Empires and the Politics of Difference

2021 ◽  
pp. 375-415
Author(s):  
Jane Burbank ◽  
Frederick Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
The Social ◽  
Homogeneous Composition

Empires governed different people differently. At one pole of empires’ repertoires of rule were the Mongols, who treated cultural difference as an ordinary fact, and possibly a useful one. At the other pole were Roman-style empires that insisted on the superiority of their civilization. Empires combined strategies and shifted among them. A polity could move through an imperial phase to more homogeneous composition, but empire-building was also a temptation for relatively uniform polities. Differential incorporation into the social fabric of empire or radical exclusion of certain categories from acceptance and political participation were variants on the politics of difference. This chapter explores issues of race, religion, differential rights, gender, ethnicity, and class as they played out across the vast spaces shaped by empires. Opponents of imperial rulers, coming from different social categories, also acted within and across imperial spaces.

scholarly journals Between “ethnocide” and “genocide”: violence and Otherness in the coverage of the Afghanistan and Chechnya wars

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 700-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Casula
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Visual Coverage

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the two Russian wars in Chechnya were the longest, most protracted conflicts of the USSR and Russia after WWII. Both were conducted under conditions of unprecedented violence in peripheral territories. Despite their distance in time and space, both wars are closely linked to each other on the level of cultural representations in contemporary Russia. This paper analyses how the conflicts were represented in a key Soviet and Russian newspaper as the wars unfolded. It analyses the textual and visual coverage of the wars in theKrasnaia zvezda(1980–1986; 2000–2003), in order to disclose changing interpretations of violence and the Other. The paper argues, first, thatKrasnaia zvezdatold the story of two different types of violence prevailing in each conflict. The Afghan case was presented as one that put the social and cultural transformation of the population at the center of its attention – violence was hence not only physical and excessive but also cultural, as it aimed at the social fabric of society. The Chechen case focused on the recapture of territory and the restoration of sovereignty. Therefore, physical violence appeared more bluntly in the coverage of the conflict. Second, the paper shows that these two different types of violence implied two different visions of the Other. In Afghanistan, the Other was represented as becoming more and more similar to the socialist Self. This dynamic is visually underscored by numerous images of Afghans who have embarked on the path to Soviet modernity. In Chechnya, in contrast, the Other was presented as traditional, backward, and immutable. The Other was usually reduced to complete cultural difference and depicted a dehumanized fashion. This orientalization of the Other was a precondition for the use of excessive physical violence.

Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1363-1379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arif Dirlik
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Modernity

How do we talk about racism, which we must, given its pervasiveness, without erasing significant changes that distinguish the present from the past and, even more important, without contributing to further racialization of the language of social and cultural analysis—and, by implication, to racist discourses? Much has changed over the last half century in the consciousness of racism and in efforts to overcome it. It is obscurantist to overlook these changes and speak of racism today as if it were the racism of earlier times. On the other hand, recent decades have witnessed the globalization of racism, the racialization of social categories, and the proliferation of race talk, which contributes to the reification of race. This article seeks to evaluate the ways in which race talk finds expression in discourses of political economy, labor migration, biogenetics, and neoliberal attacks on the idea of the social, as well as in putatively antiracist arguments in cultural and postcolonial studies that nevertheless contribute to the pervasiveness of race talk. It suggests that contemporary issues of race are best grasped within a condition of global modernity and sees in the restoration of the social a precondition for overcoming political and cultural racialization.

scholarly journals AT DRIKKE ÆBLETE: Om håndteringen af kulturforskelle i institutioner

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family

The title of this article, “Drinking Apple Tea”, refers to the account of a social worker visiting the family of his drug-addicted client. While the visit proceeds in silence, the social worker finds his own frustration rising: “We just sit there and drink apple tea. What am I doing here?” This story points to the fact that cultural differences are difficult to manage within the institutions of the Danish welfare state, since they tend to fall outside the scope of established universal categorizations and norms that form the basis for institutional practices. On the basis of an understanding of cultural encounters that emphasize the creativity of human agency, as well as the institutional fixation of hegemonic norms, the article discusses specific encounters involving majority institutions and ethnic minorities in Denmark. The analysis focuses on the ways cultural differences are either suppressed or displaced as irrelevant factors, or emerge as catchall explanations for the behavior of ethnic minorities. This pattern is to a large extent attributable to the institutional norms and practices that implicitly limit diversity. In some cases, a universal view of human nature means that difference becomes deviance; whilst in others, a focus on cultural difference reduces diversity resulting in stereotypical generalizations of the Other. One way of distributing culture and difference in alternative ways could result from a heightened awareness of the institutional rationalities and practices among the employees.

scholarly journals Life stories and formation of subordinate subjectivity. Note on social research in Italy by Danilo Montaldi

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Silvano Calvetto
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pedagogical Aspect ◽  
The One

The social research performed by Danilo Montaldi (1929-1975) represented an interpretation of great interest in understanding the transformations of neo-capitalism between the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the ambit of a very critical militancy towards the traditional forms of political participation, his attention to subordinates is marked, in our view, by a significant pedagogical aspect. On the one hand, in fact, he focuses on the political and social processes through which subordinate subjectivity is formed, with particular regard to the role played by the institutions, while on the other hand, he examines strategies with regard to his own emancipation from that condition of oppression, based on the idea of education intended as liberation. Where the educational commitment and political commitment merge in the same project of reconstruction of society, looking beyond the drifts of neocapitalism in view of a world capable of recognizing the rights of all respecting each other’s differences. This, as has been observed by several commentators, seems to be the most significant legacy of Danilo Montaldi’s intellectual commitment.

scholarly journals A Conceptual Shift in Studies of Belonging and the Politics of Belonging

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Youkhana
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Shift ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Analytical Category

The study of belonging, its underlying notions, and the politics of belonging shows that social, political, and territorial demarcations are still based on essentialist conceptions of the collective. These are often applied and reproduced in the social sciences as a result of methodological nationalism. Space-sensitive studies of migration and globalization and a return to the material have recently challenged social constructivist lines of argumentation and have provoked a conceptual shift from analytical categories with inherent spatiality, territoriality, and boundary marking to concepts based on movement and flow. In this paper the analysis of belonging and the related politics of belonging in migration studies incorporates space as an analytical category that cross-cuts established categorizations such as race, class, gender, and stage in the life cycle, and integrates a material semiotic perspective more systematically into the study of social relations at the intersection of the social categories mentioned. A new concept of belonging is defined which reflects the complex relations that individuals have with other people, circulating objects, artefacts, and changing social, political, and cultural landscapes, thus mirroring both the material conditions and the underlying power relations. Such an understanding of belonging proceeds from social naturalizations and fixations to the multiplicity and situatedness of individual attachments, which entangle social, imagined, and sensual-material relations that are constantly re-articulated and re-negotiated by actors in their day-to-day practices. In such a reading, belonging comes into being as a result of individual life stories, versatile contexts, and situated experiences and acts. In times of constant exchange through travel, mass media, and communication technologies, the conceptualization of belonging questions established sociocultural and political demarcations, indicates the compatibility of ascribed socio-cultural difference and stresses the permeability of borderlines. A space-sensitive theorization of social relations and belonging opens up new perspectives on the question of how social collectives are naturalized and by whom, and under which conditions they open up to new forms of belonging; it thus brings forth new findings about collectivization, social mobilization, and change.

scholarly journals Muamma (conundrum) of Riba (Interest and Usury) in Major Religions in General and Islam in Particular

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 4438-4443
Author(s):  
Dr Ahmad Khalid Khan ◽  
Dr Omar Abdullah Al Aboud ◽  
Dr. Syed Mohammad Faisal
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Limited Knowledge ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Limitation

Author did courage to undertake this project with his limited knowledge of Religion, therefore, he seek apology in advance with the readers if any mistake has been committed. This paper has no religious relevance rather author has strived to uplift the pride of Interest and rent by making study in different major religion. The paper entitled, “Muamma (conundrum) of Riba (Interest and Usury) in Major Religions in General and Islam in Particular” It is an attempt to study the indication given by the religion that why it is haram. Interest is a very interesting thing; almost in all major religion Riba (Interest and Usury) is Haram including Judaism, however one side in Judaism, the Torah and Talmud encourage the granting of loans if they do not involve interest, on the other hand the halakhah [applicable Jewish law] regarding free loans apply only to loans made to other Jews but it is permissible to make loans with Riba (Interest and Usury) to non-Jews. Yet Riba (Interest and Usury) is Haram in most of the major religion because it disturbs the social fabric, it perturbs the connection which people share, which can facilitate to form an ethnically rich and in a social context cohesive community, Honestly speaking Riba (Interest and Usury) is not only the perpetrator for it, but Riba (Interest and Usury) is one of the cause for it. On the other hand, where the purpose is for utilization when one has for some cause or other gone astray his earnings, to insist a fixed return where no homecoming is produced is frequently considered as iniquitous.  Especially so if the collateral demanded is the house in which the borrower lives or land from the prospect turn out of which he expects to pay back the loan.  All the way through the era, currency providers have used the first type of case to defend their business.  Ironically it is their appliance of it to the second set of circumstances that twisted the ground for the second type of spat.   Nevertheless, by the last part of the thirteenth century a number of causes emerged which greatly destabilized the influence of the Orthodox Church.  In due course, the reformist faction, led by Luther (1483-1546) and Zwingli (1484-1531), approved to the charging of Riba (Interest and Usury) on the entreaty of human limitation

The Reinvention of Society?

2019 ◽  
pp. 238-283
Author(s):  
Renaud Morieux
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
The Social ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
The One

War is not just destruction and coercion: new ‘social spaces’ are invented and reproduce themselves in wartime. In captivity zones and prison camps, pre-existing social categories might not be seen as relevant or did not operate in the same way as other contexts, and different conceptions of the social order could clash. This is not to say, however, that durable social differences did not exist, and that war captivity permitted a free-flowing and constant reinvention of society. There were limits to the redefinition of social categories, which need to be examined more closely. The extreme cases of prisoners on parole on the one hand, and of the black combatants who were enslaved on the other, show that people’s ability to play with labels ascribed by the state was socially differentiated.

Nationalist Thought in Modern India: Exploration of the Idea of Freedom

2020 ◽  
pp. 097168582094339
Author(s):  
Prakash Desai
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Positive Response ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Pandita Ramabai

Modern Indian nationalist thought has dealt with political ideas such as freedom, equality, liberty, democracy, so on and so forth. The idea of freedom received enough attention on the part of most of the modern Indian political thinkers. However, the idea of freedom as envisaged by the nationalist thinkers did not receive positive response from the other stream of modern Indian thought. Dalit-Bahujan political thinkers questioned the narration of freedom as propagated by the nationalist thinkers. Nationalist thinkers aspired for universal values and at the same time reaffirmed ancient religious principles. Such effort was questioned and doubted by the other thinkers of modern India. Thus, one can find different narrations of freedom, such as social, economic and political. The social categories such as caste, class and gender became bases for their narration on the idea of freedom. The ideas and arguments of B. G. Tilak, M. K. Gandhi, Pandita Ramabai, Jyotiba Phule, B. R. Ambedkar E. M. S. Namboodripad and others would help in larger understanding of the idea of freedom.

Girasias and the Politics of Difference in Rajasthan: ‘Caste’, Kinship and Gender in a Marginalised Society

1993 ◽  
Vol 41 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 92-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Unnithan
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Way

Anthropologists have often contrasted ‘caste’ and ‘tribe’ as forms of social organisation based on opposite principles (eg ‘castes' are based on hierarchy, ‘tribal’ society is undifferentiated and egalitarian). The concept of ‘caste’ is both an imposed one, a product of colonial governmental and academic exercises, and one which has political realities. However, whilst such national and regional formulations of caste are important, they do not always reflect the social categories which are central to the organisation of people's lives at the local level. The Girasias (generally held to be a ‘tribe’ by others) live in Rajasthan in proximity to the Rajputs (generally held to be a ‘caste’; Girasias themselves claim to be a branch of the Rajput caste). On many points the way in which a group categorises itself does not correspond with the way in which it is categorised by members of other groups. In practice the Girasias share many social, economic and religious institutions with the other ‘caste’ communities in the region as also with the ‘tribal Bhils. This does not mean that these groups are indistinguishable, but ‘Rajput’ and ‘Bhil’ stereotypes were used within the Girasia group to express differences, identifications and evaluations. However the tribe/caste distinction and the corresponding division of labour between anthropologists and sociologists in India is thereby called into question. To the Girasias, patrilineal kinship and territory play a central role in their sense of ‘caste’ identity, unlike other communities (the Rajputs and Bhils are exceptions) for whom caste is a more dispersed, agnatic and affinal group. Descent is crucial. Although their kinship ideology emphasises a sense of separation rather than hierarchy, Girasia kin divisions present members with equal opportunities to be unequal. Lineal kinship provides the paradigm for talking about all relationships whether or not based on actual biological ties. Equally, gender provides an idiom for the construction of difference. Descent groups are differentiated according to the evaluation of groups from which they have been able to obtain wives. Both Girasias and outsiders use the attire and the behaviour of women and perceived gender roles to distinguish between themselves. Despite the local complexity of Girasia kinship and gender relations which cannot be expressed in the language of caste and tribe, outsiders (other castes, classes, government officials, academics) continue to regard the Girasias as tribal as a result of the politics of caste and gender at the local, regional and national levels.

scholarly journals PERDAMAIAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF ISLAM DAN KRISTEN

Al'Adalah ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Asy’ari Asy'ari
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Problems ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social

The existence of Religion is a correction of behavioral problems that substantively cause tension, violence and even damage to the social fabric, or better known as tyranny. There is no religion established itself as a rel igion of violence and it is certain that all religions claim to be a religion of peace. But on the other hand, religion can lead to damage and even mass murder. Therefore, religious messages are ambivalent, whether religion is to solve problems or it is the source of problems. This ambivalence is emphasized with the rise of religious adherents by showing complex faces  to interpret. The complex face is inseparable from the adherents of the r eligion itself, both Islam and Christian. Because the realizat ion of religious adherents have the legitimacy of the text (the source of their religious teachings).

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