In Pursuit of Progress

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah C. M. Bulloch
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Cognitive Tool ◽  
Philippine Island ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Purpose

In Pursuit of Progress explores how meta-narratives of development become entangled in people’s identities and life trajectories; how they weave their way into people’s imaginings of their histories, their understandings of their place in the world, and their dreams for their future. The idea of development has been deconstructed and scrutinised as a “Western” metaphor ordering global difference and change, and as a banner under which diverse schemes for societal improvement find legitimacy and common purpose. Less attention has been given to the diverse ways the “subjects” of development interpret the concept. This monograph draws on a decade of ethnographic research on the Philippine island of Siquijor, to explore myths, meanings and practices of development and its counterparts, progress and modernization. It considers development not just as a collective project but recognises that, as a cognitive tool for organizing relationships between people, it is personal. Through this, In Pursuit of Progress offers fresh insights to debates in anthropology, sociology and development studies regarding the ways in which discourses of development act upon local and global power relations.

The Theory and Practice of Third World Solidarity. By Darryl C. Thomas. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001. 324p. $57.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-695
Author(s):  
Howard P. Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Developing World ◽  
World System ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Economic Decision Making ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third World

Since the end of the Cold War, development studies have fallen to the wayside as attention has shifted to the democratization process in Eastern Europe, the increased integration of the European Union, and the effects of economic globalization in the advanced industrialized countries. The developing world was seen as an afterthought or, in some cases, as arenas of misunderstandable ethnic or religious conflict, structural poverty, disease, and other hardships. However, in the context of September 11, more attention now is on the developing world, perhaps not so much on economic development, but more on containing various terrorist organizations. Yet development studies still exist, and this area of study maintains an historical connection to several decades worth of academic research. Scholars persistently ask such questions as why the South is poor and politically weak compared to countries in the North. Answers generally are located in the dependency literature of unequal economic relations leading to unequal power relations. Darryl C. Thomas, in The Theory and Practice of Third World Solidarity, asks this question but provides a somewhat different response. The economic and political inequality in the world is not necessarily due to economic ideology but to the color of skin (p. xi). The solidarity of the Third World that Thomas sees in the past is one based on race, and racial solidarity should be the means by which the poor and powerless of the Third World transform unequal power relations. Thomas refers to this relationship as global apartheid, defining it as a structure of the world system that combines political economy and racial antagonism (p. 26). He states that global apartheid refers to the continuation of white-minority dominance of political, social, legal, cultural, and economic decision-making apparatuses within the world system (p. 111) and that this form of racial capitalism has become a permanent feature in the world system.

Notes on Culture Jamming

2001 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cox
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Corporate Sector ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Corporate Power ◽  
Culture Jamming ◽  
Society Of The Spectacle ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media

Arguably, the media today represent the central means by which global power is mediated. The rise of global networks has consolidated the reach of corporate power such that it now rivals — and probably surpasses — that of government. People are finding innovative and alternative ways to communicate using the very means the corporate sector itself uses, to different ends. This is the world of the culture jammer, who turns the message back on the sender, the better to expose the unequal power relations at work in what Guy Debord called ‘The Society of the Spectacle’.

scholarly journals The Rising Powers and Globalization: Structural Change to the Global System Between 1965 and 2005

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Marie Jacobs ◽  
Ronan Van Rossem
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Global System ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Networks ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Significant Attention

This article sets out to critically assess the increasingly prevalent claims of rapidly changing global power relations under influence of the ‘rising powers’ and ‘globalization’. Our main contention is that current analyses of countries’ degree of global power (especially for the BRICS) has been dominated by the control over resources approach that, though gauging power potential, insufficiently takes into account how this potential is converted into actual global might. By drawing on a unique and extensive dataset comprising of a wide array of political, economic and military networks for a vast number of countries between 1965 and 2005, we aim to 1) reassess alleged changes in the structure of the world-system since 1965 and 2) to analyze whether these changes can be attributed to ‘globalization’. Significant attention is paid to the trajectories of the BRICS and to the possibly divergent structural evolutions of the political and economic dimensions that constitute the system. Our results show that despite a certain degree of power convergence between countries at the sub-top of the system, overall, divergence continues to take place between the most and least powerful, and stratification is reproduced. Globalization is further shown to exacerbate this trend, though its effect differs on the political and economic dimensions of the system. Overall, though the traditional ‘core powers’ might have to share their power with newcomer China in the future, this hardly heralds a new age in which the global system of power relations are converging to the extent that stratification is being undermined.

scholarly journals Moral Masculinities: Ethical Self-fashionings of Professional Chinese Men in London

NAN Nü ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-147
Author(s):  
Derek Hird
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Chinese Men ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Discursive Context

Through qualitative interviews and examination of textual sources, this essay investigates the gendered, class and cultural subjectivities of transnational, highly-educated Chinese men living and working in London. Narrative analysis of the interviews of two participants suggests that they exhibit hybrid “bricolage masculinities,” which incorporate elements from Western educational and corporate cultures, and also appropriate concepts and practices from the Confucian tradition of moral self-cultivation. A discussion of contemporary texts that support the revival of Confucian masculinities illuminates the discursive context in which the participants’ ethical self-fashionings take place. The study argues that the cosmopolitan yet culturally embedded masculinities of the participants are suggestive of how professional Chinese men, as they step onto the world stage, seek to insert themselves more advantageously into local and global power relations of gender, class and nation.


Histórias escritas com sangue: Uma análise de processos judiciários de assassinatos de mulheres em Goiânia (1970-1984)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neide Célia Ferreira Barros
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Case Reports ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Country Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Gender Power

This book analyzes the criminal processes of homicides or attempted homicides of women in Goiânia during the period of 1970-1984. We observed the gender power relations in the capital of Goiás, a border region, a mixture of country life elements and discourses of modernity. Hence, through case reports of women who suffered attacks on their lives in a period of intense changes, such as the organization of feminist groups in Brazil and the world, political and economic repercussions of the construction of Brasília in Goiás and mass immigration to Goiânia, we have pursued to understand what it meant socially to "be a man" and "to be a woman" in this capital and what consequences were brought into their bodies, concerning life and death, protection and punishment.

Twenty-First-Century Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berthold Schoene
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
First Century ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Global Relations

This chapter looks at how the contemporary British and Irish novel is becoming part of a new globalized world literature, which imagines the world as it manifests itself both within (‘glocally’) and outside nationalist demarcations. At its weakest, often against its own best intentions, this new cosmopolitan writing cannot but simply reinscribe the old imperial power relations. Or, it provides an essential component of the West’s ideological superstructure for globalization’s neoliberal business of rampant upward wealth accumulation. At its best, however, this newly emergent genre promotes a cosmopolitan ethics of justice, resistance. It also promotes dissent while working hard to expose and deconstruct the extant hegemonies and engaging in a radical imaginative recasting of global relations.

The Cambridge History of America and the World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

Indirect Subjects

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
African People ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
Nigerian Film ◽  
Indirect Rule

In Indirect Subjects, Matthew H. Brown analyzes the content of the prolific Nigerian film industry's mostly direct-to-video movies alongside local practices of production and circulation to show how screen media play spatial roles in global power relations. Scrutinizing the deep structural and aesthetic relationship between Nollywood, as the industry is known, and Nigerian state television, Brown tracks how several Nollywood films, in ways similar to both state television programs and colonial cinema productions, invite local spectators to experience liberal capitalism not only as a form of exploitation but as a set of expectations about the future. This mode of address, which Brown refers to as “periliberalism,” sustains global power imbalances by locating viewers within liberalism but distancing them from its processes and benefits. Locating the wellspring of this hypocrisy in the British Empire's practice of indirect rule, Brown contends that culture industries like Nollywood can sustain capitalism by isolating ordinary African people, whose labor and consumption fuel it, from its exclusive privileges.

Obstetric Violence in Their Own Words: How Women in Mexico and South Africa Expect, Experience, and Respond to Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 107780122110373
Author(s):  
Vania Smith-Oka ◽  
Sarah E. Rubin ◽  
Lydia Z. Dixon
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Powerful Method ◽  
Obstetric Violence ◽  
The World ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
Temporal Model ◽  
Women's Stories ◽  
Structural Inequalities

This article, based on ethnographic research in Mexico and South Africa, presents two central arguments about obstetric violence: (a) structural inequalities across diverse global sites are primarily linked to gender and lead to similar patterns of obstetric violence, and (b) ethnography is a powerful method to give voice to women's stories. Connecting these two arguments is a temporal model to understand how women across the world come to expect, experience, and respond to obstetric violence—that is, before, during, and after the encounter. This temporal approach is a core feature of ethnography, which requires long-term immersion and attention to context.

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