Racialisation in Malaysia: Multiracialism, multiculturalism, and the cultural politics of the possible

Author(s):  
Sharmani Patricia Gabriel

This article focuses on racialisation as a signifying practice and cultural process that attributes difference in Malaysia. It attempts to think with and against the concept of racialisation with an aim to add to a clearer understanding of the cultural politics of ‘race’. It focuses on the hierarchies of power and marginalisation, visibility and invisibility, inclusion and exclusion that are built into dominant discourses and modes of knowledge production about race, citizenship, and culture in Malaysia. This article aims to show how the political mobilisation of race as a remnant of colonial governmentality disciplines social processes through the notion of multiculturalism. For this reason, it sets up state-endorsed ‘multiracialism’ and a people-driven ‘multiculturalism’ as oppositional ways of thinking about race. It concludes by briefly identifying some key drivers for cultural transformation and speculating if these people-centred processes can offer a more imaginative racial horizon.

Author(s):  
Thorsten Bonacker

Abstract This article examines the political rationality and governance practices that emerged in the course of the international politics of decolonization. It focuses primarily on the UN trusteeship system, within which the former League of Nations mandates were continued by the trusteeship powers. In this process, the trustees' policies were placed under international scrutiny. The article ties in with International Political Sociology's increased interest in historical perspectives. In particular, it asks how the political rationality of the trusteeship system differs from colonial governmentality. Two arguments are put forward: first, international governing, as can be seen from the trusteeship system, is characterized by a postcolonial governmentality that continues central elements of colonial governmentality, but transfers them to the international level. Second, following Latour, it is argued that trusteeship governance is constituted by forms of knowledge production and the bureaucratic circulation of information that continue to shape the governance of international organizations today. To this end, the article takes up in particular the reporting system of the trusteeship system as well as its central instruments of knowledge production: the visiting missions, the petition system, and the collection of data through questionnaires.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-331
Author(s):  
John Owen Havard

John Owen Havard, “‘What Freedom?’: Frankenstein, Anti-Occidentalism, and English Liberty” (pp. 305–331) “If he were vanquished,” Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “I should be a free man.” But he goes on: “Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free.” Victor’s circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic “freedom” described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: “Such would be my liberty.” This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested “harem” episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor’s imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature’s desire to live in South America. Locating Victor’s concluding appeal to his “free” condition within the novel’s expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel’s pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel’s geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110039
Author(s):  
Sarah Reckhow ◽  
Megan Tompkins-Stange ◽  
Sarah Galey-Horn

Using congressional testimony on teacher quality from 2003 to 2015 and analysis of 60 elite interviews, we show how the political economy of knowledge production influences idea uptake in education policy discourse. We develop and assess a conceptual framework showing the organizational and financial infrastructure that links research, ideas, and advocacy in politics. We find that congressional hearing witnesses representing groups that received philanthropic grants are more likely to support teacher evaluation policies, but specific mentions of research in testimony are not a factor. Overall, our study shows that funders and advocacy groups emphasized rapid uptake of ideas to reform teacher evaluation, which effectively influenced policymakers but limited the use of research in teacher evaluation policy discourse.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 985-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Sachs Olsen

This paper interrogates the political potential of socially engaged art within an urban setting. Grounded in Lefebvrian and neo-Marxist critical urban theory, this political potential is examined according to three analytics that mark the definition of ‘politics’ in this context: the (re)configuration of urban space, the (re)framing of a particular sphere of experience and the (re)thinking of what is taken-for-granted. By bringing together literatures from a range of academic domains, these analytics are used to examine 1) how socially engaged art may expand our understanding of the link between the material environment and the production of urban imaginaries and meanings, and 2) how socially engaged art can open up productive ways of thinking about and engaging with urban space.


Author(s):  
Dra. Dolores Figueroa Romero ◽  
Dra. Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor

A partir de la descripción de enfoques y procesos de enseñanza de investigación del Diplomado para el Fortalecimiento del Liderazgo de las Mujeres Indígenas, coordinado por la Universidad Indígena Intercultural del Fondo Indígena y el Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, se desarrollará una reflexión sobre “la etnización” de la investigación social y la producción de conocimiento cultural y políticamente pertinente para el movimiento de mujeres indígenas organizadas en América Latina. En específico, nuestro análisis se centrará en mostrar los escenarios de disputa donde facilitadoras y lideresas se enfrentaron ante el reto de desmontar la colonialidad de la construcción del conocimiento en las dinámicas de enseñanza y procesos de adecuación de métodos de investigación. Las particulares experiencias de conducción del trabajo de campo de las alumnas mostrarán su creatividad al adaptar y adoptar metodologías que les permitieron visibilizar el aporte político de las mujeres indígenas al desarrollo del activismo indígena local.Indigenizing Social Research Methodologies: Training Experience for the Strengthening of Women’s LeadershipAbstractBased on an ethnographic description of the approaches, learning processes and final research products of the Diploma for the Strengthening of Women’s Leadership coordinated by the Indigenous Fund’s Intercultural Indigenous University and the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (UII-CIESAS), this essay reflects upon the indigenization of social research and knowledge production designed to meet the cultural and political needs of the indigenous women’s movement in Latin America. Specifically our analysis will focus on showing scenarios of dispute where facilitators and leaders faced the challenge of dismantling the coloniality of the knowledge construction in teaching dynamics and processes of adequacy of research methods. Finally, the students' own fieldwork experiences show their creativity in adapting and adopting methodologies that allowed them to make visible the political contribution of indigenous women to the local indigenous activism.Recibido: 02 de febrero de 2016Aceptado: 30 de mayo de 2017 


1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (97) ◽  
pp. 549-561
Author(s):  
Norbert Lechner

The article investigates the effects of extensive enforcement of the market society on the pattems of politics in the example of the Latin American countries. The institutionalized politics as well as the »political« (the symbolic representations of the collective order) undergo a transformation, during which the context and the meaning of democracy is changed. Instead of politics being trapped within the mere market logic and only reacting to challenges, a policy which tries toregulate social processes with the aim of a collective order for the collectivity is necessary.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 258-274
Author(s):  
Praveen Rai

Abstract Political opinion polls in India are holistic snapshots in time that divulge deep dive information on electoral participation, ideological orientation and self-efficacy of the electorate and faith in core democratic values. The popularity of election surveys stems from the political socialization and crystal ball gazing curiosity of the citizens to foresee the outcomes of the hustings before the pronouncement of formal results. The opinion polls provide crucial data on voting behaviour and attitudes, testing theories of electoral politics and domain knowledge production. The obsession of the Indian media with political forecasting has shifted the focus from psephology to electoral prophecy, but it continues to furnish the best telescopic view of elections based on the feedback of the electorate. The ascertainment of subaltern opinion by surveys not only broadens the contours of understanding electoral democracy, but also provides an empirical alternative to elitist viewpoint of competitive politics in India.


Author(s):  
Gloria Román Ruiz

Resumen: El artículo se interroga por la naturaleza y la intensidad de las resistencias que algunos grupos sociales plantearon al proceso de transformación política y socio-cultural que comenzó a finales de los años sesenta y se extendió a lo largo de los setenta. Presta atención a aquellos sujetos que alzaron su voz en defensa de la tradición y en contra de la modernidad, así como a la incidencia que tuvieron sus acciones y comportamientos de oposición sobre el proceso de democratización. En primer lugar, el texto se detiene en las acciones de resistencia protagonizadas por feligreses conservadores que abrigaban actitudes políticas aquiescentes con la dictadura y acudían a escuchar misa a una parroquia regentada por un cura progresista. En segundo lugar, atiende a las resistencias expresadas por la comunidad parroquial de la iglesia de San José de Estepona (Málaga) ante el proyecto para la instauración de un complejo nudista en la localidad en 1978.Palabras clave: tardofranquismo, transición, democratización, resistencias al cambio, conservadurismo.Abstract: The article wonders about the nature and the intensity of the resistances set in motion by some social groups against the process of political and socio-cultural transformation that began at the end of the sixties and extended throughout the seventies. It pays attention to those subjects who raised their voice in defence of the tradition and against the modernity, as well as to the impact of their actions and opposition behaviours on the process of democratization. In the first place, the paper deals with the actions of resistance activated by the conservative parishioners who had acquiescent political attitudes towards the dictatorship and who attended to a parish ruled by a progressive priest. Secondly, it focuses on the resistances expressed by the parochial community of the San José church (Estepona, Málaga) caused by a nudist project in the town in 1978.Keywords: late Francoism, transition to democracy, democratization, resistances to change, conservatism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Aleksey P. Sitnikov

The article analyzes the scientific potential of the study of such an important phenomenon for the modern world as archaization, on the basis of which the author's methodological and conceptual space for the socio-philosophical study of the archaization of Russian society is formed. The concept of the plurality of modernity, and therefore the alternatives to national modernization, is recognized as a conceptual position. In the framework of the proposed concept, archaization, traditionalization and modernization are considered as modes of tradition - a substance of the sociocultural system that ensures reproduction and preservation of the society’s culture. Under the influence of socio-cultural transformation, the tradition can take the form of these processes, depending on the degree of destruction of traditional foundations and bases of society's life and the adequacy of the implemented innovations, their organic socio-cultural roots. Archaization as a modus of tradition, in turn, under the influence of sociocultural transformation, can develop in the format (modus) of rearchaization and neoarchaization as a result of interaction with the processes of traditionalization and modernization. At the intersection of the development trajectories of modernization and traditionalization processes, a modus of development called neotraditionalization is formed. The modes of archaization (neoarchaization and rearchization) affect the development of social processes in different ways, and therefore archaization is not considered as a uniquely regressive process.


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