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In this article, I attend to several theories of festival, laughter, and performativity in which the suspension of customary norms is analyzed mainly by way of cultural and political strategies (as with Judith Butler and Richard N. Lancaster), or in reference to a performative space that exceeds such tactical and strategic projects. Georges Bataille has been especially influential to the second group, as we have seen in the recent scholarship of Tiina Arppe, Kevin E. McHugh, and Ann M. Fletchall. These writers tend to read the transgressive moments of festival in terms of excess rather than their goals or consequences. In my final observations, I do not reject this concept of overflowing excess, but I do contend that it cannot serve as a way of distinguishing moments of transgression from their containment, precisely because it cannot be measured according to the typical parameters of space and time.

The Anthropocene is a geological period defined by human activities that requires decisive responses by humanity to grapple with ecological, biological, and social change. In this essay, I argue that the concept of the Anthropocene is also one that has the potential to be mobilized in service of unanticipated and emerging forms of social, spatial, political, financial, and ecological control. Indeed, we can perhaps imagine a not too distant future wherein the apparent urgency of the Anthropocene era's challenges may require global responses that bypass democratic deliberation. At the same time, emerging modalities of control in the Anthropocene will likely be sold to the public as being in their interest. It is the potential proliferation of these emerging expressions of power in the name of the Anthropocene that, I want to suggest, we must approach with caution as we seek solutions to tomorrow's social, ecological, and spatial challenges.

Dalits (ex-untouchables) in Tamil Nadu, as in many other places of India, have historically resided in cheris or settlements set apart from the village or oor. Cheris often lack amenities like schools, ration shops, health centers or panchayat buildings and are set off the main road down poorly lit and surfaced roads, revealing the significance of space and the spatiality of social relations to the caste system. As Dalits in Tamil Nadu have mobilized politically, they have challenged the hierarchical nature of social space in the face of much backlash, seeking to create meaningful public spaces that are open to, and representative of, all castes. This article concerns the Dalit contestations over space and the wider ramifications of such struggles in the sociopolitical sphere, and argues that the process of democratization requires alterations to social and well as political spaces and institutions.

This article examines the well-known community mural, the Wall of Respect, begun on Chicago's South Side in 1967, from the perspective of its ephemerality. A product of the Organization of Black American Culture's (OBAC) Visual Arts Workshop, the Wall inspired similar murals across the United States. Completed at a moment when positive images of African Americans were scarce in the mainstream media, the Wall was filled with portraits of Black cultural and political leaders divided into eight sections (e.g., jazz, religion, politics, sports) accompanied by black and white photographic panels and text. The mural was conceived from the outset not as a static work, but as imagery which would change in response to community demands. Thus, the rise of the Black Power and Black Arts movements was registered in a series of alterations to the mural, outlined here, before its destruction in 1971.

In January 1994 the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico inaugurated a new era of media use for dissent. Since that time, an array of dissenting collectives and individuals have appropriated media technologies in order to make their voices heard or to articulate alternative identities. From Zapatista media to the Arab Spring, social movements throughout the world are taking over, hybridizing, recycling, and adapting media technologies. This new era poses a new set of challenges for academics and researchers in the field of Communication for Social Change (CfSC). Based on examples from Mexico, Lebanon, and Colombia, this article highlights and discusses four such research challenges: accounting for historical context; acknowledging the complexity of communication processes; anchoring analysis in a political economy of information and communication technologies; and positioning new research in relation to existing knowledge and literature within the field of communication and social change.

The authors explore the political and social changes in sex work in Germany from the 1950s to the present. The article uses a theoretical framework in which sociological reconstructions of events are analyzed as interactional webs conditioned by shifting relations of dominance and agency. The interpretation of events focuses on how public policy that moved prostitution from public space had implications not only for public space, but also contained gender and class-specific components. Prostitutes who were initially `unpleasantly' conspicuous in the streets of the city increasingly disappeared from the eyes of the public. This disappearance was the result of purposive and far-reaching spatial policy. In the context of `traditional localization' on the one hand and increasing public policy pressure on the other, prostitution concentrated more and more in a few, narrowly limited urban areas. This new spatial situation brought about shifts in power between the various groups involved.

Recent scholarship on the affective dimensions of social change has pointed toward hope as an ethically promising form of belonging. In this article, the articulation of hope in the context of a reform-oriented social movement provides the basis for interrogating the political promise of hope. The author examines the ascent of a movement for small, equitable schools in Oakland, California, to explore the hopes and aspirations of its most ardent advocates. To do this, the author contrasts the movement's assertion of its equity-centered strategy with the complex race and class hierarchies that grounded power relations within the movement. The question that emerges from this discontinuity is how reformers come to experience the movement as equitable and unequivocally progressive. The author finds that the gap between reformers' ideals and their material circumstances is bridged by the movement's ample production of hope.

The notion of urban vitalis as constitutive to urbanity and urbanism has not been acknowledged thus far as perhaps a premise to urban politics and planning. Critical urban studies instead see planning as a matter of designing the everydayness of everyday life by spatializing its flows and encounters. This article focuses on a force of urbanity and urbanism that at least Georg Simmel diagnosed and discusses the missing urban vitalis in urban planning and how policy makers in fact rely very much on vitalism as an a priori force to urbanism. The aim of the Danish urban regeneration project kvarterløft (neighborhood regeneration) is, politically speaking, to reconstruct bonding, inclusive, caring urban communities, and the project therefore very much relies on local interactionism and connectivity. The article discusses how this project, however, exemplifies more generally a political reliance on the existence of an urban vitalis.

This article considers how we are to understand democratic media activism, which has recently burgeoned in Canada, the UK and the USA. What is its political significance and potential? Is it a new social movement, a new style of politics cutting across movements, or are new concepts needed? Drawing illustratively upon interviews with media activists, notably in Vancouver, we explore insights offered by social movement theory - including resource mobilization formulations and the new social movement theories of Melucci, Habermas, Cohen and Arato, and Fraser. While all these traditions offer valuable insights, media activism reveals limitations in existing conceptualizations. It has some of the characteristics of a movement, but lacks a distinct collective identity or niche within movement ecology. It may be destined to be a boundary-transgressing nodal point for other movements, articulating a coherent project for radical democracy, rather than a movement-for-itself.

This article explores three loci of commemoration of 9/11 in New York City: the street memorial exemplified by makeshift shrines, posters of the missing, and graffiti; the museum installations that reflected on these street memorials and on the media's role in our collective experience of 9/11 and its aftermath; and the contested site of the permanent memorial at Ground Zero. The authors argue that both street memorials and museum exhibitions exemplify a tension between utopian and critical relations between the art and its public and that a balance between utopia and critique is perhaps the greatest challenge for the yet-unfinished memorial project in downtown Manhattan. The authors' goal is not so much to propose an ideal design for the memorial as to reflect on the aesthetic and political function of commemoration within the context of debates over public art and public space in the United States.

The football (soccer) game between Argentina and England during the France '98 World Cup is analysed as a form of media event in which the sports encounter is the source of and high-profile focus for the media's mobilization of narratives of the nation, and reaffirmation of popular mythologies of the national. The legacy of previous Argentina-England encounters is discussed in the light of the persistence of foundation myths concerning the style and impact of the respective national versions of soccer, and the contemporary media's coverage of those myths. The media responses, primarily in press and television, to the 1998 encounter are reviewed and compared in both the Argentinian and the English settings. This comparative analysis is situated, in conclusion, within analytical debates concerning the geo-political nature of persisting sporting stereotypes, and methodological issues concerning the relationship between contextual historical analysis and textual interpretation.

This article explores the prospects of American influence on electioneering worldwide. Its starting point is US campaigns themselves and, through an examination of trade literature, it focuses on campaigning knowledge and the ideas which underpin US campaigning strategies. This approach suggests that `professionalization', commonly regarded as the hallmark of US-style campaigns, is problematic and has been overestimated. US campaigning knowledge remains dominated by `political folk wisdom'. US campaigning is an evolving business, with some fledgling signs of professionalism, but what it now represents is the commercial rather than professional paradigm. This helps us to understand why US influence abroad may be limited, because the less `professional' the knowledge, the less likely it is to transcend the specifics of the US situation. However, it also helps identify practices, stemming mainly from marketing, where US practice shows signs of professionalism and is more likely to be influential.

This article conducts a `critical audit' on the range of theoretical work about television, asking questions about how television has variously been positioned within different political, cultural and social perspectives. After raising some preliminary questions about the nature and status of `theory' in relation to `research', it considers theoretical developments under four headings — representation, institution, medium and process — examining concepts and the use to which they have been put. Among other things, it notes the recent influence of postmodern thinking on the field and the shift towards consumption-focused studies. It concludes by suggesting some of the ways in which theoretical work on television might develop. It is critical of the particular legacy of speculative abstraction (theory as Theory) still observable in the field and recommends both clearer guidelines of theoretical accountability and a stronger relationship with empirical analysis.

El colapso de la Unión Soviética a inicios de los años noventa del siglo pasado, constituyó para Rusia un punto de partida para su reconfiguración y reestructuración como un país independiente. En este proceso de reconfiguración y reestructuración Rusia ha adoptado diferentes elementos de la cultura política occidental; situación que resulta de gran interés, toda vez que en los años de la Guerra Fría la Rusia comunista encarnaba la antítesis de Occidente a nivel ideológico, político y económico. Esta investigación pretende estudiar la oposición política en Rusia entre los años 2004 y 2012, y, con ello, presentar algunos elementos clave en la comprensión de las acciones, relaciones e influencia de los diferentes actores del nuevo sistema político de esta potencia mundial. ; The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties of last century was for Russia a starting point for reconfiguration and restructuring as an independent country. In this process of reconfiguration and restructuring Russia it has adopted various elements of Western political culture; situation that turns out to be of great interest, since in the years of Cold War Communist Russia embodied the antithesis of the West ideologically, politically and economically. This research aims to study the political opposition in Russia between 2004 and 2012, and thus, present some key elements in understanding the actions, relationships and influence of different actors in the new political system of this world power.

AbstractFemale representation in political decision-making positions is now a salient issue in public discussions throughout Europe. Understanding public attitudes towards a more balanced gender distribution in politics remains limited, however. Using a 2017 Eurobarometer, we focus on cross-national differences in public support for increased female participation in politics to address this limitation. Building on the policy feedbacks literature, we stress the role of gender quotas. We argue that quotas – as legislative devices usually adopted through elite-driven initiatives – stimulate support for stronger female representation. Ensuing debates on quotas raise individual awareness about the underrepresentation of women – informational effect – and, once adopted, give a clear signal that persistent gender imbalance is a social problem to be redressed – normative effect. Our empirical analysis supports this argument. Citizens in countries with gender quotas display stronger support for increased female participation in politics.