Documentary Goes Popular

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-102
Author(s):  
Angela J. Aguayo
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Documentary History ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

While the documentary genre has frequently been conceptualized as a democratic tool with civic potential, the ways popular advocacy documentary functions in the process of social change is unclear. We need more information about the relationship between documentary agitation and collective organizing for social change, as well as about how this function shifts with the visibility of popular attention. Mainstream commercial culture is more than at odds with a commons of democratic exchange. The advocacy film is a time-honored tradition in documentary history, made specifically for the aims of democratic exchange. This type of film is produced for political causes by activists or advocates who are not closely connected with the government or decision makers. Often the director is constructed as a central creative force. Central figures usually function as surrogates for the film in public interviews and engagements; the speakers are often connected to sponsoring organizations. In this chapter, I first address the historical linage of popular documentary and its movement from the vernacular to the popular. Then, I examine the ways popular advocacy documentary in popular form has morphed in recent years, providing insight into the potential of the genre to make contact with the political structure.

scholarly journals The Divine Gaps between the Usuli and Akhbaris in Bahrain: Causes and Repercussions

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
Rashed Alrasheed
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Political Perceptions ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship

In any analysis of Bahrain’s political structure, it is fundamental to understand the relationship between the Usili, Akhbaris, and authority. This analysis includes an assessment of the implications of the differences between the Usili and Akhbaris, thus shedding light on the dynamic interaction between these players in local and external structures and clarifying the effect of ideology and identity on the ties of authority with Shi’a. Usuli and Akhbaris principles have incontrovertible implications for the political perceptions of Shi’a groups and elites with regard to their dealings with the government in Bahrain. These religious perceptions form part of the political equation involved in ensuring the convergence of authority with the Shi’a community. This paper considers how differences between the Usuli and Akhbaris have shaped the relation between authority and Shi’a in Bahrain.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Politics and the Reception of Andrew Lloyd Webber’sThe Phantom of the Opera

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
Amanda Eubanks Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Subsidy ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Government ◽  
Reagan Era ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article analyses the complicated and conflicted critical response to Andrew Lloyd Webber’sThe Phantom of the Operawithin the political, economic and cultural context of the Thatcher/Reagan era. British critics writing for Conservative-leaning broadsheets and tabloids took nationalist pride in Lloyd Webber’s commercial success, while others on both sides of the Atlantic claimed thatPhantomwas tasteless and crassly commercial, a musical manifestation of a new Gilded Age. Broader issues regarding the relationship between the government and ‘elite’ culture also affected the critical response. For some,Phantomforged a path for a new kind of populist opera that could survive and thrive without government subsidy, while less sympathetic critics heardPhantom’s ‘puerile’ operatics as sophomoric jibes against an art form they esteemed.

scholarly journals An Ecological Discourse Analysis to the Chinese Slogans during the Major Economic Stages since the Foundation of PRC

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dali Ning
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Policy Language ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Ecological Philosophy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Civic Practice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

Slogan has a sound mass base in China for thousands of years，functioning as guidelines for civic practice. Even today, Chinese slogans are often employed by the government to promote policies and socio-cultural values. This paper, adopting an ecolinguistic approach, explores the development of Chinese slogans during the four economic stages since the foundation of PRC (People’s Republic of China) to find out how slogans influence the relationship between men, and man and the ecosystem. It is discovered that Chinese slogans in the recent decades have experienced great changes in terms of discourse type, the beneficial degree of discourse and the ecosophy they carry. They changed gradually from destructive discourse to harmonious discourse and they reflect the transition of Chinese ecological philosophy—from ‘anthropocentrism’, ‘growthism’, and ‘classism’ to ‘harmonism’. It is hoped that this study can shed light on the eco-discourse analysis to policy language and will bring insight into its future creation.

Rothschilds’ “Delicate and Difficult Task”: Reputation, Political Instability, and the Brazilian Rescue Loans of the 1890s

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEONARDO WELLER
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Brazilian Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship

The London House of Rothschild depended on Brazil to maintain its reputation. This became a problem in the 1890s, when the Brazilian government almost defaulted on its sovereign debt after a change of regime had made politics unstable and economic policy unorthodox. This article shows how the relationship between the bank and the state developed to the point that Rothschilds was forced to rescue its client. Exposure enabled Brazil to implement policies designed to defend the regime at the expense of payment capacity without defaulting. The debt crisis ended only after the political situation stabilized toward the close of the century, when the bank pressured the government to tighten economic policy.

Organization of American States

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-485 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Report ◽  
American States ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship

Following an investigation resulting from the request by the government of Venezuela that the Council of the Organizationof American States (OAS) ask the Inter-American Peace Committee to look into the flagrant and widespread violations of human rights by the government of the Dominican Republic, the Committee, in a special report, allegedly concurred with the charges, stressing its opinion that international tensions in the Caribbean had increased and would continue to increase, so long as the Dominican Republic persisted in its repressive policies. On the basis of evidence collected during its four-month investigation, the Committee condemned such practices as the denial of free assembly and free speech, arbitrary arrest, cruel and inhuman treatment of political prisoners, and the use of intimidation and terror as political weapons. Despite reports of 1,000 arrests for subversive activities, the Dominican Republic had accounted for only 222 such arrests and had pointed to acts of elemency granted to many of these people; the Committee had, however, been barred from visiting the country. Desirous nevertheless of avoiding any step which might adversely affect the fate of the political prisoners, and in the hope that the Dominican Republic would decree an amnesty on Easter, April 17, the Committee postponed making a pronouncement on the case; instead, it merely issued a general report on April 14 on the relationship between violations of human rights and the political tensions affecting the peace of the Hemisphere. In the later special report the Committee noted that the hope of an amnesty had turned out to be unfounded, and that it had therefore decided to examine all the information available to it, mosdy in the form either of testimony from exiles and other nationals who had recently been in the Dominican Republic or of extensive and reliable press material.

Class Struggle and Socialist Construction: The Hungarian Paradox

Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. von Lazar
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political System ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the relationship between the semantics of ideology and political practice under the pressure of socio-economic change in Hungary of the early 1960s, especially 1962-63. The events of 1956 forced the Communist Party elite to recognize the imperative need for internal social change and for control over its dynamics. Manipulation of social forces and ideological currents became a day-to-day concern as soon as it was realized that the political system must rely to an increasing extent upon the introduction of policies which induced support for the system itself—a need undoubtedly arising out of the social transformation that accompanies a developing and modernizing industrial society.

Peru: the Political Economy of an Intermediate Regime

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. V. K. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Foreign Capital ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intermediate Regime ◽  
Domestic Capital ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Any attempt to define the changes in the Peruvian political economy that have taken place since 1968 1 must be made in terms of the relationship between the state and domestic capital on the one hand and foreign capital on the other, and must offer an explanation of the way in which this military- controlled state has tended to replace the former and establish a new relationship with the latter. In particular, the confrontation between the government and foreign capital, and the significance of internal ownership reforms cannot be understood without reference to the development of Peruvian capitalism before 1968.

Somali Resistance to Colonial Rule and the Development of Somali Political Activity in Kenya 1893–1960

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. R. Turton
Keyword(s):  
Political Support ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Somali Youth

This article investigates the relationship between different phases of Somali political activity in Kenya. A clear contrast emerges between the focus, the aims and the methods adopted by the Somali pastoralists along the northern frontier and those adopted by the Isaq and Herti Somali traders in Nairobi and Isiolo. The attitude of the former towards the Colonial Government was essentially negative. Yet, while they tended to be resisterspar excellenceand fought against the Government on a large number of occasions between 1893 and 1916, this article shows that their resistance was much more limited than has generally been supposed and that they were never united on a clan basis in their resistance. In fact intra-clan rivalries seriously undermined the effectiveness of their activities Moreover, certain weaker Somali segments actively cooperated with the Government in order to obtain military and political support for their positions which were threatened by stronger groups.On the other hand, Isaq and Herti traders attempted to manipulate the political institution in order to obtain additional privileges within the system. Their agitation had positive goals, for they campaigned to gain Asiatic status. They put pressure on the central organs of Government and hired lawyers to plead their case. They wrote numerous petitions and memorials to governors of the colony, to Secretaries of State and even to two British kings. They formed well-organized political associations and had contacts in British Somaliland and England. Yet, by a curious irony, it seems that the Somali Exemption Ordinance of 1919, which represented the closest they came to achieving non-native status, was not passed as a result of their campaigns. In fact, their later agitation achieved nothing; it seems to have represented a futile effort to counter the gradual erosion of privileges obtained at an earlier date.One of the main characteristics of the Isaq and Herti agitation was its essentially sectarian character. In fighting to obtain Asiatic status they emphasized traits that isolated them from other Somali groups, and they even ended by denying that they were Somali. As such, there was a considerable disparity between their aims and those of the Somali Youth League which emerged in 1946 as the main vehicle of mass Somali nationalism, uniting the Somali pastoralists and traders in one group.

scholarly journals Swiss Consensus Democracy in Transition: A Re-analysis of Lijphart's Concept of Democracy for Switzerland from 1997 to 2007

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political System ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
The Political ◽  
Consensus Democracy ◽  
European Consensus ◽  
The Government ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The Relationship

The present article addresses the question of whether Switzerland can continue to be seen as an extreme case of federal consensus democracy, as illustrated by Arend Lijphart (1999). A re-analysis of Lijphart's (1999) study of the Swiss political system from 1997 to 2007 clearly demonstrates that due to recent political-institutional changes (a decreasing number of parties, growing electoral disproportionality, increasing decentralization and deregulation of the relationship between the state and interest groups), a consensus democracy with strong tendencies toward adjustment and normalization of the original exceptional Swiss case to meet the rest of the continental European consensus democracies has emerged. This development has been further strengthened by intensified public political contestation, rising polarization between the political camps in parliament, and the weakening of the cooperative search for consensus as the dominant mode of negotiation within the government. From the perspective of international comparison, Switzerland can thus be seen henceforth as a typical example, not an extreme case, of consensus democracy.

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