scholarly journals Review Article: The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories (2018) by Dipesh Chakrabarty

Author(s):  
Shikha Vats ◽  

W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) had famously said that the problem of the twentieth century “is the problem of the color-line” (p. 13). Dipesh Chakrabarty declares, in this new volume, that the question of the twenty-first century will be that of climate crisis. The major events of the twentieth century, including the processes of imperialism, colonization, and globalization led to widespread migration of people all across the globe framing new intersubjective equations such as oppressor-oppressed, privileged-marginalized, mostly along what Du Bois called ‘the color-line’. The major fallout of this colonial and capitalist project in the last century has been global warming which is set to affect the entire planet and hence needs to be at the forefront of all policy decisions in the twenty-first century. In order to grapple with this new age of the Anthropocene, whereby human beings have become a geophysical force capable of altering the course of the planet, Chakrabarty urges a rethinking and reformulation of the discipline of history

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M Thomas

Abstract This article argues that Du Bois’s tripartite framework consisting of the Veil, souls, and double-consciousness helps us analyze and understand the resurgence of racialized nationalism today. I juxtapose Du Bois’s early writings on German nationalism and antisemitism with his later writings on American nationalism and anti-black racism to demonstrate how antisemitism in Germany and anti-black racism in America function as constitutive elements for their respective nationalist discourses at the turn of the twentieth century. I argue that Du Bois’s analysis of the “double problem” of German nationalism served as an important precursor of his theory of the “double problem” of American nationalism. Du Bois’s concepts, when taken together, provide a still-relevant framework through which to understand contemporary expressions of racism and xenophobia that typify emergent nationalist movements in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt

This chapter argues that the center of gravity is shifting because of an intricate interplay between America's color line and its nativity line. It uses the color line concept to ask whether America has the right policy tools to fully erase the line that separated whites and racial minorities throughout America's history. If they merge—if immigrants are racialized—the future sadly repeats America's past. If, instead, America's population becomes so diverse and multiracial that the color line disappears, an altogether different future is in store, perhaps the promised postracial society. However, it is not certain whether this social process will strengthen or weaken a color line inherited from the eighteenth century, strengthened across the next century and a half, and then challenged but not fully erased by the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Michaud

Philosophies of leadership have tended to express and support idealistic or realistic approaches to leadership. Leadership elitism maintains essentially that successful leaders must know and do what is best for their followers, because their followers are not capable of knowing and doing what is best for themselves. This essay offers descriptions of the contrasting traits of leadership idealism and realism, both of which explain elitism as a common trait of idealism. These descriptions are exemplified with an overview of some past and current leadership philosophies, and then with an in-depth analysis of the early twentieth-century views of the African-Americans thinkers W.E.B. Du Bois (idealist) and Booker T. Washington (realist). Some remarks on where leadership philosophy is and could be in the twenty-first century conclude the essay.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Kunisch ◽  
Markus Menz ◽  
David Collis

Abstract The corporate headquarters (CHQ) of the multi-business enterprise, which emerged as the dominant organizational form for the conduct of business in the twentieth century, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. As the business environment undergoes a fundamental transition in the twenty-first century, we believe that understanding the evolving role of the CHQ from an organization design perspective will offer unique insights into the nature of business activity in the future. The purpose of this article, in keeping with the theme of the Journal of Organization Design Special Collection, is thus to invigorate research into the CHQ. We begin by explicating four canonical questions related to the design of the CHQ. We then survey fundamental changes in the business environment occurring in the twenty-first century, and discuss their potential implications for CHQ design. When suitable here we also refer to the contributions published in our Special Collection. Finally, we put forward recommendations for advancements and new directions for future research to foster a deeper and broader understanding of the topic. We believe that we are on the cusp of a change in the CHQ as radical as that which saw its initial emergence in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Exactly what form that change will take remains for practitioners and researchers to inform.


2013 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Pritchard

AbstractThis article examines a range of writings on the status of musical interpretation in Austria and Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century, and argues their relevance to current debates. While the division outlined by recent research between popular-critical hermeneutics and analytical ‘energetics’ at this time remains important, hitherto neglected contemporary reflections by Paul Bekker and Kurt Westphal demonstrate that the success of energetics was not due to any straightforward intellectual victory. Rather, the images of force and motion promoted by 1920s analysis were carried by historical currents in the philosophy, educational theory and arts of the time, revealing a culturally situated source for twenty-first-century analysis's preoccupations with motion and embodiment. The cultural relativization of such images may serve as a retrospective counteraction to the analytical rationalizing processes that culminated specifically in Heinrich Schenker's later work, and more generally in the privileging of graphic and notational imagery over poetic paraphrase.


2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Louis Gates

In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois famously predicted that the problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. Indeed, during the past century, matters of race were frequently the cause of intense conflict and the stimulus for public policy decisions not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The founding of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race at the beginning of the twenty-first century acknowledges the continuing impact of Du Bois's prophecy, his pioneering role as one of the founders of the discipline of sociology in the American academy, and the considerable work that remains to be done as we confront the “problem” that Du Bois identified over a century ago.


2021 ◽  
Vol 165 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Yamamoto ◽  
So Kazama ◽  
Yoshiya Touge ◽  
Hayata Yanagihara ◽  
Tsuyoshi Tada ◽  
...  

AbstractThis study aimed to evaluate the impact of climate change on flood damage and the effects of mitigation measures and combinations of multiple adaptation measures in reducing flood damage. The inundation depth was calculated using a two-dimensional unsteady flow model. The flood damage cost was estimated from the unit evaluation value set for each land use and prefectures and the calculated inundation depth distribution. To estimate the flood damage in the near future and the late twenty-first century, five global climate models were used. These models provided daily precipitation, and the change of the extreme precipitation was calculated. In addition to the assessment of the impacts of climate change, certain adaptation measures (land-use control, piloti building, and improvement of flood control level) were discussed, and their effects on flood damage cost reduction were evaluated. In the case of the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, the damage cost in the late twenty-first century will increase to 57% of that in the late twentieth century. However, if mitigation measures were to be undertaken according to RCP2.6 standards, the increase of the flood damage cost will stop, and the increase of the flood damage cost will be 28% of that in the late twentieth century. By implementing adaptation measures in combination rather than individually, it is possible to keep the damage cost in the future period even below that in the late twentieth century. By implementing both mitigation and adaptation measures, it is possible to reduce the flood damage cost in the late twenty-first century to 69% of that in the late twentieth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristela Garcia-Spitz ◽  
Kathryn Creely

How are ethnographic photographs from the twentieth century accessed and represented in the twenty-first century? This report from the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the University of California San Diego Library provides an overview of the photographic materials, arrangements and types of documentation in the archive, followed by summaries of specific digitization projects of the photographs from physician Sylvester Lambert and anthropologists Roger Keesing and Harold Scheffler, among others. Through the process of digitization and online access, ethnographic photographs are transformed and may be discovered and contextualized in new ways. Utilizing new technologies and forming broad collaborations, these digitization projects incorporate both anthropological and archival practices and also raise ethical questions. This is an in-depth look at what is digitized and how it is described to re/create meaning and context and to bring new life to these images.


2021 ◽  

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.


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