Search

COVID-19 lockdowns instituted a new kind of normal for many in China in the past three years. From Wuhan to Shanghai, urban lockdowns (封城 fengcheng) have become synonymous with the state's draconian COVID control measures enforced upon the whole of society, which caused many forms of loss and suffering. However, after the early days of COVID control in Shanghai in April 2022, the term "lockdown" vanished from official discourse, replaced surreptitiously by a neologism— jingmo (静默), meaning "to silence." What did it mean, then, for millions to live in a state of "silence" when the official policy denied the existence of a lockdown? Was jingmo merely another word for lockdown, or did it imply something different? This article reflects on the changes that took place from enforcing lockdowns in Wuhan to administering "silence" in Shanghai, and examines how China's zero-COVID control brings different biopolitics to life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How were lockdowns implemented, experienced, and perceived under China's zero-COVID regime? How do we make sense of its sudden collapse after three years of its hegemonic presence dominating Chinese lives? What does it tell us about the zero-COVID regime's inherent inconsistencies and sociopolitical contradictions as expressed in everyday life? This essay serves as the introduction to the Currents section, a compilation of seven research articles that delve into the lived experiences of individuals in different cities under China's zero-COVID regime, particularly during and after the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. By exploring the diverse ways in which individuals navigated through everyday political fickleness, irresolvable contradictions, falsehood and absurdities that turned life around, this essay argues that people often simultaneously upheld zero-COVID and circumvented it in creative ways. While many supported beliefs and practices in line with China's top-down narrative of nationalistic sacrifice and "positive energy," others forged alternative interpretations and took on acts of disengagement and disobedience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the Rohingya ethnos must navigate the Myanmar state's "blunt biopolitics"—a mode of regulation that neither protects nor intensively knows, but rather uses violence to govern, the populations rather than individuals it takes as its object. As classic resistance is ineffective against the excessive sovereign force activated in blunt biopolitics, Rohingya communities across Asia enact strategies of refusal—what this article theorizes as methods for navigating regimes of biopolitical governmentality. As Rohingya refuse literal erasure to persist as a population, that Rohingya identity has become an amorphous object as members manuever between rejection of and assent to their symbolic effacement. They reformulate the ethnic category's contours, both consciously/directly (in response to changing dynamics that their refusal has generated) and indirectly: not only as they enter and exit the ethnos, mimicking spatial peregrinations amid mass expulsion, but also in terms of disjunctive affiliations in which people simultaneously inhabit positions of identification with and refusal of "Rohingya." Refusal hence opens up a consideration of the collective refusing subject that acknowledges that it is simultaneously hypostatized (qua collective actor) while also malleable (qua its ever-mutating constituents and self-conceptions). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on challenges faced due to Covid-19 pandemic including hiring to honor exploding orders by ecommerce Amazon, halt of airlines and lack of protection at workplace causing strike by workers of warehouses of U.S. firms. Topics discussed include destruction of animal habitats which has increased zoonoses, call for biopolitics of human race and resurgence of an epidemic from homeostasis regulated by biopolitics.

The article focuses on emergence of panoply of genres of quarantine noticed by author Joshua Clover in a blog post and mentions notion of biopolitics mentioned by philosopher Michael Foucault. Topics discussed include concept of biopolitics to address the coronavirus pandemic, issue for political decision-making to be addressed by the government and city disciplinarization with inhabitants during plague pandemic.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses several reports within the issue on topics including knowledge about COVID-19, theories of biopolitics, and changing work demands due to pandemic.

Copyright of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory is the property of University of Chicago Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Even though the American Civil Rights Movement consolidated the norm of racial equality, material inequality between whites and non-whites has persisted. The norm of racial equality, meanwhile, has generated a crisis in locating and combating contemporary racism. Michel Foucault's concept of power and his lesser-known work on racism allow us to think through this crisis. His arguments suggest that racism in the post-Civil Rights era operates largely through the abandonment of non-whites to a state of war, which liberal democratic societies, via the social contract, are organized to prevent. Rather than waging war on non-whites, post-Civil Rights America normalizes whiteness. This normalization exposes non-whites to death or the risk of death by forcing them both to fend for themselves and to battle one another, as well as the elements, in a struggle for survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American capitalism finds its force and legitimacy in hegemonic understandings of nature and society, especially as expressed in human biology. In this article, I address the ways American capitalism depends on the deployment of sleep and wakefulness within the institutional contexts of school and labor, with particular attention to the recent medicalization of sleep disorders. Across American institutions and social science literature, I argue that sleep, like capitalism, has been discursively ascribed the powers of inevitability and universality, rendering them both transhistorically natural. To make these claims, I draw on ethnographic research in sleep clinics with scientists and clinicians, interviews with disordered sleepers, and textual and policy analysis. In conclusion, I offer suggestions toward elucidating the historical and continuing biopolitical projects of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses wages and the politics of life in post World War II France. The author begins by talking about a 1950 meeting of the Subcommission on the Non-Dietary Part of the Budget-Type in which biopolitics was discussed. The author argues that standards of living served a generalized biopower and a material set of class interests. The status of citizens of the modern welfare state is also examined. Subjects of the article also include the convergence of class politics, science, and consumption in the modern welfare state.

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have voted in the 2004 presidential election. We also find evidence that an association between a polymorphism of the 5HTT gene and voter turnout is moderated by religious attendance. These are the first results ever to link specific genes to political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the philosophical interpretation of the two hermeneutic paradigms called totalitarianism and biopolitics during the twentieth century. According to the author, the totalitarian paradigm, which is born out of a traditional philosophy of history, is demonstrated by the ongoing and contradictory recourse it has to the category of the origin. From the perspective of biopolitics, the twentieth century and the entire course of modernity is not determined or decided by the superficial and contradictory antithesis between totalitarianism and democracy.

Opportunistic encroachment by the national government on state policy domains erodes the robustness of federal unions. Theories of electoral and political safeguards of federalism suggest that the political process protects federalism's boundaries. This article develops a theory distinguishing risk-seeking and risk-avoiding political behavior and applies its insights to the debate about the sufficiency of the political process to police federalism. Under average conditions, the political process deters encroachment, but under more extreme conditions it fails: elected officials set policy according to the risk associated with their electoral retention rather than the policy's expected return to the voters or the health of the federation; this manipulation of the risk environment may lead a central government to encroach upon a state's domain opportunistically. The federal problem of credit assignment exposes a weakness in the political safeguards theory to protect federalism's boundaries: electoral mechanisms both encourage and discourage encroachment. Due to this fallibility in the political process, judicial intervention in federalism disputes may be justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the depoliticization of tobacco use in China. The most notorious of tobacco-related diseases is lung cancer. Several socio-historical forces have been pivotal in producing and depoliticizing experiences with lung cancer. One of which was the historical processes that have come to fuse cigarette smoking, life enhancement and male sociality. An estimated 35 percent of adults smoke tobacco on a daily basis in contemporary China. Since the 1980s, tobacco control has been carried out by branches of the party-state. This measure is being carried out, not just to acknowledge the increasing tobacco-induced morbidity and mortality in China, but also to adhere to a basic tenet of biopolitics.

A considerable body of data suggests that men know more about politics than do women. Although gender gaps exist in other aspects of political behavior, the unusual magnitude of the gender gap makes it particularly perplexing. In this paper, we advance and test the hypothesis that the knowledge gap is partly an artifact of how knowledge is measured. If men are disproportionately more likely to guess than are women, then observed gender disparities in knowledge will be artificially inflated. To test this hypothesis, we reexamine data used in two recent inquiries concerning the gender gap in knowledge, along with experimental data from the 1998 NES Pilot Study. All analyses point to a common conclusion: approximately 50% of the gender gap is illusory, reflecting response patterns that work to the collective advantage of male respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies the theoretical bases for expecting women to be more supportive of government programs than are men. We identify several factors not developed in past literature: (1) differences in emotional responses to social problems, (2) gendered differences in the awareness of those problems among one's own kin, (3) differences in the perceived fairness of existing social institutions, (4) differences in the perceived efficacy of government programs, and (5) variations in the preferred form that those programs should take. Testing hypotheses using data from a 1995 survey of public opinion covering five policy domains, we find that the gender gap in these domains is substantial, comparable to that associated with race and partisanship. These differences are attributable in part to factors identified previously in the literature--such as gendered differences in perceived opportunity--but are also affected by differences between men and women in the perceived efficacy of government programs (e.g., the extent of fraud and abuse) and differences in the preferred form those programs should take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the feminist political ecology at the millennium. Recognition of the intellectual and cultural achievements of the diversity of feminism; Emergence of immense political and intellectual engagement of feminist activists and scholars in biopolitics; Synergy between feminism and environmentalism.

Discusses various aspects of the persistence hypothesis which holds that core political predispositions tend to remain stable through the life span. Terman longitudinal study; Factors affecting persistence of political predispositions; Study of early-acquired attitudes in later life; Increase in attitude crystallization across the life cycle.

There are many instances in which even in a democracy, the political preferences held by a minority of the electorate are reflected in political outcomes. It is shown that for a simple two-alternative election environment characterized by costly voting and private information, when the expected population is very large the alternative preferred by more expected "zealous" voters, who have either large stakes in the outcome of the election or small costs of participating, wins with high probability in any equilibrium, even if the expected proportion of the entire electorate that shares that preference is arbitrarily small. This is an undesirable outcome under either of two natural but very different normative criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that research on political socialization reflect a fundamentally sociological conception of political behavior. Discussion on the sociological point of view in political behavior research; Evidence showing the sociological underpinnings of the political socialization research; Overview of sociological and psychological theories of political behavior; Criticism of the research program on political behavior based on sociology.

Examines the capability of political culture to define the subjectivities of political behavior in South Africa. Relevance of remedial political action; Status of cross-racial communication in the country; Contours of political culture.

Discusses the effects of policy dissatisfaction and internal efficacy on the relationship between political discontent and political behavior. Relationship between discontent and extra-system orientation; Differences between conservatives and liberals.

Investigates the frequency of cross-voting in the British House of Commons between 1945 and 1974. Explanations on the political voting behavior in the country; Depiction of cross-voting in literature; Comparison between government and opposition cross-voting; Link between majority size and dissidence.

Comments on the article by Henry Kenski in the February 1980 issue of 'Journal of Politics' about a research on the influence of economic conditions on the public assessment of presidential performance in the U.S. Theoretical background on the link between economic factors and presidential popularity; Limitations of research data; Multicollinearity of analysis.

Presents a study which examined the influence of economic conditions on the public assessment of presidential performance in the U.S. Details of the data gathered; Development of a model; Analysis of the link between economic conditions and political behavior.

Comments on the research reported by Robert Y. Shapiro and Bruce M. Conforto in the February 1980 issue of 'Journal of Politics' about the influence of economic conditions in the public assessment of presidential performance in the U.S. Theoretical approach of Shapiro and Conforto; Limitations of the data used; Comments on the selection of variables and the exclusion of outliers.

Discusses the value of collective intolerance as a human attitude in shaping political behavior, governmental institutions and public policy. Political significance of collective intolerance; Manifestations of collective intolerance; Evolution of collective intolerance; Conceptions about the nature of society in relation to the origins of collective intolerance.

Develops an analytical conception of resultant political behaviors framed in the decision-making approach. Factors involved in the political process; Discussion of the relationship between dimensions of behavior and activity; Assumptions of neutral choice concerning goal-setting, behavior selection and the specificity of the decision.

Discusses the relevance of the studies on monkeys' behavior to the nature and types of equality and inequality in human social and political life. Relationship between the intragroup status ranks of monkey mothers and of their sons; Similarities of monkeys to mankind; Benefits of studying primate behavior patterns to the study of human societies.

Demonstrates how political orientation and partisan identification flow across three generations and how parents as middlepersons affect and are affected by these flows. Socialization of partisanship; Information on the generational differences in parent-child partisan socialization; Conditions that may affect the transmission of partisanship across generations.

Presents information relating to crowd political behavior and demonstration leadership, while focusing on protesting the invasion of Cambodia. Need for protest and protest behavior to have more attention from political scientists; Reference to the antiwar protests of May 6, 1970 at Iowa State University; Information on developments in sociology.

Presents a study which investigates how the social environment influences political behavior. Methodology employed in this study; Information on a dataset complied in the South Bend, Indiana area during the 1984 presidential election campaign; Results of study.

Looks at various literatures on individual voting behavior and on the effect of electoral systems on vote choice and the psychology of attachment to political parties. Party systems and voter cognition; Cases.

Constitutional limits on the tenure of elected chief executives are a prominent feature of many governments, yet they have received little attention from economists working in the field of political behavior in the U.S. This paper develops an analysis of tenure limits and their incidence. The analysis assumes that the limits substitute for more familiar electoral controls, such as elections, recalls and impeachment proceedings.

The papers presented at the April 1975 conference on economic analysis of political behavior in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are discussed. All of the papers focused on various aspects of the relationship between law and economics. The three papers given at session 1 were all exercises in public choice, and dealt with bureaucracy. The papers in session 2 leaned towards behaviorist political science. The third session consisted of one paper about the legal system. These papers may provide an entry in the traditional political science literature for public choice students with economic backgrounds. In sum, the conference probably performed more of a role in developing interdisciplinary work than individual papers taken individually would imply.

Examines the economic and psychoeconomic contexts of political commitment and dissent. Theories of political development; Influence of man's economic condition on his political behavior; Association between a person's economic state and the nature of his political commitment; Psychosocial indicators of mobilization and differentiation; Relationship between economic state and economic satisfaction.