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Toward the end of the 20th century, some work within political theory, of a kind that primarily foregrounds ethical considerations and another kind within political geography that links such ethical concerns to explication in terms of social space, territoriality and scale, has resuscitated the notion of contingent universality as an alternative to the either/or embrace or rejection of universality (and consequent denigration/celebration of particularity). As witnessed by the so-called spatial turn in many of the social and cultural sciences, this very circumstance, at least in the English-speaking world, has been one wellspring of current interdisciplinary interest in various geographical concepts and traditions. For political geographers, the idea of contingent universality arguably invites a fecund perspective from which to reflect upon a range of substantive and epistemological outcomes, which this essay will argue, are densely bound up in what, in short hand, is labeled globalization.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social economy discourses in four regions of Chile, characterized by their internal economic heterogeneity.

Using an intentional sample, semi-structured interviews were applied to 45 key informants from the public sector, universities, consultant enterprises, cooperatives and civil society organizations. Through a content analysis, thematic axes were identified that allowed to characterize and to recognize the narratives that key informants held about their initiatives, experiences or ventures.

The results allow us to understand the diversity of discourses and practices about alternative economies, being able to organize them from two axes: the tension between molar and molecular subjectivities; and the tension between reform and transformation (which refers to a transformative type of institutional and socio-material change). These axes propose an interpretative framework that integrates a diversity of distinctions and/or polarities and problematizes the homogeneity of formal economic discourse.

The discourses analyzed by this paper offers representativeness by saturation. It do not allow to ponder for sure the relative presence of each of these discourses in the field of economic diversity. The analysis of what type of actors sustain each type of discourse remains pending.

The high discourse heterogeneity makes it possible to foresee major difficulties in terms of political articulation and the visibility of various alternative economic experiences, initiatives or ventures as part of a social transformation movement.

Previous studies developed in Latin America about social and solidarity economy have been focused in objective dimensions as the volume of incomes, expenditures or jobs. This is the first study aimed at characterizing the subjective field of discourse held by different actors who recognize themselves as part of an alternative economy movement.

Numerous commentators have suggested that Barack Obama represents a new “post-racial” politics in the United States, distinct from a pre-existing contentious form that originated with the civil rights era. Drawing on secondary historical data, Mr. Obama's presidential campaign speeches, and county-level electoral returns from Indiana and North Carolina, I argue in contrast to such claims that post-racial politics comprise the latest in a line of successive attempts by the Democratic Party to articulate the New Deal voting bloc, in which the white suburban middle class is the primary constituency while African Americans are of secondary importance. By addressing the question of “Obama and the Politics of Race” in this way, this chapter seeks to integrate political parties into the study of racial ideologies. Specifically, it suggests that the latter may originate and subsequently develop in the context of partisan struggle.

The figure of the Castilian knight Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, is progressively becoming a frequent topic in metal music. This growing presence has been evident particularly since the explosion of power metal in the late 1990s, and the more recent rise of folk metal, being felt not only in Spanish and Spanish-influenced bands, but also in others with no known links to the Spanish culture. This chapter establishes how the choice of such sources influences the final portrait of El Cid in metal music and the message conveyed to and the effect on the listener. The motivation behind the choices above is explored with a focus on musical, socio-cultural and political–ideological factors.

The chapters in the Nationalism and Identity in Metal Medievalism section consider a range of historical figures and practices as presented in metal music. Amaranta Saguar García’s analysis of references to El Cid in ‘The Return of El Cid: The Topicality of Rodrigo Díaz in Spanish Heavy Metal’ focusses on issues of nationalism and the varying representations of El Cid in a range of songs. In a similar manner, Annika Christensen’s ‘Making Heritage Metal: Faroese KvæÐi and Viking Metal’ looks at the interplay of medieval ballads and modern folk metal as part of the group Tyr’s investment in celebrating and articulating Faroese identity. While these two essays work with specific examples of national identities, Shamma Boyarin’s ‘The Prophet Himself Had Knowledge of Him: Nile’s “Iskander D’hul Kharnon” and a Different Kind of Metal Medievalism’ uses the figure of Alexander the Great to address the broader question of the ways that representations of classical and medieval figures define civilisations. Dean Swinford’s ‘Black Metal’s Medieval King: The Apotheosis of Euronymous through Album Dedications’ examines the medievalisation of Euronymous and its relation to black metal’s medievalist self-representation. Within this collaborative chapter, the authors explore the areas of greatest overlap in our explorations of metal music and medieval culture: nationalism and identities, neofascism, the whitewashed Middle Ages, and issues of historical authenticity in neomedievalism.

The growth of the nationalist right in Europe and the United States has set off a debate over whether “economic anxiety” or “racial resentment” is at the root of this phenomenon. Examining the case of the French National Front, I suggest that this is a poor way of posing the question of the significance of class in explaining the rise of the nationalist right. Recent advances by the National Front—particularly among working-class voters—have tended to be attributed to the party's strategic pivot toward a “leftist” economic program and an embrace of the republican tradition. This in turn has been critically interpreted in two different ways. Some take the FN’s strategic pivot at face value and see the party's success as the expression of a new political cleavage between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Others see the National Front's embrace of republicanism as a cynical ploy hiding its true face. Both interpretations, however, point to a strategy of “republican defense” as a means to counteract the National Front. I argue that this strategy is likely to misfire and that class remains central to explaining—and countering—the rise of the National Front, albeit in a peculiar way. Working-class support for the National Front does indeed appear to be driven primarily by ethno-cultural, not class, interests, but this is itself predicated on a historical decline in the political salience of class due to the neoliberal depoliticization of the economy. I argue that it was this disarticulation of class identity that helped deliver the working-class vote to the National Front and that any strategy for combating the nationalist right must thus find new ways to articulate a class identity capable of neutralizing racist and chauvinist articulations.

This chapter enquires into the political struggles that have led to the gradual institutionalization of neoliberal policies in India. As India witnessed a surge in democratization since the 1980s, the state sought to implement a policy regime of privatization and liberalization, albeit with mixed success. This chapter's contribution is to focus on the party-movement relationships that were integral to establishing this new political economy. To this end the chapter undertakes an “event-centered” analysis of the failed authoritarian interlude of 1975–1977 (the Emergency) and its aftermath. Subsequent to this turning point, the chapter argues the two key political parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress – converged upon and shaped support for a neoliberal project. In particular, the chapter traces the mechanisms by which the BJP seized the political opportunity opened during the wave of democratization that occurred from the Emergency period onward, gradually constructing a political bloc in opposition to socialism. Together with Congress Party policies “from above,” the populist mobilization led by the Hindu Right sought to embed neoliberalism by eroding the disciplinary power of the middle classes. In making this argument, the chapter offers a theory of neoliberalism as a political project that, even as it is led by particular agents such as sections of the capitalist class, technocrats, and/or organized global interests, nevertheless must be embedded through democratic processes.

The United Nations Guiding Principles locate human rights at the centre of the corporate social responsibility agenda and provide a substantial platform for the development of business and human rights policy and practice. The initiative gives opportunity and focus for the rethinking and reconfiguration of corporate accountability for human rights. It also presents a threat: the danger, as we see it, is that the Guiding Principles are interpreted and implemented in an uncritical way, on a “humanitarian” model of imposed expertise. The critical and radical democratic communities have tended to be, perhaps rightly, suspicious of rights talk and sceptical of any suggestion that rights and the discourse of human rights can play a progressive role. The purpose of this paper is to explore these issues from a radical perspective.

This paper uses insights taken from Jacques Rancière’s work to argue that there is vital critical potential in human rights. There is an obvious negativity to Rancière’s thought insofar as it conceives of the political as a challenge to the existing social order. The positive dimension to his work, which has its origins in his commitment to and tireless affirmation of the fact of equality, is equally important, if perhaps less obvious. Together the negative and positive moments provide a dynamic conception of human rights and a dialectical view of the relation between human rights and the social order, which enables us to overcome much of the criticism levelled at human rights by certain theorists.

Rancière’s conception of the political puts human rights inscriptions, and the traces of equality they carry, at the heart of progressive politics. The authors close the paper with a discussion of the role that accounting for human rights can play in such a democratic politics, and by urging, on that basis, the critical accounting community to cautiously embrace the opportunity presented by the Guiding Principles.

This paper has some novelty in its application of Rancière’s thinking on political theory to the problems of critical accounting and in particular the critical potential of accounting and human rights. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to a critical understanding of the relationship between accounting, human rights, and democracy.