Tag Archives: International

Aging in Nationhood: Everyday Nationalism and Belonging Among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec

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Stallone, Jessica. 2025. “ Aging in Nationhood: Everyday Nationalism and Belonging Among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec,” The British Journal of Sociology: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70042.

Scholars of aging and nationalism rarely engage with each another. To remedy this gap, I examine how ethnonationalism becomes a resource for navigating the precarity of aging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two private senior residences in a region of Québec, I show how financially privileged Québécois seniors enact nationhood through everyday cultural practices. I introduce the concept of “aging in nationhood” to describe how seniors draw on ethnonationalist identities to foster comfort, community, and meaning at an age of decline—often with exclusionary effects. Seniors who do not—or cannot—assimilate into majority culture experience social isolation. By linking nationalism and aging, I show how seniors reproduce the nation, shaping their well-being and the boundaries of belonging. While grounded in Québec, this concept offers new insight for thinking about how dominant-group seniors mobilize ethnonationalism as a source of membership and exclusion in white aging societies across the Atlantic.

“Until Indian Title Shall Be … Fairly Extinguished”: The Public Lands, Indigenous Erasure, and the Origins of Government Promotion of Infrastructure in the United States

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Shi, M. (2025). “Until Indian Title Shall Be … Fairly Extinguished”: The Public Lands, Indigenous Erasure, and the Origins of Government Promotion of Infrastructure in the United States. Politics & Society, 53(4), 570-602. https://doi.org/10.1177/00323292251338129 (Original work published 2025)

Prior to the authorization of the Erie Canal in 1817, it was not taken for granted that governments should directly promote infrastructure projects such as roads, canals, and railways as a means of stimulating what is now called economic development. This article investigates infrastructure promotion in this early period to examine the origins of the American developmental state. It finds that legislators repeatedly called on the nation’s public lands as a costless and freely available resource—even in the face of legally recognized Native title—for infrastructure finance. Doing so allowed legislators to rely on assumptions of Indigenous erasure to mobilize the public lands as a politically light fiscal resource that reduced the perceived costs of government action. In making this argument, this article develops political lightness as a concept for diagnosing how public budgets can institutionalize power-laden cultural contexts in public policy, makes visible the processes of Indigenous dispossession and erasure constitutive of the fiscal calculus of the modern developmental state, and contributes to the theorization of the United States as a case of settler colonial state formation.

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Democracia y movimientos sociales

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Rossi, Federico M. (2023), Movimientos sociales y democracia (Temas de la Democracia, 45; Mexico: Conferencias Magistrales – Instituto Nacional Electoral). ISBN 9786078870660. URL: https://www.ine.mx/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/democracia-y-movimientos-sociales.pdf

«El libro», afirma Matías Rossi, «sintetiza 20 años de investigación en un breve texto que responde a una serie de interrogantes troncales para comprender el rol de la acción colectiva en la constitución de los regímenes sociopolíticos». Estos interrogantes, en torno a los que Rossi articula su investigación, van desde las preguntas «¿Qué son los movimientos sociales?« y «¿Qué es la democracia?« hasta otras como «¿Cuál es la relación entre movimientos sociales y democracia?«, «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a la democratización como cambio de régimen político?«, «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a expandir la democracia más allá de sus límites representativos?« y «¿Cómo contribuyen los movimientos sociales a evitar que la democracia transite hacia una plutocracia?« Para el investigador de la UNED, «es un honor y una oportunidad» poder presentar este libro en una feria como la FIL. «Más allá de sentirme honrado por este reconocimiento a mis esfuerzos por comprender el curso de la historia, lo siento como una oportunidad de hacer reflexionar a la ciudadanía. El formato que propone el INE favorece un lenguaje coloquial que acerca los debates académicos a la población. Esto representa una oportunidad, que es la de hacer uso de la responsabilidad social del académico de involucrarse en la constitución de pueblos que vivan en libertad con dignidad social».

Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico

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Morosin, A., & Hein, J. E. (2025). Organizing against mining companies during the COVID-19 pandemic: frames, tactics and the digital divide in southern Mexico. Globalizations, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2525034

How did movements defending the commons cope with a rise in direct State support for extractive capital during the COVID-19 pandemic? This article utilizes a mixed methods approach to explore how anti-mining organizations in southern Mexico shifted their frames and tactics at the onset of the pandemic. Content analysis of e-newsletters from two civil society organizations were combined with interviews with anti-mine activists. Electronic newsletters and other forms of communication engaged in frame extension by linking the pandemic to environmental injustice and to the State’s neglect of public health. In an effort to transcend a digital divide in rural areas impacted by neoliberal extractivism, some solidarity organizations increased their reliance on the internet, yet such digital tactics were not evenly embraced. Our findings clarify some limitations of the internet for mobilizing rural populations in mining zones, while reiterating the importance of traditional, face-to-face organizing tactics that directly challenge extractive industries.

About the Patient Named Taiwan: The Rise of Doctors in Party Politics

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Kim, J., & Liu, S. (2025). About the Patient Named Taiwan: The Rise of Doctors in Party Politics. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2025.2488904

Doctors are not typically known for engaging in party politics. However, in Taiwan, many doctors have assumed prominent roles within the Democratic Progressive Party, including Dr Lai Ching-te who became president in May 2024. This article examines the factors contributing to the rise of doctors in Taiwan’s party politics since democratisation, particularly in the Democratic Progressive Party. Although the existing literature focuses on regime transitions and capital convertibility in elite circulation, this study proposes an alternative explanation: the symbiotic relationship between the Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan and the Democratic Progressive Party. Utilising extensive archival data from Taiwan, the article argues that this alliance, which combined an influential medical association with a weak political party, facilitated the emergence of doctor-politicians during Taiwan’s democratisation. The findings suggest that professional associations can serve as political vehicles, transforming individual efforts into collective action by participating in policymaking and mobilising resources for social movements and electoral politics. Furthermore, the case of doctor-politicians in Taiwan offers valuable insights into professional mobilisation, demonstrating how scientific expertise can be harnessed to wield moral authority and establish political coalitions within and beyond professional boundaries.