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An international research initiative run by the Development Learning Programme based at the University of Birmingham. See: www.dlprog.org/research/thinking-and-working-politically-community-of-practice.php . 9 By the same token, elites must have super-brains. 10 Since the mid 2000s, there has been a growing number of computer games and software programmes that claim to allow interested parties to experience what it is like to be a refugee or subject to a disaster. The Darfur content on Google Layers, for
Introduction Recent interventions in visual theory claim the camera affords the disenfranchised a form of political participation through the civil space opened up by the medium, a space where creator, subject, and spectator intersect ( Azoulay, 2008 ; de Laat, 2019 ). Beyond merely being a technology for producing pictures, the camera is understood as mediating social relations, and as such is an inherently political medium. Crucial to this formulation is visibility: being seen enables participation in a political community, even if only through a
This book addresses the question of political legitimacy in the European Union from the much-neglected angle of political responsibility. It develops an original communitarian approach to legitimacy based on Alasdair MacIntyre's ethics of virtues and practices, that can be contrasted with prevalent liberal-egalitarian and neo-republican approaches. The book argues that a ‘responsibility deficit’, quite distinct from the often discussed ‘democratic deficit’, can be diagnosed in the EU. This is documented in chapters that provide in-depth analysis of accountability, transparency and the difficulties associated with identifying responsibility in European governance. Closing this gap requires going beyond institutional engineering. It calls for gradual convergence towards certain core social and political practices and for the flourishing of the virtues of political responsibility in Europe's nascent political community. Throughout the book, normative political theory is brought to bear on concrete dilemmas of institutional choice faced by the EU during the recent constitutional debates.
This book argues for greater openness in the ways we approach human rights and international rights promotion, and in so doing brings some new understanding to old debates. Starting with the realities of abuse rather than the liberal architecture of rights, it casts human rights as a language for probing the political dimensions of suffering. Seen in this context, the predominant Western models of right generate a substantial but also problematic and not always emancipatory array of practices. These models are far from answering the questions about the nature of political community that are raised by the systemic infliction of suffering. Rather than a simple message from ‘us’ to ‘them’, then, rights promotion is a long and difficult conversation about the relationship between political organisations and suffering. Three case studies are explored: the Tiananmen Square massacre, East Timor's violent modern history and the circumstances of indigenous Australians. The purpose of these discussions is not to elaborate on a new theory of rights, but to work towards rights practices that are more responsive to the spectrum of injury that we inflict and endure.
This book introduces a discussion of a fundamental paradox concerning contemporary society and government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). There is strong evidence of continuing trends towards a more secular and less religious society and pattern of social behaviour. At the same time, religious doctrines, rituals and institutions are central to the legitimacy, stability and continuity of key elements of the constitutional and political system. Outlining the thesis of secularization, the book attempts to account for the failure of secularisation theory. The oaths of the accession and of the coronation of the monarch are the central affirmative symbolic acts which legitimate the system of government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) and the place of the monarchy at the apex of the political system. The book explores some remote and dusty corners of the constitution of the UK that might be of some importance for the operation of the UK political system. The 1953 coronation ad many features of the 1937 coronation on which it was modelled. The religious rituals of the UK Parliament appear to be much more fixed and enduring than those devised in the context of devolution since 1999 to resolve tensions between the religious and political spheres in the 'Celtic' regions. A profound limitation of Anglican multifaithism as a doctrine for uniting the political community is its failure to connect with the large secular population.
about what European identity signifies are distorted further by the European Commission’s (hereafter the Commission) ever-changing discourse on this issue. Using discursive evidence (following the guidelines provided by Fairclough, 2013),1 this chapter reveals that while the Commission (1973) has recognised the legitimising role European identity has for the EU as an emerging political community, it has failed to adopt a consistent approach to this issue. Instead, the Commission tends to propose significantly different processes – shifting between top-down and bottom
law’s autonomy as an evolutionary process in which the emergence of law is tied to the political community of the citizens. This nexus is not self-evident. In particular, the dynamic nature of evolving legal frameworks in the transnational constellation raises the question of how plausible it still is for a “law in global disorder.”11 171 Postmodern legal theory as critical theory 171 In the era of Westphalian sovereignty, the notion that legal and constitutional processes were bound up with the polity was plausible. A law outside the polity was virtually
, and for that reason accepts that all have equal voice in an inclusive political community. On the other hand, a deliberative ideal seeks the best reasons, and can do so only if some of the reasons citizens offer will have to be revised and even rejected in public discussion. My goal here is to show that this tension can be resolved if toleration becomes reflexive, that is, only if it is an ideal that is itself open to the demands of free and open public deliberation and the qualities of public communication that make that possible. Deliberative toleration is
of political community, construed as congruent 140 SUPRANATIONAL CITIZENSHIP with the polity’s jurisdiction and dependent on thick and constraining affect. For this reason, analyses of the political functions of affect between persons tend to be analyses of national or community affect (where community typically means a grouping smaller than a nation, or at least smaller in size than a populous nation) not of affect per se. Nonetheless, they are illuminating for our purposes, and so worth exploring. David Miller argues affect is a prerequisite for the pursuit of
discussions of life in the political community. In this context we can find many observations on what constitutes friendship among individuals, what is good and what is detrimental to friendship, what conditions feeble and lasting friendships, the circumstances in which they are formed and who can become friends. Since such discussions of friendship occasionally took the form of narratives on friendship between different cities and peoples, it is all the more important to start by reconstructing the main themes in the ethics of friendship. Given the scope of ancient