scholarly journals Shared parenting, law and policy: considering power within the framework of autopoietic theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-443
Author(s):  
Annika Newnham
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Autopoietic Systems ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Shared Parenting ◽  
Cognitive Frameworks ◽  
Political Subsystem ◽  
Autopoietic Theory

AbstractThis paper uses the last few decades’ developments in the area of shared parenting to explore power within the framework of autopoietic theory. It traces how, prompted by turbulence from the political subsystem, family law has made several unsuccessful attempts to solve the perceived problem of post-separation dual-household parenting. It agrees with Luhmann and Teubner that closed autopoietic systems’ developments are limited by their normative and cognitive frameworks, and also argues that changes which have occurred in family law show that closed social systems do not function in total isolation. It considers power as ego's ability to limit alter's choices. In our functionally differentiated society, with its recent proliferation of communication, power appears more diffuse and impossible to plot into causal one-way relationships.

Political Translation and the Sustainable Development Goals

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Chris G. Pope ◽  
Meng Ji ◽  
Xuemei Bai
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals

The chapter argues that whether or not the world is successful in attaining sustainability, political systems are in a process of epoch-defining change as a result of the unsustainable demands of our social systems. This chapter theorizes a framework for analyzing the political “translation” of sustainability norms within national polities. Translation, in this sense, denotes the political reinterpretation of sustainable development as well as the national capacities and contexts which impact how sustainability agendas can be instrumentalized. This requires an examination into the political architecture of a national polity, the norms that inform a political process, socioecological contexts, the main communicative channels involved in the dissemination of political discourse and other key structures and agencies, and the kinds of approaches toward sustainability that inform the political process. This framework aims to draw attention to the ways in which global economic, political, and social systems are adapting and transforming as a result of unsustainability and to further understanding of the effectiveness of globally diffused sustainability norms in directing that change.

The Mysterious Case of Disappearing Family Law and the Shrinking Vulnerable Subject

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Mant ◽  
Julie Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Political Boundary ◽  
Eligibility Requirements

This article seeks to critically examine the implications that the new eligibility requirements for legal aid as implemented by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 are having on the ways in which private family law governs families. It makes use of a theoretical lens drawn from the work of Valverde (2009, 2014a, 2014b) on ‘jurisdiction’ to map the shift that has taken place within family law as a result of the political boundary that the act has drawn between ‘vulnerable’ litigants eligible for legal aid and the rest of families engaging with private family law, for whom self-sufficiency and responsibility is encouraged and expected. It argues that in reserving legal aid for a narrow group of vulnerable litigants, the formal scale of family law has shrunk, there being at the same time an increased reliance on more informal sources of law such as advice-based resources. This has led to a diversification of formal and informal scales of governance which operate according to different ‘logics’, which impact negatively on access to family justice for families from various backgrounds and circumstances. The article concludes with a call for family law researchers to be mindful of the need to look at both formal and more informal sources of family law in order to fully appreciate developments within the jurisdiction, particularly pernicious ones, and to be able to respond to them appropriately.

scholarly journals The Traditional State as a Specific Form of Political Organization

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Valentin Ya. Liubashits ◽  
Nikolai V. Razuvaev ◽  
Natalia V. Fedorova ◽  
Georgii Ia. Trigub ◽  
Oleg V. Soloviev
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Organization ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Political Integrity ◽  
Organizational Features ◽  
System Characteristics

The article analyzes the traditional state as a historical, political, legal, and cultural phenomenon that has had a fundamental impact on the transformation of the socio-political organization of society, on the legal and socio-cultural development of modern social systems. The authors argue that the traditional state should be characterized as a specific form of the political, legal, social, and cultural organization since it contains all the institutions that provide for the management of various processes in society, and has the operating forms and mechanism of its preservation and reproduction. In addition, the work shows that the traditional state forms special legal regimes, as well as forms of socio-political integrity. The authors prove that the specificity of the traditional state as a historical type has manifested in a whole series of system characteristics (functions, structure, and forms) incomparable in full with the organizational features of other historical types of states, primarily the modern state.

scholarly journals Institutionalized Ambiguity in Legal Status: Managing Citizenship in the U.S. Imperial Rule of the Philippines

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Quisumbing King
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Administrative Capacity ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Political Realm ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Do So

A perennial question in the scholarship of the state asks how states rule and expand their capacity to do so. Scholars have paid special attention to activities that rationalize and build administrative capacity, known as legibility projects. Alongside these projects, state actors also rule through ambiguous and unclear techniques that have been given less scholarly attention. I introduce the concept of institutionalized ambiguity in legal status to extend the study of state rule. I ask what generates ambiguity, what purposes it serves in law and policy, and what consequences it has for the management of populations. I propose an analytic approach that draws attention to equivocation in law as enabling classificatory debates and discretion in the political realm. To illustrate the purchase of institutionalized ambiguity in legal status, I analyze how, during the years of formal imperial rule (1898-1946), U.S. state actors debated the racial fitness and membership of Filipinos in the imagined U.S. nation. I consider the broader implications of this analysis for scholars of modern state formation and suggest that foundational conflicts over national identity can be institutionalized in law, in turn facilitating a range of contradictory, but co-existing, legally defensible policies.

Past and Present Farming: Changes in Terms of Engagement

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Armstrong Oma
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Husbandry Practices ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Impact

In archaeology, changes in human–animal relationships are rarely considered beyond the moment of domestication. This is influenced by Ingold’s idea that domestication led to a shift in the human engagement with animals (Ingold 2000: 61–76; see Armstrong Oma 2007: 62–4, 2010 for critique). I do not question the validity of such a claim; however, I argue that changes in terms of engagement also happened beyond domestication, and that various configurations of human–animal relationships have existed throughout history. Further, I argue that such changes also have consequences for the environment, by choice of land use strategies and husbandry regimes. A twofold purpose is pursued: first, to investigate how changes in social systems, in my case changes in terms of engagement between humans and animals, affect land use in such a way as to impinge upon natural systems and ecosystems. Second, I wish to grasp the political underpinnings of the models that are employed by archaeologists and, by doing so, to deconstruct the political use of the past (see also Stump, Chapter 10 this volume). Alternative models regarding economic strategies are sought, and the implications of these are discussed. Human–environment studies frequently deal with the impact of human intrusive land use strategies on ecosystems. Awareness has been created around these processes regarding land use techniques and practices (for example Denham and White 2007; Mazoyer and Roudart 2006). However, in European archaeology the impact of husbandry practices upon ecosystems has received considerably less, if any, attention. People in past societies from the Neolithic onwards made the conscious decision to live with animals as herders or as farmers, blending together social and economic choices that had repercussions for landscape developments and ecosystems. Investigations into the relationship between environmental changes caused by husbandry practices and the social systems that instigated those changes are an important contribution to research on past environmental development. These changes are identifiable in the archaeological record.

Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Edgar
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pablo Picasso ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Theorist ◽  
The University

Born near Stuttgart, Germany, the philosopher Max Horkheimer, who obtained his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt, is best known as a leader of the Frankfurt School, along with Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas. From 1930 to 1958 (with a significant hiatus from 1934 to 1948), Horkheimer served as the Director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research), founded in 1923 to promote multidisciplinary research in the social sciences with a particular focus on Marxian thought; along with his colleague Adorno, Horkheimer was responsible for developing the distinctive form of Marxist philosophy that framed this research through the methodologies of German critical theory. Instead of just describing social systems through "objective" means, critical theory would endeavor to uncover the social context and raise questions about truth and social justice, acknowledging also that critical theory cannot produce universal truths. At best, the critical theorist simply expresses the contradictions and falsehoods of the society within which they work. Critical theory was applied in a sweeping analysis of Western civilization in Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947; Dialectic of Enlightenment), in which Adorno and Horkheimer argued that the progress of enlightened Western culture was simultaneously a regression into a new barbarism and an entanglement in myth. In modernist art, such as the work of James Joyce and Pablo Picasso, Horkheimer identified a crucial source of resistance to the political and economic oppression of late capitalist society. Horkheimer, who was Jewish, escaped Nazi Germany and taught at Columbia University from 1935 to 1941; he lived in Los Angeles during the 1940s, but eventually returned to Germany where died in Nuremburg in 1973.

scholarly journals Are living beings extended autopoietic systems? An embodied reply

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Villalobos ◽  
Pablo Razeto-Barry
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
Autopoietic Systems ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Autopoietic Theory ◽  
Extended Interpretation

Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion for living beings, these understood as discrete bodies that are embedded in, but not constituted by, the environment that surrounds them. However, by giving a more explicitly embodied definition of living beings, AT can rectify and accommodate, so we argue, the enactive extended interpretation of autopoiesis, showing that although living beings do not extend beyond their boundaries as autopoietic unities, they do form part, in normal conditions, of broader autopoietic systems that include the environment.

Value Orientations and Systemic Changes in Montenegro, 1989-2015

Südosteuropa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Mladen Lazić
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Linear Trajectory ◽  
Political Subsystem ◽  
Value Changes

Abstract The author analyses changes in value orientations in Montenegro between 1989 and 2015, examining on the basis of survey data the changes in the values that regulated the economic and political subsystems. He looks first at the period immediately preceding the breakdown of state socialism, in order to identify the spread of values relevant to the regulation of an economic subsystem which may be labelled ‘redistributive statism’, and ‘authoritarian collectivism’ within the political subsystem. He then shows how far Montenegrin society was penetrated by values pertinent to the competitive capitalist order, as well as to economic and political liberalism. He examines the changes in the modes of social reproduction and demonstrates how liberal values in fact replaced the previously dominant redistributive and authoritarian-collectivist ones. Not least, the author establishes that value changes occurred on many levels rather than simply following a linear trajectory from one system to the other.

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