scholarly journals The Irony of Michael Novak

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Menno R. Kamminga
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Fossil Energy ◽  
Democratic Capitalism ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Dangerous Climate Change ◽  
Political Economic

The late influential American intellectual Michael Novak was a self-declared devotee of Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the foremost twentieth-century American theologian. Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) was an attempt to fill the political-economic lacuna in Niebuhr’s thought. The present article offers a Niebuhrian irony–focused response to Novak’s democratic capitalism in view of climate change as probably the greatest threat facing humanity. Novak quite successfully extended Niebuhrian ideas into a theology-based vision of democratic capitalism as the only political-economic system effective in widely lifting people out of poverty. Yet he failed to acknowledge human-induced climate change as beyond reasonable doubt and rooted in the predominantly American invention of a fossil energy–based capitalist political economy. This article’s thesis is that Novak’s democratic capitalism entails Niebuhrian irony: the virtue it displays about resources becomes a vice due to Novak’s irresponsible post–Spirit of Democratic Capitalism attempt to represent democratic capitalism as innocent of any dangerous climate-change implications.

The Political Economy of Attention

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Axel Pedersen ◽  
Kristoffer Albris ◽  
Nick Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Online Publication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Political Economic

Attention has become an issue of intense political, economic, and moral concern over recent years: from the commodification of attention by digital platforms to the alleged loss of the attentional capacities of screen-addicted children (and their parents). While attention has rarely been an explicit focus of anthropological inquiry, it has still played an important if mostly tacit part in many anthropological debates and subfields. Focusing on anthropological scholarship on digital worlds and ritual forms, we review resources for colleagues interested in this burgeoning topic of research and identify potential avenues for an incipient anthropology of attention, which studies how attentional technologies and techniques mold human minds and bodies in more or less intentional ways. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Neokoloniale Strukturen in der internationalen Klimapolitik

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Political Economic

Climate change is not just one of the main problems of this century, it rather is a matter of justice: It was particularly caused by western industrialized countries and now hits all states bit by bit – regardless of the question of guilt. The author studies how states struggle for solutions and binding rules at the annual Climate Change conferences and which of the proposals have prevailed. Using approaches of the postcolonial theory, she examines which power relations that are tracing back to colonialism still exist at the political, economic and epistemic level.

Social-media-weaponised populism and community development

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Jacques Boulet
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter assesses the resurfacing of populism and its much-discussed and documented adoption and enactment by leaders and citizens. More specifically, it discusses reasons for this (re-)emergence and its effects on people's daily lives and their participation in community life against the wider political-economic background, two areas central to much community development theory and practice. The first question posed is: what is going on with and around people — especially their modalities of 'being' and 'relating' — rendering them more 'prone' to being influenced by populisms and become populisms' 'accomplices'? Second, what role does social media play in this imposition/complicity dialectic? Indeed, social media powerfully invades and interpenetrates all levels and processes of the political economy, of people's everyday experiences and their subjective-affective lives, and they infest the mediating institutions operating 'between' the virtual global and the imperceptible here and now. Finally, a third question is posed: what is the effect of such socially mediated populism on communities and on efforts to (re)develop and maintain them? The chapter concludes with some ideas about ways to resist the (combined) assault of populism and social media and restart the project of democracy.

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