Chapter 4 first reviews earlier studies of the EU’s new economic governance (NEG) regime and discusses the methodological challenges that they pose for the assessment of NEG documents. Earlier studies of NEG policy prescriptions flattened the semantic relationships between the different terms used in them and the power relations between the actors involved in their production. We therefore outline a novel research design that accounts for the links between the policy orientation of NEG prescriptions and the material interests of concrete social groups as well as the hierarchical ordering of NEG prescriptions in larger policy scripts unevenly deployed across countries, time, and policy areas. We address the first point in Chapter 4 and the second in Chapter 5. In 4.2, we identify commodification as the most relevant dimension for analysing the nexus between EU economic governance and labour politics. In 4.3, we operationalise the concepts of commodification and decommodification in employment relations and public services and outline the analytical framework against which we assess the policy orientation of the EU’s NEG prescriptions in the policy areas of employment relations and public services.

In this chapter, I dwell on regime–society – rather than classical state–society – relations and argue that the state and political power (vlast’ in Russian) is represented for many citizens by the authoritarian regime and its main dictator. I contend that to analyse these relations, we need to study how they are understood and practised in a given case. Thus, the chapter represents an in–depth analysis of activists’ and citizens’ perceptions of their positions vis–à–vis the regime, the lack of the rule of law, and conditions of socio–political insecurity. In these conditions, the ‘stability’ of everyday life and the established system of values – economic capital, incentives to normalize corruption, and so on – represent a crucial backbone to regime stability, where coercion is not the prime mechanism available to the elites. The logic of Kazakh Spring and Oyan, Qazaqstan activists is to fight against institutionalized authoritarianism and this system of authoritarian values and perceptions of ‘power’ as something embodied in the figures of autocrats. This shift is a new feature of the protest waves of the Kazakh Spring, and it potentially makes it more viable and sustained.

Chapter 8 reviews the major issues of “conditioned choice” and discrimination both in the provision of education and in labor markets. The chapter makes the case that if there are structural relations in society that “condition” individual behavior, access to information, and available likely options for investing in human capital, and if this “conditioning” varies among groups in society, the role of individual “free” choice in investing in academic and productive skills is much more limited, and we need very different explanations for the relationship of education to earnings. Structural limits on choice can come from various sources. Two important instances of such conditioned choice and its possible implications for labor market earnings differences are studied. The first regards gender differences in earnings, and the second, racial differences in earnings. The chapter reviews the arguments by some economists that both gender and race earnings gaps are the result of productivity differences between males and females and Black and White workers, and of other arguments that they are largely the result of discriminatory practices.

Chapter 3 makes the case that education systems are almost universally situated in the public sector, and their role is profoundly shaped by economic and social power relations as reflected in the political structures of the nation-State. The chapter argues that the way power relations are reflected in the State provides the framework for a political theory of education The chapter lays out such a State theory and suggests how it helps explain the nature of conflicts over how much to spend on education, who gets the resources, and how they are used in schools. The theory further helps define the structure in which individuals from different social classes, races, ethnicities, and gender make decisions (exercise agency) regarding education. It also helps define the economic opportunities facing different groups and how the State in market economies defines educational norms, standards, and access to education. The chapter’s final sections discuss how economics of education debates – for example, on the efficiency of the public sector in providing education – are influenced by political ideology, and describe the politics of nation-States’ developing social capital to enhance the efficiency of education, often at the cost of individual rights.

In this chapter, I address cross-cultural encounters of two (or more) sets of sensory scripts. These encounters are evident in the wider literature on colonialism, migration and other local–foreign interfaces. In doing so, it serves as an important reminder for one to take heed of multiple axes of sensory similarities and differences, in addition to a merely the East–West core axis of difference. I also turn the lens around by showing how local populations on the reverse, discern colonial or foreign communities through their sensory faculties as a counterpoint. The focus lies in demonstrating how sensory interfaces arising from these processes and movements of people are theorised using the notion of sensory transnationalism. I map this notion onto colonial–local sensory encounters and propose four modes of sensory engagement: reception, rejection, regulation, and reproduction. These modes collectively show how sensory encounters, stemming from contrasting power positions, lend a different understanding of empire and its everyday lived constructions, including how colonial impositions of modernity through sensory regulatory schemes are also met with resistance. Consequently, categories of colonisers and colonised are unsettled instead of being deployed as inherently asymmetrical categories.

Relationships relating channel width, depth, and cross-section as well as discharge to drainage basin area are regional relationships, because they are developed at the basin scale. These relationships constitute regional hydraulic geometry, which is utilized in stream assessments, evaluating channel characteristics, identifying field indicators of bankfull discharge, and delineation of regional boundaries, hydrologic regions, and ecoregions. This chapter presents these regional relationships.

Hydraulic geometry is a quantitative description of the variation of river characteristics with variation in discharge and sediment load. It is impacted by climate, geology, and human interference. Hydraulic geometry relations have been expressed in power form and have been derived using a multitude of hypotheses. These relations play a fundamental role in the design of alluvial canals, river training works, and watershed management. The objective of this chapter is to introduce preliminary concepts that are deemed important for understanding different aspects of hydraulic geometry.

Theresa Austin is the daughter of Japanese immigrants by her mother and African Americans by her father. Her history has led her to navigate between languages and identities that were attributed to her as she learned and developed the concept of a "wholistic imagined identity." She explains how the monolingual ideology in the United States has impacted her family life, preventing her from becoming a full member of the cultural groups of her choice.

Chapter 5 focuses on the elusive boundary between the lazy and the industrious in the post-1908 Young Turk era. In this tumultuous period, the Ottoman culture producers employed the concepts of work and laziness to further develop the exclusionary language characteristic of the culture of productivity against their rivals. Surveying political pamphlets, journals, memoirs, and the daily press, this chapter shows how various ideological camps entered into a cultural struggle over who should be regarded as lazy and useless based on a putative association with “super Westernization” or with “anti-progressivism.” In the relatively open political atmosphere immediately following the 1908 revolution, the polemics between various political agents, usually dubbed “Westernists” and “Islamists,” signalled a vital debate on the ideal citizen required by the nation. Their views of these issues diverged greatly, as did the question of who should be labeled lazy and unproductive. Such labels marshaled the exclusionary language that has been in development, revealing a variety of models of reform in the public sphere and how each one regarded the other as the cause of laziness.

Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis (also known as poststructuralist discourse analysis) is an important method for identity researchers because it focuses on the understandings people use to make sense of themselves. Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis examines what ideas people use to make sense of themselves; how these ideas come to be “thinkable” at that moment; and the consequences for what someone can say, think, feel or do when thinking with these ideas. In so doing, it offers a critical approach that also opens up directions for more affirmative ways of thinking. In this chapter, we explain some key concepts informing Foucauldian-informed research, including discourse and genealogy; power as productive, diffuse, and disciplinary; normalization, confession, and governmentality; and subject positions and technologies of self. We discuss how psychologists developing discourse analysis in the UK both engaged with, and blended, Foucauldian concepts with other linguist approaches, producing a diverse body of work. With no established procedure for Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis, this chapter offers two worked examples from separate projects related to identity and health, showing the reader how these concepts can be operationalized in the study of identities. Using an analysis of body mass index (BMI) and data from a study on how couples in long term relationships navigate lifestyle advice after a diagnosis of coronary heart disease, we showcase the value of Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis for identity researchers, particularly when identity is central in the organization of neoliberal societies.

The participation of societal actors has been advanced as the gold standard of sustainability assessment processes and is thought essential to dealing with the plurality of normative claims surrounding sustainability and the need to take decisions in a context of trade-offs. However, participation per se does not guarantee these outcomes. In this chapter, we put the spotlight on the politics of participatory sustainability assessments and look at the entanglements of knowledge and power in such processes. First, we introduce different conceptualisations of participation and show that participation is a contested concept that goes beyond methodological questions. Second, to equip ourselves for a discussion of the politics of participatory sustainability assessments, we present an analytical framework for studying diverse facets of power (‘power over’, ‘power to’, and ‘power with’) throughout participatory sustainability assessment processes. By means of a literature analysis, we illustrate how, depending on the design of the process and the socio-political context in which it takes place, different power relations pervade and shape participation processes and their outcomes. The analytical framework presented can support reflexivity in tackling power dynamics in participatory sustainability assessments.