When the people are not reasonable: Multiculturalism and realistic normative theory in the contemporary era

In this piece, I offer an original and fundamental critique of a range of approaches to multiculturalism that have dominated the field of Anglo-American political theory since first-wave debates conducted in the 1990s/2000s. I suggest that the politics of the early twenty-first century, and especially the widespread rise of anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments among citizens of liberal democratic states throughout the world, requires political theorists who seek feasible solutions to real-world political problems to reject these theories. I focus on two approaches in particular: political liberalism and the politics of difference. Neither offers a vision of politics that is tenable in the early twenty-first century, I argue, as they both require citizens to deliberate about political matters in ways that they cannot. In discussing these approaches, and finding them wanting, it is revealed that political theorists face a choice. They can present a theory which is realistic in the sense that it takes account of political reality and offers a strategy which might be used to genuinely inform a process of reform. Alternatively, they can abandon realism and also the desire to produce an operational normative theory which can resolve real problems in actually existing states. I lay out the nature and importance of this choice and explain some of its implications for the discipline and for our current political predicament. I suggest that the choice is unavoidable and that making it requires political theorists to make a more fundamental decision about the purposes of normative political theory itself.

Download Full-text

Theodicy Sociologised: Suffering Smart in the Twenty-First Century

Irish Journal of Sociology ◽

10.7227/ijs.19.1.5 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 93-115 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Steve Fuller

Keyword(s):

Political Theory ◽

Social Attitudes ◽

First Century ◽

Human Suffering ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Cosmic Order ◽

The World ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Normative Order

Theodicy is the branch of theology traditionally concerned with justifying palpable injustices in the world that are presumably the product of a just deity. The classical sociologists appreciated theodicy's relevance in terms of different social attitudes towards human suffering: is it to be tolerated, minimised, redressed or somehow transcended? Each answer implies a different view about the place of humanity in some larger cosmic order. In modern political theory, the question is normally specified in terms of the problem of distributive justice. However, the re-negotiation of the boundary between biology and sociology in the early twenty-first century is forcing a re-engagement with theodicy in its original broad sense, especially as we are increasingly asked to set resource distribution policies that bind across generations of humans and non-humans alike. In this context, as humans acquire an increasingly ‘godlike’ perspective on the normative order, suffering may come to be seen in more strictly instrumental terms – indeed, as itself a resource that might be recycled to produce good in the long term. Thus, we may be entering an era of ‘moral entrepreneurship’.

Download Full-text

Photoblogs: the immediate need to document early twenty-first century photography practices

10.32920/ryerson.14663145 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Stephanie Atwood

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

Future Generations ◽

Hard Copy ◽

Digital Cameras ◽

Collections Management ◽

Camera Phones ◽

The People ◽

Early Twenty ◽

The World ◽

Twenty First Century

This thesis attempts to suggest ways in which museums might better understand and make informed decisions about acquiring, preserving, and cataloguing photoblogs, which are an early twenty-first century photography practice. Photographers can now use the World Wide Web to show and share their images, because of the advent of digital cameras, camera phones, and cheap, open-source photo-blogging tools available to the general population. This thesis will help museums to better understand and be comfortable in acquiring digital artefacts, such as photoblogs, that will enrich their photographic collections for future generations. Acquisition tools and preservation methods are defined and discussed. The process of cataloguing photoblogs in current collections-management databases is not much different from cataloguing hard-copy photographs. The "People of Walmart" photoblog is used as an example and an illustration to clearly define the difficult technical jargon separating curatorial and collections management departments from information technology departments.

Download Full-text

New Approaches to the novel: From Terra Nostra to twitter literature

Co-herencia ◽

10.17230/co-herencia.12.22.1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 12 (22) ◽

pp. 13-23

Author(s):

Raymond L. Williams

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

First Century ◽

Close Reading ◽

The Novel ◽

Avant Garde ◽

New Approaches ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Anglo American ◽

Terra Nostra

This article addresses new approaches to the novel in the twenty-first century. It begins with an affirmation that even the most avant-garde of contemporary critics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century share a commonality: a background in what was identified as “close reading” in the Anglo-American academic world and analyse de texte in French. After numerous declarations in recent decades about the death of the novel, the death of the author and the death of literary criticism, it is evident that the novel as a genre has survived, authors remain a subject of study, and new approaches are possible. The study of trauma in fiction (as introduced by Cathy Caruth and David Aberbach), as well as eco-criticism, are promising new points of departure. The required close reading implied by Twitter also opens up new possibilities.

Download Full-text

Photoblogs: the immediate need to document early twenty-first century photography practices

10.32920/ryerson.14663145.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Stephanie Atwood

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

Future Generations ◽

Hard Copy ◽

Digital Cameras ◽

Collections Management ◽

Camera Phones ◽

The People ◽

Early Twenty ◽

The World ◽

Twenty First Century

Download Full-text

Political Parody and the Politics of Ambivalence

Annual Review of Anthropology ◽

10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100148 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 201-216 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Tanja Petrović

Keyword(s):

Political Change ◽

First Century ◽

Political Humor ◽

Political Discourses ◽

Political Reality ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Political Protests ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Insight Into

This article offers insight into the meanings of the unprecedented political potential of humor in the early twenty-first century by discussing three parodic forms of contemporary political humor: carnivalesque politics, parodic reworkings of political discourses, and political protests and satirical activism. Revealing how political parody both produces ambiguity and hinges on it, the article proposes a shift in attention from its effects and capacity to promote or hinder a political change, and from the domination versus resistance binary, toward ambivalent political subjectivities that unfold in the production and consumption of political parody. The ambiguity of political parody, its reflexivity, and its capacity to build or reconfigure affective communities are workings of political humor that enable individuals to embrace their own involvement and vulnerability and the ambiguous and unpredictable moral consequences of their complex positioning as an authentic and potentially productive form of engaging with political reality.

Download Full-text

An Endangered Partnership: The Anglo-American Defence Relationship in the Early Twenty-first Century

European Security ◽

10.1080/09662830600776694 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 47-65 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

James Wither

Keyword(s):

First Century ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Anglo American

Download Full-text

Continuing Visions

10.1093/oso/9780198813279.003.0011 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Linda Freedman

Keyword(s):

Social Activism ◽

William Blake ◽

First Century ◽

Ridley Scott ◽

American Novel ◽

Early Twenty ◽

Protest Group ◽

Late Twentieth ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Dead Man

The questions that drove Blake’s American reception, from its earliest moments in the nineteenth century through to the explosion of Blakeanism in the mid-twentieth century, did not disappear. Visions of America continued to be part of Blake’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American legacy. This chapter begins with the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by the British Ridley Scott but had an American-authored screenplay and was based on a 1968 American novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It moves to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man and Paul Chan’s twenty-first century social activism as part of a protest group called The Friends of William Blake, exploring common themes of democracy, freedom, limit, nationhood, and poetic shape.

Download Full-text