The Other in Us: Representation of Black African Identity in Portuguese Social Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Mota Santos
2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Poks

Abstract Using the U.S.-Mexican border as the place of enunciation, Cantú’s autoethnobiographical novel insists on the materiality of the border, especially for those living on its southern side, while simultaneously deconstructing it as artificial - a line splitting families and assigning nationalities on an arbitrary basis. Being a collage of photographs from the time the writer was growing up in southern Texas and the cuentos inspired by these visuals, Cantú’s Canícula documents how border crossings and re-crossings become symptomatic of living in a liminal space and how they destabilize the concept of nationality as bi-national families must learn to live with ambiguity. On the one hand, there is the undeniable materiality of the border, with its pain, fear, deportations, and other discriminatory practices; on the other, there is a growing border community of resistance cultivating the memory that they are not immigrants, that they lived in Texas before the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty. The paper examines the community’s strategies of survival in the contested cultural and social space and advances the thesis that, giving her community an awareness of its homogeneity and reclaiming its place within the larger socio-political context, Cantú becomes an agent of empowerment and change. She helps decolonize knowledge and being.


PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
William Slaymaker

Global production of literature and criticism about the environment has increased dramatically in the past decade, but black African writers and critics have not participated fully in this new approach. Literary green globalism, broadcast from metropolitan centers East and West, has inspired suspicion among some black African anglophone writers, while gaining acceptance among others, who with their Euro-American counterparts have begun to examine the relations of humanity and nature in sub-Saharan environments.


Author(s):  
Hans Marius Hansteen

Even though “toleration” and “recognition” designate opposing attitudes (to tolerate something, implies a negative stance towards it, whereas recognition seems to imply a positive one), the concepts do not constitute mutually exclusive alternatives. However, “toleration” is often associated with liberal universalism, focusing on individual rights, whereas “recognition” often connotes communitarian perspectives, focusing on relations and identity. This paper argues that toleration may be founded on recognition, and that recognition may imply toleration. In outlining a differentiated understanding of the relationship between toleration and recognition, it seems apt to avoid an all-to-general dichotomy between universalism and particularism or, in other words, to reach beyond the debate between liberalism and communitarianism in political philosophy.The paper takes as its starting point the view that the discussion on toleration and diversity in intercultural communication is one of the contexts where it seems important to get beyond the liberal/communitarian dichotomy. Some basic features of Rainer Forst’s theory of toleration and Axel Honneth’s theory of the struggle for recognition are presented, in order to develop a more substantial understanding of the relationship between the concepts of toleration and recognition. One lesson from Forst is that toleration is a normatively dependent concept, i.e., that it is impossible to deduce principles for toleration and its limits from a theory of toleration as such. A central lesson from Honneth is that recognition – understood as a basic human need – is always conflictual and therefore dynamic.Accordingly, a main point in the paper is that the theory of struggles for and about recognition (where struggles for designates struggles within an established order of recognition, and struggles about designates struggles that challenge established orders of recognition) may clarify what is at stake in conflicts concerning toleration and its limits. At the same time, Honneth’s theory of the need for recognition seems to be a source for the kind of argumentative justifications that a just toleration are dependent on, according to Forst.Another important point in the paper is that toleration (pace Forst) is a practice or attitude that implies taking a stance, but in a differentiated way, and that this presuppose a reflective distance towards one’s own positions. To be tolerant means saying “yes” to something (the beliefs and practices that one endorses), saying “no” to something (the intolerable), but also being able to say “no, but…” to something (that which is tolerated). Intolerance means saying “no” without justifiable reasons, whereas misguided tolerance means accepting something without justifiable reasons – both attitudes may be taken to indicate that one lacks proper understanding of the reasons for holding the viewpoints that one actively endorses.In discussing of Honneth’s theory of recognition, I argue that an ability to take a stance in a differentiated way is seminal, if struggles for and about recognition are to unfold productively. In all spheres of mutual recognition (primary, secondary and tertial groups), the potential for conflicts seems to rely on an unavoidable tension between identification with the other and identification of the other as another. This is the reason why recognition – in Honneth’s sense – seems to imply toleration, or at least is reliant on the same kind of self-reflective distance and ability to differentiate that is constitutive of toleration according to Forst.Finally, I argue that the concept of “communal values” that Honneth refers to in the context of “solidarity” cannot be taken to designate a set of substantial values that are constitutive of community, but rather that important forms of recognition take place in a social space and shape cultural codes that are both the results of and the subjects of conflict. Thus while “culture” is conflictual and complex, “value pluralism” – including diversity of beliefs and practices – may be productive. In this context, toleration is not about avoiding or resolving conflict, but about establishing the conditions for productive conflicts, enabling an ongoing creation and reappraisal of values.


2012 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Atkinson

Pierre Bourdieu's famous theory of educational reproduction is often depicted by critics in simplistic terms: individuals either have plenty of cultural capital, and thus symbolic mastery and school success, or they do not and develop practical mastery and vocational interests instead. Social mobility, deviant trajectories and resistance, on the other hand, are seemingly impossible. The nature of Bourdieu's writing fuelled this perception, but implicit in his early work, and elaborated in his later writings, is the idea that class and capital possession are fully relational, gradational and refracted by family dynamics, thereby suggesting the existence of all manner of possible shades of difference between the two poles of reproduction. This paper, whilst acknowledging that reproduction is still the major feature of the education system in the UK, thus revisits Bourdieu's thesis and sketches some of the manifestations of this intermediate zone of educational performance, namely social space travel, the Icarus effect, recovered trajectories and pathways born of dispersed family fields. In so doing it draws on a qualitative research project examining the life histories of adults from a variety of class positions in Bristol.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kharchenko

The paper presents an analysis of the capacity of target groups of the population which are considered as a social base for the implementation of strategies of socioeconomic development. The aim of the study is to define the ways of identifying and tools of activating of the capacity of various groups of the population in relation to strategy planning and implementation. The capacity of target groups is considered in a context of the concept of capacity as a managerial category with its both objective and subjective senses. The capacity of target groups is identified among the various sorts of capacity of a territory. The concepts of target groups capacity and social capacity, social and labor capacity, social and target groups are correlated. The capacity of target groups is shown on the example of two certain localities: Mostovski raion (Krasnodar krai) and the city district of Megion (Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous okrug – Ugra). As a result of reflection analysis of the process and outcomes of strategic planning there were revealed more than ten target groups typical for both localities. Specific target groups were also identified. The role of each of group under the condition of both inertial and purposeful development of the locality was highlighted. The identification of target groups had let to classify them by the criteria of typicality, localization in relation to the borders of the locality, cohesion, presence in the real world / result of intent construction. It was proposed to form a ‘thesaurus’ of target groups to apply while analyzing the social potential of the other localities.


Author(s):  
Reiko Shindo

This chapter examines how the various ways of dealing with the mismatch between visibility and audibility help one to imagine a social space centred on the failure of communication, or untranslatability. To do so, it considers the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Bonnie Honig, and Slavoj Žižek. Nancy theorises community in relation to failed communication, whereas Honig and Žižek focus on uncertainty as a key affective device to discuss the link between community and unintelligibility. Built on their works, the chapter develops an understanding of belonging centred on a gothic mode of relationality where people relate to one another based on ‘not knowing’ others let alone themselves. Unlike a traditional form of belonging to a community where people search commonality through intelligible communication between the self and the other, the gothic mode of belonging is realised in people's own inability to translate their voice, in the failure to achieve intelligibility.


Focaal ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (57) ◽  
pp. 62-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders H. Stefansson

This article critically addresses the idea that ethnic remixing alone fosters reconciliation and tolerance after sectarian conflict, a vision that has been forcefully cultivated by international interventionists in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Banja Luka, it presents a multi-faceted analysis of the effects of ethnic minority return on the (re)building of social relations across communal boundaries. Although returnees were primarily elderly Bosniacs who settled in parts of the town traditionally populated by their own ethnic group, some level of inter-ethnic co-existence and co-operation had developed between the returnees and displaced Serbs who had moved into these neighborhoods. In the absence of national reconciliation, peaceful co-existence in local everyday life was brought about by silencing sensitive political and moral questions related to the war, indicating a preparedness among parts of the population to once again share a social space with the Other.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
M S Taliep

Objective. To investigate the difference in performance and bowling opportunity of black African (BA), coloured/Indian (C/I) and white(W) cricket bowlers at a junior provincial level in South Africa between 2006 and 2012.Methods. Data of all players performing in the South African interprovincial under-13 (U13), under-15 (U15) and under-19 (U19)tournaments were analysed. Bowling performance (bowling average and the top 20 wicket takers relative to their par representation) andbowling opportunity (number of overs bowled) were compared between racial groups.Results. There were no significant differences in the bowling averages between BA bowlers and the other racial groups between 2008 and 2012.BA bowling averages were only significantly worse than W bowlers in the U13s in 2006 and U19s in 2007. BA bowling averages were also onlysignificantly worse than C/I in the U13s and U15s in 2007. BA bowlers were below par representation in the top 20 wicket takers in each yearfor the U15s and U19s and below par representation for the U13s in 2007 - 2009 and 2011. The performance of C/I and W bowlers was relativelysimilar across the age groups. BA players bowled significantly fewer overs than W bowlers in the U13s in 2006, in the U15s in 2007 and 2009and in the U19s in 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2011. C/I bowlers bowled significantly fewer overs than W bowlers in the U13s in 2008 and 2009.Conclusion. The bowling averages of the different racial groups are similar. However, there were relatively few BA bowlers in the top 20wicket takers each year. This could be because of a lack of highly skilled BA bowlers or the lack of opportunity provided to BA bowlers tobowl in these tournaments.


Author(s):  
Christian Fuchs

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis ruptured societies and their everyday life around the globe. This article is a contribution to critically theorising the changes societies have undergone in the light of the coronavirus crisis. It asks: How have everyday life and everyday communication changed in the coronavirus crisis? How does capitalism shape everyday life and everyday communication during this crisis? Section 2 focuses on how social space, everyday life, and everyday communication have changed in the coronavirus crisis. Section 3 focuses on the communication of ideology in the context of coronavirus by analysing the communication of coronavirus conspiracy stories and false coronavirus news.  The coronavirus crisis is an existential crisis of humanity and society. It radically confronts humans with death and the fear of death. This collective experience can on the one hand result in new forms of solidarity and socialism or can on the other hand, if ideology and the far-right prevails, advance war and fascism. Political action and political economy are decisive factors in such a profound crisis that shatters society and everyday life.  


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