The Power of Everyday Politics

The Power of Everyday Politics
Author: Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501722018

Ordinary people's everyday political behavior can have a huge impact on national policy: that is the central conclusion of this book on Vietnam. In telling the story of collectivized agriculture in that country, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet uncovers a history of local resistance to national policy and gives a voice to the villagers who effected change. Not through open opposition but through their everyday political behavior, villagers individually and in small, unorganized groups undermined collective farming and frustrated authorities' efforts to correct the problems.The Power of Everyday Politics is an authoritative account, based on extensive research in Vietnam's National Archives and in the Red River Delta countryside, of the formation of collective farms in northern Vietnam in the late 1950s, their enlargement during wartime in the 1960s and 1970s, and their collapse in the 1980s. As Kerkvliet shows, the Vietnamese government eventually terminated the system, but not for ideological reasons. Rather, collectivization had become hopelessly compromised and was ultimately destroyed largely by the activities of villagers. Decollectivization began locally among villagers themselves; national policy merely followed. The power of everyday politics is not unique to Vietnam, Kerkvliet asserts. He advances a theory explaining how everyday activities that do not conform to the behavior required by authorities may carry considerable political weight.

Everyday Politics

Everyday Politics
Author: Harry C. Boyte
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2010-11-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812204212

Increasingly a spectator sport, electoral politics have become bitterly polarized by professional consultants and lobbyists and have been boiled down to the distributive mantra of "who gets what." In Everyday Politics, Harry Boyte transcends partisan politics to offer an alternative. He demonstrates how community-rooted activities reconnect citizens to engaged, responsible public life, and not just on election day but throughout the year. Boyte demonstrates that this type of activism has a rich history and strong philosophical foundation. It rests on the stubborn faith that the talents and insights of ordinary citizens—from nursery school to nursing home—are crucial elements in public life. Drawing on concrete examples of successful public work projects accomplished by diverse groups of people across the nation, Boyte demonstrates how citizens can master essential political skills, such as understanding issues in public terms, mapping complex issues of institutional power to create alliances, raising funds, communicating, and negotiating across lines of difference. He describes how these skills can be used to address the larger challenges of our time, thereby advancing a renewed vision of democratic society and freedom in the twenty-first century.

Everyday Politics in the Philippines

Everyday Politics in the Philippines
Author: Benedict J. Kerkvliet
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742518704

Focusing on a rice farming village in central Luzon, Kerkvliet argues that the faction and patron-client relationships dealt with by conventional studies are only one part of Philippine political life.

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics
Author: Caroline Howarth
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016-11-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317601394

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics examines the ways in which politics permeates everyday life, from the ordinary interactions we have with others to the sense of belonging and identity developed within social groups and communities. Discrimination, prejudice, inclusion and social change, politics is an on-going process that is not solely the domain of the elected and the powerful. Using a social and political psychological lens to examine how politics is enacted in contemporary societies, the book takes an explicitly critical approach that places political activity within collective processes rather than individual behaviors. While the studies covered in the book do not ignore the importance of the individual, they underscore the need to examine the role of culture, history, ideology and social context as integral to psychological processes. Individuals act, but they do not act in isolation from the groups and societies in which they belong. Drawing on extensive international research, with contributions from leaders in the field as well as emerging scholars, the book is divided into three interrelated parts which cover: The politics of intercultural relations Political agency and social change Political discourse and practice Offering insights into how psychology can be applied to some of the most pressing social issues we face, this will be fascinating reading for students of psychology, political science, sociology and cultural studies, as well as anyone working in the area of public policy.

How Artifacts Afford

How Artifacts Afford
Author: Jenny L. Davis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262044110

A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective. Technological affordances mediate between the features of a technology and the outcomes of engagement with that technology. The concept of affordances, which migrated from psychology to design with Donald Norman's influential 1988 book, The Design of Everyday Things, offers a useful analytical tool in technology studies—but, Jenny Davis argues in How Artifacts Afford, it is in need of a conceptual update. Davis provides just such an update, introducing the mechanisms and conditions framework, which offers both a vocabulary and necessary critical perspective for affordance analyses. The mechanisms and conditions framework shifts the question from what objects afford to how objects afford, for whom, and under what circumstances. Davis shows that through this framework, analyses can account for the power and politics of technological artifacts. She situates the framework within a critical approach that views technology as materialized action. She explains how request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow are mechanisms of affordance, and shows how these mechanisms take shape through variable conditions—perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy. Putting the framework into action, Davis identifies existing methodological approaches that complement it, including critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), app feature analysis, and adversarial design. In today's rapidly changing sociotechnical landscape, the stakes of affordance analyses are high. Davis's mechanisms and conditions framework offers a timely theoretical reboot, providing tools for the crucial tasks of both analysis and design.

Social Media and Everyday Politics

Social Media and Everyday Politics
Author: Tim Highfield
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745691382

From selfies and memes to hashtags and parodies, social media are used for mundane and personal expressions of political commentary, engagement, and participation. The coverage of politics reflects the social mediation of everyday life, where individual experiences and thoughts are documented and shared online. In Social Media and Everyday Politics, Tim Highfield examines political talk as everyday occurrences on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, Instagram, and more. He considers the personal and the political, the serious and the silly, and the everyday within the extraordinary, as politics arises from seemingly banal and irreverent topics. The analysis features international examples and evolving practices, from French blogs to Vines from Australia, via the Arab Spring, Occupy, #jesuischarlie, Eurovision, #blacklivesmatter, Everyday Sexism, and #illridewithyou. This timely book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in media and communications, internet studies, and political science, as well as general readers keen to understand our contemporary media and political contexts

Democracy in Ghana

Democracy in Ghana
Author: Jeffrey W. Paller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2019-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316513300

A detailed account of politics in Ghana's urban neighborhoods, providing a new way to understand African democracy and development.

Everyday Politics of the World Economy

Everyday Politics of the World Economy
Author: John M. Hobson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2007-11-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521701631

How do our everyday actions shape and transform the world economy? This volume of original essays argues that current scholarship in international political economy (IPE) is too highly focused on powerful states and large international institutions. The contributors examine specific forms of 'everyday' actions to demonstrate how small-scale actors and their decisions can shape the global economy. They analyse a range of seemingly ordinary or subordinate actors, including peasants, working classes and trade unions, lower-middle and middle classes, female migrant labourers and Eastern diasporas, and examine how they have agency in transforming their political and economic environments. This book offers a novel way of thinking about everyday forms of change across a range of topical issues including globalisation, international finance, trade, taxation, consumerism, labour rights and regimes. It will appeal to students and scholars of politics, international relations, political economy and sociology.

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics
Author: Niko Besnier
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2009-07-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824833570

Although gossip is disapproved of across the world’s societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author’s intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions—the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice—that are rarely wedded successfully. Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approaches gossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelae’s people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atoll’s political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in which gossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it. Throughout, he is particularly attentive to the ways in which anthropologists themselves are the subject and object of gossip, making his work a notable contribution to reflexive social science. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics will appeal to students and scholars of political, legal, linguistic, and psychological anthropology; social science methodology; communication, conflict, gender, and globalization studies; and Pacific Islands studies.