All the World is Staged: Intellectuals and the Projects of Ethnography

1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 495-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Katz
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Male ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Concrete Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

Feminism, decolonization, and ‘new social movements’ have decentered the geopolitical power of the ‘First World’ and ruptured the relations of exploitation, domination, and imperialism that undergird it and the authority of the white, male, ruling class, Western subject. The tensions and reorientations in the macrological sphere resonate in social and cultural discourse where feminist theory, poststructuralism, and subaltern studies have called into question the subject positions associated with these relations of power. Rather than making clear that all observers and commentators stand someplace, this ‘sea change’ left many intellectuals adrift, flirting with disabling relativism. Given the projects of representing how others stand and understanding the ground on which they stand, ethnographers have been late to recognize their complicity in masking their own positions as they construct the objects of their inquiry. As intellectuals operating in a postcolonial world, we must take seriously Spivak's admonition about representation as a staging of the world in a political context and begin to connect the ‘micrological textures of power’ with larger political-economic relations. In this expanded field, we can no longer valorize the concrete experience of oppressed peoples while remaining uncritical of our role as intellectuals. Neither can we presume to speak for or about peoples and nations as if they were outside of the contemporary world system, refusing to recognize that our ability to construct them as such is rooted in a larger system of domination. In this paper the author develops these themes by offering a critique of familiar modes and practices of representation and draws on ethnographic research in New York City and rural Sudan to argue that by interrogating the subject positions of ourselves as intellectuals as well as the objects of our inquiry we can excavate a ‘space of betweenness’ wherein the multiple determinations of a decentered world are connected. Appropriating this knowledge we may develop enabling analyses of power and difference to find collective paths toward change.

scholarly journals CONTAMPORARY GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT’S FACTORS

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Irina Afanasyeva
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Global Development ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global World

At the turn of the third Millennium, significant changes have affected the global world. The contemporary world economy, the world order, international organizational and economic relations are all involved in the intensive process of global development. There is no country in the world that is able to form and implement foreign economic policy without taking into account the behavior of other participants within the world economic system. Scientific and practical analysis of the subject area of the existing research has predetermined the key objective of this article – to determine the factors of contemporary global development.

scholarly journals Towards an Islamic Enlightenment

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-100
Author(s):  
Caroline Tee
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Holistic Analysis ◽  
Syracuse University ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Gulen Movement

M. Hakan Yavuz was one of the early contributors to the literature on theGülen movement, co-editing a major volume on the subject with John Espositoin 2003 (Hakan Yavuz and John Esposito, Turkish Islam and the SecularState: The Gülen Movement [Syracuse University Press: 2003]). In the interveningdecade the movement has grown considerably in size and influenceboth within Turkey and beyond, and has emerged as a major source of interestand apparently perennial controversy. Towards an Islamic Enlightenment istherefore a timely if ambitious book, for it sets out to provide a comprehensiveaccount of the movement. The author opens with an analysis of FethullahGülen’s theological teachings and then explores the movement’s structure andorganization, as well as its emergence and development in the context of Turkishsocial, religious, and political history. No other scholar has attempted sucha holistic analysis, for others tend to focus on just one of its many areas of influence,namely, education (Bekim Agai, Zwischen Netzwerk und Diskurs -Das Bildungsnetzwerk um Fethullah Gülen (geb. 1938): Die flexible Umsetzungmodernen islamischen Gedankengutes [EB-Verlag, 2004]), politics(Berna Turam, Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement[Stanford University Press: 2007]), and economic enterprise (Joshua D. Hendrick,Gülen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World[New York Press: 2013]).Yavuz lays out his thesis of “Islamic Enlightenment” in the introductionby drawing a paradigmatic distinction between the Muslim intellectual tradition’sliteralist/fundamentalists and modernist/reformists. He acknowledgesthe impact of Enlightenment ideas on the major thinkers in the latter category,but notes that those ideas have historically remained the preserve of the Muslimelite and never “penetrated the masses” (p. 6). According to Yavuz, the ...

Political Opposition in the Contemporary World

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Blondel
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Classical Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Framework ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Western Democracies

ALTHOUGH THE CLASSICAL WORK ON POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN Western Democracies, edited by Robert Dahl, was published decades ago, in 1966, the analysis of the characteristics of opposition, in democracies or elsewhere, has advanced rather less than other aspects of comparative politics. The word ‘opposition’ is used daily to account for a variety of developments; but its many meanings have not been systematically related to the differences among the political systems of the world. A number of comparative studies did appear after the 1966 seminal work, admittedly, including one by Dahl himself in 1973, as well as those by Ionescu and Madariaga in 1968, by Schapiro in 1972, by Tokes in 1979, by Kolinsky in 1988 and by Rodan in 1996; these volumes explore aspects of the concept which could not have been even referred to in the original study, since that study was confined to Western democracies and to the part played by political parties in the context of opposition. Yet the problem has still not been tackled truly comprehensively, as, with the exception of the 1973 Dahl volume, the works on the subject are comparative only in the sense that they deal with more than one country; but their scope remains limited to a region or to a particular type of political system. Meanwhile, many country analyses examine the nature of political opposition in each particular case, but the information which they provide has to be brought within a common framework before we can hope to obtain a general picture of the characteristics of opposition across the world.

Australia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Penrose
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
Multinational Firm ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
National University ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Subject

In 1955 Edith and Penrose undertook sabbaticals at the Australian National University in Canberra. Edith and her three sons travelled across the USA by train and sailed from California. She and Fritz Machlup corresponded extensively whilst she was away discussing the draft of her book, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, particularly the final chapters. In Australia she encountered and began to study the multinational firm or enterprise, writing her first articles on the subject. The family returned to the USA via the Suez Canal and sailed from Southampton to New York so that Edith and her sons had completed a round the world voyage.

Reflections on the Contemporary World Mission

1976 ◽  
Vol os-26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Eugene L. Stockwell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
National Council ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Personal Recollection ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The World ◽  
National Council Of Churches ◽  
World Mission

We come together today as a new Unit Committee of the Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM) at the beginning of the 1976–1978 triennium of the National Council of Churches. During this meeting, and in the months ahead, we will face important decisions which, given the magnitude of both the problems we confront and the resources we can tap, will be pressing and fateful. It would be foolish to exaggerate our role — there is very real sense in which our ecumenical vehicle is fragile and weak, far less influential on the world, national, ecclesiastical, scenes than we are prone to admit — but it would be folly as well to underrate the realistic and timely role we can assume in the exercise of the Christian stewardship expected of us in our day. Allow me to commence with a very personal recollection — perhaps unduly personal. Exactly fifty years ago this year – in 1926 — my father and mother sailed out of New York harbor bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was three years old at the time and they took me along. They were setting out on an overseas ministry in the year of our nation's sesquicentennial though I doubt that they gave that fact much importance. I now look back on this ministry from the year of our nation's bicentennial and wonder at the immense changes in the context of mission and ministry between 1926 and 1976. My father was quite clear about one purpose in 1926, a clarity he never lost however unclear he might have felt in other areas of his work — he was determined to do what he could to train young men and women for the fulltime

The Right to Leave and the Right to Return: A Declaration Adopted by the Uppsala Colloquium, Sweden, June 21, 1972

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-66
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Law Faculty ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Policies And Practices

A Declaration Adopted by the Uppsala Collogium, Sweden, June 21, 1972. In June 1972, in Uppsala, Sweden, legal and human rights experts from 25 countries joined in a colloquium to examine the meaning and implications of Article 13 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Brought together under the auspices of the Law Faculty of Uppsala University, the Renέ Cassin International Institute for Human Rights, in France, and the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, in New York, the participants reviewed current policies and practices around the world related to the right to leave and to return. Taking as their springboard a group of draft principles approved in 1963 by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, they adopted a Declaration on the subject.

scholarly journals Paris, « un lieu centre de tous les centres ». Est-ce toujours d’actualité ?

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 435-442
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Le Baillif
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Media ◽  
French Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greenwich Meridian ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
World Centre ◽  
The City

Paris, “The Centre of All Centres”. Is It Still the Case? In La République Mondiale des Lettres published in 1999 and 2008, Ms. Casanova wrote: “Paris is the Greenwich meridian for literature” for the 19th and 20th centuries. Writers and artists have come to the city in the past because it was extremely attractive for creative and economic reasons. But at the beginning of the 21st century, with the rise of the New Media for writing, publishing and diffusing, is it correct to say that Paris is still supreme? Is location more important than the time devoted to writing and reading? The claims on which Ms. Casanova builds her assertions are not supported by the facts of recent history and geography. She refers to “La belle santé économique et la liberté” in Paris but she forgot to mention why artists came from central Europe. It was just because the life was cheaper in Paris than in Berlin, as Walter Benjamin observed in 1926. She notes that Paris was the world centre for high fashion and that writers came together there to be inspired by the place and each other. But these things are no longer true: Paris is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world. Fashion in clothes is determined in many centres, with fashion weeks held in New York, Milan and China; aesthetics no longer depend on a single country. Literary creativity has spread across many continents and the internet and social media provide access to millions of people around the globe. Globalisation has unified the world, note Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Sylvain Tesson, and brought the standardization of cultures. There is also the matter of the dominant language today. The French language has not changed since Ms. Casanova was doing her research, but French writers now dream of being translated into English to reach the largest audience around the world. Publishers also favour English to make the most profit because literature and art are now worldwide commodities. Writers and researchers use the Internet, which connects them with documents, libraries and people all over the world. Newspapers such as Le Monde and Le Figaro in France provide literary reviews from around the world; for example, Histoire de la Traduction Littéraire en Europe Médiane, compiled by Antoine Chalvin, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, Jean-Léon Muller and Katre Talviste, was written up in Cahiers Littéraires du Monde. What about the readership? If publishing and merchandizing are accelerating and globalizing because of how the Internet changes time and distance, the writer still has to follow the rhythm of the subject.

On Writing about the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe and His Hasidim

AJS Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel C. Heilman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Beth Israel Hospital ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The World

When Menachem Friedman and I resolved to write what became The Rebbe: The Life and the Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, we did so because as sociologists we were puzzled, as we put it in our preface, by how a “a small Hasidic group that seemed on the verge of collapse in 1950 with the death of their sixth leader” had replanted itself in America and in less than a generation “gained fame and influence throughout the world in ways no one could have imagined” at the time their next and thus far last rebbe, Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, took over the reins of leadership in 1951. More than that, we were quite amazed that this group, which at its height during the twentieth century was never among the largest hasidic sects and probably numbered at most about 100,000 worldwide, had managed to become among the most well-known hasidim in the world. We were no less struck that they had found ways to make their Jewish outreach efforts, as well as their extraordinarily parochial belief that the contemporary world had entered messianic times (and that only Lubavitchers and their rebbe knew how to hasten his coming), both newsworthy and known far beyond the borders of the hasidic world. Through a series of directed campaigns that aimed to transform Jewry and the world, many, if not most Lubavitchers had also tried to convince the world that their leader, who had reigned over them from Brooklyn for forty-three years, was the Messiah incarnate, even as he lay dying at Beth Israel Hospital in New York.

Comparative Lunacy Law

1900 ◽  
Vol 46 (192) ◽  
pp. 42-48
Author(s):  
A. Wood Renton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Forensic Psychiatry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Jurisprudence ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
The World ◽  
International Importance ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Different Parts

Considering the closeness of the ties which the existence of such bodies as the Medico-Psychological Association have created between alienists throughout the world, it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to the comparative side of the medical jurisprudence of insanity. In the spring of 1898 there was published in New York a treatise by Dr. Clevenger and Mr. Bowlby, an American barrister (Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity, or Forensic Psychiatry, 1898, Lawyers' Co-operating Publishing Company, 2 vols., pp. 1356), in which excellent work in this direction, so far as England and the United States are concerned, was done. The book is a monument of labour. Every conceivable branch of forensic medicine is discussed with learning and ability, and an admirable index, both of cases and of subjects, renders fairly accessible to the reader the otherwise bewildering mass of legal information which the editors have so industriously accumulated. It is not, however, specially of efforts of this kind that it is desired to speak in this paper. The problems of lunacy law and lunacy administration with which civilised countries have to deal are, to a great extent, similar. It would obviously be of immense international importance if the solutions attempted of these problems in different parts of the world and the results of such experiments were systematically chronicled from time to time, so as to give the lunacy authorities, lawyers, and experts of the chief countries of the globe the benefit of each other's experience. It may be of interest to select some instances of the manner in which different countries have dealt with questions that are constantly arising. Take first interdiction and curatory. The voluntary and judicial interdiction of Scots law is sufficiently familiar to alienists (for full information on the subject see Stair, i, 6, 37; iii, 8, 37; Bankt., i, 7, 118; Ersk., i, 7, 53; Bell, Com., 139, Prin., S. 2123; Fraser, P. and C., 554).

scholarly journals Entre philosophie et linguistique: Autour de “Philosophie et langage” de Paul Ricœur

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-85
Author(s):  
Rafael Barros de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Human Community ◽  
Concrete Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Poetic Function ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ontological Dimension

What is the task – rather than the contribution – of philosophy with regards to language? In this article, we revisit Paul Ricœur’s answer to this question in his text “Philosophie et langage.” Ricœur sets forth as the task of philosophy the recovery of a triple linguistic mediation: from language to the world, from language to the subject, and from language to the human community. Starting from the concrete experience of speaking subjects, Ricœur opposes the systemic closure presupposed by the structuralistic view on language, which suspends the function of reference in the relation of meaning between two ideas. Provided with an enlarged conception of reference, one that includes the poetic function of language, the philosopher extricates from the notion of “the world of the text” the constitutive ontological dimension of language, since in its poetic function the latter reveals the multiple possibilities of our mode of existence. We point towards the connection between the reopening of that triple linguistic mediation and the call to an elaboration of a new ontology, one that Ricœur accomplishes through the notion of attestation.

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