The sociological canon reconfigured: Empire, colonial critique, and contemporary sociology

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 545-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaheed Al-Hardan
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Contemporary Sociology ◽  
The World ◽  
Structural Relations ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Important Shift

The essay reviews three books that were published consecutively in the last three years, and argues that they represent an important shift in sociology that could potentially reconfigure the discipline and the discipline’s theoretical canon. This is because these books make the modern experience of European empires, colonialism, and, in many instances, incomplete decolonization central to sociology. They also question the discipline’s origin narratives and these narratives’ implications in colonial modernity. Thus, the books hold up a mirror reflecting back onto the discipline of sociology its own implication in European empires and colonization and demonstrate how sociology’s imperial episteme continues to shape the discipline today. This article reviews these books and focuses on how they engage in the double task of the deconstruction of sociology’s complicity in empire and the construction of a colonial critique-centered sociology. This is a sociology, the essay argues, which is invested in analyzing structural relations of power in view of the legacies of empire and colonialism. It is also one that asks questions relevant to contemporary realities for the purposes of effecting political change in the world.

Moment's Monument

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Hecker
Keyword(s):  
Art World ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Single Culture ◽  
Modern Sculpture ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
Artistic Heritage

Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and work. An innovative sculptor, photographer, and draftsman, Rosso was vital in paving the way for the transition from the academic forms of sculpture that persisted in the nineteenth century to the development of new and experimental forms in the twentieth century. His antimonumental, antiheroic work reflected alienation in the modern experience yet showed deep feeling for interactions between self and other. Rosso's art was transnational: he refused allegiance to a single culture or artistic heritage and declared himself both a citizen of the world and a maker of art without national limits. This book develops a narrative that is an alternative to the dominant Franco-centered perspective on the origin of modern sculpture in which Rodin plays the role of lone heroic innovator. Offering an original way to comprehend Rosso, the book negotiates the competing cultural imperatives of nationalism and internationalism that shaped the European art world at the fin de siècle.

Surviving Desire: Reading Ḥāfiz̤ in Colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Ali Altaf Mian
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
The World ◽  
Mystical Theology

Abstract This article contributes to scholarship on Muslim humanities, Islam in modern South Asia, and the Urdu literary tradition in colonial India. It does so by contextualizing and closely reading Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī’s (1863–1943) commentary on the Dīvān of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Ḥāfiz̤. Unlike his modernist contemporaries, Ashraf ʿAlī does not read Ḥāfiz̤ through the prisms of social reform or anti-colonial nationalist struggle. Rather, in his capacity as a Sufi master, he approaches Ḥāfiz̤’s Dīvān as a mystical text in order to generate insights through which he counsels his disciples. He uses the commentary genre to explore Sufi themes such as consolation, contraction, annihilation, subsistence, and the master-disciple relational dynamic. His engagement with Ḥāfiz̤’s ġhazals enables him to elaborate a practical mystical theology and to eroticize normative devotional rituals. Yet the affirmation of an analogical correspondence between sensual and divine love on the part of Ashraf ʿAlī also implies the survival of Ḥāfiz̤’s emphases on the disposability of the world and intoxicated longing for the beloved despite the demands of colonial modernity.

scholarly journals From Unspeakability to Inequality Talk: Why Conversations about Inequalities May Not Lead to Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Marie Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Consistent Feature ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
Cultural And Creative Industries ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Important Shift

This article draws on eighteen qualitative in-depth interviews with female, early-career classical musicians to investigate if, and if so in which ways, recent discourse around the lack of diversity in the classical music profession has affected how young musicians talk about inequalities in the field of classical music. The article demonstrates that the research participants were aware of ongoing inequalities and discussed them openly. This marks an important shift from previously conducted research, which highlighted the ‘unspeakability’ of inequalities in the classical music profession and the cultural and creative industries. By drawing on discursive psychology, this article explores the rhetorical and ideological work that such ‘inequality talk’ performs, arguing that conversations about inequalities do not necessarily lead to political change. Divided into three analytical sections, the article demonstrates that inequality talk can become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end (such as political change); that a fatalist sentiment can characterise discussions of inequalities, presenting structural change as unachievable; and that acknowledgement and recognition of privilege, crucial to overcoming inequalities, is not a consistent feature of inequality talk, which in turn risks reinforcing the normativity of whiteness and middle-classness in the field of classical music. Overall, the article provides a detailed analysis of recently collected empirical data to caution against overly optimistic accounts of the shift towards a more open discussion of inequalities in the classical music profession and beyond.

Trusteeship Council

2008 ◽  
pp. 148-159
Author(s):  
Ralph Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Caribbean

This article examines the Trusteeship Council, a principal organ whose work was essential to the settlement arising from World War II. It involved establishing procedures for the independence of the defeated powers' colonies. This article details the pioneering efforts of the UN at facilitating the decolonization of trust territories. This is part of the world organization's contribution to the processes of self-determination for peoples in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. It also reveals that the work of the Trusteeship Council was linked to what may have been the most important political change of the twentieth century.

“All the World Was America”

2018 ◽  
pp. 20-43
Author(s):  
Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Process And Outcome ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

Though ubiquitous in contemporary political discourse, the trope of “security” is under-historicized. Countering ahistorical accounts of “post-9/11” political-economic order, this chapter situates the contemporary manifestation and twentieth-century evolution of security rhetoric and practice within the long history of colonial modernity at large. It proceeds through an examination of three elemental relations: security and property, security and race, and security and emergency. The security state emerges to guarantee the process and outcome of capitalist accumulation, in the colony as in the metropole. The securing of private property is enabled by and in turn reinforces race thinking and practice. And the enactment of emergency or exception legitimates the preemptive and punitive violence of the security state.

Sucker Nation and Santa Claus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dayna L. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Santa Claus ◽  
National Debate ◽  
The World ◽  
Second World ◽  
Important Shift ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

This chapter focuses on the wartime congressional experience, which reflected an important shift in American foreign policy. During the Second World War, support for deep American engagement with the world, once confined to a narrow circle of internationalist elites, replaced isolationism as the dominant paradigm in American political discourse. The long debates and introduction of bills on postwar foreign policy in Congress during the summer and fall of 1943 revealed a sea change toward congressional support for an active postwar foreign policy and extensive commitments around the world. This change in Congress reflected the shift in American opinion as the isolationists and noninterventionists lost the national debate on the country's future.

Em Sokha and Cambodian Satirical Cartoons

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marston
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Press ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Grotesque

AbstractThe article examines the work of one Cambodian satirical cartoonist, Em Sokha, in the context of the historical background of cartooning in Cambodia and the developments in Cambodian print media since 1979. In particular, it looks at how Em Sokha's work has evolved in relation to alternating periods of freedom and control over the press during times of dramatic political change. It explores the implications of Em Sokha's use of distortion and the grotesque to express the violence of relations of power.

John Hazard: The Vagaries of Political Change

1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-9
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Federal Structure

The big news is no news. I mean the new constitution that, presumably, is going to define the official relationship between the federal structure and the republic structure. It is being drafted by a constitutional drafting committee consisting of some very distinguished persons. But so far they have not been able to produce a draft, at least not a draft that has been published for the rest of the world to see. They probably have one in their own office.

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