Journal articles on the topic 'Labor unions Australia Political activity'

Whereas corporate political connections are known to enhance equity values, we demonstrate that union political activity can have the opposite effect. We examine the consequences of a recent Australian state law that restricts union political activity but does not change collective bargaining rights. In the wake of this law, the equity values of affected unionized firms significantly increase, and consistent with this market reaction, these firms are able to bargain for more favorable labor contracts than their unionized peers in other states. The evidence strongly suggests that unions use political activism to extract rents from shareholders and benefit their members.

Since the Australian Labor Party came to power in Queensland in 1989, social attitudes towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) community have undergone significant change. In 1989, the decriminalisation of male-to-male homosexuality was the subject of intense debate, even within the ALP, which ultimately put forward the legislation. Today, policies have evolved considerably, with the Queensland ALP endorsing gay marriage and Anna Bligh, the current Queensland Labor Premier, releasing a YouTube video for the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign to give hope to LGBT youth experiencing harassment and perhaps contemplating suicide. During Labor's time in power, apart from the decriminalisation of male-to-male sexual activity, same-sex relationship laws have been reformed, altruistic surrogacy has been introduced and the presumption of lesbian parenthood has been extended. Some areas of LGBTIQ policy are still being contested, however, with debates surrounding civil unions, an equal age of consent and the existence of the ‘gay panic’ defence continuing. This article considers the progression and limits of these policies and areas of LGBTIQ reform that are still being disputed.

Given recent calls for a new social contract between the unions and government, it is timely to consider the relationship of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) prices and incomes Accord (1983–97) to the construction of neoliberalism in Australia. Contrary to most scholarly accounts, which posit the ALP and ACTU prices and incomes Accord and neoliberalism as exogenously related or competing processes, this article argues they were internally related aspects of economic transformation. The implementation of the Accord agreement deepened Australia’s existing corporatist arrangements while simultaneously advancing neoliberalism within a highly structured political-economic framework.

The NLRB, in a significant ruling for organized labor, recently ruled that employees who are forced to pay union dues are entitled to know how their money is being spent. The NLRB ruled in January 1997 that unions must supply financial information to workers who pay dues but who have elected not to join the union. The use of union dues for political activity continues to be a controversial issue for both public and private unions. This paper will provide a brief overview of the legal history of unions in America and the current issues they are encountering. Legal issues relating to the use of union dues for political activities for both public and private unions will also be discussed.

John S. Alquist and Margaret Levi’s In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism develops a new theory of organizations through a comparative analysis of two activist labor unions (the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia) and two unions that focus only on pursuing member benefits (the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen’s Association in the United States). Integrating the study of labor politics, social movements, social capital, and the political economy of group organization and mobilization, the book addresses a wide range of political science concerns. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on the book as an account of labor politics and as a broader account of the logic of collective action.— Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Industrial Relations proved to be one of the dominant issues in the 2007 federal election campaign with the Government at first defending, and then moderating, their Work Choices legislation. The Labor Opposition benefited greatly from the successful Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) campaign against Work Choices and established a significant electoral advantage on the issue. Labor introduced its own IR policy alternative under the banner `Forward with Fairness' and then spent a good deal of 2007 trying to sell its policy to business. The final policy adopted by Labor, and set to become law over the next few years, represents something of a calculated political compromise. When the detail of the policy is considered the influence of the Work Choices laws is still very much apparent.

Since the 1990s, observers have seen globalization impairing labor’s rights. We take Charles Tilly as an exemplar of this view, subjecting his 1995 article to critical appreciation. We argue that Tilly, known for his work on the National Social Movement, overlooked the fact that some unions under pressure from global neo-liberalism can employ a protest repertoire employing their citizen rights, while others continue to use labor rights. We use port workers, who are directly exposed to globalization, to show how different political opportunity structures and different strategic choices influence these choices. In Sweden, our exemplar of a neo-corporatist system, we find that the employment of labor rights continues to be robust; in the USA, our exemplar of a fully-fledged neo-liberal system, we find much greater recourse to a repertoire calling on citizen rights. Finally, in Australia and Great Britain, countries undergoing a shift to neo-liberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, we show that strategic choice influences how effectively unions adapt to shifts towards neo-liberalism: Australian unions effectively used citizen rights while the British port unions failed to make this strategic shift.

On 19 August 1996, thousands of trade unionists and others stormed the Australian Parliament protesting against the Coalition Government's Work place Relations Bill. In a very visible departure from the years of cooperation and compromise with the previous Federal Labor Government, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) called on trade unionists and their supporters to demonstrate their opposition to the proposed legislation. This outbreak of anger might be thought to herald a reaction to heightened attacks on the Australian working class, ushered in by the election of the Coalition Government on 2 March 1996, which ended thirteen years of Labor rule under leaders Bob Hawke (1983-1991) and Paul Keating (1991-1996). However, while indicating a renewed activism by a disenchanted and alienated working class, this outburst of anger was not attributable to a sudden shift in the overall direction of government policy. Rather, it was an expression of a profound disenchantment with thirteen years of Australian ‘New Labor’ and a fear of the future under a Coalition Government committed to the sharp edges of the neo-liberal agenda.

Purpose Union membership has declined in many countries reducing union capacity to bargain and contribute to economic equality. This paper aims to explore a more hopeful case in an Australian state, where the dramatic anti-union strategies of conservative governments have been reversed by Labor governments. Design/methodology/approach The research frames union recognition and union security in an international context, highlighting differences between US, Canadian, UK and Australian approaches. The research focuses on the Australian state of Queensland, providing an historical account of changes to union recognition and union preference provisions, drawing on legislation, major public service agreements, newspapers and parliamentary transcripts. Findings Conservative governments in Australia have implemented anti-union strategies, and Labor governments have often failed to restore union-friendly provisions when re-elected. In contrast, the Queensland study demonstrates a substantial restoration of union security provisions when Labor governments are re-elected, rebuilding political capital with unions and potentially supporting union membership. This difference is due to unique political and institutional factors that provide governments with unfettered powers to legislate their industrial relations agenda, whether in support or otherwise of unions, and has led to the more distinctive pendulum swings to the right and left than occurred elsewhere in Australia. Originality/value The research contributes to debates about the factors related to declining union membership and highlights a case where unions have achieved restoration of many provisions that increase their influence and potentially their membership.

This monograph examines daily newspaper coverage of organized labor during the burst of union activity that began in the early 1930s. Three factors influenced labor reporting during this period: the dramatic rise of unions as a political, economic, and cultural force in the New Deal; trends in journalism, including the dominance of objectivity as an operating norm and the shift toward interpretive reporting; and journalists, their sources in labor leadership, and the emergence of the American Newspaper Guild. Union leaders were highly critical of the general circulation press and its coverage of labor issues. I argue that labor news was biased against unions, but that bias was not the result of a deliberate attempt to discredit unions. Despite prounion inclinations of some journalists, news values, news gathering routines, and newsroom practices shaped labor reporting in a way that emphasized organized labor’s role in repeatedly challenging and disrupting the status quo.

As part of the global circulation of capital and labor in the early twentieth century, labor and left activists traveled throughout the Pacific Rim. Highlighting the biographical and political journeys of two important left labor agitators of the period, Patrick Hickey and J. B. King, this essay considers the role of the agitator and the meaning of the left for the mobilization of working people during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Hickey and King both had early experiences with radical unions in North America, Hickey with the Western Federation of Miners in Utah and King with the Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia. Their paths intersected in the formation of the left Federation of Labour (the “Red Feds”) in New Zealand. Both went on to play significant roles in Australian left labor circles in the years before, during, and after the First World War. Diverging over strategy and tactics during this time, Hickey became involved with the Labor Party of Australia and King eventually joined the Communist Party of Australia. Their biographical and political journeys reveal significant insights into the splits within the left and the public role of left labor agitators in the Pacific Rim during this period.

The May federal election appeared particularly important to employers’ views of their industrial relations’ interests. Employers and their associations had long steeled themselves against an unwelcome Labor victory, fearing Labor’s promises of substantial changes to industrial relations’ structures, processes and outcomes as well as taxation. Associations appeared busier than ever, representing employers through politics-related public relations, lobbying and media. With enterprise bargaining withering and most wages stagnant, Labor’s defeat encouraged associations and the re-elected government to engage in another, for-now stalled, attack on what remains of unions’ capacity to collectively protect employees. They have also focused on emergent (individual) employment law challenges for employers but have mainly deflected on widespread evidence of wage underpayment. While the political context again strongly favours employers and their associations, they face substantial challenges from rising media and public criticisms over employers’ widespread abuses of their social licence to operate.

This essay examines the American labor movement since the 2008 economic crisis. I begin with a brief review of the structural, institutional, and organizational conditions for labor before the crisis, including changes in employment and the labor force, the conflict between New Deal and anti-union labor regimes, and the emergence of new repertoires in the labor movement. These form the context for the financial crash, and the failure of policy to challenge corporate power. I then discuss the conservative political offensive against unions and movement initiatives at state and local levels. The conflicts have intensified under the Trump administration, with a resurgence of strike activity and the polarization of institutions governing labor and civic life.

The bureaucratization of many social movements has generated controversy among scholars and activists alike. While there is considerable evidence that formalized social movement organizations (SMOs) tend to be successful, critics maintain that such actors invariably shift resources away from protest, reducing their disruptive potential. The current research seeks to reorient this debate by introducing the concept of threat as an integral, but overlooked, dimension of protest. Specifically, I hypothesize that the costs associated with collective action will motivate formalized SMOs to leverage the threat of protest to achieve new gains. The empirical case is made using data from a sample of labor unions and their strike activity from 1990-2001, a period of growing acrimony between organized labor and firms that is particularly well suited for analyzing threat. The findings highlight the role of threat in movement challenges and how it interacts with the broader environment within which the SMO is embedded.

The article deals with the trade unions as a grant to protect the rights and interests of civil servants, reveals the main tasks of trade unions. The activity of trade union organizations in the structure of the state body in Ukraine is analyzed. The legal mechanisms of asserting the violated rights of a civil servant by a trade union organization of a public body and the role of trade unions in protecting the rights of civil servants in developed countries are emphasized. The state at certain times gave the trade unions great powers to protect the rights and interests of workers, and then deprived the trade unions of these powers. In connection with this, various problems arose in regulating the activities of trade unions in the protection of individual and collective rights and interests in the protection of public servants. All this affected the legal status of trade unions. However, it should be noted that trade unions are in constant flux and this leads to improvements in the regulations governing their activities. However, it should be noted that today there are many problems in Ukraine regarding the exercise by the trade union organizations of their powers in the civil service. In particular, the legal status of trade unions in the civil service is not regulated enough, which, in turn, does not allow them to fully protect the legal rights and interests of civil servants. Considering the importance of trade unions in protecting labor rights and the socio-economic interests of workers, in developing democratic forms of citizen participation in managing economic and political processes, a democratic, legal, and social state, which is Ukraine, should support trade unions and take care of legislative consolidation. their authority. Trade unions at all levels should once again return to the consideration of their core functions and pay attention to those that will now be more conducive to the achievement of the main objective of the creation and activity of trade unions – the protection of social-labor rights and interests of trade union members. Today’s Ukraine needs strong unions. A strong union is a union that effectively protects the interests of its members, enjoys their trust and support, is able to organize, if necessary, collective action to protect the socio-economic rights and interests of employees, has sufficient organizational, financial, and human resources to fulfill its statutory tasks. Keywords: trade union organization, protection, rights, the role of trade unions, legal mechanisms.

Activity of business associations is of great importance in market environment. Academic literature divides these associations into representative and employer. For the first time employers associations appeared in Germany in the late nineteenth century. They were the reaction of the German business for growing working class movement. History has shown that the process of business self-organization increases in terms of aggravation of social, political and economic contradictions. Employers associations had a significant impact on the development of the so-called monarchical socialism in Germany. Having taken on the tasks of regulating labor and distribution relations and protection of the rights of entrepreneurs they facilitated the creation of a new system of entrepreneurs - employees relations. Nowadays employers associations are members of the tri-party relations (business, state, trade unions), in a number of European countries. The article covers the origin, organizational and legal forms and main areas of activity of Russian labor unions in the early twentieth century. The analysis shows that they widely used the European experience in their practical work, developed their own mechanisms of cooperation with wage labor and the authorities. In the context the of modern market economy and emerging civil society, the study of such problems is of actual scientific and practical importance.

The author examines the question of why labor in the former Soviet Union has remained so quiet during this tumultous period. He conducts a most similar case study of coal miners, who have struck and organized militant trade unions, and of steelworkers in the same communities, who have not. To explain the lack of strike activity, the concept of mutual dependence is developed, whereby the enterprise is dependent on workers in a labor-short economy and workers in turn have been dependent on the enterprise for the provision of goods and services in short supply. The provision of a high level of such goods and services through the workplace was found to prevent independent worker activity in steel mills and certain coal mines. Implications are drawn for theories of collective action and the study of the former Soviet Union and its economic and political transformation.

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, it confronts misconceptions that explain union decline in Australia; misconceptions that are entrenched in labour history and industrial relations scholarship. We are told that decline “commenced in the early 1980s,” when in fact it began in 1948; that union decline primarily results from attacks by conservative governments “bent on their destruction,” when the rate of decline has often been steepest under Labor governments; that unions invariably redress the plight of society’s poorest, when union agreements negotiated in retail and hospitality routinely leave workers in a worse position than those employed under relevant awards. The article’s second purpose is to trace the sociological consequence of union decline. While unions claim to speak for society’s battlers, more than 40 per cent of unionists today are managers and professionals. In terms of wage cohorts, the propensity to join increases with wealth. Although unions retain representation rights for society’s battlers, and publicly advocate their cause, the fact remains: society’s poorest members are no longer found in much number in union ranks. In part, at least, the unwillingness of labour historians to confront harsh realities stems from an understandable desire to defend labour’s cause, rather than serve primarily as dispassionate academic observers.

The article discusses the implementation of the right to form trade unions as a form of political participation in contemporary Russian society. The right to form associations is enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation and is a conventional form of political participation. The author indicated methodological aspects of this problem through the prism of the concept of “professional interest” viewed as a desire of individuals to secure oneself against possible difficulties in the process of professional self-realization in the system of labor law relations or professional activity. Joining a trade union has a rational basis, because such behavior is thought to ensure an “effective result” – restoration of the violated right, assistance in realization of the right, etc. Another important methodological point is related to the consideration of cultural factors that do not determine political participation, although they are stable over time and related to other factors. Political culture is a reflection of the current political system. This area of concern reveals grounds and contradictions that determine the existing behavioral attitudes towards consensual political participation through joining trade unions.

Too often, the comparing and contrasting of traditional and alt-labor are done as if they were different points on a single dimension. This false equivalency has sometimes led to odd, fanciful, and in some cases dangerous proposals. This paper argues that worker centers, the Fight for $15, and unions operate in distinct and different arenas of power and constitute challenges to different power brokers. It is also clear that they do not use distint types of power but that they use multiple forms of power. It is fundamental that a social movement for workers’ rights needs activity in all arenas of power.

This article traces the history of Australian peacekeeping since its beginnings in September 1947. It shows that, while there have always been Australian peacekeepers in the field since 1947, the level of commitment in different periods has varied greatly. The article sets out to explain this phenomenon, chiefly in political terms. It argues that Australia’s early involvement in the invention of peacekeeping owed much to External Affairs Minister H.V. Evatt’s interest in multilateralism, but that under the subsequent conservative Menzies government a new focus on alliance politics produced mixed results in terms of peacekeeping commitments. By contrast, in the 1970s and early 1980s, for different reasons Prime Ministers Whitlam and Fraser pursued policies which raised Australia’s peacekeeping profile. After a lull in the early years of the Hawke Labor government, the arrival of internationalist Gareth Evans as Foreign Minister signalled a period of intense peacekeeping activity by Australia. For different, regionally-focused reasons, Australia was again active in peacekeeping in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, however, Australia’s heavy commitment to Middle East wars has reduced its peacekeeping contribution once again to a low level.

The attempt to analyze and show the important role of Lviv printers and to describe their role in the development of Galician society has been made in the article. This attempt has been made on the basis of documents, the principle of historicism, scientific and objective approach. The importance and problematic of the comprehensive study of the oldest history of the creation, formation and development of Lviv printers’ professional co-operation of mutual assistance has been highlighted, and the history and activities of this organization in stages have been described. In general, trade unions emerged as an independent united self-defense organizations and they were formed in the form of workers’ associations and mutual assistance funds. During the first half of the nineteenth century the crystallization of the activities of trade unions happened under the influence of various measures, hold by the administrations, the police and the authorities. This contributed to the further unification of labor and the creation of all-city union of printers in Lviv. It is quite logical that the basis of their actions was their desire to achieve and get the working solidarity, mutual support and assistance. The activities of the trade union were regulated by the statutes. First of all, the purpose of the establishment and operation of the organization was socio-economic, cultural and educational ones. Those purposes were approved by the relevant state authorities and, thus, prevented trade unions from participating in political life.The short period of the 1860-1880s can be considered to be a separate stage in the process of the formation of the mass trade union movement in Galicia. Together with the trade unions of printers, settlers, brokers, masons, carpenters, builders, tanneries, metal workers, doctors, pharmacists, tradesmen, postmen, civil servants, lawyers and many others united and became active partners of the region.The problem, which has been investigated in the article, has a valuable scientific significance as it allows to solve one of the most important issues: to get the historical understanding of activities of Lviv trade union organizations, which have not been thoroughly studied yet.

Australia has had high levels of unemployment since the mid-1970s, particularly from approximately 1976-94, yet to date there has been no significant study of political activism by the unemployed in the modern era. This article fills some of this knowledge gap by examining the activities of the Victorian Coalition against Poverty and Unemployment (CAPU), an activist group based on an alliance of trade unions, churches, community groups and the unemployed. Whilst CAPU was influenced by conventional Marxist critiques of the welfare state and highly critical of both the professional social welfare sector and the Australian Labor Party, it also worked co-operatively with key community welfare groups such as the Victorian Council of Social Service and the Brotherhood of St Laurence on specific campaigns. Consequently, it is argued that CAPU was not an anti-welfare organisation per se, but rather acted as the radical arm of the welfare lobby seeking to shame governments into operationalising in practice their declared social justice principles.

The globalization of production and finance is responsible for much of the variation in political contestation over exchange rates since the end of Bretton Woods. On the one hand, globalization increases the salience of the policy decisions that affect exchange rates, as more firms and their workers engage more in international trade and compete more against imports. On the other hand, globalization offers firms a myriad of opportunities to manage their exchange rate risk, through operational and financial hedging. But hedging is available to only certain types of economic actors and in certain situations of exchange rate risk. In this way, globalization has redrawn traditional political cleavages on exchange rates. This argument is tested with an original survey of US firms, labor unions, and trade associations on their preferences and political activity on exchange rate policy.

Abstract Republic of Moldova: Diaspora and Diaspora policy. In this article the Moldovan Diaspora and Moldova’s policy regarding Diasporas phenomena are researched. The historical and the contemporary contexts of formation of Moldovan Diasporas are revealed. The roles of Moldovan citizens’ labor migration, as well as the formation of Moldovan communities and Diasporas abroad are analyzed. The main directions of Moldova’s Diaspora policy are shown: visa free regime and readmission; mobility and circular migration; juridical and social protection of Moldovan migrants abroad; the return and reintegration of Moldovan labor migrants into their homeland’s society. The role of state bodies in the development and implementation of migration policies on a national level is analyzed; the institutional changes and role of the Bureau for the Relations with Diaspora in the coordination of Moldovan state structures’ activity towards working with the Moldovan Diaspora is demonstrated. The role of non-state actors (migrant associations, Diaspora congresses, the church, trade unions, and other) in maintaining of language, culture, traditions, Moldovan identity, in the social and economical development, and Moldova’s cooperation with the accepting country are revealed. The state’s activity in protecting and respecting the political, socioeconomical, and cultural rights of Moldovan emigrants is characterized

AbstractAll the elements of twentieth-century politics in Tamilnadu cohere in 1918–1919: human and natural rights, women's rights, the labor movement, linguistic nationalism, and even the politics of caste reservation. Much has been written of how this politics was mediated by newspapers, handbills, and chapbooks, and the dominant narrative of such events privileges the circulation of print and print culture of vernacular language. This paper explores the relatively lesser-known story of the role and impact of vernacular oratory on the development of the mass political in Tamilnadu from the Swadeshi movement (1905–1908) to the formation of labor unions (1917–1919), and the explicit attempt to persuade non-elites into speech, action, and ultimately politics. I argue that Tamil oratory was an infrastructural element in the production of the political, at least the political as we understand it in twentieth-century Tamilnadu, where oratory became the defining activity of political practice. When elites made the conscious move to begin addressing the common man, when Everyman was called to join into the political, a new agency was formed along with a new definition of what politics would look like. The paper considers what such new agency and definitions entail in pursuit of a better understanding of what constitutes the political generally and the Tamil political in particular.

To examine whether and how social movements that target private firms are influenced by larger protest cycles, we theorize about osmotic mobilization—social movement spillover that crosses the boundary of the firm—and how it should vary with the ideological overlap of the relevant actors and the opportunity structure that potential activists face inside the firm. We test our hypotheses by examining the relationship between levels of protest in U.S. cities around issues like Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement and subsequent support for labor-union organizing in those cities. Combining nationally representative data on more than 20,000 protest events from 1960 to 1995 with data on more than 150,000 union organizing drives held from 1965 to 1999, we find that greater levels of protest activity are associated with greater union support, that spillover accrued disproportionately to unions with more progressive track records on issues like Civil Rights, and that these effects were disproportionately large in the wake of mobilization around employment-related causes and shrank in the wake of conservative political reaction that limited room for maneuver among the external protesters, the labor movement, or both. Our research helps to specify the channels through which external pressures affect firm outcomes.

PurposeThis article aims to examine the influence of chief executive officer (CEO) internal political beliefs on labor relations. Prior research has paid little attention to channels through which the internal personal value system of managers enhances or deteriorates firm value. The authors provide evidence consistent with CEOs adopting labor policies impacting incumbent management–labor relationships based upon their political ideologies.Design/methodology/approachThe research design tests the impact of CEO political ideology on labor relation using an individual CEO’s personal information and firm affiliation, employee lawsuit information, financial contributions to candidates and committees, and firm financial information. The authors compiled a sample of 4,354 unique CEOs from 2,558 US firms that are covered by ExecuComp and used 18,404 firm-year observations for the study’s analysis. A Heckman two-stage estimation process is used to address a potential sample selection bias and match the requirements of exclusion and relevance criteria.FindingsFindings indicate that firms led by Republican-leaning CEOs are more likely to be sued by their employees, especially for violating union rights. Moreover, the findings of the study uncovered that Republican-leaning CEOs have fewer cases dismissed or withdrawn compared to Democrat-leaning CEOs and are also less likely to settle court cases prior to trial. Results indicate that Republican-leaning CEOs are associated with more substantial decreases in firm value compared to Democrat-leaning CEOs when facing labor allegations. The authors further show that firm value is lower for all firms facing litigation, with the magnitude of the decrease being more pronounced for firms with Republican CEOs.Research limitations/implicationsFirm affiliations are identified using ExecuComp, employee lawsuit information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), financial contributions to candidates and committees from the Federal Election Committee (FEC) website, and financial information from Compustat. To the extent that these websites are inaccurate, such as financial contributions being underreported, the findings reported here may understate the relationships reported in this article.Practical implicationsThe authors capture CEO political ideology using political contributions. There may be other means, such as physical space and personal effort, by which one could also estimate the party and intensity of CEO political ideology. This information is unavailable.Social implicationsWhile presidential politics has four-year cycles, managerial finance is a daily activity. While political affiliation is most clearly measurable through monetary contributions, one can see implications of manager political leaning through their relationship with labor throughout the election cycle.Originality/valueThe analyses of this study indicate that labor unions are more likely to sponsor lawsuits and stronger allegations in firms with Republican CEOs and show that withdrawal, settlement or dismissal rates are lower when firms are managed by Republican managers, resulting in higher subsequent legal costs and potentially damaged employee morale. Also, this paper investigates whether lawsuits have a greater negative consequence on firm value when the firm is run by a Republican CEO. The authors find that lawsuits significantly lower Tobin's Q for Republican-led firms compared to companies with Democratic and apolitical CEOs. The authors further show that firm value is lower for all firms facing litigation, with the magnitude of the decrease being more pronounced for firms with Republican CEOs.

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the class dimensions of racism in Taiwan against temporary migrant workers and migrants' efforts to build inter‐ethnic and labour‐community coalitions in struggle against racism.Design/methodology/approachAn important source of data for this study were the unstructured interview. Between September 2000 and December 2005, more than 50 temporary migrants and their support groups in Taiwan were interviewed, specifically about migrants' experiences of racism and their resistance strategies. These interviews were conducted face‐to‐face, sometimes with the assistance of translators. Between 2001 and 2007, some 70 people were interviewed by telephone, between Australia and Taiwan.FindingsIn Taiwan, temporary migrants suffer the racism of exploitation in that capital and the state “racially” categorize them as suitable only for the lowest paid and least appealing jobs. Migrants also suffer neglect by and exclusion from the labour unions. However, migrants have succeeded, on occasions, in class mobilization by building powerful inter‐ethnic ties as well as coalitions with some labor unions, local organizations and human rights lobbies.Research limitations/implicationsThe research raises implications for understanding the economic, social and political conditions which influence the emergence of inter‐ethnic bonds and labour‐community coalitions in class struggle.Practical implicationsThe research will contribute to a greater appreciation among Taiwan's labour activists of the real subordination of temporary migrant labour to capital and of the benefits of supporting migrants' mobilization efforts. These benefits can flow not only to migrants but also to the labour unions.Originality/valueA significant body of academic literature has recently emerged on temporary and illegal migrants' efforts to engage the union movements of industrialized host countries. There is a dearth, however, of academic research on the capacity of temporary migrants to invigorate union activism in Asia, including Taiwan.

Topicality. The actuality of problem is due to the fact that over the years of the Ukrainian economy transformation, market institutions have been created, and development institutions have not. Aim and tasks. The aim of the study is to identify the basic institutions that promote development, and to study the specificity of their functioning in modern Ukraine. Research results. Research shows that in the institutional system of developed countries, the main social institution that initiates progress of the economy is trade union. Trade unions are seeking for a wage increase that encourages employers to introduce in their enterprises inventions that supplant labour, to raise the technical level of their companies. The creation of such trade unions in modern Ukraine is difficult, because this institutional niche is already occupied by trade unions inherited from the Soviet system, where they did not solve the problems of labour cost and working time, their activities were limited to mass cultural work. This is what they continue to do in modern Ukraine. This conclusion is based on a study of the status of collective labour disputes, wage arrears and real wage movements for the period 2013-2018. Comparison of these indicators shows that with a marked fall in real wages and rising debt, protest activity in the labour market did not increase. Ukrainian labour collectives very rarely use such form of resolution of labour conflicts as a strike. Despite the deterioration of the financial status of workers during this period, even the number of hours not worked on average per worker involved in the strike is insignificant. And in 2017, when statistics recorded the maximum number of businesses and organizations that went on strike, that is, 23, the average number of hours not worked per strike worker was only 66. Note that in 2015, extreme in terms of deterioration of the financial status of persons employed, the number of unresolved labour disputes decreased to a minimum value of 34.8% for the whole studied period. It is also significant that only one collective labour dispute was resolved in 2013 and one in 2015 as a result of the strike. Such paradoxical evidence that the deterioration of the financial position of workers, the growth of unresolved labor conflicts and demands of workers does not lead to an intensification of the struggle of trade unions and the radicalization of their actions, indicate that trade unions behave is radically different from the way known in developed countries. Economic development largely depends not only on economic institutions but also on political ones. Political parties are the most important among them. Political parties in Ukraine have not yet formed as ideological organizations. This has made political parties such a social institution that has little influence on economic development. Thus, in the modern institutional system of Ukraine, the main social institutions, that are trade unions and political parties, have little influence on economic development. Сinclusion. Changes in the institutional system are possible only if there are social forces interested in such changes and able to implement them.

The article is devoted to the generalization of scientific approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market. It has been revealed that in modern economic science there are three main groups of approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market that are classical, Keynesian and institutional. According to classical approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market (J. Clark, F. Hayek, R. Holl, D. Gilder, М. Fedstain, І. Fisher, М. Friedman, A. Marshall, C. Marx, А. Pigu, E. Phelps, А. Smith, D. Ricardo) competition on the labor market excludes emergence of forced unemployment and dynamic of interest rate. Elasticity of the relationship between prices ans wages provide full employment in the economy. According to key statements of Keynesian economic theory (D. Bogynia, Е. Domar, І. Grabynska, J. Hicks, J. Keynes, М. Lihachev, R. Harrod) demand on labor does not form supply on it but, on the contrary, effective aggregate demand increase in aggregate supply, including supply on labor, so reaching of equilibrium on the labor market must be provided by a government. In other words, representatives of Keynesian concept proved idea about need of active government intervention in the economy, including state regulation of labor market, and determined taxes and expenditure as key instruments of fiscal policy to fight unemployment. According to institutional approaches (J. Commons, R. Couz, О. Grishnova, Т. Kyrian, U. Мitchell, S. Panchyshyn, A. Reeves, D. Stuckler, D. Zoidze) dynamic of labor market is determined by development of some industries, activity of trade unions, interaction between different social and professional groups as well as traditions that exist in any region or country. In addition, representatives of Institutionalism put forward an idea about need of state regulation of labor market using mechanism of unemployment insurance, concluding permanent contracts between employers and employees concerning salary, perks, compensation package, social benefits, paid leave and flexible working arrangements. Summing up all viewpoints above, it has been proposed author’s definition of labor market that is regarded a system of economic, political and social relations that characterize level of development and agreement of economic subjects’ needs of buying and selling of labor force.

The article is devoted to the generalization of scientific approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market. It has been revealed that in modern economic science there are three main groups of approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market that are classical, Keynesian and institutional. According to classical approaches to the defining of socio-economic essence and structure of labor market (J. Clark, F. Hayek, R. Holl, D. Gilder, М. Fedstain, І. Fisher, М. Friedman, A. Marshall, C. Marx, А. Pigu, E. Phelps, А. Smith, D. Ricardo) competition on the labor market excludes emergence of forced unemployment and dynamic of interest rate. Elasticity of the relationship between prices ans wages provide full employment in the economy. According to key statements of Keynesian economic theory (D. Bogynia, Е. Domar, І. Grabynska, J. Hicks, J. Keynes, М. Lihachev, R. Harrod) demand on labor does not form supply on it but, on the contrary, effective aggregate demand increase in aggregate supply, including supply on labor, so reaching of equilibrium on the labor market must be provided by a government. In other words, representatives of Keynesian concept proved idea about need of active government intervention in the economy, including state regulation of labor market, and determined taxes and expenditure as key instruments of fiscal policy to fight unemployment. According to institutional approaches (J. Commons, R. Couz, О. Grishnova, Т. Kyrian, U. Мitchell, S. Panchyshyn, A. Reeves, D. Stuckler, D. Zoidze) dynamic of labor market is determined by development of some industries, activity of trade unions, interaction between different social and professional groups as well as traditions that exist in any region or country. In addition, representatives of Institutionalism put forward an idea about need of state regulation of labor market using mechanism of unemployment insurance, concluding permanent contracts between employers and employees concerning salary, perks, compensation package, social benefits, paid leave and flexible working arrangements. Summing up all viewpoints above, it has been proposed author’s definition of labor market that is regarded a system of economic, political and social relations that characterize level of development and agreement of economic subjects’ needs of buying and selling of labor force.

The Union of Australian Women (UAW) was a national organisation for left-wing women between World War II and the emergence of the women’s liberation movement. Along with other left-wing activists, UAW members supported Aboriginal rights, through their policies, publications and actions. They also attracted a number of Aboriginal members including Pearl Gibbs, Gladys O’Shane, Dulcie Flower and Faith Bandler. Focusing on NSW activity in the assimilation period, this article argues that the strong support of UAW members for Aboriginal rights drew upon the group’s establishment far-left politics, its relations with other women’s groups and the activism of its Aboriginal members. Non-Aboriginal members of the UAW gave practical and resourceful assistance to their Aboriginal comrades in a number of campaigns through the assimilation era, forming productive and collaborative relationships. Many of their campaigns aligned with approaches of the Communist Party of Australia and left-wing trade unions. In assessing the relationship between the UAW and Aboriginal rights, this article addresses a gap in the scholarship of assimilation era activism.

In this article the spread of demonstrations - a political activity that situates itself in the middle on the scale of conventional - unconventional political action - is studied. The rare survey of the effective participation in demonstrations in Belgium shows that it is rather high. An extensive minority of some 20 to 25% ofthe Belgians declares to have participated in a demonstration. These figures modify the image of the passive, indifferent citizen that research of conventional political participation has shown. The spread of the participation in demonstrations according to age and professional activity, moreover, differs from the pattern found in conventional participation. Demonstrating is typical behaviour of the younger age-categories and therefore of students, but also of farmers, blue collar workers and lower-ranked white collar workers.From this survey follow a number of results connected to the use of demonstrations and the number of demonstrators during the period 1953-74. Related statistics indicate that the number of demonstrations and demonstrators increases, the latter not to the same extent as the farmer however. Furthermore it appears that students, labor unions and agricultural organizations have often come to the streets to enforce their demands. Thematically speaking, particularly problems related to traditional cleavages in Belgian polities have been theobject of demonstrations: ideological, socio-economic and linguistic issues. Organizations active in the area of this cleavages are able to mobilize a great number ofdemonstrators. These organizations are for the most part pillarized and structurally well-developed. Nevertheless the division between issues and organizations during the period 1953-74 has become less unequal. During the sixties and the early seventies the share of traditional cleavages in the number of demonstrations and demonstrators is becoming smaller. New organizations areusing demonstrations more and more to put new issues (environment, foreign policy, quality ofdemocracy, etc.) on the political agenda. They have, however, not the same power to mobilise as do the pillarized organizations.

Valparaiso University School of Law and the Christian Legal Society annually present a symposium on a critical public issue which is examined from a variety of perspectives. Between October 28-31, 1987, a major symposium was held entitled: “Perspectives on South African Liberation.” In the light of press and other media restrictions in effect since a state of emergency was declared in South Africa on June 12, 1986, and the banning of all political activity by 17 anti-apartheid organizations on February 24, 1988, it is crucial that the world community have access to current information and analysis concerning developments in that tragic land.The Pretoria regime has renewed the state of emergency for a third year following an unprecedented three-day nationwide protest strike on June 6-8 by more than two million black workers mobilized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and other anti-apartheid groups to protest the recent bannings, a proposed restrictive labor bill, the continuation of apartheid and the regime's violence. These comments are written on June 16, the 12th anniversary of the Soweto student uprising (now commonly known as South African Youth Day) as several million black workers again defied the regime by staying away from work in honor of the hundred of blacks killed following the 1976 protests against apartheid education.

The paper addresses and analyzes the attitude towards women and the question of women’s rights of the Russian right-wing politicians in the early 20th century. The paper demonstrates the views of the right-wingers on the place of women in the Russian society; their attitude toward feminism and fight for women’ rights; place and role of women in the right monarchical movement. The paper introduces some new sources into the scholarship which enable to reconsider conventional viewpoints on the attitude of rightists toward the question of women’s rights and to enhance the perception of the place of this question in ideology and practice of the pre-revolutionary Russian conservatism. Based on church and patriarchal convictions, the right-wingers largely limited women’s activities by family life, but their views on the issue of women’s rights did not rule out progress in this area. Right-wingers were not opposed to extension of women’s participation in labor activity, albeit with significant reservations. Being foes of feminism and emancipation of women, they tried to shapre a negative image of women’s rights activists, connecting this fight with the revolutionary attacks on traditional social foundations and statehood. At the same time, the right-wingers were utterly alien to misogyny; they celebrated an ideal of womanhood corresponding to their conservative worldview. The right-wingers willingly admitted women into their unions, but tended to perceive them not as party activists and leaders but as a force that would quell political tension inside the monarchical movement and would primarily deal with issues of culture, philanthropy, education, and other “womanish” matters.

Lobbying is one of the strategies applied by groups of interest. Like any other strategy it is to help achieve the goals that a particular group identifies and articulates. Paradoxically, the greatest value and the strongest enemy of lobbying is its popularity. On one hand lobbying is a series of activities that group elites willingly (e.g. in the U.S.) employ to achieve their interests. On the other hand, though, referring to the notion of lobbying in various contexts, whether in PR, marketing or journalism, it raises numerous questions. The latter, i.e. the journalistic context distorts it most severely. It is journalism that applies the name of lobbying to mysterious, to put it mildly, and dubious interactions between the private and the political sectors, thereby implying a rather derogatory ‘image’ of this instrument in public opinion, which is especially the case in Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland. However, lobbying is more than a handy tool to achieve particular, strictly business interests, it is also an important route to implement social interests. It can be easily used by large economic groups of interest, trade unions or business organizations, wrestling with the strong third party of industrial relations, the state. By this token lobbying becomes a component of industrial relations, and by no means is it a worse party, one that is less socially-oriented and more like an ‘old boys’ network’, but a party which can efficiently contribute to a specified social interest to be implemented in the labor market. In order to make it possible, though, appropriate regulations, conditions, and factors of a legal, organizational and cultural nature need to be developed. A profound change in this field does not seem feasible in Poland, which becomes clear when reading the long-awaited law on lobbying currently in the legislative process. Maybe we should not be very surprised, given that our industrial arena is highly susceptible to hybrid and ephemeral solutions, and the issue of making appropriate use of lobbying also leaves a margin for uncertainty and deformation. Despite these concerns and limitations caused by industrial relations it is worth improving and creating the proper environment for lobbying activity in Poland, which the authors of this paper try to demonstrate.

Este artigo objetiva analisar os dilemas da gestão coletiva em fábricas recuperadas pelos trabalhadores no Brasil, organizadas, em sua maioria, na década de 1990. Essas fábricas foram estruturadas ora como cooperativas, ora como formas híbridas de gestão, num contexto de reestruturação econômica e aumento do desemprego, para manter postos de trabalho. Em geral, elas tiveram apoio de sindicatos, e progressivamente se inseriram no movimento de Economia Solidária que se institucionalizou na década seguinte. Após 20 anos do surgimento dos primeiros empreendimentos desse tipo, buscamos não só verificar como eles se mantiveram no mercado e se adaptaram às mudanças político-econômicas do período, mas também analisar sua relação com as propostas originais de autogestão. A pesquisa teve um recorte longitudinal, buscando estudar fábricas analisadas anteriormente (no final dos anos 1990) e que permaneciam em atividade. Também foram realizadas entrevistas com lideranças e trabalhadores dos empreendimentos, bem como com lideranças de instituições de apoio como a ANTEAG e a UNISOL Brasil. Embora os ideais do cooperativismo e da chamada autogestão permaneçam presentes nos discursos de muitos trabalhadores, sua efetivação encontra muitos obstáculos na prática, uma vez que, para serem viáveis, as fábricas recuperadas enfrentam muitas pressões do mercado, que acabam por modificar alguns de seus objetivos iniciais.RECUPERATED FACTORIES BY WORKERS: the dilemmas of collective management of workABSTRACTThis article aims to analyze the dilemmas of the collective management in factories recuperated by workers in Brazil organized mostly in the 1990s. These factories were structured either as cooperatives or as hybrid forms of management, in a context of economic restructuring and of rising unemployment, in order to keep jobs. Generally, they had the support of labor unions, and progressively became part of the Solidarity Economy movement, which was institutionalized in the following decade. 20 years after the advent of the first projects of this kind, we sought not only to verify how they remained in the market and how they adapted to the political-economic changes of the period, but also to analyze their relation to the original proposals of self-management. This article has a longitudinal scope, seeking to study factories analyzed previously (in the late 1990s), which remained in activity. In addition, interviews with leaders and workers of the projects were made, as well as with leaders of support institutions such as ANTEAG and UNISOL Brazil. Although the ideals of cooperativism and self-management remain present in many workers’ speech, its implementation has found many obstacles in practice since recuperated factories in order to become viable endure many market pressures, which eventually modify some of their initial objectives.Key words: Work; Self-Management; Cooperativism; Solidarity Economy; Recuperated FactoriesFABRIQUES RECUPEREES PAR LES TRAVAILLEURS: les dilemmes de la gestion collective du travailABSTRACTL’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les dilemmes de la gestion collective dans des fabriques récupérées par les travailleurs au Brésil et qui se sont organisées, dans leur plus grand nombre au cours des années 1990. Ces fabriques ont été structurées soit comme des coopératives soit sous des formes hybrides d’administration, dans un contexte de restructuration économique et d’augmentation du chômage, afin de pouvoir maintenir des postes de travail. En général elles ont eu le soutien de syndicats et se sont insérées progressivement dans le mouvement de l’Economie Solidaire qui s’est institutionalisée dans la décennie suivante. Vingt ans après l’appartition des premières entreprises de ce genre nous nous proposons non seulement de vérifier comment elles se maintiennent sur le marché et se sont adaptées aux changements politiques et économiques de cette période mais aussi d’analyser leur relation avec les propositions à l’origine de l’autogestion. La recherche s’est faite sur une coupure longitudinale pour essayer d’étudier les fabriques analysées antérieurement (à la fin des années 1990) et qui sont toujours en activité. Des interviews ont également été réalisées avec des leaders et des employés de ces entreprises ainsi qu’avec des responsables d’institutions de soutien telles que l’ANTEAG et l’UNISOL Brésil. Même si les idéaux du coopérativisme et de la dite autogestion sont toujours présents dans les discours de beaucoup de travailleurs, dans la pratique leur mise en place est confrontée à de nombreux obstacles vu que, pour rester viables, les fabriques récupérées affrontent les pressions du marché qui finissent par modifier quelques-uns de leurs objectifs initiaux.Key words: Travail; Autogestion; Coopérativisme; Economie solidaire; Fabriques récupérées

Abstract Some protrade business interests that are against hard enforcement of labor and environmental provisions in trade deals may end up eventually supporting it, while others stick to their initial opposition. Why? When will their positions change? The existing literature would expect protrade interests to be more or less in favor of non-trade issues in trade policies according to how dependent on the international economy they are. However, longitudinal variation in export- and import-dependence does not suffice to explain change of the sort I am interested in. I argue that the position of protrade business interests change as they accumulate experiences on the negotiation/ratification of trade deals. To probe that argument, I present two paired comparisons analyzing the position of protrade business interests as pertains to the use of sanctions to enforce labor and environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) signed by Canada and Australia, and by the United States (US) and European Union (EU) between 1993 and 2019. My analysis points to the overall plausibility of my hypothesis and to avenues for future research. The paper helps understand the political activity of business interests on trade and sustainable development and can shed new light on the politics behind the design of social and environmental provisions in PTAs.

The article analyzes the functional purpose of trade unions in a democratic society, their role in the regulation of social and labor relations and the formation of public policy. Based on a retrospective analysis, the formation of the institution of trade unions was studied on the example of Australia. The experience of their gradual institutionalization and formation as a subject of socio-economic and political relations is considered. The important role of trade unions in ensuring social justice, supporting the processes of self-improvement of politics, development of democracy and full-fledged development of civil society institutions has been clarified. The importance of trade unions and unions for the actualization in public discourse of ensuring the labor rights of citizens, creating an appropriate social infrastructure in accordance with the demands and needs of workers, supporting the national producer and stable economic development in general. The peculiarity of trade unions is that they are voluntary public organizations created to represent and protect the social and labor rights and interests of workers, at the same time they can declare that they are not involved in politics. Trade union structures can be described as part of a political system endowed with organizational, legal, and ideological resources, which determines their subjectivity in politics, ie allows them to play the role of participants in the political process. In many countries, trade unions are actively involved in politics. Their organizational structure includes a special unit engaged in political activities. Such a "political department" provides an opportunity to ensure that the position of trade union members is voiced and heard in the political arena, as well as to inform about the positions of trade union leaders. Public organizations, political parties, as well as, in fact, public authorities and representatives of big capital are valuable allies of trade unions in their agency of progressive social change.

PurposeThis paper explores employment discrimination against gender diverse job applicants and employees in Western Australia (WA).Design/methodology/approachUsing grounded theory, this study draws on semi-structured interviews with respondents (n = 20) who identified as trans women, trans men, nonbinary or agender. Thematic analysis focused on the multiple dimensions of disadvantage experienced by respondents, including subtle, not so subtle and overt types of employment discrimination.FindingsThe authors’ results point to several reasons why gender diverse individuals (GDIs) may fear the labor market, including difficulties in concealing their stigma and acquiescence to discrimination. On the other hand, our results also point to sources of organizational support, including encouragement from direct line managers and colleagues who are also Allies.Practical implicationsThe results of the research have important implications for sociological frameworks surrounding dramaturgy, stigma, aesthetic labor, organizational silence and social identity. Practical implications for employers, employees, human resource (HR) professionals and trade unions are also articulated.Originality/valueWhereas previous studies have prioritized the discriminatory experiences of GDIs in the US and European labor markets, this study reports on gender diverse voices in WA. Furthermore, recent work on this topic has been experimental and largely quantitative, whereas the present study offers a compelling set of profound narratives, thereby addressing calls for qualitative research that foregrounds the complexities and nuances of lived experience for GDIs and renders their voices heard.

Introduction: the authors study the possibility of the global regulation of the labor market. To highlight the topic the article presents the opinions of two experts. Methods: comparison, description, classification. The subjects of the study are international treaties ratified within the framework of international organizations and pools, statistical data. Analysis: economic, social, political and other changes constantly occur in the modern world. It influences the emergence of new forms of competitive ability, pursuit to new opportunities of profit, restructuring of industry, production units, mobility of the workforce, migration flows and formation of new communities, social and cultural relations. In such conditions it is important to observe labor and other social rights of employees, guarantees of labor unions activity. The article faces the questions of how and in what ways it is possible to develop uniform norms and concepts capable of promoting more fruitful specific state cooperation in the common interests of managing the labor market. Results: professor M. Ricceri pays attention to the fact that global competition «stresses» the growing importance of institutional factors to regulate the labor market, namely the applicable laws and rules regulating the conduct of more important participants of the development process: government, system of business, employees and labor unions. Their experience shows that improving of economy and social welfare and also promotion of sustainable growth ultimately depends on the capability to adapt institutes, norms and conduct globally. These are the problems which should be solved by integration and management decision. Professor I. V. Shesteryakova points out that nowadays labor legal integration of states is a process of mutual adaptation of labor legislation of the states through rapprochement, harmonization and unification based on international legal rules. Thus it is possible to work out uniform notions and approaches to manage the global labor law in the framework of labor legal geo-integration.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore. The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. References Brett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008). Citation reference for this article MLA Style Meikle, Graham, Jason A. Wilson, and Barry Saunders. "Vote / Citizen." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Meikle, G., J. Wilson, and B. Saunders. (Apr. 2008) "Vote / Citizen," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/00-editorial.php>.

This issue of M/C Journal asks what’s your vote worth? And what does citizenship mean now? These questions are pressing, not only for the authors and editors of this special issue, but for anyone who contends with the challenges and opportunities presented by the relationship of the individual to the modern state, the difficulty and necessity of effecting change in our polities, and the needs of individuals and communities within frameworks of unequally representative democracies. And we think that’s pretty well all of us. Talk of voting and citizenship also raise further questions about the relationship of macro-level power politics to the mundane sphere of our everyday lives. Voting is a decision that is decidedly personal, requiring the seclusion of the ballot-box, and in Australia at least, a personal inscription of one’s choice on the ballot paper. It’s an important externalisation of our private thoughts and concerns, and it links us, through our nominated representative, to the machinery of State. Citizenship is a matter of rights and duties, and describes all that we are able or expected to do in our relationship with the State and in our membership of communities, however these defined. Our level of activity as citizens is an expression of our affective relationship with State and community – the political volunteerism of small donations and envelope-stuffing, the assertions of protest, membership in unions, parties or community groups are all ways in which our mundane lives link up with tectonic shifts in national, even global governance. Ever since the debacle of the 2000 US presidential election, there has been intensified debate about the effects of apathy, spin and outright corruption on electoral politics. And since the events of the following September, citizens’ rights have been diminished and duties put on something of a war footing in Western democracies, as States militarise in the face of ‘terror’. (“Be alert, not alarmed”). Branches of cultural theory and political science have redoubled their critique of liberal democracy, and the communicative frameworks that are supposed to sustain it, with some scholars presenting voting as a false choice, political communication as lies, and discourses of citizenship as a disciplinary straightjacket. But recent events have made the editors, at least, a little more optimistic. During the time in which we were taking submissions for this special, double issue of M/C Journal, the citizens of Australia voted to change their Federal Government. After 11 years the John Howard-led Liberal Government came to an end on 23 November, swept aside in an election that cost the former PM his own seat. Within a few weeks the new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd had, on behalf of the nation, ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change, apologised to the indigenous ‘stolen generation’ who had been taken from their parents as part of a tragically misconceived project of assimilation, and was preparing to pull Australian combat troops out of Iraq. Australia’s long-delayed Kyoto decision was being tipped at the time of writing as an additional pressure the next US president could not possibly ignore. If the Americans sign up, pressure might in turn build on other big emitters like China to find new solutions to their energy needs. Pulling out of Iraq also left the US looking more isolated still in that seemingly interminable occupation. And the apology, though not enough on its own to overcome the terrible disadvantage of Aboriginal people, made front pages around the world, and will no doubt encourage indigenous peoples in their separate, but related struggles. After so many years of divisive intransigence on these and many other issues, after a decade in which the outgoing Government made the country a linchpin of an aggressive, US-led geopolitics of conflict, change was brought about by a succession of little things. Things like the effect on individuals’ relationships and happiness of a new, unfavourable balance in their workplace. Things like a person’s decision to renounce long-standing fears and reassurances. Things like the choices made by people holding stubby pencils in cardboard ballot boxes. These things cascaded, multiplied, and added up to some things that may become bigger than they already are. It was hard to spot these changes in the mundanity of Australia’s electoral rituals – the queue outside the local primary school, the eye-searing welter of bunting and how-to-vote cards, the floppy-hatted volunteers, and the customary fund-raising sausage-sizzle by the exit door. But they were there; they took place; and they matter. The Prime Minister before Howard, Paul Keating, had famously warned the voters off his successor during his losing campaign in 1996 by saying, at the last gasp, that ‘If you change the Prime Minister, you change the country’. For Keating, the choice embodied in a vote had consequences not just for the future of the Nation, but for its character, its being. Keating, famously, was to his bones a creature of electoral politics – he would say this, one might think, and there are many objections to be made to the claim that anything can change the country, any country, so quickly or decisively. Critical voices will say that liberal democracy really only grafts an illusion of choice onto what’s really a late-capitalist consensus – the apparent changes brought about by elections, and even the very idea of popular or national sovereignties are precisely ideological. Others will argue that democratic elections don’t qualify as a choice because there is evidence that the voters are irrational, making decisions on the basis of slender, or incorrect information, and as a result they often choose leaders that do not serve their interests. Others – like Judith Brett in her latest Quarterly Essay, “Exit Right” – argue that any talk of election results signifying a change in ‘national mood’ belies the fact that changes of government usually reflect quite small overall changes in the vote. In 2007, for example, over 46% of the Australian electorate voted for another Howard term, and only a little over 5% of us changed our minds. There is something to all of these arguments, but not enough to diminish the acts of engaged, mundane citizenship that underpinned Australia’s recent transformation. The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, which started in 2006, was a grassroots effort to build awareness about the import of the Howard Government’s neoliberal industrial relations reform. As well as bringing down the Government, this may have given Australia’s labour movement a new, independent lease of life. Organisations like GetUp also mobilised progressive grassroots activism in key electorates. Former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, the high profile Labor challenger in Howard’s seat of Bennelong, was assisted by an army of volunteer workers. They letterboxed, doorknocked and answered phones for weeks and were rewarded with the unseating of the Prime Minister. Perhaps what Keating should have said is, ‘by the time you change the Prime Minister, the country already has’. By the time the community at large starts flexing its muscles of citizenship, the big decisions have already been collectively made. In the media sphere too, there was heartening evidence of new forms of engagement. In the old media camp, Murdoch’s The Australian tried to fight a rear-guard campaign to maintain the mainstream media as the sole legitimate forum for public discussion. But its commentaries and editorials looked more than ever anachronistic, as Australia’s increasingly mature blogosphere carried debate and alternative forms of reporting on the election right throughout the year leading up to the long campaign. Politicians too made efforts to engage with participatory culture, with smart uses of Facebook, MySpace and blogs by some leading figures — and a much-derided intervention on YouTube by John Howard, whose video clip misguidedly beginning with the words ‘Good morning’ served as an emblem for a government whose moment had passed. There is evidence this year that America is changing, too, and even though the current rise of Barack Obama as a presidential contender may not result in victory, or even in his nomination, his early successes give more grounds for hope in citizenship. Although the enthusiastic reception for the speeches of this great political orator are described by cynics as ‘creepy’ or ‘cultish’, there are other ways of reading it. We could say that this is evidence of a euphoric affective reinvestment in the possibility of citizenship, and of voting as an agent for change — ‘Yes we can’ is his signature line. The enthusiasm for Obama could also simply be the relief of being able to throw off the defensive versions of citizenship that have prevailed in recent years. It could be that the greatest ‘hope’ Obama is offering is of democratic (and Democratic) renewal, a return to electoral politics, and citizenship, being conducted as if they mean something. The mechanics of Obama’s campaign suggest, too, that ordinary acts of citizenship can make a difference when it comes to institutions of great power, such as the US Presidency. Like Howard Dean before him, Obama’s campaign resourcing is powered by myriad, online gifts from small donors – ordinary men and women have ensured that Obama has more money than the Democrat-establishment Clinton campaign. If nothing else, this suggests that the ‘supply-chain’ of politics is reorienting itself to citizen engagement. Not all of the papers in this issue of M/C Journal are as optimistic as this introduction. Some of them talk about citizenship as a means of exclusion – as a way of defining ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, as a locus of paranoia. Some see citizenship as heterogenous, and that unequal access to its benefits is a deficit in our democracy. The limits to citizenship, and to the forms of choice that liberal democracy allows need to be acknowledged. But we also need to see these mundane acts of participation as a locus of possibility, and a fulcrum for change. Everyday acts of democracy may not change the country, but they can change the framework in which our conversations about it take place. Indeed, democracy is both more popular and less popular than ever. In our feature article, Brian McNair explores the ‘democratic paradox’ that, on the one hand, democracy spread to 120 countries in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, voter participation in the more established democracies is falling. While rightly cautioning against drawing too neat an equivalence between X Factor and a general election, McNair considers the popularity of voting in participatory TV shows, noting that people will indeed vote when they are motivated enough. He asks whether the evident popularity of voting for play purposes can be harnessed into active citizenship. Melissa Bellanta questions the use of rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in relation to participatory media forms, such as voting in reality TV competitions or in online polls. Bellanta shows how audience interaction was central to late-nineteenth century popular theatre and draws provocative parallels between the ‘voting’ practices of Victorian theatre audiences and contemporary viewer-voting. She argues that the attendant rhetoric of ‘democracy’ in such interactions can divert our attention from the real characteristics of such behaviour. Digital artist xtine explores a ‘crisis of democracy’ created by tensions between participation and control. She draws upon, on the one hand, Guattari’s analysis of strategies for social change and, on the other, polemical discussions of culture jamming by Naomi Klein, and by Adbusters’ founder Kalle Lasn. Her paper introduces a number of Web projects which aim to enable new forms of local consumption and interaction. Kimberley Mullins surveys the shifting relationships between concepts of ‘public’ and ‘audience’. She discuses how these different perspectives blur and intertwine in contemporary political communication, with voters sometimes invoked as citizens and sometimes presented with entertainment spectacles in political discourse. Mark Hayward looks at the development of global television in Italy, specifically the public broadcaster RAI International, in light of the changing nature of political institutions. He links changes in the nature of the State broadcaster, RAI, with changes in national institutions made under the Berlusconi government. Hayward sees these changes as linked to a narrowing conception of citizenship used as a tool for increasingly ethno-centric forms of exclusion. Panizza Allmark considers one response to the 7 July 2005 bombings in London – the “We’re not afraid” Website, where Londoners posted images of life going on “as normal” in the face of the Tube attacks. As Allmark puts it, these photographs “promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defense against the anxiety of terror.” Paradoxically, these “domestic snapshots” work to “arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence”, only ambiguously resolving the impact of the 7 July events. This piece adds to the small but important literature on the relationship between photography, blogging and everyday life. James Arvanitakis’s piece, “The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average” opens out from a consideration of Australia’s Citizenship Test, introduced by the former government, into a typology of citizenship that allows for different versions of citizenship, and understandings of it “as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary”. His typology seeks to open up new spaces for understanding citizenship as a practice, and as a relation to others, communities and the State. Anne Aly and Lelia Green’s piece, “Moderate Islam: Defining the Good Citizen”, thinks through the dilemmas Australian Muslims face in engaging with the broader community, and the heavy mediation of the state in defining the “good”, moderate Muslim identity in the age of terror. Their research is a result of a major project investigating Australian Muslim identity and citizenship, and finds that they are dealt with in media and political discourse through the lens of the “clash” between East and West embodied on the “war on terror”. For them, “religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship.” Alex Burns offers a critical assessment of claims made, and theories advanced about citizen media. He is skeptical about the definitions of citizenship and journalism that underpin optimistic new media theory. He notes the need for future research the reevaluates citizen journalism, and suggests an approach that builds on rich descriptions of journalistic experience, and “practice-based” approaches. Derek Barry’s “Wilde’s Evenings” offers a brief overview of the relationships between citizen journalism, the mainstream media and citizenship, through the lens of recent developments in Australia, and the 2007 Federal election, mentioned earlier in this introduction. As a practitioner and observer, Derek’s focus is on the status of citizen journalism as political activism, and whether the aim of citizen journalism, going forward, should be “payment or empowerment”. Finally, our cover image, by Drew, author of the successful Webcomic toothpastefordinner.com, offers a more sardonic take on the processes of voting and citizenship than we have in our introduction. The Web has not only provided a space for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also for a plethora of brilliant independent comic artists, who not only offer economical, mordant political commentary, but in some ways point the way towards sustainable practices in online independent media. Toothpastefordinner.com is not exclusively focused on political content, but it is flourishing on the basis of giving core content away, and subsisting largely on self-generated merchandise. This is one area for future research in online citizen media to explore.The tension between optimistic and pessimistic assessments of voting, citizenship, and the other apparatuses of liberal democracy will not be going anywhere soon, and nor will the need to “change the country” once in awhile. Meanwhile, the authors and editors of this special edition of M/C Journal hope to have explored these issues in a way that has provoked some further thought and debate among you, as voters, citizens and readers. ReferencesBrett, Judith. “Exit Right.” Quarterly Essay 28 (2008).

Introduction How do we measure intimacy? What are its impacts on our social, political and personal lives? Can we claim a politics to our intimate lives that escapes the normative confines of archaic institutions, while making social justice claims for relationship recognition? Negotiating some of these disparate questions requires us to think more broadly in contemporary public debates on equality and relationship recognition. Specifically, by outlining the impacts of the popular "gay marriage" debate, this paper examines the impacts of queer theory in association with public policy and community lobbying for relationship equality. Much of the debate remains polarised: eliminating discrimination is counterposed to religious or reproductive narratives that suggest such recognition undermines the value of the "natural" heterosexual family. Introducing queer theory into advocacy that oscillates between rights and reproduction problematises indexing intimacy against normative ideas of monogamy and family. While the arguments circulated by academics, lawyers, politicians and activists have disparate political and ethical impacts, when taken together, they continue to define marriage as a public regulation of intimacy and citizenship. Citizenship, measured in democratic participation and choice, however, can only be realised through reflexive politics that value difference. Encouraging critical dialogue across disparate areas of the marriage equality debate will have a significant impact on how we make ethical claims for recognising intimacy. (Re)defining Marriage In legislative terms, marriage remains the most fundamental means through which the relationship between citizenship and intimacy is crystallised in Australia. For example, in 2004 the Federal Liberal Government in Australia passed a legislative amendment to the Marriage Act 1961 and expressly defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. By issuing a public legislative amendment, the Government intended to privilege monogamous (in this case understood as heterosexual) intimacy by precluding same-sex or polygamous marriage. Such an exercise had rhetorical rather than legal significance, as common law principles had previously defined the scope of marriage in gender specific terms for decades (Graycar and Millbank 41). Marriage as an institution, however, is not a universal or a-historical discourse limited to legal or political constructs. Socialist feminist critiques of marriage in the 1950s conceptualised the legal and gender specific constructs in marriage as a patriarchal contract designed to regulate female bodies (Hannam 146). However, Angela McRobbie notes that within a post-feminist context, these historical realities of gendered subjugation, reproduction or domesticity have been "disarticulated" (26). Marriage has become a more democratic and self-reflexive expression of intimacy for women. David Shumway elaborates this idea and argues that this shift has emerged in a context of "social solidarity" within a consumer environment of social fragmentation (23). What this implies is that marriage now evokes a range of cultural choices, consumer practices and affective trends that are incommensurable to a singular legal or historical term of reference. Debating the Politics of Intimacy and Citizenship In order to reflect on this shifting relationship between choice, citizenship and marriage as a concept, it is necessary to highlight that marriage extends beyond private articulations of love. It is a ritualised performance of heterosexual individual (or coupled) citizenship as it entrenches economic and civil rights and responsibilities. The private becomes public. Current neo-liberal approaches to same-sex marriage focus on these symbolic and economic questions of how recognising intimacy is tied to equality. In a legal and political context, marriage is defined in s5 Marriage Act as "the union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life." While the Act does not imbue marriage with religious or procreative significance, such a gender dichotomous definition prevents same-sex and gender diverse partners from entering into marriage. For Morris Kaplan, this is a problem because "full equality for lesbian and gay citizens requires access to the legal and social recognition of our intimate associations" (201). Advocates and activists define the quest for equal citizenship by engaging with current religious dogma that situates marriage within a field of reproduction, whereby same-sex marriage is seen to rupture the traditional rubric of monogamous kinship and the biological processes of "gender complementarity" (Australian Christian Lobby 1). Liberal equality arguments reject such conservative assertions on the basis that desire, sexuality and intimacy are innate features of human existence and hence always already implicated in public spheres (Kaplan 202). Thus, legal visibility or state recognition becomes crucial to sustaining practices of intimacy. Problematising the broader social impact of a civil rights approach through the perspective of queer theory, the private/public distinctions that delineate citizenship and intimacy become more difficult to negotiate. Equality and queer theory arguments on same-sex marriage are difficult to reconcile, primarily because they signify the different psychic and cultural investments in the monogamous couple. Butler asserts that idealisations of the couple in legal discourse relates to norms surrounding community, family and nationhood (Undoing 116). This structured circulation of sexual norms reifies the hetero-normative forms of relationships that ought to be recognised (and are desired) by the state. Butler also interrogates this logic of marriage, as a heterosexual norm, and suggests it has the capacity to confine rather than liberate subjects (Undoing 118-20). The author's argument relies upon Michel Foucault's notion of power and subjection, where the subject is not an autonomous individual (as conceived in neo liberal discourses) but a site of disciplined discursive production (Trouble 63). Butler positions the heterosexuality of marriage as a "cultural and symbolic foundation" that renders forms of kinship, monogamy, parenting and community intelligible (Undoing 118). In this sense, marriage can be a problematic articulation of state interests, particularly in terms of perpetuating domesticity, economic mobility and the heterosexual family. As former Australian Prime Minister John Howard opines: Marriage is … one of the bedrock institutions of our society … marriage, as we understand it in our society, is about children … providing for the survival of the species. (qtd. in Wade) Howard's politicisation of marriage suggests that it remains crucial to the preservation of the nuclear family. In doing so, the statement also exemplifies homophobic anxieties towards non-normative kinship relations "outside the family". The Prime Ministers' words characterise marriage as a framework which privileges hegemonic ideas of monogamy, biological reproduction and gender dichotomy. Butler responds to these homophobic terms by alluding to the discursive function of a "heterosexual matrix" which codes and produces dichotomous sexes, genders and (hetero)sexual desires (Trouble 36). By refusing to accept the binary neo-liberal discourse in which one is either for or against gay marriage, Butler asserts that by prioritising marriage, the individual accepts the discursive terms of recognition and legitimacy in subjectifying what counts as love (Undoing 115). What this author's argument implies is that by recuperating marital norms, the individual is not liberated, but rather participates in the discursive "trap" and succumbs to the terms of a heterosexual matrix (Trouble 56). In contradistinction to Howard's political rhetoric, engaging with Foucault's broader theoretical work on sexuality and friendship can influence how we frame the possibilities of intimacy beyond parochial narratives of conjugal relationships. Foucault emphasises that countercultural intimacies rely on desires that are relegated to the margins of mainstream (hetero)sexual culture. For example, the transformational aesthetics in practices such as sadomasochism or queer polyamorous relationships exist due to certain prohibitions in respect to sex (Foucault, History (1) 38, and "Sex" 169). Foucault notes how forms of resistance that transgress mainstream norms produce new experiences of pleasure. Being "queer" (though Foucault does not use this word) becomes identified with new modes of living, rather than a static identity (Essential 138). Extending Foucault, Butler argues that positioning queer intimacies within a field of state recognition risks normalising relationships in terms of heterosexual norms whilst foreclosing the possibilities of new modes of affection. Jasbir Puar argues that queer subjects continue to feature on the peripheries of moral and legal citizenship when their practices of intimacy fail to conform to the socio-political dyadic ideal of matrimony, fidelity and reproduction (22-28). Puar and Butler's reluctance to embrace marriage becomes clearer through an examination of the obiter dicta in the recent American jurisprudence where the proscription on same-sex marriage was overturned in California: To the extent proponents seek to encourage a norm that sexual activity occur within marriage to ensure that reproduction occur within stable households, Proposition 8 discourages that norm because it requires some sexual activity and child-bearing and child-rearing to occur outside marriage. (Perry vs Schwarzenegger 128) By connecting the discourse of matrimony and sex with citizenship, the court reifies the value of marriage as an institution of the family, which should be extended to same-sex couples. Therefore, by locating the family in reproductive heterosexual terms, the court forecloses other modes of recognition or rights for those who are in non-monogamous relationships or choose not to reproduce. The legal reasoning in the case evinces the ways in which intimate citizenship or legitimate kinship is understood in highly parochial terms. As Kane Race elaborates, the suturing of domesticity and nationhood, with the rhetoric that "reproduction occur within stable households", frames heterosexual nuclear bonds as the means to legitimate sexual relations (98). By privileging a familial kinship aesthetic to marriage, the state implicitly disregards recognising the value of intimacy in non-nuclear communities or families (Race 100). Australia, however, unlike most foreign nations, has a dual model of relationship recognition. De facto relationships are virtually indistinguishable from marriage in terms of the rights and entitlements couples are able to access. Very recently, the amendments made by the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth) has ensured same-sex couples have been included under Federal definitions of de facto relationships, thereby granting same-sex couples the same material rights and entitlements as heterosexual married couples. While comprehensive de facto recognition operates uniquely in Australia, it is still necessary to question the impact of jurisprudence that considers only marriage provides the legitimate structure for raising children. As Laurent Berlant suggests, those who seek alternative "love plots" are denied the legal and cultural spaces to realise them ("Love" 479). Berlant's critique emphasises how current "progressive" legal approaches to same-sex relationships rely on a monogamous (heterosexual) trajectory of the "love plot" which marginalises those who are in divorced, single, polyamorous or multi-parent situations. For example, in the National Year of Action, a series of marriage equality rallies held across Australia over 2010, non-conjugal forms of intimacy were inadvertently sidelined in order to make a claim for relationship recognition. In a letter to the Sydney Star Observer, a reader laments: As a gay man, I cannot understand why gay people would want to engage in a heterosexual ritual called marriage … Why do gay couples want to buy into this ridiculous notion is beyond belief. The laws need to be changed so that gays are treated equal under the law, but this is not to be confused with marriage as these are two separate issues... (Michael 2) Marriage marks a privileged position of citizenship and consumption, to which all other gay and lesbian rights claims are tangential. Moreover, as this letter to the Sydney Star Observer implies, by claiming sexual citizenship through the rubric of marriage, discussions about other campaigns for legislative equality are effectively foreclosed. Melissa Gregg expands on such a problematic, noting that the legal responses to equality reiterate a normative relationship between sexuality and power, where only couples that subscribe to dyadic, marriage-like relationships are offered entitlements by the state (4). Correspondingly, much of the public activism around marriage equality in Australia seeks to achieve its impact for equality (reforming the Marriage Act) by positioning intimacy in terms of state legitimacy. Butler and Warner argue that when speaking of legitimacy a relation to what is legitimate is implied. Lisa Bower corroborates this, asserting "legal discourse creates norms which universalise particular modes of living…while suppressing other practices and identities" (267). What Butler's and Bower's arguments reveal is that legitimacy is obtained through the extension of marriage to homosexual couples. For example, Andrew Barr, the current Labor Party Education Minister in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), noted that "saying no to civil unions is to say that some relationships are more legitimate than others" (quoted in "Legal Ceremonies"). Ironically, such a statement privileges civil unions by rendering them as the normative basis on which to grant legal recognition. Elizabeth Povinelli argues the performance of dyadic intimacy becomes the means to assert legal and social sovereignty (112). Therefore, as Jenni Millbank warns, marriage, or even distinctive forms of civil unions, if taken alone, can entrench inequalities for those who choose not to participate in these forms of recognition (8). Grassroots mobilisation and political lobbying strategies around marriage equality activism can have the unintentional impact, however, of obscuring peripheral forms of intimacy and subsequently repudiating those who contest the movement towards marriage. Warner argues that those who choose to marry derive pride from their monogamous commitment and "family" oriented practice, a privilege afforded through marital citizenship (82). Conversely, individuals and couples who deviate from the "normal" (read: socially palatable) intimate citizen, such as promiscuous or polyamorous subjects, are rendered shameful or pitiful. This political discourse illustrates that there is a strong impetus in the marriage equality movement to legitimate "homosexual love" because it mimics the norms of monogamy, stability, continuity and family by only seeking to substitute the sex of the "other" partner. Thus, civil rights discourse maintains the privileged political economy of marriage as it involves reproduction (even if it is not biological), mainstream social roles and monogamous sex. By defining social membership and future life in terms of a heterosexual life-narrative, same-sex couples become wedded to the idea of matrimony as the basis for sustainable intimacy and citizenship (Berlant and Warner 557). Warner is critical of recuperating discourses that privilege marriage as the ideal form of intimacy. This is particularly concerning when diverse erotic and intimate communities, which are irreducible to normative forms of citizenship, are subject to erasure. Que(e)rying the Future of Ethics and Politics By connecting liberal equality arguments with Butler and Warner's work on queer ethics, there is hesitation towards privileging marriage as the ultimate form of intimacy. Moreover, Butler stresses the importance of a transformative practice of queer intimacy: It is crucial…that we maintain a critical and transformative relation to the norms that govern what will not count as intelligible and recognisable alliance and kinship. (Undoing 117) Here the author attempts to negotiate the complex terrain of queer citizenship and ethics. On one hand, it is necessary to be made visible in order to engage in political activism and be afforded rights within a state discourse. Simultaneously, on the other hand, there is a need to transform the prevailing hetero-normative rhetoric of romantic love in order to prevent pathologising bodies or rendering certain forms of intimacy as aberrant or deviant because, as Warner notes, they do not conform to our perception of what we understand to be normal or morally desirable. Foucault's work on the aesthetics of the self offers a possible transformational practice which avoids the risks Warner and Butler mention because it eludes the "normative determinations" of moralities and publics, whilst engaging in an "ethical stylization" (qtd. in Race 144). Whilst Foucault's work does not explicitly address the question of marriage, his work on friendship gestures to the significance of affective bonds. Queer kinship has the potential to produce new ethics, where bodies do not become subjects of desires, but rather act as agents of pleasure. Negotiating the intersection between active citizenship and transformative intimacy requires rethinking the politics of recognition and normalisation. Warner is quite ambivalent as to the potential of appropriating marriage for gays and lesbians, despite the historical dynamism of marriage. Rather than acting as a progressive mechanism for rights, it is an institution that operates by refusing to recognise other relations (Warner 129). However, as Alexander Duttmann notes, recognition is more complex and a paradoxical means of relation and identification. It involves a process in which the majority neutralises the difference of the (minority) Other in order to assimilate it (27). However, in the process of recognition, the Other which is validated, then transforms the position of the majority, by altering the terms by which recognition is granted. Marriage no longer simply confers recognition for heterosexual couples to engage in reproduction (Secomb 133). While some queer couples may subscribe to a monogamous relationship structure, these relationships necessarily trouble conservative politics. The lamentations of the Australian Christian Lobby regarding the "fundamental (anatomical) gender complementarity" of same-sex marriage reflect this by recognising the broader social transformation that will occur (and already does with many heterosexual marriages) by displacing the association between marriage, procreation and parenting (5). Correspondingly, Foucault's work assists in broadening the debate on relationship recognition by transforming our understanding of choice and ethics in terms of "queer friendship." He describes it as a practice that resists the normative public distinction between romantic and platonic affection and produces new aesthetics for sexual and non-sexual intimacy (Foucault, Essential 170). Linnell Secomb argues that this "double potential" alluded to in Foucault and Duttman's work, has the capacity to neutralise difference as Warner fears (133). However, it can also transform dominant narratives of sexual citizenship, as enabling marriage equality will impact on how we imagine traditional heterosexual or patriarchal "plots" to intimacy (Berlant, "Intimacy" 286). Conclusion Making an informed impact into public debates on marriage equality requires charting the locus of sexuality, intimacy and citizenship. Negotiating academic discourses, social and community activism, with broader institutions and norms presents political and social challenges when thinking about the sorts of intimacy that should be recognised by the state. The civil right to marriage, irrespective of the sex or gender of one's partner, reflects a crucial shift towards important democratic participation of non-heterosexual citizens. However, it is important to note that the value of such intimacy cannot be indexed against a single measure of legal reform. While Butler and Warner present considered indictments on the normalisation of queer intimacy through marriage, such arguments do not account for the impacts of que(e)rying cultural norms and practices through social and political change. Marriage is not a singular or a-historical construction reducible to state recognition. Moreover, in a secular democracy, marriage should be one of many forms of diverse relationship recognition open to same-sex and gender diverse couples. In order to expand the impact of social and legal claims for recognition, it is productive to rethink the complex nature of recognition, ritual and aesthetics within marriage. In doing so, we can begin to transform the possibilities for articulating intimate citizenship in plural democracies. References Australian Christian Lobby. "Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009." Deakin: ACL, 2009. Australian Government. "Sec. 5." Marriage Act of 1961 (Cth). 1961. ———. Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth). 2008. Bell, David, and John Binnie. The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. Oxford: Polity P, 2000. Berlant, Lauren. "Intimacy: A Special Issue." Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-88. ———. "Love, a Queer Feeling." Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis. Eds. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001:432-52. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. "Sex in Public." Ed. Lauren Berlant. Intimacy. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2000: 311-30. Bower, Lisa. "Queer Problems/Straight Solutions: The Limits of a Politics of 'Official Recognition'" Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 267-91. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Duttmann, Alexander. Between Cultures: Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition. London: Verso, 2000. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (1): The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1977. ———. "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity." Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. London: Allen Lange/Penguin, 1984. 163-74. ———. Essential Works of Foucault: 1954-1984: Ethics, Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 2000. Graycar, Reg, and Jenni Millbank. "From Functional Families to Spinster Sisters: Australia's Distinctive Path to Relationship Recognition." Journal of Law and Policy 24. 2007: 1-44. Gregg, Melissa. "Normal Homes." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 27 Aug. 2007 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/02-gregg.php›. Hannam, Jane. Feminism. London and New York: Pearson Education, 2007. Kaplan, Morris. "Intimacy and Equality: The Question of Lesbian and Gay Marriage." Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 201-30. "Legal Ceremonies for Same-Sex Couples." ABC Online 11 Nov. 2009. 13 Dec. 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739661.htm›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London and New York: Sage, 2008. Michael. "Why Marriage?" Letter to the Editor. Sydney Star Observer 1031 (20 July 2010): 2. Millbank, Jenni. "Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law - Part One: Couples." Federal Law Review 34 (2008): 1-44. Perry v. Schwarzenegger. 3: 09 CV 02292. United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 2010. Povinelli, Elizabeth. Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Race, Kane. Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009. Secomb, Linnell. Philosophy and Love. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. Shumway, David. Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy and the Marriage Crisis. New York: New York UP, 2003. Wade, Matt. "PM Joins Opposition against Gay Marriage as Cleric's Election Stalls." The Sydney Morning Herald 6 Aug. 2003. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

The literature on spatial-temporal barriers shows that temporary migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation and has concentrated on how they utilize new media to address underpayment and exploitation. These studies, however, have left unexplored the agency, temporality, and spatial considerations that underpin why workers prefer to activate “informal” mechanisms of complaint rather than accessing “formal” channels of redress, such as the Fair Work Ombudsman or labor unions. Using Working Holiday Makers in Australia as an example, this article focuses on digital togetherness generated through new media. I argue that digital interactions on new media platforms not only change the spatial-temporal limit of temporary migrant workers, but also create digital togetherness and connect workers with different imagined others (customers, arriving migrant workers, and workers who are facing exploitation). This connection can become an everyday resistance strategy, a remedy to space–time limits, and potentially challenge asymmetrical power relations between workers and employers.

This article explores how fat women protesting challenges norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces. We use the term fat as a political reclamation; Fat Studies scholars and fat activists prefer the term fat, over the normative term “overweight” and the pathologising term “obese/obesity” (Lee and Pausé para 3). Who is and who isn’t fat, we suggest, is best left to self-determination, although it is generally accepted by fat activists that the term is most appropriately adopted by individuals who are unable to buy clothes in any store they choose. Using a tweet from conservative commentator Ann Coulter as a leaping-off point, we examine the narratives around women in the public sphere and explore how fat bodies might transgress further the norms set by society. The public representations of women in politics and protest are then are set in the context of ‘activist wisdom’ (Maddison and Scalmer) from two sides of the globe. Activist wisdom gives preference to the lived knowledge and experience of activists as tools to understand social movements. It seeks to draw theoretical implications from the practical actions of those on the ground. In centring the experiences of ourselves and other activists, we hope to expand existing understandings of body politics, gender, and political power in this piece. It is important in researching social movements to look both at the representations of protest and protestors in all forms of media as this is the ‘public face’ of movements, but also to examine the reflections of the individuals who collectively put their weight behind bringing social change.A few days after the 45th President of the United States was elected, people around the world spilled into the streets and participated in protests; precursors to the Women’s March which would take place the following January. Pictures of such marches were shared via social media, demonstrating the worldwide protest against the racism, misogyny, and overall oppressiveness, of the newly elected leader. Not everyone was supportive of these protests though; one such conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, shared this tweet: Image1: A tweet from Ann Coulter; the tweet contains a picture of a group of protestors, holding signs protesting Trump, white supremacy, and for the rights of immigrants. In front of the group, holding a megaphone is a woman. Below the picture, the text reads, “Without fat girls, there would be no protests”.Coulter continued on with two more tweets, sharing pictures of other girls protesting and suggesting that the protestors needed a diet programme. Kivan Bay (“Without Fat Girls”) suggested that perhaps Coulter was implying that skinny girls do not have time to protest because they are too busy doing skinny girl things, like buying jackets or trying on sweaters. Or perhaps Coulter was arguing that fat girls are too visible, too loud, and too big, to be taken seriously in their protests. These tweets provide a point of illustration for how fat women protesting challenge norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces While Coulter’s tweet was most likely intended as a hostile personal attack on political grounds, we find it useful in its foregrounding of gender, bodies and protest which we consider in this article, beginning with a review of fat girls’ role in social justice movements.Across the world, we can point to fat women who engage in activism related to body politics and more. Australian fat filmmaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater makes documentaries, such as Aquaporko! and Nothing to Lose, that queer fat embodiment and confronts body norms. Newly elected Ontario MPP Jill Andrew has been fighting for equal rights for queer people and fat people in Canada for decades. Nigerian Latasha Ngwube founded About That Curvy Life, Africa’s leading body positive and empowerment site, and has organised plus-size fashion show events at Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week in Nigeria in 2016 and the Glitz Africa Fashion Week in Ghana in 2017. Fat women have been putting their bodies on the line for the rights of others to live, work, and love. American Heather Heyer was protesting the hate that white nationalists represent and the danger they posed to her friends, family, and neighbours when she died at a rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in late 2017 (Caron). When Heyer was killed by one of those white nationalists, they declared that she was fat, and therefore her body size was lauded loudly as justification for her death (Bay, “How Nazis Use”; Spangler).Fat women protesting is not new. For example, the Fat Underground was a group of “radical fat feminist women”, who split off from the more conservative NAAFA (National Association to Aid Fat Americans) in the 1970s (Simic 18). The group educated the public about weight science, harassed weight-loss companies, and disrupted academic seminars on obesity. The Fat Underground made their first public appearance at a Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles, taking over the stage at the public event to accuse the medical profession of murdering Cass Elliot, the lead singer of the folk music group, The Mamas and the Papas (Dean and Buss). In 1973, the Fat Underground produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto. This Manifesto began by declaring that they believed “that fat people are full entitled to human respect and recognition” (Freespirit and Aldebaran 341).Women have long been disavowed, or discouraged, from participating in the public sphere (Ginzberg; van Acker) or seen as “intruders or outsiders to the tough world of politics” (van Acker 118). The feminist slogan the personal is political was intended to shed light on the role that women needed to play in the public spheres of education, employment, and government (Caha 22). Across the world, the acceptance of women within the public sphere has been varied due to cultural, political, and religious, preferences and restrictions (Agenda Feminist Media Collective). Limited acceptance of women in the public sphere has historically been granted by those ‘anointed’ by a male family member or patron (Fountaine 47).Anti-feminists are quick to disavow women being in public spaces, preferring to assign them the role as helpmeet to male political elite. As Schlafly (in Rowland 30) notes: “A Positive Woman cannot defeat a man in a wrestling or boxing match, but she can motivate him, inspire him, encourage him, teach him, restrain him, reward him, and have power over him that he can never achieve over her with all his muscle.” This idea of women working behind the scenes has been very strong in New Zealand where the ‘sternly worded’ letter is favoured over street protest. An acceptable route for women’s activism was working within existing political institutions (Grey), with activity being ‘hidden’ inside government offices such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Schuster, 23). But women’s movement organisations that engage in even the mildest form of disruptive protest are decried (Grey; van Acker).One way women have been accepted into public space is as the moral guardians or change agents of the entire political realm (Bliss; Ginzberg; van Acker; Ledwith). From the early suffrage movements both political actors and media representations highlighted women were more principled and conciliatory than men, and in many cases had a moral compass based on restraint. Cartoons showed women in the suffrage movement ‘sweeping up’ and ‘cleaning house’ (Sheppard 123). Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were celebrated for protesting against the demon drink and anti-pornography campaigners like Patricia Bartlett were seen as acceptable voices of moral reason (Moynihan). And as Cunnison and Stageman (in Ledwith 193) note, women bring a “culture of femininity to trade unions … an alternative culture, derived from the particularity of their lives as women and experiences of caring and subordination”. This role of moral guardian often derived from women as ‘mothers’, responsible for the physical and moral well-being of the nation.The body itself has been a sight of protest for women including fights for bodily autonomy in their medical decisions, reproductive justice, and to live lives free from physical and sexual abuse, have long been met with criticisms of being unladylike or inappropriate. Early examples decried in NZ include the women’s clothing movement which formed part of the suffrage movement. In the second half of the 20th century it was the freedom trash can protests that started the myth of ‘women burning their bras’ which defied acceptable feminine norms (Sawer and Grey). Recent examples of women protesting for body rights include #MeToo and Time’s Up. Both movements protest the lack of bodily autonomy women can assert when men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies for their entertainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And both movements have received considerable backlash by those who suggest it is a witch hunt that might ensnare otherwise innocent men, or those who are worried that the real victims are white men who are being left behind (see Garber; Haussegger). Women who advocate for bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion, are often held up as morally irresponsible. As Archdeacon Bullock (cited in Smyth 55) asserted, “A woman should pay for her fun.”Many individuals believe that the stigma and discrimination fat people face are the consequences they sow from their own behaviours (Crandall 892); that fat people are fat because they have made poor decisions, being too indulgent with food and too lazy to exercise (Crandall 883). Therefore, fat people, like women, should have to pay for their fun. Fat women find themselves at this intersection, and are often judged more harshly for their weight than fat men (Tiggemann and Rothblum). Examining Coulter’s tweet with this perspective in mind, it can easily be read as an attempt to put fat girl protestors back into their place. It can also be read as a warning. Don’t go making too much noise or you may be labelled as fat. Presenting troublesome women as fat has a long history within political art and depictions. Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) was depicted as fat and ugly; she also reinforced an anti-suffragist position (Chenut 441). These images are effective because of our societal views on fatness (Kyrölä). Fatness is undesirable, unworthy of love and attention, and a representation of poor character, lack of willpower, and an absence of discipline (Murray 14; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 1).Fat women who protest transgress rules around body size, gender norms, and the appropriate place for women in society. Take as an example the experiences of one of the authors of this piece, Sandra Grey, who was thrust in to political limelight nationally with the Campaign for MMP (Grey and Fitzsimmons) and when elected as the President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union in 2011. Sandra is a trade union activist who breaches too many norms set for the “good woman protestor,” as well as the norms for being a “good fat woman”. She looms large on a stage – literally – and holds enough power in public protest to make a crowd of 7,000 people “jump to left”, chant, sing, and march. In response, some perceive Sandra less as a tactical and strategic leader of the union movement, and more as the “jolly fat woman” who entertains, MCs, and leads public events. Though even in this role, she has been criticised for being too loud, too much, too big.These criticisms are loudest when Sandra is alongside other fat female bodies. When posting on social media photos with fellow trade union members the comments often note the need of the group to “go on a diet”. The collective fatness also brings comments about “not wanting to fuck any of that group of fat cows”. There is something politically and socially dangerous about fat women en masse. This was behind the responses to Sandra’s first public appearance as the President of TEU when one of the male union members remarked “Clearly you have to be a fat dyke to run this union.” The four top elected and appointed positions in the TEU have been women for eight years now and both their fatness and perceived sexuality present as a threat in a once male-dominated space. Even when not numerically dominant, unions are public spaces dominated by a “masculine culture … underpinned by the undervaluation of ‘women’s worth’ and notions of womanhood ‘defined in domesticity’” (Cockburn in Kirton 273-4). Sandra’s experiences in public space show that the derision and methods of putting fat girls back in their place varies dependent on whether the challenge to power is posed by a single fat body with positional power and a group of fat bodies with collective power.Fat Girls Are the FutureOn the other side of the world, Tara Vilhjálmsdóttir is protesting to change the law in Iceland. Tara believes that fat people should be protected against discrimination in public and private settings. Using social media such as Facebook and Instagram, Tara takes her message, and her activism, to her thousands of followers (Keller, 434; Pausé, “Rebel Heart”). And through mainstream media, she pushes back on fatphobia rhetoric and applies pressure on the government to classify weight as a protected status under the law.After a lifetime of living “under the oppression of diet culture,” Tara began her activism in 2010 (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She had suffered real harm from diet culture, developing an eating disorder as a teen and being told through her treatment for it that her fears as a fat woman – that she had no future, that fat people experienced discrimination and stigma – were unfounded. But Tara’s lived experiences demonstrated fat stigma and discrimination were real.In 2012, she co-founded the Icelandic Association for Body Respect, which promotes body positivity and fights weight stigma in Iceland. The group uses a mixture of real life and online tools; organising petitions, running campaigns against the Icelandic version of The Biggest Loser, and campaigning for weight to be a protected class in the Icelandic constitution. The Association has increased the visibility of the dangers of diet culture and the harm of fat stigma. They laid the groundwork that led to changing the human rights policy for the city of Reykjavík; fat people cannot be discriminated against in employment settings within government jobs. As the city is one of the largest employers in the country, this was a large step forward for fat rights.Tara does receive her fair share of hate messages; she’s shared that she’s amazed at the lengths people will go to misunderstand what she is saying (Vilhjálmsdóttir). “This isn’t about hurt feelings; I’m not insulted [by fat stigma]. It’s about [fat stigma] affecting the livelihood of fat people and the structural discrimination they face” (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She collects the hateful comments she receives online through screenshots and shares them in an album on her page. She believes it is important to keep a repository to demonstrate to others that the hatred towards fat people is real. But the hate she receives only fuels her work more. As does the encouragement she receives from people, both in Iceland and abroad. And she is not alone; fat activists across the world are using Web 2.0 tools to change the conversation around fatness and demand civil rights for fat people (Pausé, “Rebel Heart”; Pausé, “Live to Tell").Using Web 2.0 tools as a way to protest and engage in activism is an example of oppositional technologics; a “political praxis of resistance being woven into low-tech, amateur, hybrid, alternative subcultural feminist networks” (Garrison 151). Fat activists use social media to engage in anti-assimilationist activism and build communities of practice online in ways that would not be possible in real life (Pausé, “Express Yourself” 1). This is especially useful for those whose protests sit at the intersections of oppressions (Keller 435; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 19). Online protests have the ability to travel the globe quickly, providing opportunities for connections between protests and spreading protests across the globe, such as SlutWalks in 2011-2012 (Schuster 19). And online spaces open up unlimited venues for women to participate more freely in protest than other forms (Harris 479; Schuster 16; Garrison 162).Whether online or offline, women are represented as dangerous in the political sphere when they act without male champions breaching norms of femininity, when their involvement challenges the role of woman as moral guardians, and when they make the body the site of protest. Women must ‘do politics’ politely, with utmost control, and of course caringly; that is they must play their ‘designated roles’. Whether or not you fit the gendered norms of political life affects how your protest is perceived through the media (van Acker). Coulter’s tweet loudly proclaimed that the fat ‘girls’ protesting the election of the 45th President of the United States were unworthy, out of control, and not worthy of attention (ironic, then, as her tweet caused considerable conversation about protest, fatness, and the reasons not to like the President-Elect). What the Coulter tweet demonstrates is that fat women are perceived as doubly-problematic in public space, both as fat and as women. They do not do politics in a way that is befitting womanhood – they are too visible and loud; they are not moral guardians of conservative values; and, their bodies challenge masculine power.ReferencesAgenda Feminist Media Collective. “Women in Society: Public Debate.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 10 (1991): 31-44.Bay, Kivan. “How Nazis Use Fat to Excuse Violence.” Medium, 7 Feb. 2018. 1 May 2018 <https://medium.com/@kivabay/how-nazis-use-fat-to-excuse-violence-b7da7d18fea8>.———. “Without Fat Girls, There Would Be No Protests.” Bullshit.ist, 13 Nov. 2016. 16 May 2018 <https://bullshit.ist/without-fat-girls-there-would-be-no-protests-e66690de539a>.Bliss, Katherine Elaine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. Penn State Press, 2010.Caha, Omer. 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O presente trabalho apresenta os principais resultados de uma pesquisa realizada em 1998/99 sobre o sindicalismo na Região Metropolitana de Salvador, Bahia, sob a responsabilidade do Núcleo da Unitrabalho/UFBA e que teve como objetivo analisar o quadro atual dos sindicatos e dos dirigentes sindicais no contexto de amplas transformações no mundo do trabalho, decorrentes do processo de globalização e de reestruturação produtiva em desenvolvimento no país. Foram pesquisados 40 sindicatos localizados na Região Metropolitana de Salvador (RMS). A sistematização das informações permitiu a construção de um Banco de Dados que reúne informações inéditas acerca do perfil dos sindicatos e do perfil dos dirigentes sindicais. Este trabalho apresenta uma primeira análise desses resultados, ainda de caráter preliminar, porém reveladora das principais características que marcam o conjunto das lideranças sindicais da Bahia, tanto no que se refere ao aspecto pessoal e funcional, quanto no que diz respeito, mais particularmente, ao exercício da atividade sindical num contexto extremamente adverso e de crise dos sindicatos, o que permite desvendar os principais problemas, atividades e perspectivas para o movimento sindical urbano em Salvador. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Sindicato, dirigentes sindicais, representação política, Salvador, associativismo. UNIONS AND UNION LEADERS IN BAHIA IN THE 90S: DIAGNOSIS AND PERSPECTIVES This paper presents the main results of a research carried out from 1998 to 1999 on unionism in the metropolitan area of Salvador, Bahia, under the responsibility of the Núcleo da Unitrabalho/UFBA, with the objective of analyzing the present picture of the unions and union leaders in the context of the ample changes within the labor market, which are taking place in the country as a result of the process of globalization and productive restructuring. Forty unions located in the metropolitan area of Salvador (RMS) were surveyed. Systematization of the information allowed the development of a data base which gathers information on the profiles of the unions and their leaders. This paper presents a primary and preliminary analysis of those results, although no less revealing of the main trends of the union leadership in Bahia, both in their personal and functional features, with respect particularly to the union activity in an extremely adverse context, immersed in crisis, allowing the unveiling of the main problems, activities and perspectives of the urban union movement in Salvador. KEYWORDS: Union, unionism, union leaders, globalization, productive restructuring, work world. Publicação Online do Caderno CRH: http://www.cadernocrh.ufba.br

AbstractThe international community is increasingly concerned with indigenous rights. The essence of the claims that international law seeks to accommodate involves the ability of indigenous people to make decisions about social, cultural, economic and environmental matters in their region. This paper looks at some aspects of the human rights of indigenous Australians from that perspective. It contains three interlocking sections. The first section outlines the background to the Australian High Court decision in Wik Peoples v. Queensland in which the majority of the Court said that aboriginal native title to land could co-exist with pastoral lease activity. The second part looks at the furore provoked by this decision, advancing arguments about the media and political treatment of the issue. Here we contend, doubtless rhetorically ourselves, that the Australian government has moved from Wik to Wickedness in dealing with this issue. The third part looks at recent developments and offers some conclusions as to where the legal resolution of native title to land in Australia might have emerged. In our conclusion we also consider the direction of the political and legal debate since the Australian Labor Party led by Paul Keating lost the 1996 election in a landslide, and the increasing narrowness of an economically conservative political agenda. Our overall theme, which stems directly from that, is the paucity of the political debate over Australian indigenous human rights. Rhetoric has abounded and could prompt many questions about the political debate in Australia over this issue, and the obligations of politicians. Law has formed a vital background to this: at time lauded, at times rejected vehemently by the Government.