A Fictional Commons

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1215/9781478021926 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michael K. Bourdaghs

Keyword(s):

Private Property ◽

William James ◽

Global Capitalism ◽

Material Wealth ◽

Critical Response ◽

Natsume Soseki ◽

Franco Moretti ◽

New System

Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons, Michael K. Bourdaghs explores how the literary and theoretical works of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), widely celebrated as Japan's greatest modern novelist, exploited the contradictions and ambiguities that haunted this new system. Many of his works feature narratives about inheritance, thievery, and the struggle to obtain or preserve material wealth while also imagining alternative ways of owning and sharing. For Sōseki, literature was a means for thinking through—and beyond—private property. Bourdaghs puts Sōseki into dialogue with thinkers from his own era (including William James and Mizuno Rentarō, author of Japan’s first copyright law) and discusses how his work anticipates such theorists as Karatani Kōjin and Franco Moretti. As Bourdaghs shows, Sōseki both appropriated and rejected concepts of ownership and subjectivity in ways that theorized literature as a critical response to the emergence of global capitalism.

Download Full-text

Preaching the ‘green gospel’ in our environment: A re-reading of Genesis 1:27-28 in the Nigerian context

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v72i4.3054 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 72 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Chris Manus ◽

Des Obioma

Keyword(s):

Private Property ◽

Contact Point ◽

Material Wealth ◽

God's Will ◽

Ecological Awareness ◽

Genesis 1 ◽

The Right ◽

Mother Earth ◽

The Universe ◽

The Church

The article focuses on the text of Genesis 1:27–28 within its broader context where the author, the Jahwist, describes humankind as charged with the responsibility to fill and to subdue the earth, which has generally been misunderstood by wealth prospectors. Our methodology is a simplified historical and exegetical study of the two verses of the creation narrative in order to join other contemporary theologians to argue the right of humans to treat the nonhuman as private property as source of material wealth is immoral. As we re-read the text, our findings resonate with the contemporary clarion call for respect and protection of the environment such as COP 2015 in Paris. This provides the justification of our title ‘Preaching the green gospel’, especially in the Nigerian oil-rich states and in Africa in general. Whilst the paper presents a disquisition of the global efforts of the church through sensitisation of their members to appreciate the magnitude of the environmental pollution and the apocalypse it holds for the world, it draws attention to the possibility of the envisaged doomsday that may descend on Nigeria and other parts of Africa if the crass environmental degradation and the rate of pollution of flora and fauna are not checked. The paper takes cognisance of the positive views expressed by the evangelists of the ‘New Theology’ in Africa. Whilst the paper raises Biblically friendly ecological awareness in modern Africa, using Nigeria as a contact point, it concludes, inter alia, that the text demands humankind to partake in God’s will for order and peace in the universe as it struggles to maintain the ecological sustainability of mother earth.

Download Full-text

Painting on Walls

Creativity without Law ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479841936.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Marta Iljadica

Keyword(s):

Real Estate ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Subject Matter ◽

Physical Environment ◽

Private Property ◽

Spray Painting

Although graffiti images are copyright eligible in the abstract, the inherently illicit act of spray painting private property without permission complicates efforts to rely on formal law. Marta Iljadica’s empirical research on the graffiti subculture in London demonstrates that despite its illegality, graffiti writing has rules. Those rules address questions of subject matter, originality, and copying common to any expressive work. But they also extend to concerns unique to the graffiti context. Because graffiti is inextricably tied to the physical environment, it raises questions of placement: which structures are appropriate canvasses for graffiti writings and which are off-limits? And because available real estate is limited, graffiti writers must confront scarcity: Under what conditions is it permissible to cover another artist’s work with your own? So while the rules of graffiti writing parallel those of formal copyright law in some ways, they also go beyond it to confront a set of problems graffiti writers are themselves best suited to address.

Download Full-text

SIDNEY HOOK, ROBERT NOZICK, AND THE PARADOXES OF FREEDOM

Social Philosophy and Policy ◽

10.1017/s0265052505041087 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 200-220

Author(s):

John Patrick Diggins

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Judicial Review ◽

Private Property ◽

Moral Values ◽

The Other ◽

Common Interest ◽

Robert Nozick ◽

Material Wealth ◽

Life Of The Mind ◽

The Mind

Diggins observes in this essay that, while Nozick and Hook shared a passion for freedom and for understanding liberty in all its complexities, the two philosophers, one a libertarian and the other a democratic socialist, occupied different worlds when it came to how they viewed property and power. Nozick believed that freedom and justice depended upon a minimal state that would be severely restricted in its exercise of power. Sidney Hook never renounced his conviction, born of his early attraction to Marxism, that truly dangerous power is wielded not principally by government but by private individuals of great material wealth: by industrialists. Diggins examines the divergent views of these two seminal thinkers on such issues as human rights, private property, democracy, and judicial review. The differences are profound, yet they shared a common interest in the life of the mind and in exploring such hoary philosophical topics as free will versus determinism and the grounding of moral values.

Download Full-text

Land Reform Versus Agricultural Reform: Turkish Miracle or Catastrophe Delayed?

International Journal of Middle East Studies ◽

10.1017/s002074380002794x ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 207-232 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Manoucher Parvin ◽

Mukerrem Hic

Keyword(s):

Political Institutions ◽

Land Reform ◽

Private Property ◽

Land Ownership ◽

The Political ◽

Material Wealth ◽

Agricultural Reform ◽

Cultural Attitudes ◽

Complex Transformation ◽

Degree Of Redistribution

The change from an agriculturally based economy to one based primarily on industrial and services sectors requires a complex transformation in technology of productions, physical and human capital structure, social and political institutions, and cultural attitudes. Although broad similarities exist, no two countries have traced an identical path. One major economic and ideological concern in such a transformation is the fate of private property in general and land ownership in particular. Furthermore, the degree of redistribution of political power and material wealth of existing or emerging groups constitutes an important characteristic of the transformation itself. Thus, an important and interesting link in the chain of probable events is the occurrence or non-occurrence of land reform. The nature and degree of land reform, if it happens, or the variety of its substitutes, if it does not, provide vital clues to the specificity of the political economy of development.

Download Full-text

BEVIDSTHED I BEVÆGELSE - OM DEN JAPANSKE FORFATTER NATSUME SŌSEKIS SANSEBEVIDSTHED

K&K - Kultur og Klasse ◽

10.7146/kok.v41i116.15890 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 41 (116) ◽

pp. 63-75

Author(s):

Annette Thorsen Vilslev

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

William James ◽

Affect Theory ◽

Stream Of Consciousness ◽

Social Spaces ◽

Natsume Soseki ◽

Fredric Jameson ◽

Japanese Writer ◽

Theory Of Literature

CONSCIOUSNESS AS MOVEMENT — ACCORDING TO NATSUME SŌSEKI | In his Theory of Literature from 1907, Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki (1867‑1916) describes feelings as pivotal in literature worldwide. Fredric Jameson places Sōseki among the major modernists in the twentieth century. Like the western modernists, Sōseki was inspired by William James’ concept stream of consciousness, developing his own idea about literature as an affective type of continuity of consciousness. This article investigates how this idea influences the representation of characters in his last, unfinished feuilleton novel, Light and Dark from 1916. The article argues that a comparison with current day affect theory calls attention to how Sōseki not only portrays the bodily emotions, but also consciousness as embodied and embedded in particular social spaces. In this novel Sōseki depictsor sketches minor feelings or everyday affects as closely related to the experience of modernity. By exploiting its feuilleton form, Light and Dark shows how new modes of perception and movementproduce affects that stick to bodies (rather than spring from them). The article thus suggests seeing Light and Dark as a critical and nuanced comment on modernity and its discourses on emotions.

Download Full-text

Expanded empiricism: Natsume Sōseki with William James

Japan Forum ◽

10.1080/09555800701796859 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 47-77

Author(s):

Thomas Lamarre

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

Natsume Soseki

Download Full-text

A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000626 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ana Gantman ◽

Robin Gomila ◽

Joel E. Martinez ◽

J. Nathan Matias ◽

Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽

...

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

Mental Processes ◽

Psychological Science ◽

Behavioral Measurement ◽

The World ◽

Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

Download Full-text