The concept of recognition and the problem of freedom

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Do So

This chapter, “The concept of recognition and the problem of freedom,” reconstructs the concept of recognition by tracing its dialectical development in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The chapter offers a reading of the dialectic in which the central animating problem is the nature of freedom: how can a subject affirm its independence in the midst of other subjects; can it do so alone without taking account of anyone outside of it, or is dependence on the recognition of others a condition of its freedom? In addressing this question, the chapter contrasts Kant’s and Hegel’s views on autonomy and freedom. It explores various interpretations of Hegel’s idealism in the course of seeking an account of the concept of recognition that can be acceptable for us today. It argues that recognition is a concept that we ought to employ in thinking about freedom and social relations.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

scholarly journals Sociocultural Mechanisms of Conflict: Combining Topic and Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models in an Analysis of Afghanistan, 1979-2001

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Karell ◽  
Michael Raphael Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Do So

How do sociocultural dynamics shape conflict? We develop a relational understanding of how social relations, culture, and conflict are interwoven. Using this framework, we examine how combatants' associations with cultural elements affect the interpersonal relationships underlying conflict dynamics, as well as how these relationships engender associations to cultural elements. To do so, we first introduce a novel analytical approach that synthesizes computational textual analysis and stochastic actor-oriented models of longitudinal networks. We then use our approach to analyze a two-level socio-semantic graph representing both the cultural domain and social relationships of prominent militants operating in one Afghan province, Balkh, between 1979 and 2001. Our results indicate that militants' interpersonal comradeships rely, in part, on their connections to cultural elements and relative power. Comradeship, in turn, fosters militants' connections to cultural elements. We conclude by discussing how conflict studies can continue to build on insights from cultural sociology, as well as how cultural sociology and socio-semantic network research can benefit from further engaging conflict studies and developing our analytical approach. We also highlight provisional insights into endogenous mechanisms of conflict resolution and cultural change.

Webs of Community

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-161
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Kin Relations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Indian Control ◽  
Do So

A network of Indian trading villages dominated the tributary rivers of the Ohio and fostered Indian control over the exchange process. The face-to-face exchange process that characterized these villages ushered in a golden age of Indigenous prosperity as Indian women sought new types of cloth, incorporated silks and calicoes into their wardrobes, and demanded silver ornaments to highlight and decorate their clothing. Kin-based networks controlled trade as well as social relations in the region. Traders who sought a share of this prosperity resided in these Indian trading villages and carefully observed Indigenous trade protocols. Those who failed to do so found themselves unwelcome in Indian villages. Change was ongoing: newcomers were incorporated, populations multiplied, and village life was defined by evolving kin relations. These changes occurred within the framework of an Indian world, one that was increasingly shaped by Miami hegemony over the Wabash region. Intermarriage blurred social borders and simultaneously created pathways to authority and power.

scholarly journals Make development great again? Accumulation regimes, spaces of sovereign exception and the elite development paradigm of China's Belt and Road Initiative

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Uneven And Combined Development ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Development Paradigm ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article studies what I describe as “state-coordinated investment partnerships,” an investment modality central to the deployment of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These partnerships bring together state and business actors to export overcapacity and address infrastructural demands in underdeveloped markets. To do so, they require accumulation and sovereignty regimes that mirror, in contingent ways, similar social arrangements within China. The superposition of such regimes and the interests and social imaginaries of local actors produces forms of uneven and combined development and shapes the contours of the BRI's emerging developmental and geoeconomic footprints. The BRI exports also an elite development paradigm which promotes urbanization, connectivity and economic growth over participatory approaches. This paradigm projects a depoliticized version of China's present into the BRI's future to justify social and environmental dislocations, and shields Chinese firms from civil society scrutiny. My analysis rejects this elite perspective and favors a labor-centric approach that unearths the social foundations of the BRI. From this perspective, despite relevant differences in format, the BRI's quintessential investment modality is closely aligned to a contemporary global current of public-private partnerships endeavored to mobilize public resources and state power for the expansion of capitalist social relations.

Mediating Conflicts, Creating Bonds

2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-50
Author(s):  
Luca D’Anna
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Do So

The present paper discusses the patterns of interaction between the Islamic religion and the universal categories of verbal politeness described by Brown, Levinson (1987). The two scholars based their theory on the existence of two contrasting sets of ‘face-wants’ (negative and positive) and on the speakers’ necessity to preserve them while, at the same time, pursuing their goals. Verbal politeness provides means that enable the speaker to do so without endangering his social relations. While the phenomenon is, in itself, universal (i.e. found in all known cultures), its outer manifestations tend to be culturally bound. Amongst Maghrebi Arabic-speaking societies, the object of the present study, the ‘code’ of verbal politeness heavily draws on the Islamic religion. The present paper, thus, aims to analyse the interplay between Islam and the different strategies described by Brown and Levinson, by means of a wide exemplification that will highlight general trends and underlying structures.

scholarly journals Compensatory Cultures: Post -2008 Climate Mechanisms for Crisis Times

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (99) ◽  
pp. 66-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ella Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Compensatory Responses ◽  
Global North ◽  
Dominant Structure ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
Do So ◽  
Compensatory Consumption

This paper charts emerging scholarship on what I conceptualise as 'compensatory cultures'; cultures that are, in essence, compensatory responses to crisis, but are presented and received as desirable, even preferable ways of organising life. Since the 2008 crash, precarity has become a new normal and a dominant structure-of-feeling in the global north. I argue that compensatory cultures alleviate precarity's affective impacts, enabling 'business as usual', yet do so in ways that perpetuate that precarity and the conditions that reproduce it. I survey literature on compensatory urbanisms, compensatory labour and compensatory consumption; demonstrating the compensatory as a pervasive mechanism operating across various cultural settings in the post-recession, austerity context. The work explored reveals compensatory cultures as central in remaking places, structuring social relations and producing meaning in crisis times.

scholarly journals Saberes ocultos no Brasil Império: a arte da cura pelo magnetismo animal e a busca pela legitimidade * Hidden knowledge in Brazil Empire: the art of cure for animal magnetism and the search for legitimacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Danielle Christine Othon Lacerda
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Hidden Knowledge ◽  
Animal Magnetism ◽  
Do So

Os princípios e a prática do magnetismo animal consolidaram-se na França poucos anos antes da Revolução Francesa acontecer. Em meio a polêmicas e um crescente número de adeptos, o magnetismo animal ultrapassa as barreiras do tempo e as fronteiras espaciais, chegando ao Brasil nas primeiras décadas do século XIX por meio do imigrante francês Leopold Gamard. O objetivo deste trabalho foi compreender as tentativas de Gamard de legitimar o magnetismo animal como prática curativa, perante as instituições científicas médicas e a opinião pública na Corte imperial. Para tanto, examinamos periódicos científicos e jornais populares na tentativa de juntar fragmentos para recompor a intrigante trajetória de Leopold Gamard e que ajudaram a tecer a trama das relações sociais na construção de representações e apropriações da prática do magnetismo animal, como uma alternativa para cura de moléstias.*The principles and practice of animal magnetism were consolidated in France a few years before the French Revolution took place. Amid controversy and a growing number of adepts, animal magnetism surpasses the barriers of time and space frontiers, arriving in Brazil in the first decades of the nineteenth century through the French immigrant Leopold Gamard. The purpose of this work was to understand Gamard's attempts to legitimize animal magnetism as a curative practice before medical scientific institutions and public opinion in the imperial court. In order to do so, we examined popular scientific journals and newspapers in an attempt to combine fragments to reconstruct Leopold Gamard's intriguing trajectory and helped to weave the fabric of social relations in the construction of representations and appropriations of the practice of animal magnetism as an alternative for healing diseases

“Women In Jokes”: A Linguistic Analysis of Jokes on Pakistani Social Media in Light of the General Theory of Verbal Humour

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Saira Rashad ◽  
Musarrat Azher
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Resources ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Do So

 Social relations of power are established and negotiated through discourse and joke telling is one strategy among many to do so. The present study is an attempt to examine the representation of women in jokes, circulated on Pakistani social media, by addressing four themes: representation of women in general, women exercising skills/intellect, women as life partners and representation of teenage girls/young women. The study employs the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) by Attardo & Raskin (1991) as a theoretical framework. From different social media sources like Facebook and Whatsapp, twenty jokes pertaining to women have been selected randomly and analysed on the basis of the GTVH's six knowledge resources. The study reflects the realization that women are represented as talkative and ignorant beings, devoid of intellect; women as life partners are shown to be domineering and intimidating figures, and the representation of teenage girls/young women reinforces stereotypes circulated by patriarchy discourse. The significance of this work lies in the assumption that systematically analysing jokes about women may help in exposing casual sexism and empower women by provoking them to question instead of internalizing the stereotypes circulated through jokes.

The productive force of the negative and the desire for recognition: Lessons from Hegel and Lacan

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 805-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Productive Force ◽  
Recognition Theory ◽  
Do So

AbstractIn this article I theorise the concept of misrecognition that we aim to bring to the study of international politics with this Special Issue. I draw upon three sources to do so: recognition theory, Hegel, and Jacques Lacan. I show that, while the seeds of an interest in misrecognition were laid in that interdisciplinary Hegelian scholarship known as recognition theory, it remains underdeveloped. To develop it into a concept I chart a path through recognition theory back to Hegel’s original dialectic of the master and servant in thePhenomenology of Spirit. What the dialectic captures, I argue, are the actual dynamics of misrecognition in social life, not an idealised form of recognition. This foundational, constitutive misrecognition is what Lacan also theorises by way of his concept of ‘fantasy’. Both Hegel and Lacan foreground a misrecognised, desiring subject that challenges the ways in which agency has been understood in international politics. Lastly, I show the purchase of a Hegelian-Lacanian analysis for IR by considering the relations between sovereignty and nuclear weapons under the lens of fantasy.

Ethical dimensions of quantification

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Espeland ◽  
Vincent Yung
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Facial Recognition ◽  
University Rankings ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Racial Classification ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
The Us ◽  
Do So

The ethical dimensions of quantification are seldom analysed. We examine three ethical features that are characteristic of quantification – its capacity to express or mediate power, focus attention, and shape opportunity structures. We do so in the context of three recent examples of new types of quantification : university rankings, the racial classification of Asians in the US, and facial recognition algorithms. Our examples highlight the importance of understanding the varied and complex ways that quantification creates and organizes social relations, and the effect of this on multiple forms of inequality.

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