scholarly journals Queer utopias and queer criminology

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 510-522
Author(s):  
Lynne Copson ◽  
Avi Boukli

Drawing on the concept of utopia to reflect upon the emerging field of queer criminology and José Esteban Muñoz’s account of queer theory as essentially utopian, we draw two conclusions. First, we suggest that queer criminology is currently limited by tinkering at the edges with piecemeal reforms instead of focussing on radical, wholesale changes, and second, that queer theory contains within it the potential for a more holistic reimagining of the social world. In doing so, we question rigid cis/trans binaries and reject accounts of trans/gender that ignore the role of structural harm. We draw on Ernst Bloch’s concepts of ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ utopia to suggest that while queer criminology has succeeded in producing largely ‘abstract’ utopias, it struggles in translating these into ‘concrete’ ones. By introducing examples of trans literary utopias as potential transformative cultural forms, however, we consider the potential of queer theory for realising ‘concrete’ utopia through a more radical rethinking of the social world.

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Irvine

What is the role of imitation in ethnographic fieldwork, and what are its limits? This article explores what it means to participate in a particular fieldsite; a Catholic English Benedictine monastery. A discussion of the importance of hospitality in the life of the monastery shows how the guest becomes a point of contact between the community and the wider society within which that community exists. The peripheral participation of the ethnographer as monastic guest is not about becoming incorporated, but about creating a space within which knowledge can be communicated. By focusing on the process of re-learning in the monastery – in particular, relearning how to experience silence and work – I discuss some of the ways in which the fieldwork experience helped me to reassess the social world to which I would return.


Author(s):  
Michel Meyer

Chapter 10 is devoted to the role of emotions or pathos. Pathos was the term ordinarily used to denote the notion of audience. For the first time since Aristotle, emotions receive a full role in a treatise on rhetoric. The responses of the audience are modulated by its emotions. What is their nature and how precisely do they operate? The areas of political and legal rhetoric are examined here in the light of an original view of the theory of distance: values at greater distance become passions at short distance, and this is one of the features which demarcates politics from law. Law and politics are not merely argumentative, nor are they entirely emotional. The norms they codify are often implicit in their shaping of our mutual expectations and behavior in the social world.


KWALON ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Müller

Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography The labeling of auto-ethnography as navel-gazing does not do justice to the variety with which auto-ethnography is applied. A distinction should be made between emotional and analytical auto-ethnography. In the first form the central person of the researcher plays the central role, in the second auto-ethnography is applied to get a better understanding of the social world which is being studied. In this article the author discusses the second approach by using the work of Jeff Ferrell. Ferrell is a well-known cultural criminologist, who focuses critically on the cultural understanding of social life. By looking at how Ferrell applies auto-ethnography, insight is gained into the added value of this method for qualitative studies: (1) the integration of the personal experiences of researchers in texts in order to achieve a richer description of the social worlds they explore, (2) making explicit the role of the researcher in publications, and (3) developing new (more appealing) forms of representation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Schofield Clark ◽  
Angel Hinzo

To explore the role of contestation in mediatization processes, this article utilizes digital and visual methods to analyze instances of Indigenous digital survivance. Focusing on recent examples at the heart of the #NoDAPL movement allows us to flesh out and argue for a decolonizing approach to the study of mediatization, which we define, following Clark (2011), as the process by which collective uses of communication media (1) extend the development of independent media industries and their circulation of narratives, (2) contribute to new forms of action and interaction in the social world, and (3) give shape to how we think of humanity and our place in the world. The article therefore concludes with suggestions regarding the further development of methodological approaches to studying processes of mediatization in relation to contestations over normative claims and pragmatic concerns regarding the role of media systems in our collective future.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thibodeau

Abstract Metaphor frames highlight certain aspects of a target domain and deemphasize others, thereby encouraging specific patterns of inference. A recent series of studies (Reijnierse, Burgers, Krennmayr, & Steen, 2015; Steen, Reijnierse, & Burgers, 2014), however, raises questions about the role of metaphor in communication and reasoning by (a) failing to find metaphor framing effects on a series of policy judgments, (b) critiquing the methods that have been used to test for metaphor framing effects, and (c) arguing that current theories of metaphor processing fail to consider the social-pragmatic dimension of metaphor in communication. Here, I reflect on these concerns and present novel analyses of data collected by Steen and colleagues, which reveal metaphor framing effects in these studies but fail to support a prediction of Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT): that extended metaphors are more likely to be remembered. DMT attempts to situate metaphor framing effects more intentionally along a social-pragmatic dimension; developing and testing the theory was a primary motivation of the studies conducted by Steen and colleagues. I discuss the implications of these findings and offer a perspective on how DMT can help grow our knowledge of the function of metaphor in a social world.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-135
Author(s):  
Rainer Hülsse

Metaphors construct social reality, including the actors which populate the social world. A considerable body of research has explored this reality-constituting role of metaphors, yet little attention has been paid to the attempts of social actors to influence the metaphorical structure by which they are constituted. The present article conceptualises the relationship between actor and metaphorical structure as one of mutual constitution. Empirically, it analyses how until the late 1990s Liechtenstein was constructed as an attractive financial centre by metaphors such as haven and paradise, how then a metaphorical shift constituted the country more negatively, before Liechtenstein finally fought back: with the help of the new brand-metaphor and also a professional image campaign the country tried to repair its international image.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 567-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Kaptan

This article focuses on the local humor employed in the Gezi Park Protests, one of the most widespread protests in the history of modern Turkey. By analyzing examples of widely circulated graffiti in the social media during and after the Gezi Park protests, I explore the role of socio-cultural and political humor in the protests as a form of resistance, which is intertwined in many ways with local popular culture, as well as global cultural forms of resistance used in anti-capitalist movements such as the Occupy Wall Street movement and public protests in Greece, Egypt, Algeria, and Spain. The humor and laughter in political processes manifests relation to traditional Turkish cultural forms. However, context-bounded humor originating from local meanings and traditional folk stories in the humorous graffiti of the Gezi Protests is considered not only an artistic and creative form of opposition to the conservative-religiousakpgovernment, but also a local response to global capitalism.


2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-83

This study sets out to investigate the “poetry of grammar”, more specifically the role of the body in figurative speech, in African languages mainly belonging to Nilotic and Bantu. Apprehending the semantics and pragmatics of metaphorical and metonymic expressions in these languages presupposes an interaction between a number of cognitive processes, as argued below. Interestingly, these languages seem to use these strategies involving figurative speech in tandem with alternative strategies involving on-record statements. This multivocality only makes sense if we place language and language structure more in the social world in which it is used.


2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (03) ◽  
pp. 802-806
Author(s):  
Jill D. Weinberg

This comment considers Ari Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt (2013) from sociological and sociolegal perspectives. Although Bryen is a historian, and his site of inquiry is second‐century Roman Egypt, he turns to contemporary sociologists and law and society scholars to highlight the interplay between law and the social world in the construction of violence. In doing so, he finds a new way to analyze the role of law as a cultural resource for nonelites to make sense of their social world but also to change it (albeit with limits) through law.


2022 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Vanessa De Paula Hey

Resumo: Monteiro Lobato participou de forma ativa do processo de modernização pelo qual o Brasil passou nas décadas iniciais do século XX. O escritor vivenciou a modernidade sentindo o abalo nas estruturas referenciais que davam aos indivíduos estabilidade no mundo social. Ele experienciou, assim como seus contemporâneos, as profundas transformações pelas quais a sociedade passava e, a partir disso, buscou por meio da literatura e de suas outras atividades cumprir o papel de crítico dessas experiências, reagindo, portanto, ao “turbilhão de permanente desintegração e mudança” (BERMAN, 2007, p. 24), que, a nosso ver, figura-se como uma maneira de caracterizar a modernidade. Compreende-se, então, que um estudo sobre a obra de Monteiro Lobato deve incluir a discussão sobre a modernização e a modernidade. Escolhe-se, para tanto, América, obra desse autor que de forma mais explícita e constante discute essa temática. O presente artigo objetiva, assim, analisar uma das formas pelas quais a modernidade se vê representada nessa obra, a saber, através do diálogo que ela estabelece com a obra Walden, do escritor norte-americano Henry David Thoreau, pensada aqui como ponto de chegada para a reflexão sobre a modernidade em América.Palavras-chave: Monteiro Lobato; América; Henry David Thoreau; Walden; modernidade.Abstract: Monteiro Lobato actively participated in the modernization process that Brazil went through in the early decades of the 20th century. The writer experienced modernity feeling the shock in the referential structures that gave individuals stability in the social world. He experienced, as did his contemporaries, the profound transformations that society was going through and, from there, he sought through literature and his other activities to fulfill the role of critic of these experiences, reacting, therefore, to the “turmoil of permanent disintegration and change” (BERMAN, 2007, p.24), which, in our view, appears as a way of characterizing modernity. It is understood, then, that a study on the work of Monteiro Lobato must include the discussion on modernization and modernity. To this end, America is chosen, as the work of this author that more explicitly and constantly discusses these themes. This article aims, therefore, to analyze one of the ways in which modernity is represented in this work, namely, through the dialogue it establishes with the work of Walden, by the American writer Henry David Thoreau, thought here as a point of arrival for reflection on modernity in America.Keywords: Monteiro Lobato; América; Henry David Thoreau; Walden; modernity.


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