Barrie Axford

Talk About a Revolution: Social Media and the MENA Uprisings

This article examines the role played by social media in the popular uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). When discussing their role, it is important to note the wider research context on social media and political participation and to be aware of any ideological and normative interventions. A number of key questions are asked about the role played by social media in the uprisings. First is the importance of context when assessing the role and impact of social media with global reach. Second is the extent to which ‘old’ media in the guise of print and broadcast journalism have been displaced or downgraded as forums for public talk. Third is the variable use and significance of different information and communication technologies and formats. The fourth issue concerns the demeanor of activists and audience, while the fifth focuses on the effects of social media on the conduct of the uprisings and, insofar as this can be ascertained, on their outcomes. Este artículo examina el papel que jugaron los medios en los famosos levantamientos a través del Medio Oriente y África del Norte (MENA, por sus siglas en inglés). Al analizar su papel, es importante notar una mayor amplitud en el contexto de la investigación sobre los medios sociales y la participación política, y de tener presente cualquier intervención normativa e ideológica. Se formularon varias preguntas claves sobre el rol que jugaron los medios sociales en los levantamientos. Primero, la importancia del contexto cuando se evalúa el papel e impacto de los medios sociales con el alcance mundial. Segundo, hasta qué punto los medios ‘antiguos’ en la forma de periodismo impreso y radio y teledifusión fueron desplazados o se redujeron a fórums de charlas públicas. Tercero, la importancia y el uso variable de las diferentes tecnologías y formatos de la información y la comunicación. El cuarto asunto analiza la conducta de los activistas y la audiencia, mientras que el quinto se enfoca en los efectos de los medios sociales sobre la conducta de los levantamientos, y en la medida que se pueda constatar, sobre sus consecuencias. 本文考察社会媒体在横贯西亚北非地区的民众反叛中扮演的角色。当讨论社会媒体的作用时，注意到社会媒体和政治参与广阔的研究范围并小心避免任何意识形态或价值标准干扰是很重要的。关于社会媒体在反叛中扮演的角色，存在若干关键问题。首先是当以全球性覆盖来评估社会媒体角色和影响时环境的重要性。第二是作为公众话题平台，以印刷和广播新闻形式出现的“旧”媒体在多大程度上被取代或其重要性降低了。第三是不同的信息、通信技术及形式的可变用途和重要性。第四个问题有关积极分子和接受者的行为，而第五个则聚焦于社会媒体对起义的进行以及在可确定范围内其结局的影响。

Towards a post‐national polity: the emergence of the Network Society in Europe

This chapter explores the prospects for a postnational polity in Europe where the territorial base of power is replaced by a system of networks and flows in which the principal resource is knowledge. The argument depicts a united Europe as a space of flows rather than as a super- or supra-statist entity. Tensions that arise between a Europe of networks and spaces and a Europe of places are examined, partly through a study of the burgeoning European Information Society Project which attempts to harness these developing networks in the service of European integration. Issues relating to the democratic nature of governance without government in the network polity are highlighted to exemplify the difficulties of re-imagining Europe. The rhetoric surrounding the European Information Society expresses the ambivalence within a programme that foresees Europe as a web of discursive spaces while continuing to acknowledge the power of the old imagined communities based upon territory and ethnicity.

Anti-Politics or the Triumph of Postmodern Populism in Promotional Cultures?

AbstractPromotional cultures, to use Wernick.s expression, have transformed communication, as the ideology of the market seeps into every facet of social life. Promotional texts, whether verbal, written or visual, now have great impact upon cultural formation and are contributing to a reflexive transformation of both individual and collective political identities. Much commentary on political change (and especially electoral change) is exercised by a powerfully normative concern with the alleged death of modernist forms of politics and political discourse. This paper goes beyond metaphorical hand-wringing to examine changes in the cultural currents which are transforming the politics of many post-historical societies, and which are conveniently summarised in the changing character of electoral politics and campaign discourses. Although frequently discussed as a kind of anti-politics, these currents, and their phenomenal appearance in the guise of media parties and forms of lifestyle marketing are producin...

Cricket for people who don't like cricket?: Twenty20 as expression of the cultural and media zeitgeist

In the run-up to the cricket One Day International (ODI) World Cup played on the Indian subcontinent in the spring of 2011, an interesting fact emerged, albeit one not directly related to prospective events on the field of play.

In at the Death? Reflections on Justin Rosenberg's ‘Post-Mortem’ on Globalization

This article offers a review of Justin Rosenbergs recent critical exegesis on the fate of globalization and the demise of what he calls ‘globalization theory’. It uses his ‘post-mortem’ on globalization theory to underscore the changing nature of critical global(ization) studies, of which the study of globalization processes and the ideologies of globalism form a part. It starts with a brief résumé of Rosenbergs argument and then proceeds to unpack his understanding of the concept of globalization, emphasizing the need to distinguish between quite different concepts which share a common root but cleave to quite separate discourses about the global. Rosenbergs failure to grasp the significance of the spatial turn in social research is discussed at some length, before suggesting that his attempts to construct an alternative methodology for understanding long-term, large-scale social change merely reveals most of the weaknesses in Marxist historical sociology already discerned by students of macro-sociology and comparative history. Rosenbergs resort to conjunctural analysis is located as yet another exercise in paradigm maintenance and his reading of the 1990s is too selective to really explain the variety and import of changes taking place before and during that decade, as well into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Finally, the condition of critical global studies is reviewed. Este artículo ofrece una revisión de la reciente exégesis crítica sobre el destino de la globalización por Justin Rosenberg y la desaparición de lo que él llama ‘teoría de la globalización’. Ésta utiliza su término de ‘post-mortem’ a la teoría de la globalización para destacar los constantes cambios de los estudios críticos de globalización, de los cuales forman parte el estudio de los procesos de la globalización y las ideologías del globlalismo. Comienza con un breve resumen del argumento de Rosenberg y luego procede a desenvolver su noción del concepto de globalización, resaltando la necesidad de distinguir entre conceptos bien diferentes que comparten una raíz común pero que se dividen en métodos muy separados acerca de lo global. El error de Rosenberg para captar la importancia del giro espacial en la investigación social se trata en detalle, antes de sugerir que sus intentos de elaborar una metodología diferente para entender el cambio social a largo plazo y de gran envergadura, apenas revela la mayoría de las deficiencias en sociología histórica marxista, ya discernidas por estudiantes de macro-sociología e historia comparativa. El recurso de Rosenberg para un análisis coyuntural se sitúa como otro ejercicio más para el mantenimiento del paradigma y su lectura de 1990 es demasiado selectiva como para explicar en realidad la variedad e importación de cambios que tienen lugar tanto antes y después de esa década como en la primera década el siglo veintiuno. Finalmente, se analiza la condición de estudios críticos globales.

Global civil society or ‘networked globality’: beyond the territorialist and societalist paradigm

The concept of global civil society (GCS) is central to treatments of globalization and to depictions of a contested globality. This article offers a novel critique of the concept and its value for a critical social science of globalization. It argues that received notions of GCS are rooted in territorialist and societalist paradigms of the social and should not be used to subvent an account of globalization located in the dynamics of trans and even post-societal and post-national connections and the kind of world they intimate. GCS and variants such as cosmopolitanism are examined to evaluate whether they can provide a way of bridging the gap between territorialist and societalist assumptions about the organization of the social and the increasingly post-societal and post-territorial nature of the world. The aim is to avoid the inviting, but ultimately misleading sleight of hand through which GCS is revealed as the boundary-less equivalent of civil society, but with all the normative and aesthetic baggage of the latter still attached. The article ends with a critical discussion of the claim that globalization processes of connection are producing a networked globality in which reflexive agency is not lost. To recognize this requires a radical take on networks and their ontologies and being skeptical about much of the received sociology of globalization. Barrie Axford is professor of politics and head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has held posts at Stanford University and the University of Southampton and been visiting professor at the University of Genoa. Publications include The Global System: Economics, Politics and Culture(1996); Politics: An Introduction(joint author, 1997 & 2002); Unity and Diversity in the New Europe(joint editor, 2000) and The New Media and Politics(joint editor, 2001). He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Studies Association, where he is responsible for international outreach and also a member of the International Editorial Board of the Elsevier journal Telematics and Informatics. He has just completed ‘Multidimensionality, mutual constitution and the nature of systemness: the importance of the cultural turn in the study of global systems’ for Protosociology, Vol.20 (2004). Currently he is working on Theories of Globalization(forthcoming, Polity, 2006) and is organizing an ESRC seminar on Networks, Mobilities and Borders in the Global System, to run at Oxford in January, 2005.The concept of global civil society (GCS) is central to treatments of globalization and to depictions of a contested globality. This article offers a novel critique of the concept and its value for a critical social science of globalization. It argues that received notions of GCS are rooted in territorialist and societalist paradigms of the social and should not be used to subvent an account of globalization located in the dynamics of trans and even post-societal and post-national connections and the kind of world they intimate. GCS and variants such as cosmopolitanism are examined to evaluate whether they can provide a way of bridging the gap between territorialist and societalist assumptions about the organization of the social and the increasingly post-societal and post-territorial nature of the world. The aim is to avoid the inviting, but ultimately misleading sleight of hand through which GCS is revealed as the boundary-less equivalent of civil society, but with all the normative and aesthetic baggag...

Anti-politics or the triumph of postmodern populism in promotional cultures?

Abstract Promotional cultures, to use Wernick’s expression, have transformed communication as the ideology of the market seeps into every facet of social life. Promotional tests, whether verbal, written or visual, now have great impact upon cultural formation and are contributing to a reflexive transformation of both individual and collective political identities. Much commentary on political change (and especially electoral change) is exercised by a powerfully normative concern with the alleged death of modernist forms of politics and political discourse. This paper goes beyond metaphorical hand-wringing to examine changes in the cultural currents which are transforming the politics of many post-historical societies, and which are conveniently summarised in the changing character of electoral politics and campaign discourses. Although frequently discussed as a kind of anti-politics, these currents, and their phenomenal appearance in the guise of media parties and forms of lifestyle marketing are producing a highly self-referential style of electoral discourse, and better understood as intimations of postmodern populism, where that involves: (I) a growing reliance on the techniques and outputs of culture industries to provide sites where meaning is constituted, (II) a de-centring of ideas about authentic forms of publicness and (III) the side-lining of palpable modern forms of politics, like mass political parties. Recent and current developments in campaigns in the USA, Italy and the UK are extracted for detailed comment. ©

Macro-lite: Ways to Understand Europe-Making in the Global Era

In this article, I interrogate elements of a global and European Studies scholarship to be found in the imbrication of sociological institutionalism, modern systems theory and network analysis, where the latter includes complexity models of social (dis)order. I note tensions between them and express concern with their bloodless treatment of agency and, more variably, consciousness while still holding out the possibility of synergy. I argue that there is a strong case for dispensing with any constraining levels of analysis approach to understanding Europe-making, favouring a version best described as ‘macro-lite’. In doing so, I endorse the premise of the special issue that much scholarship under the rubric of European Studies has been too narrowly focused and too constrained by normative or ideological positions, by disciplinary firewalls, by territorialist and ‘internalist’ constructions and even by the ‘integration’ motif, to comprehend the extent to which European/EU agency is socially constructed at the global level and enacted through the imbrication of actors, institutions and networks that cross scales at all levels, sometimes rendering them nugatory.

You Had Me on ‘Global’ and ‘Studies’ Too, I Think

Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2013) has triggered a battery of scholarly reflection over the intellectual terrain of global studies and about its pedagogy. All of which reveals a degree (OK, varying degrees) of approbation for his critique of the ways in which normal science addresses the global, but also frustration. While much of what he says seems unexceptionable, some of the complaints about the piece bemoan its Big/Little-Endian propensity to find nuances of meaning and differences where none exist and irritation that, when all is said and done, his solutions rarely get beyond being merely hortatory. Let me be clear here, I am pretty much sold on the notion that what is often (usually?) packaged as globalization (studies of globalization, globalization studies, theories of globalization) is in dire need of redress. And I agree that what is construed as globalization is often framed by disciplines in ways that are partial and thus limiting, not to say skewed. Globalization is a concept that, in principle, beggars compartmentalization in any one area of social science. But the truth is that while many disciplines have engaged with the idea, none has embraced it fully, let alone ventured far into the conceptually uncharted and infinitely deeper waters of the kind of global scholarship prescribed by Nederveen Pieterse. Strict allegiance to disciplinary traditions and ontological givens is understandable, but vitiates the possibility of a social science of the global and often trivializes contemplation of it. So far, so good. Of course, this is all rather broad-brush and, as the first commentaries pointed out, some work on globalization out of particular disciplines essays at least a jobbing interdisciplinarity and a casual disregard for rigid levels of analysis. There is not too much evidence for this by way of international studies and the defensive enclaves of IPE, including its eponymous ‘critical’ strand; but in sociology—especially sociology with a firm cultural bent—the mission and the engagement are much more pronounced (Giulianotti and Roberston, 2009). Cultural and communication studies are already promiscuous in their embrace of concepts and theories fashioned elsewhere. Complexity science, deemed and damned by many as either too much in thrall to systems thinking and/or much too bloodless in its regard for agency, at least has the virtue of

Mere Connection: Do Communication Flows Compensate for the Lack of World Society?

In recent and usefully acerbic commentary on the prospects for political community beyond the nation-state, David Chandler takes both liberal cosmopolitans and post-structuralist critics of same to task for having quite developed political projects, but very little in the way of hard copy or convincing theory with which to back up their claims (2007, 2009). When discussing globalization, and especially when demarcating or prescribing a global civil society, his is not an unusual complaint.