Historical background during the Springs and Autumns Period

Author(s):  
Yuri Pines

This chapter explores the political and social order of the aristocratic Springs and Autumns period. It analyzes the formation of the multistate system in the wake of the weakening of the Zhou dynasty, this system’s functioning, and the eventual collapse of the attempts to ensure viable multistate order. The chapter shows that aggravating political fragmentation notwithstanding, the aristocratic elites throughout the Zhou realm maintained considerable cultural unity. Even the elites of alien political entities, such as Wu and Yue, became increasingly absorbed into the broad framework of the Zhou culture, contributing therewith to the expansion of the Zhou realm and the softening of Sino-alien dichotomy. The second part of the chapter focuses on domestic life of the component polities of the Zhou world. Particular attention is given to the power of hereditary aristocrats (specifically, the ministerial lineages) and to political activism of the lower stratum of “capital-dwellers,” who emerged as major beneficiaries of the ongoing struggles between the rulers and their chief ministers.

Author(s):  
Joel Gordon

This chapter examines the extent to which the Free Officers formed a political ethos that inclined them toward intervention in civilian politics during the conspiratorial stage. The Free Officers' movement was the culmination of a dramatic political reorientation among the officer corps between 1936 and 1952. They represented the generation that turned away from the political establishment and rejected the leadership of its elders. The soldier's relationship to his country, to his people, to his commanding officers and king gave the young officers a particular perspective on the decay of the liberal order. This chapter first provides a historical background on the Egyptian military before discussing the organization of the Free Officers, along with its political activism, developing ideology, and ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.


Author(s):  
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela

This book offers an interpretation of Italy’s decline, which began two decades before the Great Recession. It argues that its deeper roots lie in the political economy of growth. This interpretation is illustrated through a discussion of Italy’s political and economic history since its unification, in 1861. The emphasis is placed on the country’s convergence to the productivity frontier and TFP performance, and on the evolution of its social order and institutions. The lens through which its history is reviewed, to illuminate the origins and evolution of the current constraints to growth, is drawn from institutional economics and Schumpeterian growth theory. It is exemplified by analysing two alternative reactions to the insufficient provision of public goods: an opportunistic one—employing tax evasion, corruption, or clientelism as means to appropriate private goods—and one based on enforcing political accountability. From the perspective of ordinary citizens and firms such social dilemmas can typically be modelled as coordination games, which have multiple equilibria. Self-interested rationality can thus lead to a spiral, in which several mutually reinforcing vicious circles lead society onto an inefficient equilibrium characterized by low political accountability and weak rule of law. The book follows the gradual setting in of this spiral, despite an ambitious attempt at institutional reform, in 1962–4, and its resumption after a severe endogenous shock, in 1992–4. It concludes that innovative ideas can overcome the constraints posed by that spiral, and ease the country’s shift onto a fairer and more efficient equilibrium.


Author(s):  
Patricia Hill Collins

For youth who are Black, Indigenous, female, or poor, coming of age within societies characterized by social inequalities presents special challenges. Yet despite the significance of being young within socially unjust settings, age as a category of analysis remains undertheorized within studies of political activism. This essay therefore draws upon intersectionality and generational analyses as two useful and underutilized approaches for analyzing the political agency of Black youth in the United States with implications for Black youth more globally. Intersectional analyses of race, class, gender, and sexuality as systems of power help explain how and why intersecting oppressions fall more heavily on young people who are multiply disadvantaged within these systems of power. Generational analysis suggests that people who share similar experiences when they are young, especially if such experiences have a direct impact on their lives, develop a generational sensibility that may shape their political consciousness and behavior. Together, intersectionality and generational analyses lay a foundation for examining youth activism as essential to understanding how young people resist intersecting oppressions of racism, heteropatriarchy, class exploitation, and colonialism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Mario De Benedetti

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to contextualize Bruno Leoni’s political theory within the Digital Information Society, a new dimension of public participation in the political arena and a sign of the democratic transition through new forms of involvement by public opinion. In particular, the evolution of the Information Society will be briefly examined starting from the studies of Fritz Machlup, considered its progenitor, to pass to the examination of the Leonian concept of law and politics in the technological society, with reference to Norbert Wiener and Karl Deutsch’s cybernetic theory. This paper will attempt to describe the evolutive process of political participation in democratic society by reinterpreting the thought of Bruno Leoni concerning Democracy, the State and the homo telematicus in the digital social order.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Jerdén

AbstractMany states partially relinquish sovereignty in return for physical protection from a more powerful state. Mainstream theory on international hierarchies holds that such decisions are based on rational assessments of the relative qualities of the political order being offered. Such assessments, however, are bound to be contingent, and as such a reflection of the power to shape understandings of reality. Through a study of the remarkably persistent US-led security hierarchy in East Asia, this article puts forward the concept of the ‘epistemic community’ as a general explanation of how such understandings are shaped and, hence, why states accept subordinate positions in international hierarchies. The article conceptualises a transnational and multidisciplinary network of experts on international security – ‘The Asia-Pacific Epistemic Community’ – and demonstrates how it operates to convince East Asian policymakers that the current US-led social order is the best choice for maintaining regional ‘stability’.


Author(s):  
Ivars Orehovs

On May 4, 2020, the 30th anniversary of the restoration of Latvia’s national independence was celebrated, and the 160th anniversary since the birth of the first President of Latvia, Jānis Čakste (1859–1927), was remembered on September 14, 2019. In 1917, even before the establishment of the Latvian state, Čakste published a longer essay in German, entitled „The Latvians and Their Latvia” (Die Letten und ihre Latwija), in which both the ethnic and geopolitical history of the Baltics was presented to communicate the public opinion and strivings of that time internationally. The essay also reflected economic relations in the predominantly Latvian-inhabited territory, demonstrating the political convictions and the culture-historical background of the era. The article aims to characterise the history of writing and publishing the essay in German, and its translation into Latvian (1989/90), and the translation’s editions (1999, 2009, 2014, 2019). Part of the article is devoted to analysing the culture-historical aspects, which in the authorial narrative have been expressed in the interethnic environment of the territory and the era.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faye Ginsburg ◽  

Abstract This article covers a wide range of projects from the earliest epistemological challenges posed by video experiments in remote Central Australia in the 1980s to the emergence of indigenous filmmaking as an intervention into both the Australian national imaginary and the idea of world cinema. It also addresses the political activism that led to the creation of four national indigenous television stations in the early 21st century: Aboriginal People's Television Network in Canada; National Indigenous Television in Australia; Maori TV in New Zealand; and Taiwan Indigenous Television in Taiwan); and considers what the digital age might mean for indigenous people worldwide employing great technological as well as political creativity.


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