Caribbean Technological Thought and Climate Adaptation

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-121
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Vaughn

This essay offers a critical perspective on the role technology plays in the Caribbean formation of climate adaptation. It locates this critical perspective in “the embodiment of technology,” a concept in the writings of the late political economist Norman Girvan that helped him describe how Caribbean states acquire technology and related infrastructures despite at times not having resources to maintain them. The embodiment of technology is still important today for mapping the possibilities of climate adaptation—that is, if technology transfer is a historically embodied process, then climate adaptation is a measure of how people recognize the political failures and the potentials of technology over time. The essay suggests that attention to Girvan’s writings is central to critical Caribbean scholarship on climate change for two reasons: his writings reflect the forms of intergenerational responsibility that shape climate adaptation, and they examine the shifting meaning of technology to regional identity.

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-204
Author(s):  
Blake Emerson

This conclusion explains how the Progressive theory offers a critical perspective on our present political moment and the political ideologies that underlie it. Using examples from the Obama and Trump administrations on topics such as fair housing, climate change and immigration, I show how cost-benefit analysis and presidentialist theories of administration undermine deliberative democratic values. Cost-benefit analysis tends to restrict the administrative state to the task of simulating a perfectly competitive marketplace. Progressivism insists that the state should more broadly further public freedom, providing the goods, services, and institutions that allow democratic self-government to function. Presidential administration equates democracy with plebsicitary legitimacy, and aligns with Carl Schmitt’s illiberal, authoritarian political theory. While Progressivism acknowledges that the president has an important role to play in supervising administration, it aims to anchor administrative legitimacy in broader, plural, and discursive interactions between the government and its citizens.


2018 ◽  
Vol 117 (796) ◽  
pp. 62-68
Author(s):  
Mark Carey ◽  
Holly Moulton

A focus on the various factors shaping climate adaptation over time—particularly the social, economic, and political dimensions—fosters a reframing and broadening of the climate change problem.


Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel

This chapter seeks to understand how Islamist movements have evolved over time, and, in the process, provide important background on the political and religious contexts of the movements in question. In particular, it shows that Islamist movements coevolve. Focusing on the histories of Morocco's two main Islamist movements—the Justice and Spirituality Organization, or Al Adl wal Ihsan (Al Adl) and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD)—it suggests that their evolutions can only be fully appreciated if they are relayed in unison. These movements mirror one another depending on the competitive context, sometimes reflecting, sometimes refracting, sometimes borrowing, sometimes adapting or even reorganizing in order to keep up with the other.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (7) ◽  
pp. 110-123
Author(s):  
Vladimir Y. Bystrov ◽  
Vladimir M. Kamnev

The article discusses the attitude of Georg Lukács and his adherents who formed a circle “Techeniye” (lit. “current”) toward the phenomenon of Stalinism. Despite the political nature of the topic, the authors are aspired to provide an unbiased research. G. Lukács’ views on the theory and practice of Stalinism evolved over time. In the 1920s Lukács welcomes the idea of creation of socialism in one country and abandons the former revolutionary ideas expressed in his book History and Class Consciousness. This turn is grounded by new interpretation of Hegel as “realistic” thinker whose “realism” was shown in the aspiration to find “reconciliation” with reality (of the Prussian state) and in denial of any utopias. The philosophical evolution leading to “realism” assumes integration of revolutionaries into the hierarchy of existing society. The article “Hölderlin’s Hyperion” represents attempt to justify Stalinism as a necessary and “progressive” phase of revolutionary development of the proletariat. Nevertheless, events of the second half of the 1930s (mass repressions, the peace treaty with Nazi Germany) force Lukács to realize the catastrophic nature of political strategy of Stalinism. In his works, Lukács ceases to analyze political topics and concentrates on problems of aesthetics and literary criticism. However, his aesthetic position allows to reconstruct the changed political views and to understand why he had earned the reputation of the “internal opponent” to Stalinism. After 1956, Lukács turns to political criticism of Stalinism, which nevertheless remains unilateral. He sees in Stalinism a kind of the left sectarianism, the theory and practice of the implementation of civil war measures in the era of peaceful co-existence of two systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Dima Kortukov

Abstract The concept of sovereign democracy dominated the political discourse in Russia in 2006–8 but lost much of its significance since. In this article, I argue that sovereign democracy is best understood as the response of Russia’s authorities to the threats of democratization, following Eurasian color revolutions. I distinguish between three conceptually distinct aspects of sovereign democracy: (1) a social contract (2) a legitimation discourse; and (3) a counter-revolutionary praxis. These dimensions allow us to understand what functions sovereign democracy fulfilled within the framework of Russia’s authoritarian regime and why it lost its prominence over time.


1969 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karine Gagné

Assumptions that local communities have an endogenous capacity to adapt to climate change stemming from time-tested knowledge and an inherent sense of community that prompts mobilisation are becoming increasingly common in material produced by international organisations. This discourse, which relies on ahistorical and apolitical conceptions of localities and populations, is based on ideas of timeless knowledge and places. Analysing the water-place nexus in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalayas, through a close study of glacier practices as they change over time, the article argues that local knowledge is subject to change and must be analysed in light of changing conceptions and experiences of place by the state and by local populations alike.


Author(s):  
Ben Epstein

This chapter shifts the focus to the third and final stabilization phase of the political communication cycle (PCC). During the stabilization phase, a new political communication order (PCO) takes shape through the building of norms, institutions, and regulations that serve to fix the newly established status quo in place. This status quo occurs when formerly innovative political communication activities become mundane, yet remain powerful. Much of the chapter details the pattern of communication regulation and institution construction over time. In particular, this chapter explores the instructive similarities and key differences between the regulation of radio and the internet, which offers important perspectives on the significance of our current place in the PCC and the consequences of choices that will be made over the next few years.


2020 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 102024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Ballew ◽  
Adam R. Pearson ◽  
Matthew H. Goldberg ◽  
Seth A. Rosenthal ◽  
Anthony Leiserowitz

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