scholarly journals The Magical Theory of Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egil Asprem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Effervescence ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
The Right

The election of the 45th president of the United States set in motion a hidden war in the world of the occult. From the meme-filled underworld of alt-right-dominated imageboards to a widely publicized “binding spell” against Trump and his supporters, the social and ideological divides ripping the American social fabric apart are mirrored by witches, magicians, and other esotericists fighting each other with magical means. This article identifies key currents and developments and attempts to make sense of the wider phenomenon of why and how the occult becomes a political resource. The focus is on the alt-right’s emerging online esoteric religion, the increasingly enchanted notion of “meme magic,” and the open confrontation between different magical paradigms that has ensued since Trump’s election in 2016. It brings attention to the competing views of magical efficacy that have emerged as material and political stakes increase, and theorizes the religionizing tendency of segments of the alt-right online as a partly spontaneous and partially deliberate attempt to create “collective effervescence” and galvanize a movement around a charismatic authority. Special focus is given to the ways in which the politicized magic of both the left and the right produce “affect networks” that motivate political behaviors through the mobilization of (mostly aversive) emotions.

scholarly journals The great Chinese transformation: cynicism and the future of the world (article two)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Supranational Level

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.

scholarly journals The colonial matrix of power: Image ontology and the question of blackness

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itumeleng D. Mothoagae
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Black People ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Peter Hart-Brinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Generational Theory ◽  
Cultural Schemas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter introduces the concepts of generational change, generational theory, and the social imagination, and it describes how they can help us understand the evolution of public opinion about gay marriage in the United States and the role that public opinion played in the legalization of gay marriage. It introduces the thesis that the changing social imagination was the key cultural and cognitive development that led young cohorts to develop more supportive attitudes about gay marriage while also causing older cohorts to rethink their prior opinions. It explains how the imagination both produces and draws from the cultural schemas that we use to make sense of the world and why different groups can develop different cultural schemas. It concludes by describing the overall plan of the book and the author’s standpoint.

Discovering sign language

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
François Grosjean
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Deaf Child ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Sign ◽  
The World ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Right

The author discovered American Sign Language (ASL) and the world of the deaf whilst in the United States. He helped set up a research program in the psycholinguistics of ASL and describes a few studies he did. He also edited, with Harlan Lane, a special issue of Langages on sign language, for French colleagues. The author then worked on the bilingualism and biculturalism of the deaf, and authored a text on the right of the deaf child to become bilingual. It has been translated into 30 different languages and is known the world over.

The Russian Connection

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-169
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Dna Test ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Vladimir Putin

This chapter begins with an account of Anna Anderson, an immigrant to the United States who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia that was exposed to be fake after a DNA test. It discusses the collusive connections between Russia and the American radical alt-right. It also identifies several figures that were prominent in the Unite the Right events in Charlottesville in 2017 and strongly supported the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump. The chapter highlights how alt-right groups idolize Russia's leader Vladimir Putin, seeing him as the sort of strong-willed authoritarian dedicated to “traditional values” that the world needs. It discloses how Russia has been the hospitable home and host of American right-wing extremists, such as David Duke who moved to Russia in 1999.

Benign Discrimination and the Right to Equality

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Evans
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Formal Expression ◽  
Gareth Evans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

Governments have been increasingly preoccupied with the task of reconciling claims to preferential treatment with the principle of equality. The social and philosophical issues raised by this apparent paradox are considered, and the compatibility of benign discrimination with the concept of equality demonstrated by developing a complex normative notion of equality. An analysis is then undertaken of the various attempts made by lawyers, in nearly one hundred existing bills of rights, to give formal expression to these principles. Ultimately the problem of benign discrimination falls for resolution by the courts, and the jurisprudence developed in this respect by the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States is critically discussed and compared. Having exhaustively developed an appreciation of world experience regarding the interaction of bills of rights equality clauses and benign discrimination, consideration is given to the formulation of the Australian Human Rights Bill—a bill of which Gareth Evans was one of the principal draftsmen.

Henry Carter Adams: A Case Study in the Emergence of the Social Sciences in the United States, 1850–1900

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Coats
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Profession ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
European Counterpart

Few scholars would nowadays question the importance of the United States in the world of learning; but the process whereby that nation attained its present eminence still remains obscure. Among the cognoscenti, it is generally acknowledged that American scholarship had come of age by the early 1900s, whereas fifty years earlier there had been only a handful of American scholars and scientists of international repute, and the country's higher education lagged far behind its European counterpart. Yet despite the recent popularity of intellectual history and research in higher education, which has produced a veritable flood of publications touching on various aspects of this theme, the heart of the process—the emergence of the academic profession—is still inadequately documented and imperfectly understood.

Paving the Way for Reagan

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Review ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Third World

The book analyzes the influence of National Review, Human Events, and Commentary on the foreign policy ideas of the Republican Party from 1964–1980. During that eighteen-year period, the publications of conservative opinion provided ideological clarification on important national issues that played a fundamental role in reviving the political fortunes of the American Right, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan. Those who wrote for these publications used their positions to offer suggestions to conservative policy makers that called for a more confrontational approach toward the Soviet Union and the nations that sought to compromise the United States’ interests around the world. In recommending a shift in foreign policy, Human Events, National Review, and Commentary assisted right-wing decision makers by contributing arguments to revive what these publications believed was a weak and indecisive United States that had become uncertain about its role in the world following the defeat in Vietnam. By criticizing policies, such as détente, or the aggressiveness of the Third World within the United Nations, opinion makers on the Right offered conservative political leaders information and analysis that called for the return of American power in the face of an ever more confident Soviet Union.

scholarly journals Modern trends and problems of the global intellectual property market development

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-409
Author(s):  
T. G. Filosofova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
World Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Property Market ◽  
The World ◽  
Effective Development ◽  
The Right

It is shown that active processes of digitalization and development of creative industries form new trends of the world economy development. Possession of the right to use IP, in particular the results of the latest scientific research and technological developments (especially in the field of artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, blockchain, processing large databases, quantum computing systems, cloud technologies, etc.) significantly expands the capabilities of the owner of IP rights in world economy, its participation in global value chains. Intellectual property is becoming not only the main instrument of socio-economic development, but also the center of global technological confrontation and a fierce struggle for the right to own it, a significant factor of success in geoeconomic competition. The main long-term trend in the development of world IP markets is the dynamic growth of the volume of commercial transactions with goods and services containing IP objects with a significant expansion of the range of the latter. The IP market is growing at a rate exceeding the rate of growth of “material” markets. The countryleader in the number of valid patents for a long period is the United States. The main competitor for the United States is China. Among the main technological trends, the development of the IP market in terms of assistive technologies should be highlighted, which allow producing products according to digital description anywhere in the world. A large share of the IP markets is occupied by trade in licenses. It is shown that for the further successful and effective development of IP markets, it is necessary to take into account the prospects for the functioning of IP markets and the movement of goods containing IP objects in a new technological order.

scholarly journals The Coming Revolution: The Healthcare Challenge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Halamka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
World Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Product ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S

The United States spends nearly 17% of its gross domestic product on healthcare,1 almost double that of any other industrialized country,2 and achieves worse outcomes by many measures.3 The U.S. may have the most healthcare in the world, but we do not have the best healthcare. Today, Healthcare in the U.S. is a poor value. If we are going to remain competitive in the world economy, we must deliver the right care in the right setting at the right time at the right cost.

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