Acoustics of the Everyday: Between Growth and Conflict in 1960s Japan

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIKI KANEDA

AbstractFocusing on a multimedia practice labelled ‘intermedia art’, this article shows how experimental musical practices complicate popular characterizations of the idea of politics in 1960s Japan that are polarized by their focus on extraordinary economic growth, on the one hand, and radical protest, on the other. Like their counterparts in art, experimental musicians and artists such as Shiomi Mieko, Kosugi Takehisa, and Yuasa Jōji took an interest in everyday sounds, spaces, and technologies as sites for artistic exploration. However, their musical approaches did not share the overtly political engagement with the scenes of protest playing out in the public sphere that played a central role in the visual arts. Through an investigation of the notion of ambiguity in the acoustics of intermedia, the article seeks to re-examine understandings about the role of sound in shifting perceptions about political participation.

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Schnell

Professional journalism fulfills an important role in modern democracies, while always standing with one leg in the public sphere and the other in the private media economy. Within the era of digitalization, the limits of a market-driven professionalism become apparent. Since information appears to be easily accessible due to new media, journalism lost its role as a gatekeeper for “what the world needs to know”. But dropping an anachronistic idea of professional authority—as reform projects within the journalistic profession demanded for decades—does not necessarily lead to a more open and participatory public sphere. On the contrary, the chance for reliable news seems to shrink in the everyday flood of information. Facing a severe shortage of professionalism against the background of an oversupply in the field of journalism might indicate a general paradox of contemporary societies.  


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.


Author(s):  
Montserrat Escribano Cárcel

RESUMENEste artículo se acerca al papel público que las religiones desempeñan en las democracias. Para ello es necesario que cultiven un doble afán. El primero, que mira hacia el exterior y sitúa a la religión católica entre el resto de esferas que definen nuestras sociedades plurales. El artículo cuestiona la tarea ética que puede ejercer esta tradición religiosa y que ha de reforzar el marco democrático en el que todas estas esferas se incluyen. El segundo, que mira hacia el interior de esta religión y ocupa la mayor parte de este artículo, gira en torno a la teología feminista desarrollada por Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Su sentido crítico está transformando la identidad de los y las creyentes, los horizontes comprensivos religiosos y puede ayudar así a reforzar el papel de las democracias.PALABRAS CLAVERELIGIÓN, ESPACIO PÚBLICO, DELIBERACIÓN, HERMENÉUTICA CRÍTICA Y TEOLOGÍA FEMINISTA CRÍTICA.ABSTRACTThis article approaches the public part religions play in democracies. On the one hand, the Catholic religion has to be set amidst the rest of the spheres, which define our plural societies. In this first part, we will try to evaluate how the Catholic religion helps reinforcing the democratic frame in which it evolves. On the other hand, the largest part of this article will be devoted to the Catholic feminist theology developed by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza not only as a means of changing the identity of believers and their understanding religious horizons, but also as a way of strengthening the role of democracies.KEYWORDSRELIGION, PUBLIC SPHERE, DELIBERATION, CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS AND CRITICAL FEMINIST THEOLOGY


Author(s):  
Eduardo Villanueva-Mansilla

OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child initiative, was accepted by just a few countries, including Peru. The largest acquisition of computers has produced a fairly low impact in education and is now being quietly phased-out. Peru's government decision to adopt the computers, back in 2007, was not contested or questioned by the political class, the media or even teachers, with just a rather small number of specialists arguing against it. This chapters discussed the political and argumentative processes that brought OLPC into the public sphere, through the use of a specific narrative, that of hackerism, i.e., the hacker attitude towards computers, and how social and political validation resulted in adoption. An assessment of the process of framing OLPC as a hacker product and the perils of such reasoning lead to discuss the need for a counter-narrative about the role of computers in society.


Author(s):  
Óscar CORTÉS

Laburpena: Adimen artifiziala da gaur egungo teknologien artean bultzadarik handiena duenetako bat. Azterlan honen xedea da horren erronka batzuen hausnarketa bat eskaintzea Administrazio Publikoan aplikatzeko. Alde batetik, abiadura-palanka gisa duen gaitasunaren ikuspuntutik, sektore publikoa den bezalako ekosistema juridikoan; beste alde batetik, administrazio-sistemetan bere garapena bideragarri egiteko suertatzen diren galderei erantzuteko beharretik. Horretarako, aztertuko da nola aldaketa teknologiko berriek lege-moldaketekin batera etorri diren maila publikoan bideragarritasuna emateko; aurkeztuko dira algoritmoen aukera eta ziurgabetasun batzuk Administrazioaren teknologia eraldatzaile bezala; azkenik, deskribatuko dira aspektu juridiko batzuk beharrezkoak direnak Administrazioan bere ezapen ziurra eta etikoa lortzeko eta aztertuko dira administrazio-prozedura automatizatu posible baten elementurik aipagarrienak. Resumen: La inteligencia artificial es ya hoy una de las tecnologías con mayor potencial. El presente estudio tiene por objeto ofrecer una reflexión sobre algunos de los retos para su aplicación en la Administración pública. Por un lado, desde el punto de vista de su capacidad como palanca de cambio en un ecosistema jurídico como el sector público; por otro, desde la necesidad de abordar algunos de los interrogantes que surgen para hacer viable su desarrollo en los sistemas administrativos. Para ello, se analizará cómo los recientes cambios tecnológicos han venido acompañados de modificaciones legales para dotarles de viabilidad en el ámbito público, se mostrarán algunas de las oportunidades e incertidumbres de los algoritmos como tecnologías transformadoras en la Administración, se describirán algunos de los aspectos jurídicos que es necesario abordar para su segura implantación ética y jurídica en la Administración y se analizarán algunos de los elementos más destacados de un posible procedimiento administrativo automatizado. Abstract: Artificial intelligence is already today one of the technologies with greatest potential. The purpose of this study is to offer a reflection on some of the challenges for its implementation in public administration. On the one hand, from the standpoint of its capacity as a lever of change and transformation in a legal ecosystem such as the public sector; on the other, from the need to address some of the questions that arise to make viable its development in administrative systems. For that purpose, it will be analyzed how recent technological changes have been accompanied by legal modifications to make them viable in the public sphere, some of the opportunities and uncertainties of algorithms as transformative technologies in administration will be shown, some of the legal aspects that need to be addressed for its legal and ethical secure implementation in the Administration will be described, and some of the most outstanding elements of a possible automated administrative procedure will be analyzed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 130-155
Author(s):  
Mónica López Lerma

Chapter six turns to Marcelo Piñeyro’s El Método (2005) to examine a perceived tension in contemporary societies between the depoliticization of the public sphere and the opposite call for its repoliticization. The film productively presents this tension in two ways: first, by inviting viewers to participate in depoliticizing structures of power, and then by inviting them to question their role and responsibility in those structures. On the one hand, the film uses the cinematic split-screen technique to grant viewers a godlike perspective and ability to watch different actions and events synchronically, as if through a surveillance camera. Job candidates are scrutinized from the point of view of a multinational corporation during massive anti-corporate globalization protests in Madrid, which the mass media presents in dismissive terms. On the other hand, the film’s subtle use of sound effectively disrupts the complicity of the viewer in these structures and provides possibilities for political subjectivation. Drawing on the work of Michel Chion and Mdalen Dolar, the chapter shows how the “acousmatic sound” of protest irrupts into the viewer’s given space of the visible and provides avenues for what might be called a “sonic emancipation.”


Author(s):  
Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen

The article investigates Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt’s theory of the constituent power. By comparing Schmitt and Arendt’s notions of democracy, the people and the public sphere, the article seeks to establish an alternative to deliberative democracy’s conceptualisation of the relation between democracy and the public sphere. By pointing to the differences between the debating and legitimating public sphere inherent in deliberative democracy on the one hand and the lawgiving and constituting public sphere in the works of Schmitt and Arendt on the other, the article investigates Schmitt’s notion of plebiscitary democracy and Arendt’s idea of a federal republic of councils. These political modes of organizations attempt to overcome the hierarchical relation between representatives and represented and seek to envision the people as able, when gathered together in public, to give laws themselves, and not only play the role as electors or debaters.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Nisar Alungal Chungath

Identity is not a fixed and frozen prison-house for the self, but a liquid continuum, affected and shaped by the ‘outside’ or the world. The self, which is situated and which undergoes revisions and transformations, keeps identity as a frame within which it makes sense of things. On the one hand, there is a ‘history’ within which an identity is rooted and through which meaning-making is made possible, and on the other hand, every person aspires to be a ‘universal’ and recognition-worthy human being. Both inherent identity and inherent universality of the self should be considered in their interactions in the public sphere, which has been traditionally viewed as a space of discrete individualities. The ontological force of this argument aside, the paper demonstrates that reduction of an identity without crediting its aspiration for universality and consideration of universality without crediting the historical underpinnings of identity are both acts of violation. 


Author(s):  
Tedi Kholiludin

AbstrakAsumsi sekularisme bahwa peran agama akan meredup pasca Pencerahan, nyata tidak terbukti. Dugaan akan tergerusnya agama di ruang publik, tak terwujud. Meski ada sekularisasi di masyarakat, tapi proses itu tidak berimbas pada kesadaran individu. Agama masih menjadi modal sosial dan memberikan pengaruh terhadap pergumulan masyarakat modern. Dalam bentuknya yang paling militan hingga yang halus kita merasakan bagaimana pengaruh dari Konfusianisme dan Taoisme di Cina dan Taiwan, Kristen Kharismatik serta Pentakostalisme di Afrika Selatan dan India, Kristen Ortodoks di Rusia, Islam di Indonesia serta spirit kapitalisme di Eropa Timur. Agama disini, menjadi sebentuk the hidden form of capital atau modal yang tersembunyi. Di lain wajah, sentimen agama, juga tak jarang menimbulkan banyak pertikaian. Konflik antar umat beragama semakin banyak kita temukan. Inilah era dimana counter terhadap sekularisasi justru semakin menguat.  Agama selalu menghadirkan wajah ganda yang ambivalen, menjadi perekat dan sumber integrasi di satu sisi, tapi juga menjadi pemisah dan sumber konfilik di sisi lain. Bagaimana masyarakat yang tidak saling mengenal satu dengan lain, berasal dari berbagai belahan dunia bisa terbangun sentimennya karena agama. Juga sebaliknya, bagaimana ikatan-ikatan persaudaraan menjadi pudar karena berbeda agama atau pemahaman keagamaan.Kata kunci: Agama, Integrasi, Konflik dan Rekonsiliasi AbstractThe assumption of secularism that the role of religion will diminish after the Enlightenment is not proven. Allegations of religious erosion in the public sphere are unfulfilled. Although there is secularization in society, but the process does not affect individual consciousness. Religion is still a social capital and gives effect to the struggle of modern society. In its most militant to subtle form we feel the influence of Confucianism and Taoism in China and Taiwan, Christian Charismatics and Pentecostalism in South Africa and India, Orthodox Christianity in Russia, Islam in Indonesia and the spirit of capitalism in Eastern Europe. Here, Religion is being a form of hidden form of capital or hidden capital. On the other face, religious sentiments, also not infrequently cause a lot of disputes. Conflict among religious people more and more we find. This is an era where the counter to secularization is actually getting stronger. Religion always presents an ambivalent double face, a glue and source of integration on the one hand, but also a separator and a source of confidence on the other. How people who do not know each other, coming from different parts of the world can be awakened by religious sentiment. On the contrary, how fraternal bonds fade due to different religions or religious understanding. Keyword: Religion, Integration, Conflict and Reconciliation                


2007 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fitzgerald

Politicians increasingly treat radio talkback as a valuable resource through which to communicate directly with the public. Whilst research has examined the role of talkback in the public sphere in the United States. United Kingdom and recently Australia, little is known about the use of talkback in Asia. This paper begins an initial examination of the role of talkback in Singapore and Hong Kong as a vehicle for public opinion and political engagement by those who produce and host the programs.


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