Facing History: Sovereignty and the Spectacles of Justice and Violence in Poland's Capitalist Democracy

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saygun Gökariksel
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
The Face ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Typical Object ◽  
Forms Of Violence

AbstractThis article explores the nexus of sovereignty, violence, and transitional justice through an analysis of the public exhibitions of the faces of communist-era secret service officers in Poland. During the rule of right-wing government from 2005 to 2007, the state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) organized exhibitions in public squares across Poland, which stirred much contention. Was it a pursuit of justice or a call for public lynching? Was it a means to ensure public transparency and identify the “faceless” evil of communism, or instead a political instrument of anti-communist nationalists? In some places, like the deindustrialized city of Katowice, the exhibition even met with devastating attacks. Focusing on this event in Katowice, I use media reports, interviews, and other ethnographic material to explore what the IPN-led state spectacles of justice, particularly the figure of the face and the defacement practices they employ, reveal about tensions and contradictions of “post-socialist” sovereignty; how the figure of the (secret) communist agent has come to facialize both the unfinished reckoning with communist-era state violence and the “normalized” violence of capitalist transformation. I argue that past violence, which is the typical object of transitional justice, needs to be approached in a dynamic and relational manner, with a focus on the conjunctures—how different forms of violence become transformed, reproduced, or entangled across time and space. My comparative perspective on transitional justice highlights the problems caused when its nationalist appropriation becomes entangled with capital's violence.

scholarly journals OUR DEAD CAN SPEAK: SOCIAL DISPLACEMENTS, AFFECTS, AND POLITICAL ACTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliana Sanjurjo
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Political Action ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
The Face

Abstract Grounded in ethnographic research with activist organisations-families of the victims of state violence in Argentina and Brazil-this article seeks to critically reflect on the relationships between gender, kinship, and the politics and social practice of memory, together with devices for the management of life and social order in specific ethnographic situations. Using a comparative approach, the article argues that relationships established between these groups enable the construction of shared strategies of political action and the production of shared meanings in the face of overlapping confrontations with inequalities and violence. The central problematic questions how the these activists’ displacements (often transnational) disseminate practices, skills, experiences, and repertoires of political mobilisation that compose a field of action directed towards the construction of memories, the rendering visible of victims, and the denunciation of previous regimes of selectively perpetrated violence.

Ending Violence against Women in Latin America: Feminist Norm Setting in a Multilevel Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 143-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conny Roggeband
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Latin American ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
International Convention ◽  
The Public ◽  
International Obligation ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Latin American feminists brought up the issue of violence in the 1970s under military rule or situations of armed conflict. These contexts made feminists specifically concerned with state violence against women. Women's organizations pointed to torture and rape of political prisoners and the use of rape as a weapon of war and connected these forms of violence to deeper societal patterns of subordination and violence against women in both the private and public spheres. Processes of democratization in the region brought new opportunities to institutionalize norms to end violence against women (VAW), and in many countries feminists managed to get the issue on the political agenda. In the mid 1990s, the region pioneered international legislation on VAW that uniquely included state-sponsored violence. The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (1994) established an international obligation for states to prevent, investigate, and punish VAW regardless of whether it takes place in the home, the community, or in the public sphere. While Latin American governments massively ratified this convention, national legislation was not brought in line with the broad scope of the international convention. This points to the complex and often contradictory dynamics of institutionalizing norms to oppose VAW in multilevel settings.

scholarly journals ISLAM IN THE WEST MEDIA DISTORTION (MEDIA IN CONSTRUCTING ISLAM AS A TERRORIST AND EXTREMIST RELIGION)

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ifah Ifah
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Global Community ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Negative Concept ◽  
Western Media

Various media reports that directly or indirectly have formed public opinion that accuses Muslims as a whole as accused of all forms of violence and terrorism on the face of the earth accompanied by extremist acts. Some western media are trying to brainwash the global community that where there are Muslims then there are terrorists and where there are terrorists then there is a threat accompanied by extremist acts. This article aims to see how western media are constructing the message that Islam is the religion of terrorists and extremists. The method used is the study of literature. The results show that the Media has a big impact on a person's view of something and using only symbols of Islam, they can be accused of being terrorists. The media constructs messages in the form of writings or images that link terror acts with Muslims. Muslims, in general, are suspected of being part of terrorists, even for small neighborhoods. So it is clearly seen that the media is trying to form a negative concept of Islam as a religion of terrorists and extremists.

Fractious Greek coalition may last a year

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
General Election ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Structural Reforms ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
Roll Back

Significance The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) won the early general election on January 25 and formed a coalition government with a nationalist right-wing party, Independent Greeks (ANEL). The coalition will have the support of 162 members in the 300-seat parliament. The principal policies shared by the parties are to roll back the country's massive debt, which is equivalent to 175% of GDP, and to escape the foreign tutelage implied by the two Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with Greece's creditors, which stipulate rigorous fiscal and structural reforms in exchange for 240 billion euros (272 billion dollars) in soft bailout loans. Impacts In the public sector, leftist supporters will clamour for jobs in the face of a Syriza platform commitment to introduce hirings on merit. Syriza says it will welcome foreign investment to help restore growth so that Greece can pay its own way and not have to borrow in future. If the takeover of office goes smoothly, Syriza's victory could boost left-of-centre parties in the forthcoming UK and Spanish elections.

scholarly journals Different Forms of Violence – Selected Issues

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 103-118
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Mikołajczuk
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Violent Behaviour ◽  
The Public ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Media ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Violence has been part of the human history since its very beginning. As some believe, it is “Cain’s sin” that determines violent human behaviour. Though this belief is obviously simplified, it reflects the nature of man. We are eager to seek evil in others, in individuals and in social structures. It is not just the family that is oppressive. Violence is ubiquitous; it is inflicted by peer groups, social classes, organisations, and by the state. Violence is commonly defined as social behaviour against someone or something, the aggressor being on one side and the victim on the other. Usually, a narrow definition of violence is used; i.e., violence is understood as the use of force to obtain from others what they are not willing to give or what they do not want to do. However, violence is a more complex phenomenon. Some forms of violence are sophisticated and difficult to discern, not only in the behaviour of others but also in our own actions. Violence occurs on a micro-scale in the form of pressure, extortion, inducement, or restrictions, and on a macro-scale – as wars, crises, terroristic acts, or revolutions. Violence is not only physical and psychological; it may also be personal, structural, hidden, explicit, emotional, and rational. What follows, it takes place in a wide array of spaces: in culture, sport, politics, the media, in the public space and at home. Therefore, the narrow definition of violence fails to include many of its aspects, and as such it is not practical. Using such a definition, we are left with extreme cases, so in fact we define pathologies. A serious difficulty in defining violence is connected with defining human rights in a unified way. These vary from culture to culture and have been evolving throughout history. Violation of these rights constitutes the essence of what is referred to as violent behaviour. Each society defines and attempts to prevent violence differently, and also in its own way indicates those who judge the perpetrators of prohibited acts.

scholarly journals Falun Gong: The End of Days. By MARIA HSIA CHANG. [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 188 pp. $25.00; £16.99. ISBN 0-300-10227-5.]

2005 ◽  
Vol 181 ◽  
pp. 181-183
Author(s):  
David A. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Chinese Religion ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Falun Gong ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Media Reports

Since 1999, falun gong has been one of the most burning and sensitive political and religious issues in China, brought to the attention of the public around the world by demonstrations and media reports. Until Maria Hsia Chang's book, Falun Gong: The End of Days, was released this spring, no balanced book-length account of the facts surrounding falun gong was available. Chang's book provides the general public with an informative summary of the development of falun gong, its basic beliefs, the history of its repression by the Chinese state, and its connection with millenarian and sectarian traditions in Chinese religious history. However, the journalistic style and sources of the book underline the need for a thorough academic study of the phenomenon.Chapter one, “A religious sect defies the state,” outlines the story of falun gong from its foundation in 1992 to its continued repression today following the Zhongnanhai demonstration of 1999. In chapter two, “Chinese religions and millenarian movements,” Chang summarizes the history of Chinese religions, secret societies, and millennial and apocalyptic movements, including the Eight Trigram, Taiping and Boxer rebellions, and argues that the Chinese Communists tapped into China's millenarian tradition in order to gain power. She then stresses that falun gong, contrary to its claims that it is not a religion, draws heavily from Chinese religion, and particularly its millennial and apocalyptic strands. Falun gong teachings are described in chapter three, “Beliefs and practices,” in which falun gong's cosmology, theology and eschatology are outlined with ample reference to the writings of Li Hongzhi. The next chapter, “The state vs. falun gong,” goes through the Chinese state's charges against falun gong. Chapter five, “The persecution of other faiths,” begins with a critique of the “rule of law” purportedly called on by the CCP to deal with falun gong, and argues that the accusations made against falun gong could just as well be made against the CCP itself. It then discusses the vast social dislocations in contemporary China that create a fertile soil for the emergence of apocalyptic movements such as falun gong, and describes how the persecution of falun gong is part of a larger policy to eradicate underground religious groups, several of which are presented. Finally, Chang concludes that, in the face of widespread social dissatisfaction, the fear of millenarian uprisings is the main motivation for the CCP's fierce suppression of falun gong – but its intolerance of “heterodox” faiths only reinforces their politicization into oppositional movements, increasing the likelihood of the CCP “reaping the fate” it so dreads.

scholarly journals Why We Can't Have Our Facts Back

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noortje Marres
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Knowledge Democracy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Fact Checking ◽  
Computationally Intensive ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Public Evidence

How do we make the case for “knowledge democracy” in the face of the growing influence of right-wing figures and movements that denounce experts and expertise? While the threats to knowledge posed by these movements are real, it would be a mistake to return to a classic intellectual strategy––the politics of demarcation––in the face of this danger. Examining practical proposals for combatting fake news and opinion manipulation on the Internet, namely so-called "fact-checking" tools and services, I argue that they threaten to enroll us in a problematic normative project, one that aims to re-establish a hierarchy between knowledge and its presumed opposite, non-knowledge, or anti-knowledge. I list a number of shortcomings of this strategy. Most importantly, it distracts us from the role of technology in the crisis of public evidence in today's computationally-intensive societies. Social media are a truth-less public sphere by design. A politics of demarcation also puts us at risk of forgetting a key insight from the previous century that remains valid today: knowledge democracy is a re-constructive practice and an ideal. Instead of consolidating hierarchies of knowledge through facts that derive their authority form outside the public sphere, we need to recover the central role in public life of experimental facts: statements whose truth value is unstable. The experimental validation of public knowledge must happen in the public domain.  

scholarly journals Transitional Justice and the Constitutional Crisis: The Case of Poland (2015–2019)

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Michał Krotoszyński
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Service Employees ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communist Past

During the last four years the situation in Poland has been a matter of interest to the worldwide legal community mostly due to the constitutional crisis. Yet, the years 2015–2019 were also a time of a revival of transitional justice measures, such as cleansing the public sphere of communist symbols, remodelling of lustration law, and further reduction of pensions of communist secret service employees and officers. In this paper I argue that these spheres are interconnected and that Poland’s constitutional crisis has a transitional justice dimension. I start with an overview of retrospective instruments dealing with the communist past introduced in the last four years. Next, I turn to the constitutional crisis itself, discussing its possible explanations and transitional justice aspects. In the end I claim that the dramatic constitutional backsliding that Poland has recently experienced can be explained not only as a power grab, but also as a result of the tension between the rule of law and the principle of individual responsibility on one hand – and the resort to collective accountability in an attempt to get what the government sees as justice on the other.

The Relevance of Energy Service Contracts in the Budget Sphere

2018 ◽  
pp. 64-68
Author(s):  
George V. Boos ◽  
Elena Yu. Matveeva
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Debt Burden ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
Effective Implementation ◽  
Service Contracts ◽  
The Face ◽  
Energy Service ◽  
The Russian Federation

The problematic aspects related to the implementation of energy saving policy in the budget sphere are examined in the article. The factors hindering the mass and effective implementation of energysaving measures are highlighted in the article. Among these factors, there is the technical complexity of energysaving projects, the presence of innovative and investment risks, problems with the financial provision of costs in the face of increasing debt burden in most public budgets. The article concludes that in these circumstances only the energy service contract is a tool that allows implementing energy­saving measures without the first participation of budgetary funds in financing and allows transferring the risks of making technically inefficient decisions directly to the investor. In the article, the authors substantiate the importance of the institutional development of energy services directly in the public sector and analyze the measures of the comprehensive plan to improve the energy efficiency of the economy of the Russian Federation aimed at expanding the scope of energy service contracts in the public sector.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

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