Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Start date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.authoritarianism

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    Taking (anti-)‘woke’ seriously: the future of development cooperation and humanitarian aid
    (John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of ODI Global, 2025-08-21) Mawdsley E; Banks G; Sanyu C; Scheyvens R; Overton J
    Purpose This article examines the Trump administration’s ‘war on woke’ as a key narrative in dismantling USAID in early 2025, arguing that its cultural framing is politically significant alongside material and geopolitical impacts. Approach Drawing on Project 2025 and a Lonsdale and Black blog as examples, we explore how ‘woke’ is cast as a threat to US values and interests. Findings Cuts disproportionately harm women, children, and marginalised groups, while emboldening conservative actors globally. Anti-‘woke’ narratives gain traction from inequalities produced by neoliberal globalisation; liberal aid arguments have lost voter appeal. Reclaiming ‘woke’ in its original sense offers opportunities for justice-based development approaches. Value Foregrounding the cultural politics of aid, we call for structurally oriented, globally connected solidarity that engages alienated domestic constituencies and addresses racialised inequalities in North and South.
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    Development and Validation of the Affective Polarization Scale
    (Ubiquity Press, 2024-06-05) McMurtrie B; Philipp M; Hebden R; Williams M
    Affective polarization – an expressed aversion and dislike of members of one’s political outgroup – has increased in many polities in recent years, and thus published research on the topic has proliferated. Studies have asserted that affective polarization is tied to prejudice and authoritarianism, among other potentially harmful phenomena, and is buffered by intellectual humility. We assert that this literature is hindered by the use of ad hoc, heterogeneous measures of affective polarization which have not been properly psychometrically evaluated, and which limit research clarity and make cumulative science on the topic difficult. Informed by the common extant measures of affective polarization we constructed a new scale and investigated its reliability and construct validity. In Study 1 we generated items and had them rated by subject matter experts for content validity (N = 6). In Study 2, a sample of US participants completed the scale (N = 326), an EFA suggested a three-factor model, which had good reliability. In Study 3, a CFA (N = 331) confirmed that a three-factor model fit the data, with subscales labelled Social Distance, Aversion, and Incivility. We also showed that our Affective Polarization Scale had good reliability, through the results of the α- and ω-indicators of reliability. Construct validity analyses supported all pre-registered hypotheses, showing that scores on our scale were positively correlated with authoritarianism, need for closure, and identity strength, and negatively correlated with intellectual humility. We make suggestions for future research and scale usage, such as investigating measurement invariance in different populations, or with different outgroup targets.
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    COVID-19, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and Precarious Migrant Work in Singapore: Structural Violence and Communicative Inequality
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2020-08-20) Dutta MJ; Sastry S
    Drawing upon an ongoing ethnography with low-wage migrant workers in Singapore, this article builds on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach (CCA) to explore the experiences of the workers amid COVID-19 outbreaks in dormitories housing them. The CCA foregrounds the interplays of communicative and material inequalities, suggesting that the erasure of infrastructures of voices among the margins reproduces and circulates unhealthy structures that threaten the health and well-being of the working classes. The voices of the low-wage migrant workers who participated in this study document the challenges with poor housing, poor sanitation, and food insecurity that are compounded with the absence of information and voice infrastructures. Amid the everyday threats to health and well-being that are generated by neoliberal reforms across the globe, the hyper-precarious conditions of migrant work rendered visible by the trajectories of COVID-19 call for structurally transformative futures that are anchored in the voices of workers at the margins of neoliberal economies.
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    Neoliberalism and authoritarian media cultures: a Vietnamese perspective
    (1/03/2022) Yến-Khanh N; Phelan S; Gray E
    This study asks how the concept of neoliberalism can be adapted to a critical analysis of authoritarian political and media cultures that cannot be adequately understood through the Western-centric narratives that dominate the literature on neoliberalism. We examine the case of Vietnam, a country where the relationship between the media system and the political system is defined primarily by the power of the party-state autocracy. We explore the extent to which neoliberalism is a useful theoretical category for grasping the relationship between state, market, and civil society actors in Vietnam, especially as it relates to the media system. Supported by an analysis of how Vietnamese news media cover healthcare and education for people with autism, we conclude by extrapolating three theoretical-methodological guidelines that will be useful to researchers examining the relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarian political and media cultures in different countries.