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This chapter argues that weight-loss dieting is not only a quest for the ideal body, but also a process of working on the self, marketed and sold to women with particular resonance, that cleverly deploys the discourse self-care feminists have long encouraged. The Use of Pleasure, volume 2 of History of Sexuality, is remarkable for its section on dietetics, in which Michel Foucault details certain practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans with regard to regimen as “an art of living”. Contemporary weight-loss dieting both appropriates and debases the forms of rapport a soi Foucault identifies. This chapter supplements existing critical accounts of dieting, which typically rely on the central explanatory concepts either of “false consciousness” or of “docile bodies” to understand better its enabling moments. Such moments exemplify Foucault's thesis that the growth of capabilities occurs in tandem with the intensification of power relations. The author recounts her ten-month experience in participating in Weight Watchers — the largest and best known commercial weight-loss program in the world.

If corporations are now utilizing the tools of criticism and dissent, then where does this leave scholarly critique? This chapter provocatively explores the role of criticism in a cultural era where large corporations have absorbed and re-packed its own critique in the pursuit of profit. Rather than the firm being afraid of criticism, it actively co-opts and uses it to reinforce the status quo. The chapter uses the ideas of Latour and Boltanski and Chiapello's ‘The New Spirit of Capitalism’ to investigate this shift in managerial ideology. It argues that there might be a danger that critical management studies is actually reinforcing the latest managerial discourses rather than undermining them as it intends to do. It concludes by discussing the limits of co-optation (what kind of critique might not be appropriated and remain inscrutable?) and the role of the university.

This chapter extends previous work analyzing the origins of academic entrepreneurship at Stanford with an agent-based model that simulates the rise and spread of patenting by research faculty, drawing on archival analysis of divergent approaches taken by different lab directors. In so doing, this chapter builds on the formal model of autocatalysis developed in Chapter 3, which enables this chapter to disentangle competing explanations. The results are quite surprising. Incentives or mimicry alone are less likely to account for academic embrace of patenting, whereas preemptive efforts to preserve scientific autonomy do play a large role. The pursuit of safeguards from commercial co-optation by other researchers has the transformative effect of making the emergence of proprietary science more likely.

The introduction presents the conceptual framework for the book and its central arguments. It discusses Islamism as a political ideology, as well as the nexus in the political science literature between Islamists, politics, and the state, exploring examples in various Muslim polities.

This chapter analyzes the relationship between trade and co-optation in Russian strategies aimed at reshaping indigenous ruling structures and identities. It addresses how the Russians employed trade for establishing and deepening ties of mutual dependence. The chapter argues that trade was intimately tied to the strategy of pacifying the Alaska Natives in order to be able to russianize them. It also argues that the way that the Russians pursued co-optation of the indigenous elites in Alaska resembled strategies that they had pursued in Siberia. Under the conditions of competition with the British and the Americans in North America, the Russians felt even more compelled to create to establish alliances with indigenous people than had been the case in the relatively uncontested space of Siberia. These strategies had a lasting effect, because the Russian-American Company reshaped indigenous hierarchies by the privileges that it bestowed on its favored chiefs.

Following on from the examination of how British Jews related to the Zionist project in the Middle East in Part II and the Zionist transformation of British Jewry in Part III, Part IV probes how the participation of British Jews in Zionist state- and nation-building related to the fabric of British state and society. The impact of Zionism on the modes of Jewish integration into British state and society will be explored in two case studies: the presentation of the Zionist case in British parliamentary politics and the place of Zionism in the English educational landscape. The interaction of Zionism with British state and society is discussed against the background of specific features of the British constitution and of the British-Jewish condition: a nation-state conditioned by premodern features and the presence of Empire, the specific terms of Jewish emancipation in Britain, and Britain’s assumption of the Mandate for Palestine.

A co-optation strategy aims to bring as many people on side as possible, and coupled with propaganda, these have always been, and remain, the essential hand-in-glove tools to win the “hearts and minds” of the Hong Kong community throughout much of the time that the party has been active there. The success of the united front in Hong Kong during the transition years was helped by the certainty that China was going to resume sovereignty in 1997. United front work is about building personal relationships with a large group of nonparty folks. There has also been a long tradition of appointing Hong Kong people to Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress as part of China's political co-optation strategy. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-style persuasion is discussed in detail. The CCP published a Practical Manual for Party Propaganda Work that provides a fascinating look at how the party sees an essential part of its work today. Its principles are applied throughout the party's propaganda work, and thus are also relevant to how it is done in Hong Kong.

The Manchurian Incident was marked with prevalent cooperation between the Japanese invaders and the local Chinese leaders. In many places, there was fearless fighting by Chinese opposed to the occupation, but as it was not centrally coordinated, it had little overall effect. However, in the initial period of the occupation, the army's behavior was heavily affected by Chinese actions and, in some cases, their refusal to act. Thus, the Japanese co-optation of Manchurian Chinese elite members at a provincial and local level, making them part of the new regime, was encouraged by the policy of nonresistance to the Japanese advocated by Nanjing and followed by prominent members of the Zhang Xueliang administration, who might have been expected to oppose the Kwantung Army's incursions.

To the extent that the problem of global warming arises from existing socio-economic activities, tackling it will entail an institutional metamorphosis towards a more sustainable form of socio-economic system. This will require a realignment of broad policy goals, which itself may require changes in policy-making institutions. Such changes have been referred to as policy integration, which is the theme of this chapter. The integration of environmental concerns into general economic policy in Japan started around the time of the Earth Summit in 1992. This chapter looks at policy integration specifically in the areas of global warming and energy and transportation, focusing on whether and how global warming policy caused policy and institutional developments. It first provides a background on Japanese energy policy, energy efficiency policy, electricity prices and demand, and the promotion of ‘new energy’. It then explores Japan's nuclear energy policy, energy taxation and finance, coal and global warming, transport and global warming, fuel efficiency, concerted action for the promotion of low-emission vehicles, and policy co-optation and exclusion of environmental interests.

This chapter elucidates a framework for understanding how, why, and when the internet can foster change in non-free states. It introduces five elements of internet analysis that can lead to clearer examination of the online sphere: content, community, catalysts, control, and co-optation. With a discussion of both the Russian political and online spheres, the chapter places the challenges of Russian online communication within historical and global context. It posits that key changes within the Russian communication sphere–notably the rapid rise of internet use, interest, and content–have provided a fundamental challenge to the traditional control of political communication by the Russian state.

By interweaving an ethnography of the Pusan International Film Festival, the author’s personal accounts, an overview of Korean modern history (with a focus on the emergence of the “democratic generation”), and a review of relevant anthropological literature the Introduction sheds light on the question, What is the role of independent filmmakers in the “explosion” of Korean films in the postauthoritarian/reform era? The Introduction argues that the “explosion” of Korean film is a product of a wide range of new alliances among social actors and that independent filmmakers played a key role in creating this critical alliance. It asks whether this alliance can be characterized as “co-optation,” and goes on to engage social theories of state, activism, and media in order to establish the significance of the “explosion” of Korean films and the social and political context in which it occurred.

Can the alliances described throughout this book be characterized as “co-optation” of social activism in contemporary South Korea? This chapter argues that this characterization does not help us to fully grasp the complex practices of the co-optors. In fact, former film activists and independent filmmakers who were “co-opted” by the state transformed South Korea’s film institutions, film censorship policies, and film industry, and elaborated the idea that Korean cinema was worthy of protection. In addition, they opened up new cultural venues that allowed the expression of underappreciated political and cultural sensibilities. This concluding chapter asserts that spaces of resistance were formed through unanticipated alliances and social processes and emphasizes that resistance emerged from “inside” power and transformed it from within. Being cognizant of the contingent yet transformative nature of resistance is fundamental to understanding South Korea’s ever-changing cultural landscape.

This chapter examines the way the Turkish state views insurgents and insurgency and how it responds to them. It begins by tracing the historical origins of Turkish counterinsurgency discourse and goes on to highlight Turkish state's rural bias in locating contentious action. It suggests that the state held outside world responsible for mustering domestic unrest in Turkey and explains how these views translated into policy. It then discusses the developmentalist logic of the Ottoman-Turkish elite that promoted centralization to remedy the insurgency problem. It also looks at the backup plan of the state elite, with particular emphasis on the willingness of the central authority to bargain with traditional actors when an insurgent threat is perceived as a foreign plot. It shows that the Turkish state tried regional transformation in peaceful times and reverted to the co-optation model whenever it faced a security threat. This cyclical ideology split people's loyalties, especially during times of rebellion.

This book has examined the distribution of violence and its political origins in the Turkish civil war. It has highlighted the different political trajectories followed by the Kurds and Kurdish areas and how civil war sides kept the Kurdish universe divided. It has discussed the Turkish state's counterinsurgency efforts in the form of special regions and the co-optation model. It has argued that the Kurdistan Workers' Party failed to consolidate an ethnic homeland and mobilize its community around a political agenda, which prevented it from realizing its goals of national integration and Kurdish independence. This book concludes by raising new questions about civil wars using the Kurdish insurgency. It also considers the role of brokers in organizing collective action in support of the rebellion, along with path dependence as a strategy for solving distributional conflicts. It contends that there is no easy solution to end protracted civil wars and that a negotiated settlement will not guarantee peace in the long run.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is considered an institutionally defined elite. Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s explored the educational and career backgrounds of Central Committee members as well as the channels for “recruitment” or “co-optation” into that body. Also investigated was the “representation” of functional entities, ranging from the party apparatus to military, government bureaucracy, and intelligentsia, along with various geographical regions and social groups, in the composition of the Central Committee membership. However, the exact composition of the Central Committee and the specific posts that were associated with Central Committee status received little attention. Members of the Central Committee were chosen neither by free election nor by random appointment, but in accordance with a system of unwritten (or at least unannounced) rules. The Central Committee as a bureaucratic elite appears to reflect a complex matrix of unacknowledged but strongly felt status relationships in Soviet politics.

This chapter suggests that hipness is a historically-situated, contingent entity, arising among urbanized African Americans in the interwar United States and subsequently transforming as it enters intellectual and mass-cultural awareness. Over time, many odd items, from many unexpected quarters, are added to its inventory. The example developed in this chapter is Zen Buddhism. Though unrelated to African American vernacular culture, Zen ended up fitting well within a sensibility that prized spontaneity and mistrusted linguistic abstraction. This chapter argues that it is pointless to argue whether Zen or anything else really belongs in the inventory of items assimilated to the hip sensibility. Nothing is essentially hip; things can become hip as they enter a branching network of cultural associations, but hipness itself can be defined only as the network itself, not as any privileged node within it. This understanding of hipness runs counter to the idea of co-optation.

This chapter looks at the desires produced by Angola’s oil wealth and analyses the material and symbolic effects of the post-war economic boom on the lives of Luandans. It does so by exploring the often-cited emic notion of a ‘culture of immediatism’ to show how the dynamics of economic growth and the commodification of politics are perceived and utilized by the population. Contrary to popular interpretation the idea that regime critics are simply ‘co-opted’ falls short; instead, the chapter demonstrates how these processes are much more ambiguous, fluid and reciprocal, and represent avenues for agency and strategies for upward mobility, thereby complicating ideas of ‘corruption’ and balancing the standard ‘clientelist’ account of contemporary Angola

Taking recent immigration policies related to pregnancy and motherhood as its point of departure, the conclusion considers the implications of homeland maternity and examines potential modes of resistance to it. Resistance might include strategies of co-optation, subversion, and other modes of rhetorical invention and reinvention. In an age of homeland maternity, this would imply, for example, challenges to the cult of intensive mothering, resistance to the surveillance and control of pregnancy and childbirth, novel forms of community organizing and alliance, and more capacious imaginings of motherhood, family, and kin. This final chapter highlights and develops emerging channels of challenge and transformation, to edge us toward the promise of reproductive justice, beginning with the very words we speak.