Mabel Berezin

Secure States: Towards a Political Sociology of Emotion

Emotion and politics is the study of the non-cognitive core of politics. Emotion and politics presents its own special set of difficulties. First, emotions are experienced individually but politics is by definition a collective phenomena. This means that the social analyst has to attempt to understand how an individual micro-level instinct, an emotion, contributes to collective macro-level processes and outcomes. Second, emotions are ontologically in the moment. Emotions and sound have similar properties. Music or noise either soothes or jars the central nervous system. Emotions too affect the central nervous system and even social scientists have begun to acknowledge the relevance of neurobiology to their studies. The physicality of emotion suggests that a robust analysis of emotion demands a multi-disciplinary approach, and not that emotions are outside of the purview of the social sciences. This chapter begins from the position that much theoretical, analytic and empirical work remains to be done in the study of politics and emotions. It represents a first attempt to explore, from multiple angles, how emotions matter to politics. The chapter proceeds on four levels: first, it develops the concepts secure state and community of feeling as analytic frames that unite politics and emotion; second, it explores how emotions are embedded in political institutions; third, it takes up the issue of emotion and collective action; and lastly, it suggests the conceptual issues that a political sociology of emotions might address.

Effectiveness of a prehospital medical control system: an analysis of the interaction between emergency room physician and paramedic.

Medical control for paramedics by means of radio and ECG telemetry is costly, time consuming, and-of unproved value. We assessed the interaction between emergency room physicians and paramedics during ambulance transport of “seriously ill” cardiac patients (cardiac arrest, acute myocardial infarction, or new onset on crescendo angina pectoris) with paramedics in service. Thirty-five percent of all arrhythmias and 35% of potentially life-threatening arrhythmias were misclassified. Correct treatment was rendered in 74% of the cases, although only 65% were correctly diagnosed (p < 0.01). The principal predictive variable for misdiagnosing or incorrectly treating a patient was the presence of a potentially life-threatening arrhythmia, precisely the condition for which medical control and the paramedic system has the most to offer. Only 39% of patients with life-threatening arrhythmias were correctly diagnosed and correctly treated, whereas 64% of patients without life-threatening arrhythmias were correctly diagnosed and correctly treated (p < 0.001). Mortality reflected correct diagnosis and treatment. In-hospital and overall mortalities were 12% and 33%, respectively, for patients who were correctly diagnosed and treated (p < 0.06), compared with 20% and 43%, respectively, for patients who were incorrectly diagnosed or incorrectly treated (p < 0.04). More rigorous medical control is needed to improve the quality of patient care and outcome and to further integrate the advanced life support program into the health care system.

THE ORGANIZATION OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY: CULTURE, STATE, AND THEATER IN FASCIST ITALY*

The Italian fascist regime claimed that the theater was an ideal cultural vehicle for diffusing fascist ideology. Yet, the regime did not radically alter the content offascist theater. Standard accounts of the relationship between culture and the state that privilege the cultural product suggest that the Italian case was anomalous. Using archival materials, I lay out a conceptualframeworkfor discussing the interaction between states and cultural institutions and apply it to Italianfascist theatrical policyfrom 1922 to 1940. Thefascist regime pursued a policy of state paternalism towards the theater. The regime regulated producers of culture rather than cultural products and used organizational structures to legitimate a split between doing theater and writing theater -performance and text. The Italian case suggests that even a regime that claims to be totalitarian cannot create a national aesthetic. it also forces a re-examination of prior studies of states and cultural institutions. M odern states frequently mobilize social and cultural institutions to disseminate ideological beliefs and to shape the public identities of their citizens. While expenditures for cultural institutions may be a small part of state budgets, cultural products diffuse more widely than benefits that accrue to individuals. They provide the state with a symbolic infrastructure. Early in the twentieth century, regimes as diverse as Stalinist Russia, New Deal America and fascist Italy enlisted national cultural institutions in the service of ideology. Despite recent exceptions (Goldfarb 1989; Haraszti 1987; Hunt 1984; Mally 1990), the social science and historical literature lacks accounts of the process through which regimes use cultural institutions to diffuse political ideology.I Studies of Nazi art (Lane [1968] 1985), fascist cinema (Hay 1987), and totalitarian culture (Golomstock 1990), no matter how rich in descriptive value, belie the complexity of the interaction between politics and ideology and suggest that regimes can mold cultural products in their ideological images. Theater in fascist Italy is a useful venue for exploring the interaction between states and cultural institutions. When Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, cinema was in its infancy and theater was the principal mass entertainment medium. Theorists and activists of varying political persuasions viewed the theater as an effective political tool (e.g., Goldman [1914] 1987; Rol

Semiperipheral development : the politics of southern Europe in the twentieth century

PART ONE: THE FORMATION OF THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN SEMIPERIPHERY The Relevance of the Concept of Semiperiphery to Southern Europe - Immanuel Wallerstein Nation-States and Interregional Disparities of Development - Maurice Aymard Problems of Southern European Economic Development (1918-38) - Gyorgy Ranki Incorporation Peripheralization - Kostis Papadantonakis Contradictions of Southern Europes Economic Development Core Demand for Labor from Southern Europe - John Casparis The Case of Switzerland PART TWO: THE POST-WAR TRANSITION The American Recovery of Southern Europe - Caglar Keyder Aid and Hegemony Democracy from Above - John R Logan Limits to Change in Southern Europe Semiperiphery and Core in the European Context - Peter Lange Reflections on the Post-War Italian Experience The Crisis of the Late 1960s in Italy and France - Sidney Tarrow The Transition to Mature Capitalism Fascism to Democratic Socialism - Giovanni Arrighi Logic and Limits of a Transition

Revisiting the french national front : The ontology of a political mood

The French National Front under the leadership of Jean Marie Le Pen is postwar Europes longest standing right-wing political party. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Front began to steadily gain electoral support. In April 2002, Le Pen managed to come in second in the first round of the French Presidential elections. I visited the National Fronts annual festival in 1998, and again in 2005 as part of a larger study on the political culture of the European right. Visiting and revisiting the festival, by adding a temporal comparison to my study, permitted me to see that between 1998 and 2005, the Front had normalized (domesticated) and professionalized. In addition, the visit allowed me to assess the level of political emotion and commitment among Front supporters. I concluded that the new level of emotion and energy that I observed indicated that the Front had possibilities for future electoral success.

Appropriating the “No”: The French National Front, the Vote on the Constitution, and the “New” April 21

On the evening of May 26, 2005, with the polls suggesting that the European Constitution was veering toward defeat, Jacques Chirac made a final exhortation to the French public. He argued that the French were voting not on a sectarian political issue but on an issue that would determine the future of themselves, their children, France, and Europe. Chirac characterized the choice before French citizens as “neither right nor left.” His use of a phrase more commonly associated with Vichy displayed an uncharacteristic historical amnesia and suggests that Chirac and his party were grabbing at straws in those final days. The public discussion of the European Constitution in France, before and after the referendum, underscored the peculiarities and contradictions that are constitutive of the expanding process of European integration. A Socialist Party campaign poster that listed “5 reasons to say yes” typified the rhetorical strategies of the “yes” camp. According to the pamphlet that accompanied the poster, the Constitution would preserve “social Europe” and make Europe “more democratic,” “stronger,” “more protected,” and “more efficient.” But the Socialist Party never convinced its entire constituency and the Socialist vote was 59% “no.” Fears of Polish plumbers and an “attachment to national identity” in the end had more general resonance with the 70% of French citizens who turned out to vote on the referendum. In contrast to analysing why the Constitution failed in France, this article explores why the advocates of the “no” won. In the last 10 years, populist parties, such as the French National Front, have challenged the accelerated process of European integration that the Constitution represented. This brief symposium article focuses on the French National Front’s campaign against the Constitution as well as its post-referendum appropriation of the “no.”1 This article explores how April 21, 2002—the date that Jean Marie Le Pen came in second in the first round of the presidential election— evolved as a political metaphor exploited by both sides in the Constitution debate. The last section speculates on the landscape of political possibilities and opportunities that the vote and its aftermath, particularly the recent riots, provide. The linchpin of the discussion is my visit to the Front’s Fête Bleu Blanc Rouge that took place in the Le Bourget ex-urb of Paris on October 8 and 9, 2005. Le Bourget is a banlieue located near the areas that were in flames beginning October 27, 2005.2

Ambulance utilization by patients with acute myocardial infarction.

Fifty-five per cent (73/133) of myocardial infarction (MI) patients on Cape Cod during a three-month period reached the hospital by ambulance. the 45 per cent (60/133) not using ambulances were compared to users to identify a subpopulation to which public health programs might be directed to increase appropriate use of cardiac ambulances. Univariate analyses showed a distnce of more than ten miles from the hospital, and a prior history of MI distinguished ambulance users from non-users. Demographic/economic status, delay in seeking care, presenting symptoms, Killip class, and in-hospital mortality rates were not signigicantly different. Step-wise discriminant analysis identified four predictive variables in rank order: distance from the hospital, past history of MI, symptoms of fainting, and negative history for hypertension which correctly classified 72 per cent of our population with respect to ambulance utilization.

Risk is for the rich? Childhood vaccination resistance and a Culture of Health.

Childhood vaccination resistance has given rise to outbreaks of diseases, which had been virtually eliminated in the developed world. A parents decision to forego vaccination for their child is a private choice that can have collective outcomes. This article takes a two-pronged approach to unraveling the puzzle of perceiving vaccines as dangerous in view of evidence that testifies to their effectiveness and relative safety. First, it draws on fifty-seven years of newspaper articles on vaccines to outline the public narratives. Second, it uses school-level data from New York and California to explore how these public narratives shape a geography of vaccination rates. We have two main findings. First, we find that while risk has always been a feature of vaccine narratives, the perception that the risks of vaccines out-weigh the benefits has grown. By the millennium, some began to view medical treatments as sources of risk rather than cure. Second, our geography of childhood vaccination reveals two distinct vaccine worlds. Affluence governs one world. Poverty governs the other. The geographic locales where vaccination rates are low enable us to contrast the difference between imagining risk, the prerogative of the affluent, and being at risk, the fate of the poor. Vaccination resistance speaks directly to a Culture of Health as it poses questions about the collective perception of risk and its relation to social inequality and solidarity.

Introduction Democracy and its Others in a Global Polity

Democracy and the modern nation-state are coextensive. Globalization in the economic sphere and shifting and collapsing borders in the political sphere pose challenges to the nation-state and to democratic practice. Citizenship, identity and civil society take on new meanings when they confront large-scale political and social change. Ethnos, the expression of the particular, as a cultural orientation threatens commitment to demos. The principal problem that democracy confronts in a global universe is the emergence of its others - ethnic nationalism, violence and incivility. This article explores how ethnos emerges from demos, the possibilities for constraining it and normative discussion of democratic loyalty and social equality.Democracy and the modern nation-state are coextensive. Globalization in the economic sphere and shifting and collapsing borders in the political sphere pose challenges to the nation-state and to de...

The Festival State: Celebration and Commemoration in Fascist Italy

«Fest-Staat»: Feiern und Gedenken im faschistischen ItalienDas faschistische Italien war ein Fest-Staat (festival state). Die Partei und das Regime inszenierten Fest- und Gedenkveranstaltungen an d...