a source of optimism about the future of liberal democracy or post-liberal possibilities for some, while others problematise the ways that everyday practices challenge public-private, legal-illegal, self-community distinctions at the heart of liberal institutions. We take this recent anthropological scholarship on citizenship in Latin America as a jumping off point, and invite papers that situate citizenship practices within local moral economies, and which grapple with emergent possibilities and constraints on active citizenship.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the understanding of the Panamanian general public that Panamanian ninis’ (youth who don’t work or study) are lazy, idle and inactive. It suggests ninis actively rather than inactively participate in the moral economy through calculated decision-making about lifestyles and work.
Paper long abstract:
In an international context, the 'punitive turn' in youth surveillance has increasingly pitted youth idleness, joblessness and disengagement against a moralising neoliberal rhetoric of personal unrighteousness and responsibility (Wacquant 2009). Under this logic, the government of young subjects sees moral rationalities transformed so that inactive youth become identified as problematic for society.
Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Panama, this paper discusses the young Panamanian population known as ninis who do not work or study, instead preferring to pass their days playing computer games, sleeping, and acquiring brand name consumables. Ninis in Panama are often depicted as lazy and burdensome to a self-proclaimed modernising society whose new catch phrase was to seguir adelante (go forward, in Spanish). Viewed as 'parasites' and 'infantile', ninis' idleness was often met with anger and resentment from the general population and the media. Contrary to popular opinion however, ninis I interacted with exemplified a calculated decision making process and a high level of proactivity when choosing types of employment they preferred, the lifestyles they desired, and in measuring their own commitment to work.
This paper ultimately argues that definitions of activity and inactivity with respect to employment are subjectively being shaped in Panama by a dominant neoliberal-centred ethos. I suggest Panamanian ninis do actively engage with the contemporary moral economy through their rejections of work, unsatisfactory employment conditions and 'lesser than' lifestyles.
Paper short abstract:
21st Century Socialism offers an alternative to liberal democracy drawn from an essentialised image of indigenous political economy. I critically examine this discourse in relation to Hiwi forms of sociality, highlighting inconsistencies in the State’s approach to indigenous rights.
Paper long abstract:
Popular disillusionment with liberal representative institutions gave impetus to the Bolivarian Revolution and its electoral success may be traced to the promise of a more inclusive, participatory, and protagonistic form of political economy, recently branded as 21st Century Socialism. Due to indigenous activism, part of this re-envisioning of citizenship consists of specific collective rights for indigenous peoples to redress historical marginalisation, reflect their particular political imaginaries and ensure self-determination. I examine Hiwi forms of political organisation and social well-being, through the lens of Overing's concept of the 'aesthetics of conviviality:' the everyday production of a sociality through economic activities that balance the key principles of personal autonomy and collectivism. Indigenous sociality offers an enriching alternative to liberalism, which the Bolivarian project draws upon in its symbolic and practical construction of a new distinctly Latin American democracy. However, the State's discourse is often grounded in an essentialised view of indigeneity, which may overlook intergroup diversity and contradict the State's commitment to indigenous self-determination. I explore contemporary Hiwi social ways of being, in light of the national political structures, such as communal councils that offer increased yet standardised democratic participation, and global economic dynamics of the oil industry, which impede the process of territorial demarcation upon which indigenous political autonomy depends.
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at how government uses inquiries and reports to reveal and conceal social realities by examining recent government interventions into Kimberley Aboriginal communities and Norfolk Island. We discuss secrecy and risk in relation to citizenship, community and sovereignty.
Paper long abstract:
In November 2014 the Western Australia Premier announced that his government intended to close around half of the state's 274 remote communities. Four months later in a very different part of Australia, Norfolk Island, the Commonwealth Government decided to abolish the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly and Executive Council, ending a period, starting in 1979, of autonomous government there. In both cases, government invoked a rhetoric of 'failure leading to crisis', echoing earlier uses of failure to justify government intervention in Northern Territory indigenous communities in the mid-2000s. In all three cases, the revelation of concealed realities became a mobilising trope of government, given substance through official reports, hinted-at-official-information and leaks of classified documents.
Using these case studies we look at the use of secrecy and risk as means to identify concerns about social and individual security against broader characterisations of citizenship, community and sovereignty. We triangulate our discussion through reference to Tim Rowse's distinction between people and population and Elizabeth's Povinelli's use of social tense in creating societies of risk.
Paper short abstract:
As the Commonwealth Government pledges to “put an end to sit-down welfare” in remote Aboriginal communities I consider how indigenous systems of value subvert the moral underpinnings of modern ‘work’.
Paper long abstract:
The 'moral' value of work is deeply rooted in Western, capitalist societies (Weber 1930) and the discourse surrounding Aboriginal employment shows that the Australian Government considers it a 'moral' imperative to provide employment in remote Aboriginal communities. However, an economy of resource sharing based on very different notions of what is 'moral' continues to exist in many Aboriginal communities (Gould 1982; Altman 1987), challenging the success of this endeavor.
What are the obligations of remote Aboriginal people, as Australian citizens, to participate in the mainstream economy? How are these obligations undermined through pre-established cultural values? What are the obligations of the state to provide services to these communities, and how are these undermined by neoliberal economic policies?
In this paper I reflect on my role as the coordinator of an employment program - designed by a government underpinned by one set of moral values - in a remote aboriginal community with a completely different set.
Paper short abstract:
That the enactment of human rights operates through paradox is now well understood in political philosophy. This paper will explore how several of these paradoxes operate in remote central Australia in relation to the State's expectation of the agentic citizen.
Paper long abstract:
That the enactment of human rights operates through paradox is now well understood in political philosophy. This paradox is sharply defined in Aboriginal Australia where the governing of Aboriginal peoples was initially predicated on the denial of citizenship rights, now citizenship is itself the mechanism for neo-liberal reform via the paradigms of "good governance" as embodying democracy and elements of human rights (per Hindess 2002). Similarly to international post-colonial and developing States, this governance discourse has become the vehicle through which to channel the political moralities of responsibilisation, representation and accountability to remote Aboriginal communities.
This paper will explore the ways in which this instrumentalist discourse of good (corporate) governance operates in the space of human rights as a poor cousin. While I'm wary of submitting to a triumphalist human rights vision, political activists and development theorists understand the potential of human rights as emancipatory; as a pedagogy for the oppressed through consciousness raising about structural oppressions. In contrast the discourse sponsored by the state is coercive, intolerant of pluralism, dismissive of recognition and substantive rights in their language of entailment and obligation. Nevertheless, both discourses rest to varying degrees on the agentic or public citizen, as Ranciere states; "the Rights of man are the rights of those who make something of that inscription" (2004). This perhaps definitive paradox can be found in the tensions inherent in the self-community and the public-private distinctions and will be examined through a consideration of the Anangu politico-moral discourse of shame (kunta : kuntarringu).
Paper short abstract:
Social conditions of the mining economy, abandonment and citizenship are critically examined through the example of a 'participatory' development plan and it's broader political economic context in Calama, Chile.
Paper long abstract:
Calama, principal inland town of the Antofagasta region and service centre for the mines that surround it, is described by some Chileans as 'botado'; used up and abandoned by the flourishing mining industry. In a series of city-wide strikes from 2011-2013, Calama's citizens, workers and municipal leaders took to the streets to demand their share of the wealth. Partly in response to such demands, a program of corporate-state-citizen participatory developments was inaugurated -'Calama PLUS'- and the renovation of the decaying Mercado Central building was an emblematic project within it. The case may be used to narrate the political economic conditions of citizenship framed in terms of EP Thompson's moral economy. However, as a corporate-community partnership, the Mercado Central development plan engaged certain rhetorical aspects of participation while working to make vulnerable the place of those citizens whose historical and contemporary activities in the Mercado did not fall within the ambit of the plan. Abandonment as a condition of liberalism and the forms of citizenship made possible are examined here through both the 'social projects' (Povinelli) that Calameño citizens undertake; thereby enduring and belonging, as well as social projects of the neoliberal state that enables and (quite literally) undermines it's citizens.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing upon Philippine ethnography, this paper examines how Canada produces new citizens. Questions of migration and morality arise from Canada’s “just-in-time” immigration priorities. Temporal dissonance and precarious citizenship occur regarding past, present, and future potentialities.
Paper long abstract:
Citizenship confers (and denies) bundles of rights even in liberal democracies where rights are theoretically universalized. Neoliberal citizenship policies valorize individual autonomy and market initiatives while eschewing state social programming. Canada, one of the few truly immigration-dependent countries has undergone radical restructuring of its immigration program in accord with neoliberal precepts, particularly with regards to neoliberalism's temporal priorities for labor and capital.
This paper examines the neoliberal underpinnings of Canada's restructured immigration program relative to the production of new citizens. Drawing from the ethnographic example of the Philippines, Canada's current top source country for permanent and temporary migrants, questions of migration and morality will be articulated. Particular emphasis will be accorded: i) the transnational refractions of Canada's "just-in-time" priorities read against the history of Philippine neoliberal labor export; ii) how neoliberalism creates temporal dissonance with regards to past, present, and future potentialities and, iii) migrants' precariousness of citizenship ambition in both countries.
Paper short abstract:
Recent years' clashes between Turkey's ruling Islamic party and the civic opposition over public policy reveal competing notions of citizenship. They draw on different (moral vs. democratic) values and mark a rift that has grown since the AKP took office and triggered a political modernization.
Paper long abstract:
While the Turkish democratization seemed to gather pace during the first years of the AKP government that has been in office since 2002, the street fighting confrontations in the "Gezi Park protests" in Istanbul and other Turkish cities in 2013/14 revealed a rift between the leadership of the ruling party and considerable parts of Turkish society. Different ideas of citizenship surfaced in these clashes. The political polarization went along with different extents to which the conceptions of good citizenship that protesters and government officials pitched against each other were morally loaded. An analysis of the competing normative discourses and of citizenship practices shows that the ruling AKP - by combining religious politics with a liberal, democratic movement - triggered a liberalization of civic culture in Turkey, as an unintended consequence of the effort to "raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation's values and principles" (then Prime Minister Erdogan, 2012). Exactly the question what makes up the latter is at issue in the ongoing confrontations, and due to the modernization that Turkish politics underwent in the AKP era. With an eye to dismantling the traditional (secularist) principles of Kemalism which had informed Turkish citizenship since 1923, the AKP succeeded in opening up the country's public space for particularistic positions. Yet the resulting increase in the visibility and normalcy of Turkey's societal heterogeneity is being made a core value by those who use the symbolic power of citizenship (Bourdieu) against the AKP's moral authoritarianism.
Paper short abstract:
Political corruption, personal greed and flawed individuals have been popular topics in various public media, for decades and with the advent of social media such topics have gained additional avenues which allow the everyday person to become an active participant in the reflections and ‘reports’.
Paper long abstract:
In Iceland, political corruption, personal greed and flawed individuals have been popular topics in public media, for decades and with the advent of social media such topics have gained additional avenues which allow the everyday person to become an active participant in the reflections and 'reports' constructed through online forums. This became very evident on the 16th of February, when Sigurdur Einarsson - one of the CEOs of Kaupthing, an Icelandic bank which failed in the course of the 2008 GFC - was sentenced to four years in prison by the High Court of Iceland. Following the sentencing, RUV reported in detail on the sentencing and then contacted Sigurdur via videophone call to London. A supposedly short call, turned into rather farcical conversation, where through bad connection a slurring Sigurdur attempted to express his feelings at the time.
Immediately after, Facebook came alight with emotive postings, expressing everything from personal disgust, to pity and criticism. The initial discussion concentrated on speculations about the possible drunken state of Einarson, but soon the concentration turned to a debate about ethical conduct.: Was it right for RUV and Bogi (the reporter) to interview Sigurdur so soon after he received news of the verdict? In the span of only few minutes, the online discussion turned from revulsion and loathing, to critical, moralistic attack on the oldest television station in Iceland. This paper explores the manner in which the Icelandic bank failures have been cast as moral tales, populated by a cast of greedy and corrupt individuals.