Theorizing alternatives to capital

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry K Gills ◽  
James Goodman ◽  
S A Hamed Hosseini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Global South ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Political Program ◽  
Global North ◽  
Systems Of Domination ◽  
New Framework

We are living in an era of multiple crises, multiple social resistances, and multiple cosmopolitanisms. The post-Cold War context has generated a plethora of movements, but no single unifying ideology or global political program has yet materialized. The historical confrontation between capital and its alternatives, however, continues to pose new possibilities for social and systemic transformations. Critical analysis of ideological divisions among today’s diverse emancipatory and transformative movements is important in order to understand past and present shortcomings, and many continuing difficulties in imagining crisis-free alternative futures. Inspired by a multiplicity of responses from the Global South and the Global North, and by furthering Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanist approach, this article aims to create a new framework for interpreting ‘transformative visions’ that challenge systems of domination embedded in capitalist social relations. The framework is designed to enable the evaluative analysis of such visions, as well as the exploration of embedded ideological obstacles to dialogue and collaboration among them.

scholarly journals Wallander's Dark Geopolitics

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (s1) ◽  
pp. 29-42
Author(s):  
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global South ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Global North ◽  
The One ◽  
National Stereotypes ◽  
A Current

AbstractA current fault line in the study of crime fiction as a transnational genre is to what extent crime novels offer readers genuine cosmopolitan windows onto other worlds and cultures or whether it simply is bound to reproduce trite imagologies and national stereotypes. The overarching premise for this article is to explore the extent to which Henning Mankell's crime novels and their adaptations engage the character Wallander's own and “other” worlds with a cosmopolitan perspective, by considering the mutations of Wallander's fictional local world as intricately tied to discursive geopolitical realities of the post–Cold War world. More specifically, I consider what may be gained from exploring the Wallander series within two distinct – yet, I shall argue, related – perspectives on geopolitics and crime fiction: on the one hand, the geopolitics of the translation, adaptation, and reception networks that have “worlded” the Wallander series (what I call Wallander's geopolitical adaptation networks), and on the other, the fictional geopolitical networks that weave the Global North and the Global South together in several of Mankell's intricate crime plots (Wallander's dark geopolitics).

Differences in temporal reasoning

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Flexibility ◽  
Shrinking City

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.

scholarly journals Conceptual Readings into the Cold War: Towards Transnational Approaches from the Perspective of Latin American Studies in Eastern and Western Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Manke ◽  
Kateřina Březinová ◽  
Laurin Blecha
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Global South ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
Global North ◽  
Scale Integration ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
Multiple Actors

Abstract This bibliographical and conceptual essay summarizes recent research in Cold War Studies in Europe and the Americas, especially on smaller states in historiographical studies. Against the background of an increasing connectedness and globalization of research about the Cold War, the authors highlight the importance of the full-scale integration of countries and regions of the 'Global South' into Cold War Studies. Critical readings of the newly available resources reveal the existence of important decentralizing perspectives resulting from Cold War entanglements of the 'Global South' with the 'Global North.' As a result, the idea that these state actors from the former 'periphery' of the Cold War should be considered as passive recipients of superpower politics seems rather troubled. The evidence shows (at least partially) autonomous and active multiple actors.

scholarly journals In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Martin Müller
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Global South ◽  
Interstitial Position ◽  
Strategic Essentialism ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Connections ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Global Relations

Carving up the world into Global North and Global South has become an established way of thinking about global difference since the end of the Cold War. This binary, however, erases what this paper calls the Global East — those countries and societies that occupy an interstitial position between North and South. This paper problematizes the geopolitics of knowledge that has resulted in the exclusion of the Global East, not just from the Global North and South, but from notions of globality in general. It argues that we need to adopt a strategic essentialism to recover the Global East for scholarship. To that end, it traces the global relations of IKEA’s bevelled drinking glass to demonstrate the urgency of rethinking the Global East at the heart of global connections, rather than separate from them. Thinking of such a Global East as a liminal space complicates the notions of North and South towards more inclusive but also more uncertain theorizing.

Old and new questions for the public sphere: historicizing its theoretical relevance in post–Cold War South Korea

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-170
Author(s):  
Jiyeon Kang
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Public Sphere

In this article, I reflect on the theoretical rise of the public sphere in the 1990s from the vantage point of South Korea, connecting this approach to the broader context of the global post–Cold War transition. The case of South Korea – a postcolonial, authoritarian country with deep geopolitical connections to the West – offers a node of the global embrace of the public sphere in the 1990s for theorizing the transformation of authoritarian countries into liberal capitalist democracies, elevating the distinction between state and civil society as a prominent focus. However, the establishment of authoritarian public spheres in Asia and the illiberal turn of public spheres in the Global North in the 2010s call upon scholars to identify relevant questions regarding current public spheres while addressing what essential components define the public sphere. Here, I call for critical attention to the loci of power and oppression, to the production of critical practices within a particular social configuration, and to coexistence within a civil society. I end the article by proposing a set of suggestions for reading, theorizing, and teaching public sphere theories.

Navigating Shomoyscapes: Time and faculty life in the urban Global South

2021 ◽  
pp. 0961463X2110580
Author(s):  
Riyad A Shahjahan ◽  
Nisharggo Niloy ◽  
Tasnim A Ema
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Global South ◽  
Temporal Constraints ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
University Politics ◽  
Global North ◽  
Faculty Experience ◽  
Temporal Agency

We aim to decenter the Global North knowledge production about time in higher education (HE) by introducing and applying a culturally sustaining concept of shomoyscapes. While the Bengali word “shomoy” literally means “time,” it goes beyond “clock time” and also refers to memories, present moments, feelings, a particular duration, and/or signifier for a temporal engagement. A shomoyscape entails a complex temporal landscape of different temporal categories, constraints, agencies, and to various degrees, embodies hybrid times (i.e., modern time coexisting with non-linear local/traditional time). Drawing on interviews and participant observations with 22 faculty in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we demonstrate the efficacy of shomoyscapes by illuminating how faculty experience, contest, and manipulate their time(s) amid rapid socio-economic transformations of Dhaka, an urban, Global South mega city. We show how shomoyscapes manifest as faculty experience temporal constraints, such as (a) traffic, (b) party-based university politics, and (c) caring for others. We suggest that Bangladeshi faculty experience and navigate shomoyscapes that are constituted by both larger temporal constraints (spatial, structural, or relational) and their temporal agency in response to these same constraints. Using a temporal lens, we contribute to a more in depth understanding of the experiences of faculty working and living in an urban, Global South context, highlighting how life “outside the academy” spills over into working “inside the academy,” rather than vice versa. We argue that shomoyscapes offer a useful temporal heuristic to help contextualize human/social relations in different arenas of social life that would otherwise remain invisible.

scholarly journals Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 839-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niko Besnier ◽  
Daniel Guinness ◽  
Mark Hann ◽  
Uroš Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Global South ◽  
Professional Athletes ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
The World ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
Global North ◽  
Rugby Players

AbstractIn the Global South since the 1980s, when economic downturns under pressure from the forces of neoliberalism eroded social relations, sport and athletes’ bodies have become major loci where masculinity is constituted and debated. Sport masculinity now fills a vacuum left by the evacuation of traditional forms of masculinity, which are no longer available to the new generations of men. For them, the possibility of employment in the sport industries in the Global North has had a transformative effect, despite the extremely limited probability of success. During the same period of time, the world of sport has become commoditized, mediatized, and corporatized, transformations that have been spearheaded by the growing importance of privatized media interests. Professional athletes have become neoliberal subjects responsible for their own destiny in an increasingly demanding and unpredictable labor market. In Cameroon, Fiji, and Senegal, athletic hopefuls prospectively embody this new gendered subjectivity by mobilizing locally available instruments that most closely resemble neoliberal subjectivity, such as Pentecostalism and maraboutism. Through the conduit of sport, the masculine self has been transformed into a neoliberal subject in locations where this is least expected. What emerges is a new approach to masculinity that eschews explanations based on the simple recognition of diverse and hierarchically organized masculinities, and instead recognizes masculinity in its different manifestations as embedded, scalar, relational, and temporally situated.

scholarly journals INDO-US STRATEGIC RELATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 417-421
Author(s):  
Balwinder Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Defence Cooperation ◽  
Logistic Support ◽  
Meaningful Role ◽  
New Framework

The disintegration of Soviet Union had positively impacted Indo-US relations in post Cold-War era. The post Cold-War strategic scenario provided a chance to both countries to redefine their bilateral priorities. The US was always keen to improve bilateral relationship with India and therefore India initiated Defence cooperation with the US in changing strategic environment. India’s nuclear explosion [1998] had posed some divergences in Indo-US relationship. India and the US signed strategic partnership in 2000 and therefore the US set-aside its sanctions against India. India signed ‘Next Steps in Strategic Partnership’ [NSSP] with the US in 2004 and both countries started strategic dialogue in 2009. Both the nations signed a ‘New Framework for Defence Relationship’ in 2005 and ‘123 Civil Nuclear Agreement’ in 2008.  India has always supported US’s ‘pivot-aria’ policy and played a meaningful role in counter China strategy. India and the US renewed their ‘New Framework for Defence Relationship’ in 2015 and signed ‘Logistic Support Agreement’ in 2016. Indo-US strategic relations were touched new heights when the Obama administration had declared India as a major Defence partner in 2016. The new US President Trump also showed its softness towards India and called Indian Prime Minister Modi as a ‘True Friend of US’. The decline of US-Pakistan strategic relations has positively affected Indo-US relations. The Pakistan factor has always affected Indo-US relations. The US administration considers that India would play a meaningful role in counter China planning. The study explores the raison d’être of Indo-US strategic partnership. The present paper intends to look into the Indo-US strategic cooperation and points out the improvement in Indo-US strategic relations in 21st century.

scholarly journals Gentrification in Latin America: Overview and Critical Analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Betancur
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Restructuring ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Global North ◽  
American Cities

This paper offers a critical review and interpretation of gentrification in Latin American cities. Applying a flexible methodology, it examines enabling conditions associated with societal regime change and local contingencies to determine its presence, nature, extent, and possibilities. Questioning the uncritical transfer of constructs such as gentrification from the Global North to the Global South, the paper advocates analyses of mediating structures and local conditions to determine their applicability and possible variations. Overall, the review questions the feasibility of self-sustained, large scale gentrification in central areas of the region’s cities today tying it to each city’s level of incorporation into global circuits and the role of local governments. Rather than an orthodox hypothesis testing, this is an exercise in interpretation that calls for nuanced approaches to the study of urban restructuring in cities of the global South.

Self-Institutionalizing as Political Agency: Contemporary Art Practice in Bucharest and Budapest

ARTMargins ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-73
Author(s):  
Izabel Galliera
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporary Organizations

Reacting against politically monopolizing attempts at rewriting the socialist past in post-1989 Hungary and Romania, a diverse number of artists, curators, critics, activists and students have come together to form temporary organizations and institutions. Through a contextual reading and critical analysis of The Department for Art in Public Space (2009–2011) in Bucharest and DINAMO (2003–2006) and IMPEX (2006–2009) in Budapest, this article investigates what the author refers to as a “self-institutionalizing” and the ways in which this practice becomes a vehicle to rear politicized civil societies in post-cold war Central and Eastern Europe. The discussion of the two self-institutionalizing initiatives in Romania and Hungary seeks to contribute and complicate the official and institutionalized narrative of institutional critique rooted in a North American context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document