scholarly journals Politics, Interrupted

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Murray Li
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Incipient Stage ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
The Status ◽  
Anthropology Of Politics

Against the suggestion that we are living in ‘post-political’ times, I argue that the capacity for critical politics is permanent and broadly distributed, as it emerges from the contradictions embedded in our everyday lives. Yet collective mobilisation to change prevailing power formations is not common. Ethnographers are well positioned to explain why this is so, by investigating critique at its incipient stage, when it may be mute or incoherent, and examining how it develops into a world-changing force or—more often—how the emergence of such a force is interrupted. Posing the trajectory towards historically effective politics as counter-factual (something we might expect to find), and attending to how such a trajectory is interrupted, offers a useful point of entry for ethnographic research. Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall, I propose a set of questions that could help guide a renewed anthropology of politics along these lines: (1) What is the formation of power that creates a sense of unease, or separation? (2) Through what practices is critique shared or enunciated? (3) What is the social group that connects to this critique? (4) In what ways does a group thus assembled act to change the configuration of power it has identified as problematic? Following the logic of the counterfactual: (5) What potential or embryonic critiques are not articulated, (6) do not form the basis for connection and mobilisation, or (7) do not make new worlds? Finally: (8) What are the formations, practices, and affective states that sustain and stabilise the status quo? In the second part of my essay I use these questions to probe practices of politics in three sites in rural Indonesia where I have carried out research.

scholarly journals The scope and limits of combatting violent extremism in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Tahir Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
The Status ◽  
British Muslims

This article situates the debate on the United Kingdom’s Prevent policy in the broader framework of the global paradigm for countering violent extremism (CVE), which appeared at the end of 2015. It argues that omission of a nuanced focus on the social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics of radicalised people has led to a tendency to introduce blanket measures which, inadvertently and indirectly, have had harmful results. Moreover, although Prevent has been the fundamental element of the British government’s counterterrorist strategy since 2006, it confuses legitimate political resistance of young British Muslims with signs of violent extremism, thus giving credence to the argument that Prevent is a form of social engineering which, in the last instance, pacifies resistance by reaffirming the status quo in the country’s domestic and foreign policy.

Leftover Men and Masculine Grievance: Making Sense of Rural Migrant Men’s Emotional Hardships

NAN Nü ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Wanning Sun
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Rural Migrant ◽  
The Social ◽  
Marriage Partner ◽  
The Status ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The social problem of “leftover men” among the most marginalized members of China’s rural migrant population has become widely known, but how these rural migrants themselves talk about and make sense of their failures to secure a marriage partner is relatively less understood. Answering this question may also shed light on how socioeconomic marginalization makes an impact on rural migrant men’s masculine identity. This paper is a longitudinal study of a cohort of unmarried rural migrant men born in the 1980s. This study shows that the emotional experience of cohort members is marked by a mixture of persistent feelings of loneliness, bitterness, and dissatisfaction with the status quo of their lives, and a quiet yearning for the possibility – however remote – of “finding someone” in the future. The paper also points to “masculine grievance” as a useful concept for understanding how unmarried migrant men rationalize their emotional hardships.

Social Imperialism and Wilhelmine Germany

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian L. D. Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Interpretive Scheme

In recent times the historiography of the Wilhelmine Reich has clearly reflected the influence of Eckart Kehr and of later historians who have adopted and developed his work. The Rankean dogma of the Primat der Aussenpolitik (primacy of foreign policy) has been replaced by a new slogan, Primat der Innenpolitik (primacy of domestic policy). The resultant interpretive scheme is by now quite familiar. The social structure of the Bismarckean Reich, it is said, was shaken to its foundations by the impact of industrialization. A growing class of industrialists sought to break the power of the feudal agrarian class, and a rapidly developing proletariat threatened to upset the status quo. The internecine struggle between industrialists and agrarians was dangerous for both and for the state, since the final beneficiary might be the proletariat. Consequently agrarians and industrialists closed their ranks against the common social democrat enemy and sought to tame the proletariat, which had grown restive under the impact of the depression, by means of a Weltpolitik which would obviate the effects of the depression, heal the economy, and vindicate the political system responsible for such impressive achievements. Hans-Ulrich Wehler and others call this diversionary strategy against the proletarian threat social imperialism; and this, it is said, is the domestic policy primarily responsible for Wilhelmine imperialism.

Journey through light and darkness: a study of duplication in Shakespeare

1982 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Aimara Da Cunha Resende
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ideological Stance ◽  
Renaissance Poetics

As Shakespeare matures, his ideological stance changes from that of a writer believing in and backing up the establishment, to that of one who, though deeply aware of man in his human condition, doubts the validity of the status quo. His art then reflects the changes in his stance. At first it tends to present Renaissance poetics, becoming essentially Baroque, in its greatest phase, to move back to more firmly delineated forms and structures, in his last plays. This study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and The Tempest aims at presenting some characteristics both of the Renaissance elements in the structure, based on "mise en abyme," and of the Baroque poetics found within this structure. These aspects are viewed against the background of the ideology of Shakespeare's England at the same time that duplication, in Lacan's sense, is analysed and shows to coincide with the support and/or acceptance of the social cannons.

Transcending Oppression And Exploitation: Struggle For Education In Bulosan’s America Is In The Heart And Sudham’s Monsoon Country

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Kittiphong Praphan
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Diasporic Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
The Voice

<p>Diasporic literature functions as an important source which provides the social contexts of the home countries of its authors. Carlos Bulosan’s 'America is in the Heart' and Pira Sudham’s 'Monsoon Country' are among this group of literature representing the voice of the oppressed and exploited farmers in the Philippines and Thailand, respectively home of the authors. The farmers are represented as being exploited by those in power, including colonizers, local officials, landlords, and middlemen. The exploiters can be seen as capitalists who accumulate wealth through the labor and the property of farmers. In their methods of oppression the oppressors employ State Apparatuses and Ideological State Apparatuses to maintain the status quo and reproduce the exploitative system. To transcend the oppression and exploitation, the major characters of the books struggle to obtain education, since they view that ignorance is the most important cause of the exploitation. Education is seen as the only way to eliminate ignorance and liberate themselves as well as their people from the exploitative cycle. 'America Is in the Heart' and 'Monsoon Country' represent the voice of the farmers in the Philippines and Thailand who condemn their exploiters and raise readers’ awareness of the problem.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>diasporic literature, oppression and exploitation, education, voice</em></p>

scholarly journals „Winning is strictly prohibited”. O strategiach twórczych Banksy’ego i Jana Klaty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michalina Lubaszewska
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Amusement Parks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

The paper analyzes the activities of two socially committed artists: Banksy and Jan Klata, who both use the funfair motif. Banksy employs it in a literal though subversive way in his project Dismaland, which is a quizzical reversal of Disneyland. Klata employs it in his performances (which often take the form of the director’s comments on the reality that surrounds us), showing a set of “amusements” resembling those from a funfair and leading the viewer to a perceptive dissonance (similarly to the collection of Eisenstein’s amusements). It seems that the space created by the committed art that uses the concept of a funfair allows for the implementation of a real rebellion against the status quo. Actual amusement parks, however, create only an illusion of the possibility to break with the norms of the social system.

scholarly journals Holznöte im 18. Jahrhundert? – Ein Forschungsbericht zur «Holznotdebatte» der 1990er Jahre | Wood shortage in the 18th century? A report on the wood shortage debate of the 1990s

2006 ◽  
Vol 157 (9) ◽  
pp. 377-383
Author(s):  
Winfried Schenk
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Status ◽  
Complex Phenomena ◽  
Forest Conditions ◽  
Energy Shortage

At the beginning of the 1990s forest historians turned against the economic historian Joachim Radkau, who argued that lamentations in forest instructions around 1800 regarding wood shortage (scarcity) should rather be interpreted as an instrument of feudal authorities to regulate and constrain usage as well as a means to subjugate and discipline their subjects. By contrast, forest historians judged these lamentations to be an indication of actual shortcomings that existed before the advent of governmental forest management. As a result, many studies were undertaken that dealt with the social relevance of woods and forests in pre-industrial times. The present article starts with the status quo and traces back the complexity of the so-called wood emergency debate by taking a closer look at these early studies. It demonstrates how regional studies that were based on a wide range of sources contributed to the understanding of pre-industrial wood shortage events as complex phenomena related to distinct forest conditions and energy shortage discussions.

scholarly journals Threatening the Social Order

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-249
Author(s):  
Ana Ivasiuc
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contemporary Context

One of the most productive loci for the analysis of the security – morality nexus is the making of security laws and norms which reveals the ways in which the social order is perceived to be under threat. This article argues for a critical examination of the moralities underlying the security paradigm, or else ‘the securitarian moral assemblage’, through the example of how the Roma are targeted by security laws, decrees, and measures in Rome. Moral values underpinning the social order become particularly visible in security laws, as these laws betray that which requires enhanced protection, and what is seen to produce the existential danger that jeopardizes the status quo. Taking a closer look at the practices that are framed as morally dubious and increasingly repressed and controlled helps us make sense of the moral underpinnings that serve the reproduction of a social order presaged upon exacerbated consumption and the production of inequalities. Such an approach goes beyond merely illuminating the dynamics of exclusion grounded in the racialization and discrimination to which the Roma are undoubtedly subjected. It establishes a link between the explosion of security narratives, practices, and measures, and the larger contemporary context of capitalism and the current protracted crisis that it has engendered.

Desperately seeking the good society

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 636-654
Author(s):  
Gill Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Good Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Northern City

Working towards the ‘good society’ is an important aspiration to hold, but equally its subjectivity complicates the realisation for all – each person’s view of what ‘good’ means in relation to society differs. The notion is also open to statutory appropriation and mainstreaming using rhetoric to suggest its centrality to governmental thinking, but the reality reveals policy and practice, which undermines the accomplishment of social justice and thus a good society. This paper seeks to explore this complexity through dissecting the processes of representation of the ‘good society’ in theory and in practice. The paper will argue that the ‘good society’ might be termed a doxic construct. Bourdieu used ‘doxa’ to explain how arbitrariness shapes people’s acceptance of their place in the world, the covert process is ‘internalised’, seemingly objectively, into the ‘social structures and mental structures’, producing a universal and accepted knowledge of something (Bourdieu, 1977 ). The possibility of difference is undermined; thus, the varied needs and contexts of people’s lived realities are consumed within prevailing normative narratives. Foucault (cited in Simon, 1971 : 198) referred to a ‘system of limits’ and Bourdieu (1977: 164) ‘ sense of limits’, both authors will assist in seeking to uncover how such invisible practices limit and constrain the imagining of possibilities beyond the taken-for-granted. The paper argues that community development can be a catalyst to challenge this invisibility by utilising Freire’s ( 1970 ) conscientisation, enabling people to recognise structural oppression to challenge the status quo. This paper will draw on examples offered within a northern city to build on Knight’s, 2015 research, which posed the question ‘[w]hat kind of society do we want?’, identifying, when asked, a hunger for change. The paper explores whether there is a desire to overturn the predominant individualism of the neoliberal era to reignite the notion of the common good.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document