The political signification of riots: A dispositive perspective on the 2011 England riots

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110373
Author(s):  
Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup

This article suggests a new perspective on the political signification of riots, using the 2011 England riots as a case. The sociological literature tends to look for the political signification of riots in the riots themselves. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of the dispositive, the article develops a new approach that analyses the optical grids in which riots are made visible as objects for thought and action that can be either political or apolitical. By analysing the case of the 2011 England riots, the article shows how the dispositives that made the riots visible make it possible to ascribe a both obscure and radical political signification to the riots. The article opens up a new line of inquiry about the relation between riots and politics, and allows us to reconsider the political signification of riots.

Inner Asia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-171
Author(s):  
Hildegard Diemberger

AbstractIn this paper I follow the social life of the Tibetan books belonging to the Younghusband-Waddell collection. I show how books as literary artefacts can transform from ritual objects into loot, into commodities and into academic treasures and how books can have agency over people, creating networks and shaping identities. Exploring connections between books and people, I look at colonial collecting, Orientalist scholarship and imperial visions from an unusual perspective in which the social life and cultural biography of people and things intertwine and mutually define each other. By following the trajectory of these literary artefacts, I show how their traces left in letters, minutes and acquisition documents give insight into the functioning of academic institutions and their relationship to imperial governing structures and individual aspirations. In particular, I outline the lives of a group of scholars who were involved with this collection in different capacities and whose deeds are unevenly known. This adds a new perspective to the study of this period, which has so far been largely focused on the deeds of key individuals and the political and military setting in which they operated. Finally, I show how the books of this collection have continued to exercise their attraction and moral pressure on twenty-first-century scholars, both Tibetan and international, linking them through digital technology and cyberspace.


POETICA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 228-265
Author(s):  
Rafael Simian

Abstract Guigo II is commonly known and praised among specialists of Western mysticism for his Scala claustralium, a work that presents a spiritual program for cloistered monks. His Meditations, on the other hand, have usually been relegated to the margin of attention. The First Meditation, in particular, is generally regarded as a minor piece. The paper argues, however, that a new approach can make better sense of the First Meditation, while also enabling us to recognize its specific function and value. Seen from this new perspective, Guigo’s purpose with the text is to train and exercise his readers’ minds according to the spiritual program laid out in the Scala. The paper shows that the First Meditation realizes that goal, surprisingly, by having the same essential features that Umberto Eco found in the ‘open works’ of the Western avant-garde.


1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Wang ◽  
Christine Eisenbeis ◽  
Martin Jourdan ◽  
Bogong Su

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Askerov

With the advancement of power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has introduced revolutionary policies in Turkey in various realms, including foreign affairs. The new trend in the foreign policy focused on not having problems with neighbors. This could be possible or nearly possible theoretically but eliminating century-long and deep-rooted conflicts with some of the neighbors would not be easy in practice. The new idealistic/moralistic approach necessitated new ways of policy formulation based on mutual gains and unthinkable concessions on the part of Turkey. Ankara’s new approach had given a special importance to building bridges of trust with the neighbors, which also seemed attractive to the political leaders of the neighboring states. This idealistic/moralistic approach was vulnerable to the dynamic political and economic developments in the region and the world in general. The policy did not have a power of sustainability due to the various old, new, and emerging problems around Turkey and hence, the government had to give it up gradually and take a new course of foreign policy based on realistic approaches to defend its national interests.


Author(s):  
Chris Mourant

Katherine Mansfield’s contemporaries knew her primarily as a contributor to magazines and periodicals. In 1922, for instance, Wyndham Lewis described her as ‘the famous New Zealand Mag.-story writer’. This book provides the first in-depth study of Mansfield’s engagement in periodical culture, examining her contributions to the political weekly The New Age, the avant-garde little magazine Rhythm and the literary journal The Athenaeum. Reading these writings against the editorial strategies and professional cultures of each periodical, Chris Mourant situates Mansfield’s work within networks of production and uncovers the many ways in which she engaged with the writings of others and responded to the political, aesthetic and social contexts of early twentieth-century periodical culture. By examining Mansfield’s ambivalent position as a colonial woman writer working both within and against the London literary establishment, in particular, this book provides a new perspective on Mansfield as a ‘colonial-metropolitan modernist’ and proto-postcolonial writer.


Author(s):  
D.A. Tomiltseva ◽  
A.S. Zheleznov

Artificial agents i.e., man-made technical devices and software that are capable of taking meaningful actions and making independent decisions, permeate almost all spheres of human life today. Being new political actants, they transform the nature of human interactions, which gives rise to the problem of ethical and political regulation of their activities. Therefore, the appearance of such agents triggers a global philosophical reflection that goes beyond technical or practical issues and makes researchers return to the fundamental problems of ethics. The article identifies three main aspects that call for philosophical understanding of the existence of artificial agents. First, artificial agents reveal the true contradiction between declared moral and political values and real social practices. Learning from the data on the assessments and conclusions that have already taken place, artificial agents make decisions that correspond to the prevailing behavioral patterns rather than moral principles of their creators or consumers. Second, the specificity of the creation and functioning of artificial agents brings the problem of responsibility for their actions to the forefront, which, in turn, requires a new approach to the political regulation of the activities of not only developers, customers and users, but also the agents themselves. Third, the current forms of the activity of artificial agents shift the traditional boundaries of the human and raise the question of redefining the humanitarian. Having carefully analyzed the selected aspects, the authors reveal their logic and outline the field for further discussion.


Author(s):  
Mihai V. Putz ◽  
Marina A. Tudoran ◽  
Marius C. Mirica ◽  
Mirela I. Iorga ◽  
Radu Bănică ◽  
...  

With the ever present-to-future need of renewable energy the main features of photo-electrochemistry processes are reviewed and described from the perspective of devices phenomenology serving to sustainable design of photovoltaics, while providing the quantum insight in terms of data observability and interpretation. At the same time, the photovoltaic cell “enriched” with quantum dots is presented as a “milestone for obtaining green energy”, a perspective opened by the developing of recent nanotechnology. Nevertheless, this new approach is referring to both theoretical and experimental aspects, both equally needed in order to find a way to develop efficient and ecological photovoltaic devices. Finally, bondonic information for molecules activated in mesoscopic scale are determined while combining their FT-IR spectra with photovoltaic fill factor and metrological quantum triangle (electron tunneling, Josephson effect and quantum Hall effect) towards challenging new perspective of sub-quantum interaction in condensed nano-matter.


Author(s):  
Howard J. Booth

Both Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer and E. M. Forster’s Maurice explore success achieved in the face of society’s hostility to homosexuality. This chapter addresses both novels in terms of allegory and utopian possibility. Whilst Galgut’s adoption of biofiction in Arctic Summer aims to utilize the political and creative possibilities found in early modernist writing, the text’s tight control of narrative form and use of allegory leads to problems – that apparent newness is in fact highly scripted and controlled. Spurred by this consideration of Arctic Summer, a new approach is taken to Maurice that emphasises its openness as a text. The reader is encouraged to engage with issues of interpretation, with Maurice’s own development showing him becoming adept at reading complex, pressured situations. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is seen as an important intertext both for Maurice and the South African Anglophone tradition to which Galgut belongs. Using Walter Benjamin on natural history and allegory the chapter contends that Maurice, whilst maintaining its stress on how long-term same-sex relationships and cross-class love secure meaning in the world, also depicts a world that is always subject to change, loss and ruination.


The world's reaction to the September 11th, 2001, event demonstrated its minimal understanding of Muslim societies from sociological, psychological, economic, and political perspectives.. In this chapter, socio-cultural, political, legal and historical forms of Islamic conditioning are reviewed to manifest how the Shi'ite clerical establishment became lenient towards what Weber called traditional capitalism. The impact of colonialism on Islamic societies and the political-religion bifurcations are discussed. A new and useful explanation of Islamic societies will assist one in looking at the Islamic world from a new perspective by synthesizing sociological and economic viewpoints, especially given the uneven globalization that is affecting Muslim societies. Patterns of intergenerational mobility in industrial nations and Islamic societies are reviewed. Only by developing a fresh perspective on the struggle of Muslim societies can the West understand how best to engage with these countries in order to precipitate reform and vastly improved relations. We concur with Esposito (1999) that our challenge is to better understand the history and realities of the Muslim world and to recognize the diversity and many faces of Islam.


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