“Make Holy the Bare Life”

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-291
Author(s):  
Steve Pavey ◽  
Marco Saavedra
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Undocumented Youth ◽  
Nation States

This article examines thevivencias en la vida cotidiana(everyday lived experiences) of undocumented youth activists in theusaat the intersection where dislocated “bare lives” encounter the hegemonic sovereign power of the nation-state (Agamben 1998). As nearly 2.1 million undocumented immigrant youth in the United States face the precarious reality of “learning to be illegal” (Gonzales 2011) and the threat of “deportability” (De Genova and Peutz 2010), a growing movement of undocumented youth fight for the dignity and liberation of their community while the light of their activism illuminates the majority who remain in the shadows. Based on three years of ethnographic research and action within the undocumented youth activist movement, this article utilizes a dialogical framework through collaborative and participatory based research methods to examine the theological dimensions of “illegal” and “bare” lives on the margins lived between the borders of citizenship and human dignity, between nation-states and the kingdom of God. The research and writing are grounded in a methodological and theological praxis with the marginalized, embodied most poignantly in the co-authors collaborative work and friendship.

Untangling Plyler's Legacy: Undocumented Students, Schools, and Citizenship

2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto G. Gonzales ◽  
Luisa L. Heredia ◽  
Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales
Keyword(s):  
Civic Education ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Immigrant Students ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Supreme Court Ruling ◽  
Undocumented Youth ◽  
States Experience ◽  
K 12

In this article, Roberto G. Gonzales, Luisa L. Heredia, and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales present a nuanced assessment of how undocumented immigrant students in the United States experience the public educational system. Though the landmark 1982 Supreme Court ruling Plyler v. Doe has resulted in hundreds of thousands of undocumented children being educated in US K–12 schools, much of Plyler's promise still eludes them. Drawing data from multiple studies conducted with undocumented youth in California, the authors argue that schools perform three critical social functions—as integrators, as constructors of citizenship, and as facilitators of public and community engagement—that shape the educational experiences and political and civic participation of undocumented immigrant youth. They suggest that while schools hold the potential to engender a sense of belonging and membership for undocumented immigrant students, they often fall short of this promise. The authors argue that constrained resources in school districts that serve large concentrations of students of color, school structures that sort and deprioritize students in lower academic tracks, and modes of civic education that do not allow undocumented students to participate equally in society or view themselves as equal members of the citizenry limit the potential for schools to create positive educational and civic experiences for undocumented youth. In addition to inequalities in the educational system, undocumented students' immigration status constrains their interaction in each school function, limiting the realization of Plyler's promise.

Self-Care and Solidarity: The Undocumented Immigrant Youth Movement

2018 ◽  
pp. 139-160
Author(s):  
Ala Sirriyeh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Self Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Dream Act ◽  
Undocumented Youth ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Deferred Action

This chapter examines how a shift from the notion of compassion that is felt at a distance to a practice of compassion as suffering with one another in solidarity has been achieved by the undocumented youth movement in the United States. It begins with an overview of the origins of the undocumented youth movement, followed by a discussion of their campaign for the rights of the country's undocumented young people, their campaign for the passage of the federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and their response to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) introduced by President Barack Obama. It also considers the movement's use of storytelling as testimony in their DREAM Act campaign and shows how compassion as solidarity and co-suffering can play an important role in enabling witness bearing and the building of a more inclusive and enduring resistance to suffering and social injustice.

Simone Weil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Simone Weil

Few of Giorgio Agamben’s works are as mysterious as his unpublished dissertation, reportedly on the political thought of the French philosopher Simone Weil. If Weil was an early subject of Agamben’s intellectual curiosity, it would appear – judging from his published works – that her influence upon him has been neither central nor lasting.1 Leland de la Durantaye argues that Weil’s work has left a mark on Agamben’s philosophy of potentiality, largely in his discussion of the concept of decreation; but de la Durantaye does not make much of Weil’s influence here, determining that her theory of decreation is ‘essentially dialectical’ and still too bound up with creation theology. 2 Alessia Ricciardi, however, argues that de la Durantaye’s dismissal of Weil’s influence is hasty.3 Ricciardi analyses deeper resonances between Weil’s and Agamben’s philosophies, ultimately claiming that Agamben ‘seems to extend many of the implications and claims of Weil’s idea of force’,4 arguably spreading Weil’s influence into Agamben’s reflections on sovereign power and bare life.

Iraq's Chemical Weapons Legacy: What Others Might Learn from Saddam

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Richard L. Russell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Weapon ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Nation States

Iraq's experience with chemical weapons provides ample lessons for nation-states looking to redress their conventional military shortcomings. Nation-states are likely to learn from Saddam that chemical weapons are useful for waging war against nation-states ill-prepared to fight on a chemical battlefield as well as against internal insurgents and rebellious civilians. Most significantly, nation-states studying Iraq's experience are likely to conclude that chemical weapons are not a “poor man's nuclear weapon” and that only nuclear weapons can deter potential adversaries including the United States.

Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Michael E. Harkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
European Contact ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Foundational Work

This article examines the first decades of the field of ethnohistory as it developed in the United States. It participated in the general rapprochement between history and anthropology of mid-twentieth-century social science. However, unlike parallel developments in Europe and in other research areas, ethnohistory specifically arose out of the study of American Indian communities in the era of the Indian Claims Commission. Thus ethnohistory developed from a pragmatic rather than a theoretical orientation, with practitioners testifying both in favor of and against claims. Methodology was flexible, with both documentary sources and ethnographic methods employed to the degree that each was feasible. One way that ethnohistory was innovative was the degree to which women played prominent roles in its development. By the end of the first decade, the field was becoming broader and more willing to engage both theoretical and ethical issues raised by the foundational work. In particular, the geographic scope began to reach well beyond North America, especially to Latin America, where archival resources and the opportunities for ethnographic research were plentiful, but also to areas such as Melanesia, where recent European contact allowed researchers to observe the early postcontact period directly and to address the associated theoretical questions with greater authority. Ethnohistory is thus an important example of a field of study that grew organically without an overarching figure or conscious plan but that nevertheless came to engage central issues in cultural and historical analysis.

India and Vietnam in the Indo-Pacific

2021 ◽  
pp. 097492842110049
Author(s):  
Sanjay Pulipaka ◽  
Libni Garg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Territorial Aggression ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Power Shift ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Common Position ◽  
Foreign Policy Strategies

The international order today is characterised by power shift and increasing multipolarity. Countries such as India and Vietnam are working to consolidate the evolving multipolarity in the Indo-Pacific. The article maps the convergences in the Indian and Vietnamese foreign policy strategies and in their approaches to the Indo-Pacific. Both countries confront similar security challenges, such as creeping territorial aggression. Further, India and Vietnam are collaborating with the United States and Japan to maintain a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. While Delhi and Hanoi agree on the need to reform the United Nations, there is still some distance to travel to find a common position on regional economic architectures. The India–Vietnam partnership demonstrates that nation-states will seek to define the structure of the international order and in this instance by increasing the intensity of multipolarity.

scholarly journals (In)coherent subjects? The politics of conceptualising resistance in the UK asylum system

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
Sarah M Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Grounding Resistance ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
The Uk

Many accounts of resistance within systems of migration control pivot upon a coherent migrant subject, one that is imbued with political agency and posited as oppositional to particular forms of sovereign power. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the role of creativity within the UK asylum system, I argue that grounding resistance with a stable, coherent and agentic subject, aligns with oppositional narratives (of power vs resistance), and thereby risks negating the entangled politics of the (in)coherence of subject formation, and how this can contain the potential to disrupt, disturb or interrupt the practices and premise of the UK asylum system. I suggest that charity groups and subjects should not be written out of narratives of resistance apriori because they engage with ‘the state’: firstly, because to argue that there is a particular form that resistance should take is to place limits around what counts as the political; and secondly, because to ‘remain oppositional’ is at odds with an (in)coherent subject. I show how accounts which highlight a messy and ambiguous subjectivity, could be bought into understandings of resistance. This is important because as academics, we too participate in the delineation of the political and what counts as resistance. In predetermining what subjects, and forms of political action count as resistance we risk denying recognition to those within this system.

scholarly journals Retirement Without God: Activism and Community Among Secular People Over 60

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 441-441
Author(s):  
Joseph Blankholm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Vast Literature

Abstract There are more than 1,400 nonbeliever communities in the United States and well over a dozen organizations that advocate for secular people on the national level. Together, these local and national groups comprise a social movement that includes atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other kinds of nonbelievers. Despite the fact that retired people over 60 dedicate most of the money and energy needed to run these groups, the increasingly vast literature on secular people and secularism has paid them almost no attention. Relying on more than one hundred interviews (including dozens with people over 60), several years of ethnographic research, and a survey of organized nonbelievers, this paper demonstrates the crucial role that people over 60 play in the American secular movement today. It also considers the reasons older adults are so important to these groups, the challenges they face in trying to recruit younger members and combat stereotypes about aging leadership, and generational differences that structure how various types of nonbeliever groups look and feel. This paper reframes scholarly understandings of very secular Americans by focusing on people over 60 and charts a new path in secular studies.

The practice of surrogacy as a phenomenon of ‘bare life’: An analysis of the Japanese case applying Agamben’s theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212096489
Author(s):  
Yoshie Yanagihara
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Surrogate Mothers ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Mothers And Children ◽  
History Of ◽  
Magazine Articles

This article elaborates the cultural and political structures that inform the belief among Japanese that surrogacy is legitimate. It argues that this belief reflects a transition from previously negative attitudes toward surrogacy practices developed in the United States. The article first elaborates the history of the Japanese recognition of surrogacy by introducing early forms of East Asian surrogacy that lasted until the first half of the 20th century. Second, it explores the recent shift in Japanese discussions about surrogacy through an analysis of cultural representations on the topic, mainly referring to a dataset of magazine articles published from 1981 to the present. The author then calls upon Giorgio Agamben’s theoretical framework to discuss the juridico-political perspective of ‘bare life’ as it relates to surrogacy, and argues that considering surrogate mothers and children conceived through surrogacy as bare life makes surrogate practice seem reasonable in modern Japanese society. To conclude, the article stresses the importance of incorporating women’s reproductive functions into law to prevent women and their conceived children from becoming bare life, and being exposed to violence, in the form of a surrogacy contract.

scholarly journals Ethnic Fundraising in America and the Irish and Lithuanian Wars of Independence, 1918–1923

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
R. J. C. Adams ◽  
Vaida Nikšaitė
Keyword(s):  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Bonds ◽  
First World

Abstract The close of the First World War signalled a proliferation of newly established nation-states across Europe. However, the unilateral proclamations of these states’ independence did not guarantee their international recognition, nor did it guarantee their financial viability. This article examines the funding of two such states: the unrecognized Lithuanian (1919–23) and Irish (1919–21) republics. Both funded their wars of independence by selling ‘war bonds’ to their respective diasporas in the United States; the Lithuanians raising almost $1.9m from c. 28,000 subscribers and the Irish raising $5.8m from c. 300,000 subscribers. Communication between the organizers of these bond drives was virtually non-existent, but following the example of the US Liberty Loans they employed remarkably similar tactics. Yet, issued by self-proclaimed nation-states with neither territorial integrity nor a credible history of borrowing, the Lithuanian and Irish war bonds promised a return only when the states had received international recognition. In this sense, they were examples of what the authors term Pre-Sovereign Debt. Practically, they were a focal point for agitation for governmental recognition and rousing of American public opinion. Symbolically, they were tangible representations of the Lithuanian and Irish pretensions to statehood.

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