'This is an excellent book. It addresses what, in both conceptual and political terms, is arguably the most important source of tension and confusion in current arguments about the environment, namely the concept of nature; and it does so in a way that is both sensitive to, and critical of, the two antithetical ways of understanding this that dominate existing discussions.' Russell Keat, University of Edinburgh.

Some of the first Marines to die in Iraq in 2003 were non-citizen Latinos who were given posthumous citizenship. I examine these unusual occurrences and use them to understand the location of Latino immigrants in American society. I argue that the ethnic and class character of the parties involved put in motion parts of the national machinery that helped legislators and journalists monitor symbolic membership and sovereignty in a racialized, gendered, and classed fashion. I find evidence of this in the (...) way journalists and politicians placed the lives of the Latinos in ethnocentric narratives. In these, for instance, the armed forces are depicted as institutions that allow Latinos access to the American dream. These ‘ethnocentric fantasies’ were widely used and served to empty out the events of any critical potential. I use the work of Michel Foucault on genealogies and that of Lauren Berlant and Dana Nelson on citizenship. (shrink)

This article argues that exclusionary representations of welfare recipients constructed in the speeches of Australian politicians have facilitated the implementation of punitive welfare measures and that these representations have significant implications for recipients’ moral identity and standing. Representations of welfare recipients in political speeches have constructed them as a threat to the economic and moral wellbeing of ordinary Australians. The paper uses critical discourse analysis to analyse the speeches of Howard Government ministers and compares them with recent speeches by Prime (...) Minister Julia Gillard. (shrink)

The in-depth comparative analysis of political rhetoric in a Basque newspaper's editorials, published on 17/18 October 1997, and reporting similar events in Basque or Spanish, suggests that the use of these languages involved different constructions of the readership and strategies to express writer/reader communality. The Basque language editorial eventually conveyed an assertive we Basques, stressing the search of unity, differentiation and sovereignty. Conflict/differences between the Basques were omitted, backgrounded or ironised, while differences with the Spanish were foregrounded. The Spanish editorial (...) avoided using the rhetoric of we and blamed specific Basques for the repression of Basque secessionism. Subtle criticism against Euskadi Ta Askatasuna served to include it among the human victims. The implications of such fine-detailed differences are discussed as those linked to the struggle to strengthen a representative democracy patterned on Western models, which presuppose that since conflicting proposals can co-exist, the use of violence is unnecessary for the communities/political institutions’ implementation. (shrink)