scholarly journals Ethnicity, Food, and Politics: the Example of the Yasa in the Cameroonian South Province

Afrika Focus ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavien Tiokou Ndonko

In Cameroon, ethnicity is present in food as well as in anthroponymy. Neighbou- ring populations use it to auto-identify themselves and to indicate their spatial settlement. The 'leaves'eaters', the 'crabs'eaters' and the '"fruits de l'arbre à pain"-eaters' live together in peace on the Coast of the country by assuming their ethnicity. They even take over new political and administrative structures as guide mark in self presentation. Even the political power who officially tries to 'erase' ethnicity is not able to compose without it. Ethnicity has become a political strategy and is being mobilized or demobilized to balance or control the power. KEY WORDS: Ethnicity, food, politics, space, stereotype 

Afrika Focus ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Flavien Tiokou Ndonko

Ethnicity, Food, and Politics: The Example of the Yasa in the Cameroonian South Province In Cameroon, ethnicity is present in food as well as in anthroponymy. Neighbouring populations use it to auto-identify themselves and to indicate their spatial settlement. The ‘leaves’eaters’, the ‘crabs’eaters’ and the ‘“fruits de l’arbre à pain”-eaters’ live together in peace on the Coast of the country by assuming their ethnicity. They even take over new political and administrative structures as guide mark in self presentation. Even the political power who officially tries to 'erase' ethnicity is not able to compose without it. Ethnicity has become a political strategy and is being mobilized or demobilized to balance or control the power.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 607-616
Author(s):  
David Neal Greenwood

The rhetorical career of Libanius of Antioch (a.d.314–c.393) spanned the reigns of a number of fourth-century emperors. Like many orators, he used the trope of the emperor as a pilot, steering the ship of state. He did this for his imperial exemplar Julian and in fact for his predecessor Constantius II as well. Julian sought to craft an identity for himself as a theocratic king. He and his supporters cast him as an earthly parallel to the Christ-like versions of Heracles and Asclepius he constructed, which was arguably a co-opting of Christian and particularly Constantinian themes. In a public oration, Julian even placed himself in the role of Christ in the Temptation in the Wilderness. This kind of overtly Christian metaphor was not Libanius’ preferred idiom, however, and he wrote of Julian as another kind of chosen and divine saviour-figure, one with its roots in the golden age of Greek philosophy. The figure of the κυβερνήτης, the ‘pilot’ or ‘helmsman’, is a philosophical concept with roots in the thought of the pre-Socratics but most familiar from Plato. The uses of this metaphor by Julian and Libanius highlight the rhetorical strategy and self-presentation the emperor employed during his reign.


Author(s):  
Nataliia Rotar

In the article the author defined the peculiar properties and structure of the political mechanisms for the integration of Russian nationalism into Crimea’s Political Area in 1991-2014. It is proved that Russian nationalism formed a political strategy of integration into the political space of the Ukrainian autonomy on the principles of creating a manageable set of actors and subjects of the regional political process and civil space, as well as the incorporation of its agents of influence into the institutions of political power of the ARC. It is substantiated that the essence of the political component of the strategy of the activities of Russian imperial nationalism in the Crimea consisted in the creation on the basis of the Russian national minority (by status) of an independent ethno-social organism with a claim to its own state-territorial formation. In the conclusions, the author notes that structurally, the process of using the political mechanisms for the integration of Russian nationalism in the ARC is presented in three consecutive stages. At the first stage, the political goals of Russian nationalism in the Crimea were identified, which were of an imperial nature, and therefore included the definition of key directions and a system of organizational measures that were oriented toward the political, economic, ethno-national, sociocultural and information spheres of life in the Crimean peninsula. At the second stage, the political institutes of the Russian Federation developed a system of advanced initiatives aimed at weakening the influence of the institutions of Ukraine's political power on the territory of the autonomy and a set of tactical methods that enabled them to react quickly to the actual challenges of pro-Ukrainian initiatives. At the third stage, a system of effective mechanisms of lobbying, institutional interaction, forms, methods and methods of reproducing the meanings of Russian imperial nationalism in the ARC at the level of all levels of the given social space – political, ethnonational, socio-cultural and economic – was formed. Keywords: Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Russia, Russian nationalism, political integration, integration mechanisms, political meanings


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Frazer

This chapter analyses Shakespeare’s consideration of the pulls of seclusion, and of concealment, against the demands of public government and open contestation of the power to rule. Measure for Measure dramatizes the abuse and corruption of authoritarian governing power, in particular in the form of male sexual coercion and exploitation of females. The plot focuses on a ruler’s use of secrecy and surveillance in order to monitor their attempts to counter overly lax law enforcement with authoritarianism. It also puts questions of market rationality, and the imperatives that govern poor people’s attempts to earn livings in constrained urban circumstances in relation to questions of political order, and into relation with the imperatives of theological truth and spiritual virtue. The claims and imperatives of frank public speech, as a method of revealing corruption and pursuing justice, are brought into relationship with the political strategy of trickery.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.


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 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.


Author(s):  
Mark I. Vail

This chapter situates the book in theoretical and empirical contexts. It provides a brief overview of competing theoretical approaches to explaining trajectories of economic reform in continental Europe in the era of austerity and transnational neoliberalism since the early 1990s. Since standard analyses of “neoliberal” reform fail to capture these dynamics of economic reform in continental Europe, as do conventional institutionalist and interest-based accounts, it argues for an approach that emphasizes the political power of ideas and highlights the influence of national liberal traditions—French “statist liberalism,” German “corporate liberalism,” and Italian “clientelist liberalism.” It provides a brief overview of the remainder of the book, which uses a study of national liberal traditions to explain trajectories of reform in fiscal, labor-market, and financial policies in France, Germany, and Italy, three countries that have rejected neoliberal approaches to reform in a neoliberal age.


Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy

The exercise of political power in late medieval English towns was predicated upon the representation, management, and control of public opinion. This chapter explains why public opinion mattered so much to town rulers; how they worked to shape opinion through communication; and the results. Official communication was instrumental in the politicization of urban citizens. The practices of official secrecy and public proclamation were not inherently contradictory, but conflict flowed from the political process. The secrecy surrounding the practices of civic government provoked ordinary citizens to demand more accountability from town rulers, while citizens, who were accustomed to hear news and information circulated by civic magistrates, were able to use what they knew to challenge authority.


Author(s):  
Raphaëla Dubreuil

This chapter explores the image Plutarch created of the end of Athenian Democracy. Its aim is to show that Plutarch conceived of this end through the lens of the theatre, and to explore the origins of this portrayal. It makes this argument through close study of the intersection of theatre and politics in Plutarch’s Life of Phocion. Plutarch expresses the political significance of crucial moments by drawing attention to their theatrical dimension. Theatrical venues, self-presentation, staging, speech, and props are used in order to create an emotional impact on an Athenian audience. Since Plutarch understood theatre in (mostly) Platonic terms, this evaluation is negative. He wishes to depict an Athenian society predisposed to strong emotion, ready to welcome an exuberant tyrant with open arms despite its previous democratic values.


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