Labouring for Kashmir’s azadi: Ongoing violence and resistance in Maisuma, Srinagar

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
Sarbani Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Central Area ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

While much has been said about the historicity of the Kashmir conflict or about how individuals and communities have resisted occupation and demanded the right to self-determination, much less has been said about nature of everyday life under these conditions. This article offers a glimpse of life in the working-class neighbourhood of Maisuma, located in the central area of the city of Srinagar, and its engagement with the political movement for azadi (freedom). I argue that the predicament of ‘double interminability’ characterises life in Maisuma—the interminable violence by the state on the one hand and simultaneously the constant call of labouring for azadi by the movement on the other, since the terms of peace are unacceptable.

scholarly journals City of Nostalgia: The Semiotics of Urban Retrotopias

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Massimo Leone
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Administrative Region ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Administrative Region ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Abstract The Casa da Nostalgia, or “Nostalgic house,” in the Taipa area of the special administrative region of Macau, is a museum devoted to temporary exhibitions reconstructing everyday life in the city, especially in the epoch of Portuguese ruling. Just opposite the museum, on the other side of a large pond, a giant casino, the Venetian Macau, reproduces Venice both with its external architecture and its interior design. The article analyzes these two urban settings in order to develop a semiotic understanding of as many ways of symbolically reconstructing cities. On the one hand, cities can be reconstructed in a nostalgic form; the essay inquires on the origin and the consequences of urban nostalgia; on the other hand, cities can be reconstructed as ersatz. The article further investigates the dialectics between predominantly temporal or prevailingly spatial urban reconstructions, with reference to the socio-cultural dynamics that have changed Macau in the last decades. The article concludes with the methodological suggestion that the study of urban re-constructions requires the combined efforts of several disciplines, jointly investigating why, how, but also to what effect cities are re-built.

scholarly journals SUNG POEMS AND POETIC SONGS: HELLENISTIC DEFINITIONS OF POETRY, MUSIC AND THE SPACES IN BETWEEN

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 597-615
Author(s):  
Spencer A. Klavan
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Simply by formulating a question about the nature of ancient Greek poetry or music, any modern English speaker is already risking anachronism. In recent years especially, scholars have reminded one another that the words ‘music’ and ‘poetry’ denote concepts with no easy counterpart in Greek. μουσική in its broadest sense evokes not only innumerable kinds of structured movement and sound but also the political, psychological and cosmic order of which song, verse and dance are supposed to be perceptible manifestations. Likewise, ποίησις and the ποιητικὴ τέχνη can encompass all kinds of ‘making’, from the assembly of a table to the construction of a rhetorical argument. Of course, there were specifically artistic usages of these terms—according to Plato, ‘musical and metrical production’ was the default meaning of ποίησις in everyday speech. But even in discussions which restrict themselves to the sphere of human art, we find nothing like the neat compartmentalization of harmonized rhythmic melody on the one hand, and stylized verbal composition on the other, which is often casually implied or expressly formulated in modern comparisons of ‘music’ with ‘poetry’. For many ancient theorists the City Dionysia, a dithyrambic festival and a recitation of Homer all featured different versions of one and the same form of composition, a μουσική or ποιητική to which λόγοι, γράμματα and συλλαβαί were just as essential as ἁρμονία, φθόγγοι, ῥυθμός and χρόνοι.

scholarly journals Towards a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Kitchin
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
The Public ◽  
Alternative Future ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Smart Urbanism

This paper considers, following David Harvey (1973), how to produce a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism. It does so through utilising a future-orientated lens to sketch out the kinds of work required to reimagine, reframe and remake smart cities. I argue that, on the one hand, there is a need to produce an alternative ‘future present’ that shifts the anticipatory logics of smart cities to that of addressing persistent inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination, and is rooted in notions of fairness, equity, ethics and democracy. On the other hand, there is a need to disrupt the ‘present future’ of neoliberal smart urbanism, moving beyond minimal politics to enact sustained strategic, public-led interventions designed to create more-inclusive smart city initiatives. Both tactics require producing a deeply normative vision for smart cities that is rooted in ideas of citizenship, social justice, the public good, and the right to the city that needs to be developed in conjunction with citizens.

The Death of an Idea: Political, Historical, and Poetic Visions of Hasidism

2005 ◽  
pp. 228-248
Author(s):  
Marcin Wodziński
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Degenerate Form ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
The One ◽  
Poetic Visions

This chapter addresses the ideological crisis among Polish Jewish integrationists at the start of the twentieth century. One of the signs of departure from the old ideological line was the rapidly changing attitude to hasidism. On the one hand, politically involved journalists such as Nachum Sokołów saw a new political threat in the hasidic movement and called for an alliance of all non-hasidic political forces against this group. On the other hand, from the mid-1890s, it became more and more common to idealize the hasidic past, to see the movement as the fascinating creation of folk mysticism, a depository of authentic Jewish folklore, and above all an excellent literary theme. These two attitudes, although they seemed contradictory, frequently coexisted. Usually, they were evident in the belief that the good and beautiful teachings of the fathers of hasidism were later distorted by the tsadikim and had led to the contemporary degenerate form of the political movement. The great interest in the origins of the movement was undoubtedly an attempt to escape contemporary reality and, at the same time, to escape the confrontational attitudes of the maskilim. This was obviously the result of changes in European writings that took place at the turn of the century in relation to the historiographic, philosophical, and literary portrayal of hasidism.

Aristophanes and the events of 411

1977 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 112-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan H. Sommerstein
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

The dates of performance of Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusae are still not generally agreed. The most widely accepted opinion is perhaps that of Wilamowitz, that Lysistrata was produced at the Lenaia and Thesmophoriazusae at the City Dionysia in the same year, 411 B.C. But both Schmid and Gelzer, in their authoritative works on Aristophanes, have given reasons for reversing these assignments and putting Th. first; Russo holds that both plays were produced on the same occasion; and Rhodes has recently revived the view—which goes back to Dobree and beyond—that Th. is to be dated to 410, during the régime of the Five Thousand.The one unequivocal and undisputed datum we have comes from Hypothesis I to Lys., which tells us that that play was produced in the archonship of Kallias (412/1). Further information can be elicited from a variety of sources:(1) statements by scholiasts giving the date, relative to one of the plays, of an event whose date is independently known;(2) references (or, less safely, failures to refer) in the plays themselves to datable events;(3) references to the season of the year at which the performance took place;(4) considerations of the type of play more likely to have been produced at one or the other festival;(5) references in one play to the other;(6) the political, military and diplomatic conditions, movements, prospects and attitudes reflected in the plays, considered with reference to contemporary events.

scholarly journals SIDSTE PAS DE TROIS I GENÉVE: En dans for tre i FN’s saloner, hvor værten fører

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Kvaale
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Cultural Relativity ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Different Levels

Katja Kvaale: Last pas de trois in Geneva: a dance for three in the UN saloons with the host leading the dance The purpose of this article is twofold. Taking its point of departure in empirical examples from the 1993 Session of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva, the article attempts partly to analyse how indigenous peoples operate in the UN system, and partly to examine how this touches on classical anthropological notions such as peoplehood, nationhood and culture as distinet and continuous units. It is argued that most of the indigenous inputs at the UNWGIP can be heard as persistent reactions against the member states’ questioning their peoplehood and consequent rights to self-determination. However, it is not the idea to deconstruct the notion of the modem nation State altogether, nor to imply a radical cultural relativity, but rather to establish that the UN is confronting a global reality somewhat more complex than individuals and nation- states. In stating that the right to self-determination is separate from and prior to international law - it has been there since time immemorial - the indigenous representatives are tuming the legal logic of the UN upside down. From their perspective it is thus not a matter of being endowed with rights from a magnanimous UN, but rather a latecoming making up for the wrongdoings of half a millennium. Meanwhile, in asserting cultural continuity and distinetiveness in their politicized self-representation, indigenous peoples are catching anthropology off-guard and without foothold amidst the debris of its recently abandoned paradigms. Ironically, in the case of indigenous peoples the discipline is seemingly facing the incamation of the very notions and concepts just ditched: the exotification of the other, the radical us/them or West/the Rest distinetions, the Levi- Straussian „cold“ timelessness i.e. „conservative" rejection of modemity and development, culture as partly reified and self-sufficient units etc. However, rather than a morally based rejecting attitude towards this phenomenon the discipline would benefit from facing the great theoretical and analytical challenge that lies behind it. Although indigenous peoples and anthropologists are now operating within the same frame of reference to a far higher degree than was the case 25 years ago, it can still prove worthwhile to distinguish between the different levels on which culture is dealt with at different times. Hence, a potential clash between indigenous politieized „authentic culture" on the one hånd and scientific deconstruction of „true culture" on the other can be avoided.

scholarly journals Problem eutanazji w ujęciu Roberta Spaemanna

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-73
Author(s):  
Józef Kożuchowski
Keyword(s):  
Living Will ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Passive Euthanasia ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Robert Spaemann

The problem of euthanasia as seen by Robert SpaemannThe main aim of the article is to present some aspects of euthanasia in the perspective of Robert Spaemann—one of the most significant contemporary German thinkers. First of all, the paradox of the right to euthanasia derived from one’s own decision is pointed out. It is illustrated by the practice of legalising these acts in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. On the one hand, such acts are to be motivated by our personal right to self-determination, but on the other, relevant decisions are taken by a doctor. Ultimately, the law protects the doctor, not the patient. Next, the nature of two main types of euthanasia is discussed and defined: active euthanasia and passive euthanasia. Also, an attempt is made to show the inevitable consequences of the right to kill oneself by answering the question whether the right to euthanasia breeds a sense of duty. Finally, a polemic between Robert Spaemann and Peter Singer is presented, which gives us an opportunity to see the three fundamental differences between these philosophers in their views on the problem of the so-called good death.The author of the article emphasizes that the patient’s living will, introduced in Germany in 2009 Patientenverfugung, may indirectly imply consent to passive euthanasia, which is omitted in specialist literature. He then indicates the specificity of the philosophical argumentation of the eminent thinker against euthanasia. He also highlights two aspects of Spaemann’s discussion with Singer: one concerns the downward spiral argument which undermines the legitimacy of euthanasia legalisation, and the other distinguishes two ways of abandoning the treatment if a person faces death.

Implementing Indigenous Self-Determination

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-137
Author(s):  
Rauna Kuokkanen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Right ◽  
Women’S Views

Indigenous self-government is the political theory and practice of the right to self-determination. It is a political arrangement that enables a group to govern themselves according to their own will and through their own institutions. This chapter considers the degree of Indigenous self-determination in the three regions through participant discussions. In spite of increasing participation of Indigenous women in formal politics and their involvement in self-determination struggles from the outset, literature and scholarship especially from a comparative perspective on Indigenous women’s views on self-government remains next to nonexistent. Yet there are a number of similarities globally between Indigenous women’s struggles for political voice, representation, and rights and against the imposition and internalization of colonial patriarchal policies and laws. This chapter fills the gap by examining Indigenous women’s views on the current efforts of implementing indigenous self-determination and the ways in which the efforts have a connection to the everyday life of individuals. It begins with Greenland, with the most extensive self-government arrangements, and concludes with the Sámi Parliaments, whose authority is largely limited to consultation with the state and administration of state funding to Sámi language and culture.

Laïcité du système scolaire français en Tunisie: autonomie cultuelle ou abstention religieuse?

2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Émilie Pontanier
Keyword(s):  
Educational System ◽  
School System ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The author discusses the political and legal implications of French secularism in an Islamic context. To this purpose, she focuses on the French educational system in Tunisia, which allows the distinction between public and private spheres to be emphasized. By way of a discursive analysis of conversations with parents who school their children there, the author shows that the school system strengthens, on the one hand, the religious autonomy of families and, on the other hand, religious abstention. Secularism is therefore analyzed as a vector of religious resistance in the face of the transformation of Tunisian society in that it promotes a modern or “moderate” Islam and recognizes the right to be atheist.

Religion and the state in contemporary Arab society: theoretically, practically and prospectively†

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-523
Author(s):  
Abdelilah Belkeziz
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Main Factor

Through an examination of the different types of relationships between religion and the state, this article argues that the two extremes of this relationship – namely, the case whereby the state exploits religion and the one where it tries to banish it – ultimately lead to the emergence of political Islam as a reaction. Political Islam can be seen as employing religion to gain political power, hence reinforcing the worldly aspects and self-interest of a certain group at the expense of intellectual, ethical and doctrinal considerations. Practically speaking, political Islam has pushed the idea of an Islamic state to suicidal theocratic ends. The main factor behind the ascent of Islamists to political power is the political vacuum resulting from the retreat of the left, added to absolute obstructionism in the political domain. In an attempt to redeem religion and the state in contemporary Arab society and end the struggle between Islamists and secularists, four suggestions are presented: (1) recognition of the right of any political movement to derive its basic ethos from religion, or religious heritage, on condition that this is considered a personal endeavour rather than a religious issue; (2) stressing the civil nature of all parties, whether secular or religious; (3) respecting the civil nature of the state; and (4) abiding by the democratic circulation of power. In sum, a revitalization of the modern state system is inevitable.

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