Labour, Efficiency, Critique: writing the plantation into the technological present-future

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110654
Author(s):  
Stefan Ouma ◽  
Saumya Premchander
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Caribbean Studies ◽  
Global History ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Analytical Category ◽  
Geographical Scope

In this commentary, we call upon critical labour scholars, including labour geographers, to feature what sociologist Palmer called the ‘thrust of efficiency’ more centrally in their work. We put forth that the push for efficiency, as made possible by digital technology, needs to be analysed in terms of its historical lineage as well as in terms of its geographical scope. Centreing efficiency in critical labour studies, necessitates three scholarly moves. These are particularly relevant for labour geography, a field that has so far tended to circumvent questions of coloniality/labour, digital Taylorism, and the politics of (re-)writing economic geographies, in by-passing the literatures that deal with them. The plantation, an analytical category and ontic reality that stretches across several yet often unconnected bodies of literature – literary studies, Black Geographies, Caribbean studies, and the Black Radical Tradition, as well as in Global History – is central to our effort. Eventually, writing the plantation into the technological present-future can be the starting point for a larger and historico-geographically informed critique, in economic geography and beyond, of efficiency, a mode of thinking-cum-praxis based on input–output calculations, objectifying practices, violent value extraction and the removal of undesired ‘social frictions’ for the sake of capital accumulation.

V. M. ZHIRMUNSKY AS A FOLKLORIST. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY METHODS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-128
Author(s):  
Anna I. Kovalevskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Successful Search ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Further Development

The article considers the main stages in formation of the method for the comparative historical typology the first steps of which were made by A.N. Veselovsky in the second half of the 19 th century. For example, the point elaborated upon in “Historical Poetics” concerning consequential evolution of genres and poetic forms that reflect social reality became the starting point for the further development of that method. Work in this direction was continued later on by V.M. Zhirmunsky. At the beginning of his career in academia he dwelled upon the issues of literary theory and – while keeping “Historical Poetics” in high regard – continued Veselovsky’s work in the field of literary studies. However, turning to folklore material, he managed to develop the basic principles of the comparative historical method: first of all, he had analysed and systematised the extensive epic material, what allowed him to reveal in the folklore work the national and the general, for the successful search and analysis of which the method was necessary. The author analysis of the works of Zhirmunsky, that contain his main ideas, and considers not only his suggestions on how to work with folk material, and also the features of the comparative typological method, as well as the development of Zhirmunsky’s ideas in the works of his students, followers and scientists who came to a similar result on their own (for example, V.Ya. Propp) and influenced further refinement of the methods of comparative typology.

scholarly journals Potential and Actual Cognitive-Emotional Engagement with Characters: A Response to Michael Whitenton and Bonnie Howe & Eve Sweetser

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 530-550
Author(s):  
Ralf Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Potential Reading ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

Abstract This article addresses the contributions by Michael Whitenton, and Bonnie Howe and Eve Sweetser, in the present volume. I endorse all three contributors’ use of cognitive-linguistic approaches, highlighting their helpfulness for the reconstruction of frames that shape the reading experience of audiences located in different historical and cultural contexts. The two chapters meticulously trace the complexity and dynamics of understanding exemplary biblical characters. I emphasise that the level of attention to linguistic detail displayed by cognitive stylistics is a desideratum for a reader-oriented analysis of a text’s potential reading effects. At the same time, I question some assumptions in cognitive linguistics concerning the cognitive-emotional processes real readers are actually likely to perform. The two chapters serve as a starting point for me to discuss general tendencies in recent cognitive and empirical literary studies, which have perhaps overstated the intensity and impact of some processes, while overlooking others that may be just as important.

An unlevel playing field: national income estimates and reciprocal comparison in global economic history

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Jerven
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
National Income ◽  
Global History ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies

AbstractIf we take recent income per capita estimates at face value, they imply that the average medieval European was at least five times ‘better off’ than the average Congolese today. This raises important questions regarding the meaning and applicability of national income estimates throughout time and space, and their use in the analysis of global economic history over the long term. This article asks whether national income estimates have a historical and geographical specificity that renders the ‘data’ increasingly unsuitable and misleading when assessed outside a specific time and place. Taking the concept of ‘reciprocal comparison’ as a starting point, it further questions whether national income estimates make sense in pre-and post-industrial societies, in decentralized societies, and in polities outside the temperate zone. One of the major challenges in global history is Eurocentrism. Resisting the temptation to compare the world according to the most conventional development measure might be a recommended step in overcoming this bias.

Towards a Critical Geography of Gambling Spaces: The Australian Experience

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Young
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
The State ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Community Benefit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Australian Experience ◽  
Gaming Machines

I attempt to develop a critical geography of gambling in Australia with particular reference to the proliferation of electronic gaming machines (EGMs), the Australian variant of the Vegas-style ‘slot-machine’, devices that have infiltrated nearly all settlements in the country over the past two decades. As a starting point, I borrow from David Harvey's analysis of the dual logics of power within ‘capitalist imperialism’ to reveal the dialectical relations between the state and capital that have been responsible for the mass-production of local EGM spaces of consumption. I develop the argument that EGM gambling, through its reproduction of bounded spaces, represents a new wave of global capital accumulation where local citizens are reconstituted according to the imperative of global aleatory consumption. The overlay of the postmodern on the logic of capital accumulation amounts to a stunningly efficient form of exploitation where consumption has been reduced to the pure cash nexus. A new set of dependencies has emerged in that the state, social service sector, and gambling industry have become terminally reliant on the most disadvantaged members of society to resolve their internal contradictions. Thus, there exists a continued need for capital and the state to resolve the contradictions between the consumer and citizen, modern and postmodern, leisure and harm, private sector income and public service provision, local markets and global products, individual harm and community benefit. Given this dialectical relationship between state and industry, and the level of dependency its development has engendered, we may expect the continued expansion of EGM gambling spaces as long as capital accumulation is the key goal in the neoliberal economy of Australia.

WHAT IF PAUL HAD TRAVELLED EAST RATHER THAN WEST?

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
North And South

AbstractFor first-century Jews the eastern disapora was at least as important as the western. When Paul returned from Arabia (Nabatea) to Damascus, his intention was to travel east from Damascus to Mesopotamia, where the synagogue communities, descendants of the original exiles of both northern and southern tribes of Israel, would have been his starting point for mission to the Gentiles of the area. But when he escaped arrest by the Nabatean ethnarc, Nabatean control of the trade routes south and east of Damascus left him no choice but to travel to Jerusalem, where he re-thought the geographical scope of his mission. Had Paul travelled east, the Christian communities of both north and south Mesopotamia might have flourished already in the first century and Paul's writings might have had more influence on Syriac theology. Considering how Christianity in the Roman Empire would have developed without Paul entails rejecting such exaggerated views of Paul's significance as that Paul invented Christianity or that without Paul Christianity would have remained a Jewish sect. The Gentile mission began without Paul and took place in areas, such as Rome and Egypt, which were not evangelized by Paul. Without Paul much would have been different about the way the early Christian movement would have spread across the Roman Empire, but it would still have spread, with much the same long-term effects.

The Sticky Temptation of Poetry

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kári Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Animal Presence

AbstractSometime around 1900, a fundamental shift occurred in the way animals were represented in works of Western literature, art, and philosophy. Authors began to write about animals in a way that was unheard-of or even unimaginable in previous epochs. Traditionally, animals had fulfilled a symbolic, allegorical, or satirical function. But in the period around the turn of the twentieth century these animals begin, as it were, to »misbehave« or to »resist« the metaphorical values attributed to them. There is a conspicuous abundance of animals in the literature of this period, and this animal presence is frequently characterised by a profound and troubling ambiguity, which is often more or less explicitly linked to the problem of writing, representation, and language – specifically poetic or metaphorical language.Taking the Austrian literary scholar Oskar Walzel’s 1918 essay »Neue Dichtung vom Tiere« as its starting point, this essay explores the historical and philosophical background of this paradigm shift as well as its implications for the study of animals in literature more generally. Zoopoetics is both an object of study in its own right and a specific methodological and disciplinary problem for literary animal studies: what can the study of animals can contribute to literary studies and vice versa? What can literary animal studies tell us about literature that conventional literary studies might otherwise be blind to? Although animals abound in the literature of almost every geographical area and historical period, traditional literary criticism has been marked by the tendency to disregard this ubiquitous animal presence in literary texts, or else a single-minded determination to read animals exclusively as metaphors and symbols for something else, in short as »animal imagery«, which, as Margot Norris writes, »presupposes the use of the concrete to express the abstract, and indeed, it seem[s] that nowhere in literature [are] animals to be allowed to be themselves« (Norris 1985, 17). But what does it mean for literary theory and criticism to allow animals to »be themselves«? Is it possible to resist the tendency to press animals »into symbolic service« (ibid.) as metaphors and allegories for the human, whilst also avoiding a naïve literalism with respect to the literary animal?The pervasive uneasiness regarding the metaphorical conception of the animal within recent scholarship in animal studies stems from a more general suspicion that such a conception serves ultimately to assimilate the animal to a fundamentally logocentric discourse and hence to reduce »animal problems to a principle that functions within the

scholarly journals USING SATELLITE DATA FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ANALYSIS IN ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE CASE OF MONGOLIA

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B8 ◽  
pp. 805-811
Author(s):  
A. Tungalag ◽  
R. Tsolmon ◽  
L. Ochirkhuyag ◽  
J. Oyunjargal
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Satellite Data ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Optimal Growth ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Solow Model ◽  
Degraded Land ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Starting Point

The Mongolian economy is based on the primary and secondary economic sectors of agriculture and industry. In addition, minerals and mining become a key sector of its economy. The main mining resources are gold, copper, coal, fluorspar and steel. However, the environment and green economy is one of the big problems among most of the countries and especially for countries like Mongolia where the mining is major part of economy; it is a number one problem. The research of the work tested how environmental elements effect to current Mongolian economic growth, which is growing economy because of mining sector. <br><br> The study of economic growth but the starting point for any study of economic growth is the neoclassical growth model emphasizing the role of capital accumulation. The growth is analysed either in terms of models with exogenous saving rates (the Solow-Swan model), or models where consumption and hence savings are determined by optimizing individuals. These are the so-called optimal growth or Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans. The study extends the Solow model and the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model, including environmental elements which are satellite data determine to degraded land and vegetation value from 1995 to 2013. In contrast, we can see the degraded land area increases from 1995 (4856&thinsp;m<sup>2</sup>) to 2013 (10478&thinsp;m<sup>2</sup>) and vegetation value decrease at same time. <br><br> A description of the methodology of the study conducted follows together with the data collected and econometric estimations and calibration with environmental elements.

scholarly journals One Step Back, Two Steps Ahead

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-43
Author(s):  
Tobias Franke
Keyword(s):  
European Security ◽  
It Use ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
One Step ◽  
European Security Strategy ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
It Structure ◽  
The Eu

By analyzing the European Security Strategy (ESS) this paper identifies five underlying key tensions which evolve around the questions: what are the threats the EU is facing, how (if at all) will it use force to counter these threats, what precisely are the objectives and interests Brussels seeks to achieve and defend and what capabilities does the EU need for these ends, how will it structure its interaction with the US/NATO, and what is the realm – the geographical scope – of the EU‘s security ambitions? The paper is well aware of the interlinkage of these questions but chooses geography as a starting point of analysis.

scholarly journals Our Digital Mirror

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-94
Author(s):  
Erich Prem
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Information Resources ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Starting Point

AbstractThe digital world has a strong tendency to let everything in its realm appear as resources. This includes digital public discourse and its main creators, humans. In the digital realm, humans constitute the economic end and at the same time provide the means to fulfill that end. A good example is the case of online public discourse. It exemplifies a range of challenges from user abuse to amassment of power, difficulties in regulation, and algorithmic decision-making. At its root lies the untamed perception of humans as economic and information resources. In this way, digital technology provides us with a mirror that shows a side of what we are as humans. It also provides a starting point to discuss such questions as who would we like to be – including digitally, which purpose should we pursue, and how can we live the digital good life?

Fashioning culture: Transforming perspectives from Oceania

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Kalissa Alexeyeff ◽  
Geir Henning Presterudstuen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Clothing Style ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Analytical Category ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
The Relationship

In this introductory article we discuss what might be gained from examining more familiar areas of anthropological research such as cloth, dress or material culture through fashion as an analytical category and, in turn, how insights from Pacific clothing cultures can broaden understandings of fashion. Our aim is to unsettle the ethnographic gaze that is often brought to bear on non-western cultures of fashion, cloth, clothing, style and innovation. Fashion, as we conceive of it, spans from the physical production and design of garments and objects to everyday appearances, the desire to be ‘in vogue’ and the consumption of aesthetic objects that are considered popular. From this starting point we move analyses of fashion from the systemic to the experiential, reflecting ethnographic sensitivity to everyday embodied practice and the constant political and creative negotiation of values and norms that takes place in quotidian social relations. We situate these analyses in a region that is often perceived to be at the very edge of the world economy and invite further discussion about the relationship between fashion and the global flow of people, ideas and commodities.

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