Framing an Ecology of Hope

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-34
Author(s):  
Graeme Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
American Society ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Better Than

Abstract Responding to the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges that confront contemporary society, this article—the 2019 Presidential Address to the American Society for Environmental History—argues that critique and resistance, married with a quest for alternative possibilities, will serve us better than a doleful narrative of decline. It seeks hope by reengaging with the ideas of scholars who earlier lamented despoliation and envisaged other, better, ways of being in the world. By discovering, interrogating, and drawing insight from the ways in which our precursors sought to emancipate their contemporaries, we can ask what they (or their ideas) can do for us. Although this strategy is unlikely to deliver immediate efficacious solutions to current dilemmas, it can help us to historicize ourselves and the precepts that shape our lives. It can also expand the range of existential possibilities by calling into question the conceited convictions, tired mantras, and blithe assumptions of contemporary economic and political discourse. By reflecting on the lives and contributions of two Canadians—Pierre Dansereau, an ecologist, and C. B. Macpherson, a political theorist—whose ideas cast light on the roots of our present predicament, this article helps to frame hopeful strategies with which to address our circumstances.

scholarly journals cultivating oppositional debt ethics and consciousness: philosophy for/with children as counter-conduct in the neoliberal debt economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (36) ◽  
pp. 01-32
Author(s):  
Jason Thomas Wozniak
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Ways Of Being

In this article, I examine what the ethical and political implications of conceptualizing and practicing philosophy for/with children (P4wC) in the neoliberal debt economy are. Though P4wC cannot alone bring about any significant transformation of debt political-economic realities, it can play an important role in cultivating oppositional debt ethics and consciousness. The first half of this article situates P4wC within the current global debt economy. Here, I summarize the analyses made by critical theorists of the ways that debt impacts public institutions (including schools), and shapes individual subjectivity. The second half of this article builds on Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of “counter-conduct.” For Foucault, counter-conduct is an ethical/political act of resistance against governmentality, one that makes possible alternative social relations and ways of being in the world. I argue in this section that P4wC should be conceptualized, and practiced, as form of counter-conduct that challenges power in the debt economy. Both the form of P4wC pedagogy, and the content that can be taken up in a collective manner in communities of inquiry, make P4wC a potential site for debt counter-conduct practices. Thought of as counter-conduct, P4wC is an educational practice with liberatory promise. I conclude this piece with brief ruminations on practicing P4wC in the time of COVID, and during the uprisings around the world against racial capitalism. It is suggested here that P4wC not only be practiced within formal education settings, but also in the social movements that are fighting to bring into being a world more just for all of us. En este artículo, examino cuáles son las implicaciones éticas y políticas de conceptualizar y practicar la filosofía para / con niños (P4wC) en la economía de la deuda neoliberal. Aunque P4wC no puede provocar por sí solo ninguna transformación significativa de las realidades político-económicas de la deuda, puede desempeñar un papel importante en el cultivo de una ética y una conciencia de la deuda opuestas. La primera mitad de este artículo sitúa a P4wC dentro de la economía de deuda global actual. Aquí, resumo los análisis realizados por teóricos críticos sobre las formas en que la deuda afecta a las instituciones públicas (incluidas las escuelas) y configura la subjetividad individual. La segunda mitad de este artículo se basa en la conceptualización de la "contra-conducta" de Michel Foucault. Para Foucault, la contra-conducta es un acto ético / político de resistencia contra la gobernamentalidad, que posibilita relaciones sociales y formas de estar en el mundo alternativas. Sostengo en esta sección que P4wC debe conceptualizarse y practicarse como una forma de contra-conducta que desafía el poder en la economía de la deuda. Tanto la forma pedagógica de P4wC, como su contenido adoptados de manera colectiva en las comunidades de investigación, hacen de P4wC un sitio potencial para las prácticas de contra-conducta de la deuda. Pensada como una contra-conducta, P4wC es una práctica educativa con promesa liberadora. Concluyo este artículo con breves reflexiones sobre la práctica de P4wC en la época de COVID y de los alzamientos en todo el mundo contra el capitalismo racial. Aquí se sugiere que P4wC no solo se practique dentro de los entornos de educación formal, sino también en los movimientos sociales que luchan por crear un mundo más justo para todos nosotros. Key Words: Debt (Deuda), Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) (Filosofía para / con niños), Counter-Conduct (contra-conducta)

scholarly journals IDEOLOGICAL INVOLUTION OF THE ISLAMISTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fawaizul Umam
Keyword(s):  
Early Warning System ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
National Context ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Single System ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Islamic Values

Islamism as one of transnational political Islam ideologies continues to spread throughout the world. Many researchers read the phenomenon of strengthening Islamism solely as part of the Islamic social movements. This article looks at it further as a threat to the social cohesiveness of contemporary society. It intends to describe the Islamism from (1) its genealogy to ideological ideas about the unification of dîn (religion) and dawlah (state) and (2) measuring how relevant that idea is realized in a global and national context and (3) proposing a counter-ideology as a solution. Genealogically, Islamism ideology shows the tendency of revivalism and even fundamentalism, which tries to set Islam as a single system in society life. For contemporary Indonesia concept, the ideology is not only realistic, but is also potentially destructive to the unity, the country-nation awareness, the democracy, and Islam’s mission as raḥmat li al-‘âlamîn. Its deployment can be forestalled by revitalizing an alternative strategic discourse containing Islamic values into every dimension of life in this country. Based on the documentary review, its research findings are expected to enrich the discourse as well as an early warning system for national solidity and religious solidarity, especially in Indonesia.

Of Markets and Missions: The Early History of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa M. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Early Growth ◽  
Early History ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Internal Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Back Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society

“It seems to me, now,” reflected Troy Perry, four years after founding a successful new Protestant denomination, “that it must have been a matter of timing, and I think that it was fate, too! God chose me for my mission at a time when He knew the world would respond, once the need was made clear.” While the question of divine ordination is a bit outside the scholar's jurisdiction, the question of timing is a crucial one for historical inquiry, and Perry's remarks show an insightful awareness that the success of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC) was due in large part to timing. As with any successful religious group, however, the seeds of the UFMCC germinated, sprouted, and grew as a result of a multitude of interconnected factors, including both external back-ground factors in American society at large and internal factors within the UFMCC itself. This article relates the history and early growth of the UFMCC to this constellation of factors in order to gain a clearer understanding of both the denomination itself and the social changes of which it was an integral part.

The World the Bedouin Lived in: Climate, Migration and Politics in the Early Modern Arab East

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Marginal Zones

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.

The White Working Class

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Gest
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Political Economic

In recent years, the world has been re-introduced to the constituency of “white working class” people. In a wave of revolutionary populism, far right parties have scored victories across the transatlantic political world: Britain voted to leave the European Union, the United States elected President Donald Trump to enact an “America First” agenda, and Radical Right movements are threatening European centrists in elections across the Continent. In each case, white working class people are driving a broad reaction to the inequities and social change brought by globalization, and its cosmopolitan champions. In the midst of this rebellion, a new group consciousness has emerged among the very people who not so long ago could take their political, economic, and cultural primacy for granted. Who are white working class people? What do they believe? Are white working class people an “interest group”? What has driven them to break so sharply with the world’s trajectory toward a more borderless, interconnected meritocracy? How can a group with such enduring power feel marginalized? This perplexing constituency must be understood if the world is to address and respond to the social and political backlash they are driving. The White Working Class: What Everyone Needs to Know® provides the context for understanding the politics of this large, perplexing group of people. The book begins by explaining what “white working class” means in terms of demographics, history, and geography, as well as the ways in which this group defines itself and has been defined by others. It will address whether white identity is on the rise, why white people perceive themselves as marginalized, and the roles of racism and xenophobia in white consciousness. It will also look at whether the white working class has distinct political attitudes, their voting behavior, and their prospects for the future. This accessible book provides a nuanced view into the forces driving one of the most complicated and consequential political constituencies today.

scholarly journals Educar al «animal enfermo». Nietzsche y el problema de la grandeza y la reconfiguración de la intersubjetividad en la experiencia histórica

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Riccardo Roni
Keyword(s):  
Historical Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
New Models ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Social Destiny ◽  
Ways Of Being

In this article I am focusing on the problem of greatness and on the social destiny of strong individuals in some moments of Nietzsche’s reflection, investigating the ethical-pedagogical implications of this assumption, without neglecting the importance of the historical experience. On this basis, I value Nietzsche’s attempt to reconfigure subjectivity and intersubjective relations through new models of coexistence (even in democratic contexts marked by decadence), by appealing to the human capacity for self-overcoming, in accordance with the demands of a “concrete reason” which makes explicit the multiple ways of being in the world.

Crosscurrents of Crisis in 1970s America

The 1970s ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
Oil Crisis ◽  
American Society ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Do So

This chapter examines American anxieties about the longstanding foundations of American society and thought. By the 1970s, American society would be buffeted by powerful crosscurrents which reshaped both the nation and the world beyond it. Military, political, economic, and environmental crises unfolded rapidly on top of each other, leaving many citizens uncertain of which to address first and how to do so. In the backwash of defeat in Vietnam and humiliation from the Watergate scandal, and in the midst of inflation and an oil crisis, distrust of government pervaded American society, the loss of confidence in public authority laid the foundation for deregulation and a turn toward the free market, a path that led to growing disparities between rich and poor. At the same time, the more tolerant and individualistic mainstream American culture increasingly rejected old forms of group discrimination and inequality.

Why Cooperate?

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas N. Sherratt ◽  
David M. Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Kin Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
The Common

An altruistic act is one in which an individual incurs a cost that results in a benefit to others. Giving money or time to those less fortunate than ourselves is one example, as is giving up one’s seat on a bus. At first, one might consider such behaviour hopelessly naive in a world in which natural selection seemingly rewards selfishness in the competitive struggle for existence. As the saying goes, ‘nice guys finish last’. Yet examples of apparent altruism are commonplace. Meerkats will spend hours in the baking sun keeping lookout for predators that might attack their colony mates. Vampire bats will regurgitate blood to feed their starving roost fellows, while baboons will take the time and effort to groom other baboons. Some individuals, such as honeybee workers, forego their own reproduction to help their queen and will even die in her defence. The common gut bacterium Escherichia coli commits suicide when it is infected by a bacteriophage, thereby protecting its clones from being infected. If helping incurs a cost, then surely an individual that accepts a cooperative act yet gives nothing in return would do better than cooperators? What, then, allows these cases of apparent altruism to persist? In his last presidential address to the Royal Society of London in November 2005, Robert M. May argued, ‘The most important unanswered question in evolutionary biology, and more generally in the social sciences, is how cooperative behaviour evolved and can be maintained’. In this chapter, we document a number of examples of cooperation in the natural world and ask how it is maintained despite the obvious evolutionary pressure to ‘cheat’. We will see that, while it is tempting to see societies as some form of higher organism, to fully understand cooperation, it helps to take a more reductionist view of the world, frequently a gene-centred perspective. Indeed, thinking about altruism has led to one of the greatest triumphs of the ‘selfish gene’ approach, namely the theory of kin selection. Ultimately, as the quote from Mandeville indicates, we will see that cooperation frequently arises simply out of pure self-interest—it just so happens that individuals (or, more precisely, genes) in the business of helping themselves sometimes help others.

Freemasonry in Turkey: a by-product of Western penetration

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL DUMONT
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Annual Income ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Political Economic

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, various European Masonic obediences set up lodges throughout the Ottoman empire, many in Istanbul, while another important centre was Smyrna. Freemasons were also active in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and Macedonia. Lodges were established in the main political, economic and cultural centres of the Empire. There was a strong parallelism between the Ottoman Masonic geography and that of European colonial expansion. It is easy to delineate the social and ethnic structure of lodges, but we know less about what was going on behind the walls of Masonic temples. For sure, Ottoman Freemasons, like their brethren in other parts of the world, when not busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies, dedicated themselves to philanthropic activities. A considerable part of the annual income of the lodges was used to finance various charitable works (assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress …) and to fund educational institutions. The lodges were also places for the discussion and exchange of ideas about current themes: socialism, feminism, venereal diseases, progress of science, etc. Some mingled with politics, displaying a highly nationalistic discourse. The politicization of Ottoman/Turkish freemasonry climaxed during the years of the Young Turk revolution (1908–1914), when an autochthonous obedience was created. One of the goals of the new organization, coldly received by most European freemasonries, was to rid the Ottoman Empire of foreign penetration. After the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, this national freemasonry continued to flourish, except for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 when Masonic activity was banned.

scholarly journals The Four Ways of Eco-global Criminology

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob White
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Green Criminology ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Study ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Global Criminology ◽  
International Social

In charting out the ‘four ways’ of eco-global criminology, this paper discusses the importance of recognising and acting in regards to the differences evident in (1) ways of being (ontology), (2) ways of knowing (epistemology), (3) ways of doing (methodology) and (4) ways of valuing (axiology). The paper assumes and asserts that global study of environmental crime is essential to the green criminology project, and particularly an eco-global criminology approach. Specific instances of criminal and harmful activity therefore need to be analysed in the context of broad international social, political, economic and ecological processes. The article outlines the key ideas of eco-global criminology, a perspective that argues that global study must always be inclusive of voices from the periphery and margins of the world’s metropolitan centres, and critical of the social relations that sustain the epistemological as well as material realities and legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Yet, in doing so, there arise many paradoxes and conundrums that likewise warrant close attention.

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