Humph. My tutorial group has no faith in me. When I raised this point I was derided as a Satanist and an infidel. They no not the struggles I have been through to get so far, the insults I have faced. Etc. So forth. Enough with the rabble rousing.
Point a) What defines a political issue?
Xavier T (T for Tutor), asked this question today. I was informed (as I misguidedly missed out this weeks, and quite a few of the previous weeks, readings) that this weeks reading from Tilly defined a political issue as something that involves the government or an agent of the government (James Bond).
I disagree. Whilst politics in its Greek history (yes I can read Wikipedia) in essence refers to the affairs of the city or the state, its modern form is more varied. The people have a horrendous say in government affairs and political issues. An issue is not a political issue if only one person cares about it. For an issue to grow up, leave school, find a job, get married and become a political issue it must gain widespread exposure and thus widespread interest. If one person wants hedgehogs to be made the national icon of NZ, and they submitted the appropriate paperwork to the appropriate government department, it does not make the wacko idea of an officially registered pest being our national animal a political issue.
If, on the other hand, some poor kid had his icecream stolen by a 80 year old on a mobility scooter, and the media captured this event and popped it all over the news. That would instantly make the issue a political one. People will be concerned about drive by granny robbers and politicians will want to gain exposure from this and will do something like forcing all mobility scooter drivers to have police checks.
You see in any system of government, if there is enough public knowledge and passion on an issue, that issue becomes political. I will defend this statement from those critics who say "nananannana not in authoritarian dictatorships nananana" and those other seditious types who are in my tutorial.
2) I also recommend Xavier T be arrested for attempting to stir political rebellion. I might also point out that he makes an interesting point. WHY THE HELL AREN'T MORE OF US PROTESTING. I mean currently, protesting is made uncool by all those hippies who do it for kicks and get involved in these issues, 'because its important man' without fully understanding them.
A few thousand dreadlocked people who showered last week gain some attention to issues, but not enough to really make it politically important. A few thousand tidy respectable Pols 209 students marching down Lambton Quay will make any issue important (well almost any issue). But I guess the problem is, what would you march down the street for? Is our issue that we don't care enough any more?
So again, I ask you, What defines a political issue?!? What would you march down the street for?!?!? AND WHY THE HELL HAVE I SPENT SO LONG WRITING THIS WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITING MY ESSAY.
p.s In joke: I know a good bar, lets go make it better. Anyone?
AH thats really long.
ReplyDeleteSo let’s say its 1650 and we’re in England, and you stand up against slavery, and nobody cares. You rant on a street corner everyday about the injustices of slavery until you die, but nobody cares. The police do not care, the media do not care, people do not care. K slaves care but that’s not important. Nobody cares because opposing slavery is just dumb, in the context of 17th century England. There is no ‘public knowledge’ or ‘passion’ around the issue, people just want to get on with drinking whisky and whipping slaves. You were the only one that cared, and now you are dead. What you’re saying is, the issue of abolitionism would not be political if only one abolitionist cared about it. Is that what you’re saying Ben? huh?
ReplyDeleteHedgehogs are not officially registered pests by the way. They are politely inquisitive night-dwellers with soft underbellies and they would never hurt anyone.
I think the above point is important. It really gets down to the question of whether an issue is defined by what it is or what it is about or by the amount of support it has.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that an old man stealing (what was it an ice cream or something??) from a kid is a political issue no matter how much attention is drawn to it UNTIL it somehow involves government, law enforcement questions, etc.
Technically politics is power relations or relations that are a means of gaining/accessing or utilizing power. but is that what we mean by a political issue? in that case any issue concerning any relationship in which power is gained or used would be a political one.
So maybe we need to narrow the "political" down to the more commonly perceived definition of being related to the state or government. In which case something is not political until a related institution or individual becomes involved.
So i guess in summary the two questions would be:
1. If an issue is determined by the amount of support it garners or by the topic/point of interest it is about
2. If by "political' we mean the commonly understood definition (state/governments) or the political scientist definition (power relations)
"What you’re saying is, the issue of abolitionism would not be political if only one abolitionist cared about it. Is that what you’re saying Ben? huh?"
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately Sam, you are slightly missing the point. By your argument you would state that a political issue is defined not by the amount of people involved, nor by government involvement, it is instead defined by the righteousness of a cause. In which case you are arguing that Nazi Genocide of the Jews was not a political issue.
The point is, that it is the level of public support and interest that decides whether or not an issue grows into being a political issue. When the level this level of public interest is reached, the government is forced to react or adapt in some way. If the sole criteria to be filled was government involvement then a traffic violation would automatically become a political issue.
Your point is more interesting Martha. I would merely argue that to say that an issue with large public support only becomes political when an agent of the government gets involved, implies that if the government refuses to get involved and the public take action to solve the issue without government involvement then the issue still does not become a political issue. Thus stating that a government has the power to decide which issues are political and which are not.
No, abolitionism was simply an example, righteousness doesn’t really factor into it. All I am saying is that for a cause to become big, it often needs to be small first. This has been the nature of almost every major progressive social movement throughout history. To dismiss people who are asking important questions and saying important things simply because they are a minority is imprudent.
ReplyDeleteYour argument ran thus. If one person raises an issue, it is not political, if many people raise it, it is political. The fact is that issues just don’t get picked up by everyone at the same time. Further consider abolitionism. Today the entire world recognizes human slavery to be wrong, but the struggle began with just a few people; street orators, writers, emancipated slaves, all of whom were marginalized as extremists. When slavery was opposed by just a few people, I presume you would have deemed the issue non-political? I don’t know. Defining what does and does not constitute a political issue is hard, but I certainly wouldn’t judge the political importance of an issue by its level of popular interest or support. I think I would tend towards defining a political issue by its substance.
But how do you judge substance? Who can decide whether an issue is substantial or not?
ReplyDeleteAbolition did not become an issue of importance until many people knew and felt passionately about it. Its all very well to use hindsight to judge a situation, but at the time, the street orators were extremists! And the issue of abolition was not a political one as not enough people cared about it.
Your summary of how I define a political issue is precisely correct. Just because I myself have a personal opinion on which political party should be running New Zealand does not make my opinion a political issue. As my opinion is shared by hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, it has become a political issue.
I do see your point Sam, I just feel that it is impossible to judge how substantive an issue is. Thus we must use a method of defining a Political Issue that relies more on something that is readily identifiable in context. Whilst the idea of judging whether or not an issue is political by judging its level of support may not be perfect, I feel it does provide an effective format that can be used during and after that issue has been raised.
‘Who can decide whether an issue is substantial or not?’ I can. You can. That decision is subjective, inherently. If you see a man starving, and you deem his starvation political, the issue is political. You shouldn’t have to wait for the issue to be validated as political by some quantitative measure of popular interest.
ReplyDeleteI can see how this debate has the potential to very quickly degenerate into semantics (ie the definition of the word political) and pointless abstractions. You make a valid argument. Let us agree to disagree.
Note that Tilly and Tarrow distinguish three things: whether an issue is political, whether it is contentious, and whether it involves collective action. A traffic violation is "political" and perhaps contentious but not necessarily collective; they are concerned with collective contentious politics. There's even a neat Venn diagram, showing the intersection between collective action, contention, and politics.
ReplyDeleteThis is totally detached from the former posts but has more to do with the fact that you asked why aren't more of us protesting?? I would argue becasuse in the end we accomplish little or nothing...The governments does not really seem to care what the people of New Zealand think. I speak in specific to the Labour government of the last nine years. Although I am personally not against the Anti-Smacking Law I think the way the Labour government went about and eventually passed this law is as undemocratic as I have ever seen. Polls showed an overwhelming amount of people 80% or so were against it. Why don't we have binding referendums on such contentious issues. The Labour government and New Zealand's democratic system to me failed on this issue as we had politicians in parliament instead of listening to the people of New Zealand pushing there own agendas and obviously these two parties suffered for it in the election and after the most recent poll released a few days ago National is now at 55% of the vote...Obama is alsoalot more popular now then before the election...likewise in Britain it seems certain the Conservative party will win the next election...Why in the last few years are so many countries switching governments? Australia is another example.
ReplyDeleteOn protesting: we are the middle children of NZ history. We've lived under such a middlebrow conciallatory government for most of our political lives that we don't know how to protest. The Dock workers in the 50's and 60's had head-bustin' union-breaking thugs in the government to fight against. Our parents had Muldoon and his sneering support for "ordinary NZ'ers" to fight against. MMP and mediation tactics have pulled our teeth. Passion can only exist in the face of opposistion. Conceded to, it flares out. If Key would act more like the corrupt right-wing hawkish fatcat overlord that Bomber wants hime to be maybe we would take to the streets. Instead he's the banal and boring face of middlebrow conciallatory rationality. Muldooon was a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire, Key is a wiffle ball.
ReplyDelete“You see in any system of government, if there is enough public knowledge and passion on an issue, that issue becomes political. I will defend this statement from those critics who say "nananannana not in authoritarian dictatorships nananana" and those other seditious types who are in my tutorial”.
ReplyDelete… That’s because you dug yourself quite a large whole in our tutorial.
… That being said, I may be venturing into the murky realm of philosophy (watch out Plato), but I agree that there must be public knowledge of an issue for it to be political. I mean, if nobody else knows about an issue, then how is it an issue? That’s why I also think that a political issue is one which is between a government and the individuals of the state (as per Tarrow and Tilly). If it wasn’t, surely it would just be an issue of self.
… Somehow, that made no sense. In my mind, I know what I mean.
… Also, you could have just called ‘Xavier T’, ‘Xavier F’.
… FURTHERMORE, Sevod, stop hating on Labour. Key is set to merge NZAid with MFAT despite public outcry.
Sevod,
ReplyDeleteAll those countries you mentioned had very long term incumbent governments. As mentioned in previous discussions, people tend to tire very quickly with incumbent governments after even only one term, even if that government has been effective.
New Zealand had 9 of Labour, the US had 8 years of Bush, the UK has had about 12 years of Labour, and likewise Australia had roughly 11 years of Howard and the Liberals. In terms of democracies, these are all VERY long lengths of time for one party (or in the case of the US, one person) to be in power. It is only natural that people get tired of the old and desire to bring in someone new. This explains why the approval rating of a newly elected leader often goes up after they have been elected. The new governments also have to carry out those things they promised to do, which makes their early times in office by far the busiest and most productive. People are happy to see things being done, and in a different manner to that which they had previously been accustomed to.
Give it time and their approval ratings will drop right down, and a few more years down the track and people will be demanding for someone new once again.
"The people have a horrendous say in government affairs and political issues." - why do you seem to find this idea so abhorrent? Surely that's the point of a democratic system- the people elect a representative who will stand up for them and what they believe in? Hence they should have a say in govt affairs and issues.
ReplyDelete