Anti-politics, the early Marx and Gramsci’s ‘integral state’

Humphrys, Elizabeth

doi:10.1177/0725513618787638

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…This article is also influenced by the Gramscian idea of the integral state, which sees continuities between political society and civil society (Gramsci 1999;Humphrys 2018). The concept of the integral state implies that coercion alone cannot guarantee state power but requires the construction of a consensus around a set of values (Thomas 2009).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

Liinason

2020

International Feminist Journal of Politics

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This article explores the discourses, actors, and cross-border exchanges that shape the broader landscape of contemporary transnational feminist and queer non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While several studies have pointed to the co-opted role of NGOs, fewer have explored the potential for NGOs to influence the conditions under which they operate. That is what this article sets out to do, with the goal of highlighting the potential for feminist and queer NGOs to engage in oppositional politics within contexts of neoliberalism. Based on material collected during ethnographic fieldwork with transnational feminist and queer NGOs, this article examines how NGOs position themselves in relation to the political and financial structures that condition their work; how and to what effect the emerging professional class of NGO activists navigate the contradictory landscapes within which they are located; and the ambiguities of cross-border exchanges among NGOs. The article shows examples of agency and small-scale resistance, but also illuminates the palpable risks of existing neoliberal tendencies among funders and NGOs. I conclude that transnational feminist and queer NGOs have much to gain from intervening more decisively in such ambiguities as those examined in this article.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

Liinason

2020

International Feminist Journal of Politics

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“…Anti-politics, therefore, is not new, but in the current period can be seen as a ‘product of the breakdown of the political order that prevailed in many advanced capitalist countries for much of the last century’ (Humphrys, 2018: 41).…”

Section: Using Anti-politics As a Tool To Understand Responses To Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For individuals, the bureaucracy becomes an individual end, a situation which results in the state becoming a particular interest in itself (Marx, 1994). As Humphrys (2018: 32) argues:Marx identified that the antagonism between civil society and the state was unable to be resolved, precisely because in a society composed of competing particular interests, the state itself would be just another particular interest – even if in a formal or abstract way it claimed to stand for the general or collective interest of the society that it governed over.…”

Section: Using Anti-politics As a Tool To Understand Responses To Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, in later writings Marx argued that the form of any state is specific to the mode of production within that society (Marx, 1991). This is because in any social formation, the exploitative social relations of production dominate over other forms of social relations (Humphrys, 2018). In a capitalist society, therefore, the state is inherently connected to the interests of capital.…”

Section: Using Anti-politics As a Tool To Understand Responses To Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The disconnect between civil society and the state is therefore inherent to capitalism, challenging the very notion of the capacity for the state to ever represent any form of ‘universal’ interests, as Hegel argued for. As Humphrys (2018: 33) argues:This antagonism meant that for Marx the notion of ‘political representation’ is a misnomer. As soon as individuals deputed from civil society enter the state, they stop being deputies and instead become part of the abstract state.…”

Section: Using Anti-politics As a Tool To Understand Responses To Thementioning

confidence: 99%

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Anti-politics and Global Climate Inaction: The Case of the Australian Carbon Tax

Copland

2019

Critical Sociology

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Action on climate change has enjoyed popular support in most Western countries. Despite this, successive governments have struggled to implement policy to tackle this issue. Using the case of opposition to the Clean Energy Act, passed in Australia to establish an emissions trading scheme, this paper argues that a growing and broad sentiment of distrust in political elites, described as ‘anti-politics’, can explain some of this contradiction. Particular forms of climate policy, in particular emissions trading schemes, have been successfully framed as policies that appeal to the interests of a new class of liberal elites while hurting ordinary working people. This frame was used successfully in Australia by conservative forces to oppose the Clean Energy Act. While used cynically by political leaders in this case, the paper argues that anti-political sentiment reflects genuine concerns about the detachment between the state and voting population. This detachment is reflected in neoliberal climate policies. Through briefly examining the cases of the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Gilets Jaunes protest movement, the paper argues that while formulating climate policy we must consider anti-political sentiment, developing responses to the climate crisis from a bottom-up rather than top-down approach.

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Transnational Spaces of Resistance

Çağatay

Liinason

Sasunkevich

2021

Thinking Gender in Transnational Times

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This chapter lays out the theoretical foundation of the book. It conceptualizes resistance as a space in-between small-scale mundane practices with a low level of collective organizing and large-scale protest activities which often exemplify resistance in social movement studies. In line with feminist and queer conceptualization of resistance, the authors suggest to examine multi-scalarity of resistant practices. The chapter attends to three scales of feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Turkey, and Scandinavia. The first scale analyzes activism in relation to the civil society-state-market triad. The second scale problematizes the notion of solidarity in relations between feminist and LGBTI+ activists from different geopolitical regions and countries as well as between small- and large-scale activist organizations and groups. Finally, the third scale focuses on individual resistant practices and the role of individual bodies in emergence of collective political struggles.

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Anti-politics, the early Marx and Gramsci’s ‘integral state’

Cited by 13 publications

References 10 publications

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

Anti-politics and Global Climate Inaction: The Case of the Australian Carbon Tax

Transnational Spaces of Resistance

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