Unfounding

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-244
Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
International Intervention

This chapter, ‘Unbounding’, illuminates the opposition between peace as a project of making and the founding or refounding of a political community through civil political action. The chapter examines how peacemaking was implicated in South Sudan’s violent failure as a new political community. Without diminishing domestic elite political responsibility for the destruction of order and civility, the chapter analyses how this collapse was possible within the context of a heavily internationalized peacemaking, statebuilding and peacebuilding effort. By ordaining a government-in-waiting that needed no further legitimacy from its people, and focusing on a technocratic and transactional mode of ‘building’ peace and state in southern Sudan after war, international intervention made a peace without politics in southern Sudan between 2005 and 2011. The new political beginning of independence, the founding of a new political community, became a mirage when overtaken by the memories and wounds of intra-southern violence, rekindled political rivalries and the militarized, corrupted and coercive logic of power to rule that quickly pulled South Sudan down into war.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke A. Ackerly
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Power Relation ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Taking Responsibility

Just responsibility is a transformative human rights politics for taking on the complexities, power inequalities, and social normalization of injustice itself. Just responsibility is a human rights theory of political responsibility in which we understand human rights as enjoyed and shared throughout political community (and human rights entitlements as a tool toward that end), political community as defined by its web of networks, not its boundaries, accountability as a political process of discernment, not a power relation, and leadership as a quality of political community, not of individuals within it. Found within and supported by the principles-in-practice of women’s human rights activists, this grounded normative theory of responsibility guides us in a human rights enhancing way to be accountable leaders in political transformation, taking responsibility for global injustice in a just way.

scholarly journals The Nineties: Establishment of Polity

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-71
Author(s):  
S. I. Kaspe
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Stable Set ◽  
The Political ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
The Status ◽  
Territorial Organization

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, was established the Russian polity, which continues to exist to this day. In this paper polity is understood as a macro-social community, united by a certain political order i.e., by a stable set of institutions and actors, as well as normative standards for organizing their interactions, both formal and informal. Establishment is understood as a series of events that establish these most fundamental frameworks for political action, as well as a repertoire of its scenarios, behavioral stereotypes, strategies, and tactics. The negative myth about the nineties, which has dominated the Russian public discourse in the recent years, describes the 1990s as a time of catastrophe and degradation. It certainly has its reasons, but this myth almost completely ignores the fact that the same decade was also a time of creation. Thus, the current state of Russia cannot be understood without paying attention to the circumstances of its establishment. The article describes some of the key features of the modern Russian polity that emerged in the 1990s — the “main takeaway” of the constituent era. They are the following: the electoral legitimacy of the supreme political power; non-partisan presidency; capitalism as the economic foundation of the political order; federalism as a principle of territorial organization of political space; freedom of association; freedom of religion; open borders. This list is not exhaustive: there are other elements of the design of the Russian polity that can claim the status of constitutive ones. However, a radical change in all these institutions together or in any one of them individually would mean another re-establishment of the political community as a whole.

scholarly journals Sentimental politics or structural injustice? The ambivalence of emotions for political responsibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Head
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Institutional Boundaries ◽  
Affective Dimensions

AbstractStories and representations of suffering are frequently central to attempts to arouse our emotions and initiate political action. Yet, the evocation of emotion and, in particular, empathy, remains politically ambivalent. It does not necessarily lead to the acknowledgement of political responsibility or to actions to address the historically-constituted roots of contemporary structural injustices. Moving beyond the legal, moral, and institutional boundaries of political responsibility, this article argues for greater recognition of its affective dimensions. In particular, it differentiates between a sentimental politics and testimonial empathy to better understand the affective dynamics of political responsibility. While the former finds close company with pity and a lack of acknowledged political responsibility, the latter offers an ethical–political orientation towards radical reflexivity and social transformation, situating experiences of injustice within wider networks of power, privilege, and agency. Drawing on the work of feminist, cultural, and social theorists, the article offers a critical conceptualisation of testimonial empathy and its limits. The article illustrates the insights offered by re-thinking political responsibility in terms of testimonial empathy through a close reading of a historical account of structural injustice – slavery in the United States – as written in Harriet A. Jacobs’ 1861 slave narrative.

Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Natsios
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
The North ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Historic Change ◽  
Rights Issues

For thirty years Sudan has been a country in crisis, wracked by near-constant warfare between the north and the south. But on July 9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent nation. As Sudan once again finds itself the focus of international attention, former special envoy to Sudan and director of USAID Andrew Natsios provides a timely introduction to the country at this pivotal moment in its history. Focusing on the events of the last 25 years, Natsios sheds light on the origins of the conflict between northern and southern Sudan and the complicated politics of this volatile nation. He gives readers a first-hand view of Sudan's past as well as an honest appraisal of its future. In the wake of South Sudan's independence, Natsios explores the tensions that remain on both sides. Issues of citizenship, security, oil management, and wealth-sharing all remain unresolved. Human rights issues, particularly surrounding the ongoing violence in Darfur, likewise still clamor for solutions. Informative and accessible, this book introduces readers to the most central issues facing Sudan as it stands on the brink of historic change.

scholarly journals COURTS, COURTIERS, AND CULTURE IN TUDOR ENGLAND

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 703-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
NATALIE MEARS
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
The Relationship

Geoffrey Elton's model of Tudor politics, which emphasized the importance of political institutions and which dominated our understanding of Tudor politics for much of the second half of the twentieth century, has been challenged by a number of historians for over twenty years. They have re-emphasized the importance of social connections and cultural influences and turned attention away from studying the privy council to studying the court. In doing so, they have gone back to re-examine earlier approaches by Sir John Neale and Conyers Read which Elton had challenged. Yet, these new socially and culturally derived approaches, recently labelled ‘New Tudor political history’, remain varied and its practitioners sometimes at odds with each other. Focusing on both established seminal works and recent research, this review considers the different elements of these approaches in relation to Tudor court politics. It assesses the methodological problems they raise and identifies what shortcomings still remain. It demonstrates that Tudor politics are increasingly defined as based on social networks rather than institutional bodies, making issues of access to, and intimacy with, the monarch central. Our understanding has been further enhanced by exploration of political culture and its relationship to political action. However, the review points to the need to integrate more fully the political role of women and the relationship between the court and the wider political community into our understanding of Tudor politics, as well as place England into a European context.

The tent: The uncanny architecture of agonism for Israel–Palestine, 1910–2011

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Allweil
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Mass social protest erupted in Israel in 2011 around the banner of housing, with citizens pitching hundreds of tents in urban public spaces all over the country. The tent, as a symbol of and the architecture for political action, aligned communities deeply alienated from each other – the middle class and very poor, renters and homeowners, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, Jews and Arabs-Palestinians – in a shared demand for housing. Solidarity revolving around shared bodily discomfort over the precarious dwelling situation deepened as communities faced the uncanny realisation that tents invoke the dwelling history of each of them: Ashkenazi Zionist pioneers of the 1920s credited as founders of the nation, Palestinian refugees’ facing dispossession and negotiating right of return, and Mizrahim who were marginalised and racialised in immigrant absorption camps. In 2011 protest tents materialised the competing narratives of these conflicted social groups while simultaneously serving as a shared space for political action. This paper explores the history of tent dwellings in Israel–Palestine since the 1910s as the uncanny architecture of nation building and object of shared, though conflicting, narratives of gain and loss. Architectural space emerges from this study as the ‘matter that matters’, producing a political community of conflicted groups, as proposed by Chantalle Mouffe and Bruno Latour. Mouffe and Latour identified the social role of designed spatial objects as crucial for understanding ways in which politics and space are affected by changes to the material world. This paper’s contribution expands on the architectural history of Israel–Palestine and adds to scholarship of the political meaning of architecture as a social ‘object of concern’, applicable beyond this case.

An Unsettled Past as a Political Resource

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svjetlana Nedimović
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Resource

This chapter examines recent debates about transitional justice and argues against attempts at ‘overcoming the past’ or ‘settling the past’. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of the social-historical, it shows that engaging with the past is an inescapable dimension of societal existence and its self-creative process. It contends that such past is not necessarily a burden but can become a political resource in the (re)construction of political community. The resourcefulness of the past, however, is contingent upon standing or permanent political institutions and normative frameworks. The unsettled past, the chapter suggests, becomes a valuable political resource only if it remains unsettled and, as such, a vital part and live matter of everyday political processes through the interconnected workings of collective political responsibility and political imagination.

Responsibility for climate justice: Political not moral

2020 ◽  
pp. 147488512095514
Author(s):  
Michael Christopher Sardo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Adaptation Capacity ◽  
Climate Vulnerability ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
In Virtue Of

How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in virtue of their individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation.

The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Part II – the marginalization of Aristotle’s politeia in modern political thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Political Actions

Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. This article continues the presentation of Aristotle’s treatment of politeia (initiated in ‘The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science’, in this journal) as the concept allowing us to understand the nature and workings of human political community in a way that lets us see how the fundamentally social nature of human beings manifests itself. I look at how Aristotle’s politeia became marginalized as a useful means to understand the shape and direction of human community. While the state has become the new frame for the human political community, the concept of the state rests on the fundamental a-social assumptions of early modern thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc., whose model of how the state emerges denies the fundamental social character of man and instead insists that political action consists merely of the rational calculations of willing agents for common utility and society. In doing so the model renders politics and political actions as merely another form of economics.

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the State and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
System A ◽  
The World ◽  
Transnational Civil Society ◽  
Mexican Politics

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra-territorial conduct of Mexican politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi-autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.

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