Thinking with Diplomacy: Within and Beyond Practice Theory

Author(s):  
Costas M Constantinou ◽  
Jason Dittmer ◽  
Merje Kuus ◽  
Fiona McConnell ◽  
Sam Okoth Opondo ◽  
...  

Abstract Following the considerable interest in practice theory, this Collective Discussion interrogates what it means to practice and, ultimately, to think with diplomacy. In asking how empirical, methodological, and axiological disagreements over what constitutes diplomatic practice can be productively employed to develop or revise practice theory, the Discussion engages the historically and culturally contingent practices of diplomacy. In doing so, it goes beyond the conventional interactions that assume a fixed and singular identity for diplomacy. The Discussion aims, on the one hand, to pluralize the notion of diplomatic practice, and, on the other, to reflexively retrieve “theory” from the everyday and alternative practices of diplomacy that are often missed by the radar of practice theory. It thus seeks to reassess practice theory using insights from the very terrain of action it employs to develop its distinctive viewpoint. The Discussion contributes, moreover, to the rapidly changing field of Diplomatic Studies that has recently opened up to cross- and trans-disciplinary conversations with political geography, social anthropology, digital studies, visual studies, and new materialism.

Author(s):  
Darin Stephanov

‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’ This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies. The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The most important conclusions of this summarizing chapter are the following: The religious landscape of Eastern Europe is more diverse than that of Western Europe. The cases of Poland and the GDR confirm the hypothesis that there is a link between the diffusion of functions and the growth in the importance of religion. The strong processes of biographical individualization that occurred in the post-communist states did not necessarily intensify individual religiosity. The economic market model cannot be confirmed for Eastern Europe. There is in Eastern and Central Europe a demonstrable link between economic prosperity and the loosening of religious and church ties. What can act as a bulwark against the eroding effects of modernization is church activity on the one hand, and the everyday proximity, visibility, and concreteness of religious practices and rituals, symbols, images, and objects on the other.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Adrijana Marčetič

Just after the end of the Great War Miloš Crnjanski wrote a poem dedicated to Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914. The title of the poem is “A Tribute to Princip” (“Spomen Principu”), and it was first published in Crnjanski’s early book of poetry Lyrics of Ithaca (Lirika Itake, 1919). Forty years later Crnjanski wrote a commentary on the poem, a sort of its prose paraphrase, and entitled it “On the Poem about Princip” (“Uz pesmu o Principu”); it was published in his Commentaries on Lyrics of Ithaca (Komentari uz Liriku Itake, 1959). Although by no means as significant as his famous poem “Sumatra”, and equally famous “Explanation of Sumatra”, that is considered a kind of Crnjanski’s personal poetic manifesto, as well as a poetic manifesto of Serbian modernism in general, “A Tribute to Princip” and its explanation represent an equally important testimony to Crnjanski’s poetic sensibility and his literary inspiration. The subject of the poem, the manner of poetic expression, on the one side, and the prose style of its commentary, on the other, clearly indicate what was considered by young Crnjanski the main role of the new, modern poetry he was advocating for: the break with the tradition, the rejection of the old and no longer productive poetic and national myths, and the affirmation of the new role of poetry in the everyday life. Therefore, opposing the standard interpretation of the poem, in this paper I argue that “A Tribute to Princip” is not a political poem but a “poem about poem”, which we could read as metapoetry or a poetry poem, providing that we apply the term with a little more freedom.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Hawkes

By the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s an estimated 22,438 people were unaccounted for. Their whereabouts were unknown or their remains were missing. The clarification of the fate of the missing is a fundamental component of transitional justice processes. Taking as its focus two photographic projects—one with forensic identification purposes and the other with a memorialisation focus—this article explores the juridical and memorialisation contexts in which these photographs circulate, asking how photographs might be, on the one hand, practical tools for the identification of remains, but also, at the same time, act as visual vehicles for raising awareness and action around the broader justice questions concerning the clarification of the fate of the missing.


2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 861-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunyoung Park

Perhaps the most renowned leftist writer of late colonial Korea, Kim Namch'ŏn left a complex body of work that has so far defied an encompassing interpretation. On the one hand, in his theoretical writings, Kim consistently advocated realism as his aesthetic principle. On the other hand, within his fictional writings, Kim also displayed an antithetical interest in the fragmentary scenes of modern life, which he often depicted through experimental techniques of a modernist aesthetic sensibility. In this essay, an attempt is made to provide a unified account of Kim's works. Special attention is given to Kim's early theorization of the everyday as a proper literary space for a materialist critique of society. This focus on everyday life, it is argued, enabled Kim to critique both the teleological outlook of dogmatic socialism and the utopian vision of pan-Asianism, but it did not shelter him from a fascination with the daily spectacles of urban modernity.


Author(s):  
Igor G. Petrov

On the basis of literary, archival, folklore sources and expedition materials, the article examines such a little-studied genre of Chuvash folklore as prohibitions (taboos). Special attention is paid to the systematization and analysis of behavioral prohibitions that have long existed and continue to exist in the funeral rites of the Chuvash. By behavioral prohibitions, the author means a set of well-established and generally accepted prescriptions and rules that regulated the everyday and ritual behavior of an individual and a collective within the framework of a funeral and memorial rite – family members, relatives, as well as other members of a rural community. Their observance was due to the fear of the society members before the deceased and death, the desire to appease the deceased and secure his protection, as well as the desire to protect themselves from the deceased and ensure his safe transition to the other world. By adhering to the prohibitions, people ensured their own safety and well-being, and in general secured the protection of the deceased as a representative of the ancestral world. Despite the superstitious nature of most of the prohibitions, they still exist nowadays. On the one hand, this indicates the antiquity of their origin, on the other – their stability in time and space.


AFRYKA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (50) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Lucjan Buchalik

The Batwa – A Hundred Years of Transformation. Between Globalisation, State and Tourism The article is a deep refl ection on changes taking place in minority cultures, not only in contact with their larger neighbours, but also, and above all, under the infl uence of globalisation processes and the rapid development of tourism. The research is structured in order to present the Batwa people living in the African Great Lakes region from a broader time perspective. The juxtaposition of two research periods, one from the early 20th century (Jan Czekanowski) and the other from the 21st century (Lucjan Buchalik), made it possible to track the changes in the everyday life of this community. On the one hand, the Batwa are marginalised, and on the other hand, they are being absorbed by the surrounding, more dominant peoples. Studying the transformation process, one can notice that the Batwa accepted many changes resulting from their contacts with the outside world. It was the process of forcible displacement from their historical territories that threatened the existence of this community.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
JAGJEET LALLY

Abstract Across monsoon Asia, salt is of such vital necessity that controlling its production or supply has historically been connected to the establishment and expression of political authority. On the one hand, rulers maintained the allegiance of their subjects by ensuring their access to salt of suitable price and sufficient quantity. On the other hand, denying rebels their salt was a strategy of conquest and pacification, while the necessity of salt meant it could reliably be taxed to raise state finances. This article first sets out this connection of salt and sovereignty, then examining it in the context of colonial Burma, a province of British India from its annexation until its ‘divorce’ in 1935 (effected in 1937), and thus subject to the Government of India's salt monopoly. Focusing on salt brings into view two aspects of the state (while also permitting analysis of ‘Upper Burma’, which remains rather marginal in the scholarly literature). First, the everyday state and quotidian practices constitutive of its sovereignty, which was negotiated and contested where indigenes were able to exploit the chinks in the state's administrative capacity and its knowledge deficits. Second, in turn, the lumpy topography of state power. The state not only failed to restrict salt production to the extent it desired (with the intention that indigenes would rely on imported salt, whose supply was easier to control and thus tax), but conceded to a highly complex fiscal administration, the variegations in which reflected the uneven distribution in state power – thicker in the delta and thinnest in the uplands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Katarina Leppänen

The fact that dystopian literature has a great potential for envisioning alternative futures is elaborated in this article in relation to the Finnish/British author Emmi Itäranta’s Memory of Water (2013). Itäranta’s gloomy low-fi novel is read alongside contemporary ecocritical theory with a focus on issues of vernacular cultures and knowledges versus ideas of cosmopolitan planetary citizenship. Reflections are made about the profound nature of the concept of borders: cultural, temporal, informational, geographical, political, in the event of massive catastrophes. The article investigates how Rob Nixon’s concept of ‘slow violence’ and Ursula Heise’s ‘eco-cosmopolitanism’ are played out in a novel, and how the novel in turn poses important questions for ecocritical theory. Thus, the interplay between ecocritical literary theory, on the one hand, and literature, on the other, is highlighted. What can dystopia make visible in contemporary theory?


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 02002
Author(s):  
Lidiia Gazniuk ◽  
Irina Soina ◽  
Gennadiy Goncharov ◽  
Pavel Chervony

It has been determined that understanding everyday life as a socially determined sphere of religious life makes it possible to explore the religious practices of the Orthodox believer, on the one hand, as a component of social relationships and a way of incorporating into religious relations, on the other, as a means of objectifying religious experience. Within the framework of various scientific areas, communication is explored as a way to transfer information in interpersonal, group and social interaction. Communication is considered as a way of being of everyday life, a universal form of sociality, reproduced in intersubjective interaction. The everyday relations of Orthodox believers are characterized by common linguistic meanings and processes of interpretation. The identification of religious individuals and communities takes place through communication. Daily life is the basis of the communication of believers, the religious language is the main factor in the nature of everyday life level. The influence on the development of religious relations of the newest means of communication, including Internet forums, providing the opportunity for communion of the laity, clergy, monastics, believers of other faiths and religions is shown.


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