The article offers a comparative description of typological mechanisms used in political communicative practice and methods of verbal explication of its axiological and symbolic constituents determining universal mental features of individual/collective consciousness. The research position based on a systemic multilevel analysis of the component structure of discourse facilitates the identifica...

This article presents a review of Hard to Believe, a compelling documentary reporting the forced organ procurement and death of Chinese prisoners of conscience. The documentary is targeted to ignite political and public pressure to stop these practices that are thought to be motivated by financial and political gain. Narrated by journalist and author Ethan Gutmann, the documentary pricks at the...

Departing from the self-portrayal of the private security business as a normal, non-political sector at the service of states and other legitimate clients, this article argues that the rise of the private security business reinforces general trends towards techno-managerial, de-politicized, and militarized security practices. Even when firms behave by their own books, security privatization rec...

Contrary to numerous other professionals, lawyers are political agents in their daily professional practices. They habitually act through legalistic struggles to alter allocation of public goods (Halliday and Karpik, 1997). Frequently, they either function in politics and/or have meaning in politics (Abel, 1989, 1995; Barzilai, 2005; Eulau and Sprague, 1964; Feeley and Krislov, 1990, Feeley and...

In this paper, I will challenge the widespread idea that democratic elections can be the main instrument for creating political legitimacy and discuss what other types and forms of political practices that may (and may not) create political legitimacy. The argument I criticize is that people will accept a political authority because they have been given the right to take part in “free and fair ...

Geopolitics is about how the world is understood politically at the planetary scale. It is simultaneously a term that refers to great power rivalries and the knowledge and representational practices that legitimate that mode of rule. Now in the face of climate change the premises for thinking about human politics have been dramatically changed, even if many political elites and scholars have ye...