15. Regions

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-280
Author(s):  
James Bickerton ◽  
Alain-G. Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Different Types

This chapter explores the concept of region, defined as a territorial entity distinct from both locality and nation-state. The region constitutes an economic, political, administrative, and/or cultural space, within which different types of human agency interact, and towards which individuals and communities may develop attachments and identities. Regionalism is the manifestation of values, attitudes, opinions, preferences, claims, behaviours, interests, attachments, and identities that can be associated with a particular region. The chapter first reviews the main theories and approaches that are used to understand the political role and importance of regions, including the modernization paradigm, Marxism, and institutionalism. It then considers the various dimensions and aspects of regions and regionalism, with particular emphasis on regionalism from below versus regionalization ‘from above’. It also examines the political economy of regions, tracing the changing economic role and place of regions within the national and global economy.

15. Regions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Bickerton ◽  
Alain-G. Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Political Role

This chapter explores the concept of region, defined as a territorial entity distinct from both locality and nation-state. The region constitutes an economic, political, administrative, and/or cultural space, within which diffrent types of human agency interact, and towards which individuals and communities may develop attachments and identities. Regionalism is the manifestation of values, attitudes, opinions, preferences, claims, behaviours, interests, attachments, and identities that can be associated with a particular region. The chapter first reviews the main theories and approaches that are used to understand the political role and importance of regions, including the modernization paradigm, Marxism, and institutionalism. It then considers the various dimensions and aspects of regions and regionalism, with particular emphasis on regionalism from below vs regionalization ‘from above’. It also examines the political economy of regions, tracing the changing economic role and place of regions within the national and global economy.

A politics of the senses: the political role of theKing’s-Evil in Richard Wiseman’s Severall Chirurgicall Treatises

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-294
Author(s):  
Adam S Komorowski ◽  
Sang Ik Song
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Case Series ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Expediency ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Restoration England ◽  
Charles Ii

Written by Richard Wiseman, sergeant-surgeon to King Charles II of England, ‘A Treatise on the King’s-Evil’ within his magnum opus Severall Chirurgicall Treatises (1676), acts as a proto-case series which explores the treatment and cure of 91 patients with the King’s-Evil. Working within the confines of the English monarch’s ability to cure the disease with their miraculous (or thaumaturgic) touch, Wiseman simultaneously elevates and extends the potential to heal to biomedicine. Wiseman’s work on the King’s-Evil provides an interesting window through which the political expediency of the monarch’s thaumaturgic touch may be explored. The dependence of the thaumaturgic touch on liturgy, theatricality and its inherent political economy in Restoration England allowed Wiseman to appropriate the traditionally monarchical role of healer as his own, by drawing attention to a medical ritual of healing that was as reliant, just as the theatrical ritual of monarchical thaumaturgy was, on symbolic binaries of healer–healed, head–body and touch–sight.

Political Economy of the Green Innovations in the Construction Industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 527-546
Author(s):  
Begum Sertyesilisik
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Environmental Footprint ◽  
Industry Needs

Green innovations are important in enhancing sustainability performance of the industries and of their outputs. They can influence the carbon emissions, energy efficiency of the industries affecting global green trade, and energy policies. Construction industry is one of the main industries contributing to the global economy and sustainable development. It has, however, bigger environmental footprint than majority of the other industries. Green innovations can contribute to the reduction in the environmental footprint of the construction industry. For this reason, green innovation in the construction industry needs to be supported by the effective policies. This chapter aims to introduce and investigate the political economy of the green innovations in the construction industry. This chapter emphasizes that the effectiveness of the green innovations in the construction industry can be fostered by effective political economy and strategies.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COVID-19 AND ITS EFFECTS ON GLOBAL ECONOMY

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Vincent Eseoghene Efebeh
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
School Closures ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Health And Disease

The relationship between human health and disease is neither a new concept nr a new subject. The outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan city of China in December, 2019 has turned out to be a global health emergency which triggers disastrous socio-economic and political crises in the infected countries. Covid-19, apart from becoming the greatest threat to global public health of the century, it has severely demobilized the global economy. It is against this backdrop that this paper examined the political economy of Covid-19 and its effects on the global economy. The paper argues that the measures taken to contain the epidemic in some countries appear as putting the nation under a state of siege. Some governments are adopting rather extreme measures - com-plete lockdown of the cities, the provinces and even the country itself, school closures, travel ban and cancellation of flights. The lack of responsible world leadership when it is most needed in terms of providing basic subsistence to the vulnerable especially in Africa has also proven problematic in the spread of the contagious disease. The paper concludes that the abuse of powers for narrow political motives exacerbate the spread of Covid-19 which brought considerable human suffering and economic disruption worldwide. The paper therefore recommends among others that the US government and the world leadership should strive to ensure effective and well-resourced public health measures to prevent infection and contagion, and implement well-targeted policies to support healthcare systems and workers, support low-income economies and protect the income of the vulnerable including social welfare payments to citizens while the monetary authorities offered loan relief to help businesses in the affected countries.

From outside the Imperium: Gandhi's Cultural Critique of the ‘West’

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Nandy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Equitable Distribution ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Shifting Baseline ◽  
Modern Nation State

Gandhi considered the cultural gap between the modern and the non-modern cultures deeper than that between the West and the East. It is the modern culture he rejected, not only as a social ideal, but also as a framework within which one could struggle for an equitable distribution of the products of modernity. Thus, to him, the demonic aspects of the modern Western culture did not centre around only the political economy of modernity, but also around modern West's scientific secularism, technologism, overorganization, ideologies of adulthood and masculinity, giganticism, stress on normality and oversocialization, and cultural evolutionism. Such a critique allowed Gandhi to see the West as a differentiated structure and the Western man as a co-victim of the oppression of the modern nation-state system, centralized economy, mass media and technocracy, and an ethic which was openly ethnocidal. Traditional cultures also were not undifferentiated to him. He was a critical traditionalist, not an uncritical defender of faiths, and he believed in ‘negative’ relativism, not in the anthropologist's version of cultural relativism. No culture could be perfect in his model, not even a traditional one; it could only be useful as a shifting baseline for cultural criticism.

Enriching Discourse Theory: the Discursivematerial Knot1 As a Non-Hierarchical Ontology

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Carpentier
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Critical Fields ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Constructive Dialogue

Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory has played a significant role in thinking through the political role of knowledge and ideology, without ignoring the significance of the material, also in relation to its post-Marxist agenda and the de-essentialisation of class relations. At the same time, there is a need to enrich discourse theory, by finding a better balance between the discursive and the material, and by providing a better theoretisation of the entanglement of the discursive and the material. This article remains grounded in, and loyal to, discourse theory, but aims to learn from new materialism in order to develop a non-hierarchical theory of entanglement, as a discursive-material knot. In particular, it investigates the theoreticalconceptual potential of three concepts, namely the assemblage, the invitation and the investment. This theoretical development also has strategic importance, in that it facilitates a better and more constructive dialogue between different (critical) fields, for instance, between those that are explicitly engaged with discourse theory and new materialism, but also between the emancipatory project(s) that post-Marxism advocates, namely cultural studies and (critical) political economy.

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