The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about “democracy” as we know it.

Though much of the reporting of last year’s US presidential race focused on the “angry” American voter, it has been observed that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as “ambivalent”.

In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, observers also reflected that a shared “ambivalence” about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.

And in France, people explained the record low turnout in June’s parliamentary elections by pointing to the “ambivalent base”. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s election, the new president had “yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better”.

This French voter isn’t easily won over. radiowood/flickr

These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere on the rise, and that these are anxious times politically.

If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.
 

A wilful, rational response

We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But it’s a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both “yes” and “no” about a person or an object at the same time.

Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who coined the term in 1910, wrote:
 

In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.

Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.

We needn’t be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common “inner experience”. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlet’s soliloquy:
 

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…

The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take.

Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.
 

Is this a dangerous development?

When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want.

In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos.

The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in people’s minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters came out in numbers to elect someone like Duterte.

As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their country’s democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy.

The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty.

Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) “off the hook”.

Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman noted, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and “mere opinion”, the more the opposite is likely to occur.

Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.

Those in positions of power often view ambivalence on the streets as socially toxic or threatening. jprwpics/flickr
 

Ambivalence can be a check on power

Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of “the people” as both the source and guardians of power.

Consider the way Ernesto Laclau sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance.

While the collective identity of “the people” claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of “the other”.

If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of “the people”? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?

Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society don’t lead to its destruction.

The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by “experts” in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.

Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly warned that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order.

Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change.

Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.

No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians.

The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to people’s desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as “true” representatives of “the people”, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.

Rodrigo Duterte poses with the Philippines military and boxer and senator Manny Pacquiao in 2017. Rene Lumawag/Republic of the Philippines Presidential Communications Office
 

A chance to rethink the status quo

Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay.

The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who “should know better”, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.

A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it – even embrace it – as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.

Kenneth Weisbrode likened ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:
 

… a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.

If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.

This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo.

It could even be seen as one of democracy’s internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive.

Bauman wrote:
 

The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.

Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.

If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent “the people”? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.

Adele Webb, PhD Researcher, Department of Government and International Relations / Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A growing number of young Asian men are using a plethora of whitening products. Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters

On a regular school day, after he wakes up, he takes a shower, scrubbing his body using soap made of papaya (Carica papaya), a fruit that’s said to have skin-whitening properties. Afterwards, he applies a facial whitening lotion, and before finally going to school he uses SPF 30 sunscreen, again with whitening properties, on his face and arms.

Jose was one of many young people I met in my ethnographic work as part of the Chemical Youth Project, a research programme that sought to document and make sense of the different chemicals that young people use in their everyday lives, from cosmetics to cigarettes.

Skin whitening among women has long been commonplace in the Philippines and other parts of Asia and the world but, while working on this project, I was struck by the fact that young men too, are using a plethora of whitening products. And that these products have proliferated in various retail outlets, from shopping malls to small sari-sari, or neighbourhood, stores.

But this development is not unique to the Philippines either. A 2015 study found that the prevalence of skin-whitening product use among male university students in 26 low and middle-income countries was 16.7%. The figure was higher in many Asian countries: 17.4% in India, 25.4% in the Philippines, and 69.5% in Thailand.

In the Asia-Pacific region alone, the male cosmetics industry was estimated at $2.1 billion in 2016. Whiteners are likely to be a significant component of this figure; a 2010 study reported that 61% of all cosmetics in India had a whitening effect.
 

Views of whiteness

How do we make sense of this phenomenon? First, it must be pointed that the preference for white skin, even among men, has existed in many parts of Asia since ancient times.

In Heian Japan (794 to 1185 AD) and Ming China (1368–1644), handsome men were described as having white or pale skin. In one undated Philippine epic, the hero covers his face with a shield so that the sun’s rays will not “lessen his handsome looks”.

Researchers have suggested that, in many societies, fair skin was a mark of class distinction. In her 2012 book Living Color, American anthropologist Nina Jablonski explains:
 

Untanned skin was a symbol of the privileged class that was spared from outdoor labor … Dark-skinned people were deprecated because they were of the labouring class that worked out in the sun.

Others have suggested that the association of whiteness with purity became conflated with the idea that white skin signifies spiritual and physical superiority.

Arguably, the colonial encounter lent another meaning to white skin, making it a marker of racial – not just class – distinction. Filipinos, for instance, were commonly referred to by the Americans as their “little brown brothers”, signifying an unequal fraternity based on height and skin colour.

Changing notions of masculinity mean being a man is no longer incompatible with the use of cosmetics. Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters

But some scholars have also pointed out that many Asian people don’t necessarily aspire for a “Caucasian whiteness”, but a “cosmopolitan whiteness” that transcends race and signifies mobility across national borders.

Like the emergence of the “metrosexual” (urban men who enjoy interests traditionally associated with women and homosexual men), the rise of male-specific whitening products may be explained by the demographic and social changes that have given rise to the view of the body as, in the words of UK sociologist Chris Shilling, “a project that should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity.”

It can also be attributed to changing notions of masculinity that are no longer incompatible with the use of cosmetics or beauty products.
 

Promises with side effects

Today, cosmetics companies, through mass-mediated, star-studded advertising, build on these conditions. In India, Bollywood superstar Sharukh Khan made headlines by endorsing “Fair and Handsome” skin whitening cream in 2008.

In South Korea, K-pop superstars promote homegrown brands such as The Face Shop and Etude House, and serve as ambassadors of a Korean male aesthetic: slim, youthful-looking, and fair-skinned.

While it is insightful to look at these historical and global trends, it’s also important to look at the individual users themselves, and the role whitening products play in their lives.

South Korea’s male K-pop icons have been enlisted by the country’s cosmetics firms. Bobby Yip/Reuters

In my fieldwork, I met many young men who were motivated by perceived social and economic gain: 20-year-old call centre agent Edwin wanted to be more attractive to girls.

Jose, for his part, wanted to someday be a flight attendant. He told me, “If you’re fair-skinned, you’re noticeable, and that gives you a advantage.”

Their assumptions find empirical support in studies that suggest men with lighter skin are more likely to get higher paying jobs. In environments where young people only have their bodies as “capital”, resorting to modification is understandable.

But from a public health perspective, the proliferation of whitening products raises questions of efficacy and safety, particularly in Asian countries without strong regulation.

For all their promised effects, there’s actually no proof that many products actually work, and many of them have potentially grave side effects. Mercury, for instance, is a known toxin but it’s still found in skin whitening products in India, even when it has long been banned in many other countries.
 

Is it right?

Alongside these health concerns, the moral debate continues. By shaping the way people people view their skin – and that of others – will its colour, which is determined by genes, occupation and lifestyle, become another layer of inequality?

And as with any other social issue, there has been dissent. Across Asia, a growing number of voices challenging the “colourism” they have to live with. Blogger Aswasthi Thomas, for instance, recently declared:
 

I’m Indian, I’m dark, and I don’t care.

But what these campaigns sometimes forget is that the quest for distinction through physical appearance is probably as old as humanity itself. And it’s unlikely to go away, especially when it is useful for people in their everyday lives.

Even so, as desires for dermatological perfection become increasingly commodified – and as skin becomes subjected to a host of chemicals – the point about restraint and reflection is well taken.

Indeed, as more and more men and women embrace the idea that “fair is handsome”, we need a deeper conversation about the motivations that underwrite the phenomenon of skin whitening, and the meaning of (un)fair skin.

Gideon Lasco, PhD candidate in Medical Anthropology, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Rebels linked to Islamic State have taken control of several neighbourhoods in the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with army artillery and aerial attacks unable to completely dislodge them after six days.
At least 61 militants and 17 security forces have been killed, according to the armed forces. Nineteen civilians have died.

Tens of thousands of people have fled the city of 200,000.

Read the rest of the story here
 

The post Why Islamic State-linked rebels took over part of a Philippine city & Why 100 Deaths have not Made Headlines News appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The closing of civic space is not just about people’s right to organize or protest in individual countries. This year’s Gobal Risks Report, published last week by the World Economic Forum ahead of its annual Davos meeting, looks in detail at the risks posed by threats to governments clamping down on fundamental civic freedoms. The report points out that, “a new era of restricted freedoms and increased governmental control could undermine social, political and economic stability and increase the risk of geopolitical and social conflict.”

Indeed, the recently launched CIVICUS Monitor shows that more than 3.2 billion people live in countries in which “civic space” is either closed or repressed. It also shows that conditions very few countries—16 out of 134 countries with verified data—are genuinely open. This means that scope for citizen action is constrained and getting worse in much of the world, including some countries where one might least expect it. The spillover effect to other countries also cannot be understated.

Scope for citizen action is constrained and getting worse in much of the world, including some countries where one might least expect it. Glaringly absent from the WEF report, however, are any examples of countries where these trends are evident, so here are five examples from five different parts of the world of countries that demonstrate just how much citizen action is under threat in 2017.
 

Burundi

Already one of the worst places in the world for civic freedoms, 2017 didn’t begin well for human rights activists in Burundi after the government shut down Burundi’s oldest human rights organisation, Ligue Iteka. Journalists and media organisations have also been targeted. The situation in Burundi is so bad that the government is silencing the very people and institutions that could monitor rights abuses and undemocratic developments. Far from signifying a lull in human rights violations, the lack of information flowing from the country reflects the silencing of critical expression and the prevailing climate of fear, and this also explains why no significant public demonstrations have taken place in recent months.
 

Honduras

One deeply worrying dimension of Honduras’ high crime rates is the impact this is having on citizen action. Journalists, environmental activists, and gay rights campaigners have been among those most vulnerable to violence. This is made worse by the fact that government efforts to investigate and prosecute violence against members of these groups have made little progress. The murder of world-renowned environmentalist Berta Caceras in March 2016 was a tragedy in itself but made worse by the fact that this attack was far from isolated, and that peaceful protests have been met by police brutality and with suspected surveillance of media outlets.
 

Flickr/Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (All rights reserved)

A memorial to Berta Cáceres, a murdered Honduran environmentalist and human rights activist.

Philippines

President Rodrigo Duterte successfully courted controversy in 2016 but his flamboyant political style had very real consequences for the Filipino people. Thousands of citizens were killed in extrajudicial killings openly encouraged by Duterte as part of a so-called war on drugs. Activists and NGOs fear that the war is merely a thinly veiled excuse to permanently silence dissent against Duterte and his government. Mirroring many other similar political contexts, the assault on civilians comes hand in hand with direct attacks on the media, with President Duterte even endorsing the killing of "corrupt" journalists.
 

Turkey 

The Arab Spring may seem like ancient history for citizens in Turkey trying to assert their rights to peacefully assemble and express themselves. The people of Turkey saw their democratic rights shrink at an alarming pace in 2016. On a single day in November the Turkish government suspended 370 NGOs, due to their alleged links with the opposition groups, including the Gulen movement, the Kurdish PKK and left wing organisations. The fragile political and security situation in Turkey is not a sufficient justification for limiting citizens’ rights to peacefully assemble and express themselves. Yet, the Turkish government, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is employing similar tactics to many other governments by using security threats as a cover to tighten its own grip on power. Turkey is also one of many countries where gay rights activists have been targeted for speaking out: a pride parade planned in Istanbul in June 2016 was banned and then disrupted by authorities.
 

United States

The strength of the United States’ Constitution means that US citizens have some of the best protected democratic rights and freedoms in the world. And yet, recent events suggest that even the constitution—the vision of the US founding fathers—may be under threat. President-elect Donald Trump has shown little respect for the First Amendment to the constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. In November, he controversially tweeted that those who burn the American flag should be sent to jail, even though the Supreme Court deemed this act legal since 1969 on First Amendment grounds. Trump has also repeatedly attacked the freedom of the press, including through litigation and at his most recent press conference this month, where he refused to speak to CNN and called the media outlet “fake news”. The harsh policing of #BlackLivesMatter and Standing Rock protests have called into question Americans’ right to peaceful assembly. Maina Kiai, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on these issues, noted serious concerns about how citizen action is being curtailed in the US. Ominously, he concluded that, “people have good reason to be angry and frustrated at the moment. And it is at times like these when robust promotion of assembly and association rights are needed most.”

There perhaps lies the most concerning aspect of the global trends on civic space: measures to limit the scope for citizens to organise and mobilise come just as people the world over are frustrated with established political institutions and actors. If we do not create the spaces and opportunities for people to vent these frustrations and articulate their aspirations in constructive ways, we could see social conflict intensify across the world. This problem is about far more than a few country examples. When this unrest spills across borders, especially when it stems from big powers like the United States, it creates a very real risk for further geopolitical instability—a risk we can no longer afford to ignore.

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is Secretary General of CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance with members in more than 175 countries.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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The election of Donald Trump is the latest in a string of triumphs for illiberal nationalism, all of which squarely challenge the notion that governments must respect universal human rights.

It is rare, if not unprecedented, for so many leading figures in political democracies—from India to Britain, Hungary to France, the Philippines to the United States—to have so directly disparaged principles of open government, peaceful dissent, freedom from torture, and non-discrimination.

It is rare, if not unprecedented, for so many leading figures in political democracies—from India to Britain, Hungary to France, the Philippines to the United States—to have so directly disparaged principles of open government, peaceful dissent, freedom from torture, and non-discrimination.

As angry rhetoric soars, the temptation is either to lay low or to lash back in equal fury. But the present moment calls less for sudden shifts in direction than clear thinking. Advocates must examine soberly what has happened and why, as we chart a strategy to revitalize the rights cause for a new era.

For some critics on the left, the rights project suffers from association with the prevailing, top-down version of globalization—of unfettered markets, little regulation and low taxation—that has brought patterns of widening inequality to many societies. For others on the right, human rights are part of an international system that is seen to override national prerogatives, ignore national culture and demean national pride—or, as the Trump campaign has said, which “puts allegiance to international institutions ahead of the nation-state”.

Common to both lines of critique is a caricature of a movement that is elitist and out of touch with ordinary concerns. Yet this vision has gained political traction in part because it contains a glimmer of truth.

Many institutionalized efforts to advance rights—for example, NGOs with professionally trained staff and boards—depend for financial support on a small coterie of private foundations and/or individuals, overwhelmingly located in the United States, and to a lesser extent, in Europe. However well intended, these donors are the global elite; they have been spared the economic hardship others suffer. Compounding the sense of disproportion, the bulk of rights funding still goes to groups located in the global North, notwithstanding more recent efforts to change. And much of it favors issues (such as international criminal justice, LGBTI rights or internet freedom) which, however important, are not the priorities of all. Many view it as no coincidence that the most visible sites of the global rights architecture—the United Nations human rights regime, the International Criminal Court—are located in wealthy northern capitals like Geneva, The Hague and New York. Repeated assertions of US exceptionalism have not helped.

All this has fed narratives setting “human rights” in false opposition to the interests of ordinary people. Former Home (now Prime) Minister May has called for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, which, she has complained, “bind[s] the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, [and] makes us less secure.” Philippines President Duterte couldn’t “give a shit” about human rights because, he explained, he has a duty to protect children from drug dealers. In the same vein, US President-elect Trump has consistently dismissed as essentially “none of our business” reports of abuses in Russia, Syria, Turkey and other countries, because “we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country.”

All this has fed narratives setting “human rights” in false opposition to the interests of ordinary people. The reality, of course, is that in most countries, most advocates of human rights are not well-paid professionals; they are common citizens and non-citizens, members of communities, victims of abuse and their loved ones—anything but elite and out of touch.

So how should rights practitioners respond to the new reality?

First, do what they do best—confront human rights violations when they happen. In the wake of Brexit and the US election, hate crimes are on the rise. Activists must deploy their core skills to document, publicize and pursue accountability. By shining a spotlight on abuses, exposing injustice and using the media and the courts, civil society groups in the US and other countries constrained some of the worst excesses of the Bush Administration’s war on terror. Worse may be soon to come, and rights actors will be sorely needed.

But that’s not enough. Advocates must intensify efforts to address the profound economic dislocations that have inspired so many political earthquakes. Numerous instances of deprivation—having to forego medical care for a serious illness for want of insurance; losing a job and having no safety net to fall back upon; being condemned to inferior quality primary schooling due to inadequate state funding—raise profound questions about social obligation, and demand public action, whether the interest at issue is framed as a “right” or not. 

Fortunately, they need not start from scratch. South Africa’s courts are hardly alone in recognizing the justiciable nature of certain “progressively realizable” economic and social rights, whether in the area of housing, health or social security. In recent years, US state courts have found that the government has a constitutional duty to fund education at minimally adequate levels. More should be done to fortify the doctrinal foundations undergirding affirmative efforts to safeguard economic and social welfare.

Beyond the letter of the law, the human rights community must expand the toolbox of rights advocacy to encompass practical, grassroots engagement through legal empowerment of the many. In recent years, civil society from Albania to Uganda has partnered with business, government and international bodies to improve access to health, water, and land by fostering more active community involvement, enhancing basic legal knowledge, securing legal identity, enabling women and girls, and training paralegals. These initiatives, which merit increased public and private support, are an increasingly critical part of the 21st century movement for human rights.
Finally, we must reject the often-cited, much-exaggerated dichotomy between domestic and international rights law as an unnecessary diversion. To be sure, international laws and institutions are the creations of states, but they are far away, and they often carry less authority than equivalent bodies closer to home. They are intended not as an alternative, but rather to backstop failing national systems. In most cases, implementation of international standards requires local action.

More to the point, from the perspective of most people seeking recognition or vindication of one right or another, it matters far less who provides it than that it is done at all. Their claims for help rarely distinguish among municipal authorities, national government and international institutions. And if their language varies from place to place, they share a common aim—to be treated with dignity by virtue of their humanity. Such an aspiration could not be more authentic. Maybe it’s enough to make the movement for human rights great—again.

(James Goldston is the director of the Open Society Justice Initiative).

(This article was first published on openDemocracy).

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