scholarly journals Narrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Myles Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic

This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice.

scholarly journals Four Scenarios of Malaysia-Indonesia Migration: From the Status Quo to the Wild Card Scenarios

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Suyatno Ladiqi ◽  
Reevany Bustami ◽  
Ellisha Nasruddin
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Critical Events ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Wild Card ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Blind Spots

In the context of ASEAN, the number of migrants from Indonesia and Malaysia is the largest. Combining the regular and the irregular migrants, the estimates range from 1.8 million to 3 million people. It is incontrovertible that movement of such magnitude has its impacts, probably both positive and negative. This article aims at providing an analysis based on future scenarios. The purpose is not to make predictions but rather to chart possible paths of critical events that would lead to different scenarios which have different implications to the political, economic and socio-cultural realities. Within this analysis, it is hoped that certain taken-for-granted blind-spots, due to conventional assumptions and mainstream paradigms, will be exposed and examined.

scholarly journals Two pages from the culture of the double speech and of tacit suppositions

wisdom ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Ana Bazac
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Status

The power relations – at the time of Erasmus and Mandeville, and also in present – make the critique of the status quo to be very difficult. An answer to this situation was and is the complex of the double speech and tacit political suppositions. The paper suggests some similarities between the texts of the above-mentioned thinkers and, on the other hand, the present mainstream political jargon, by emphasising rather the differences: it is noteworthy that Mandeville and Erasmus had a strong, while indirect through their humoristic use of the double speech, critique of the state of things described by them. The conclusions developed here concern the tacit suppositions in the political discourse and how the two items are perennial within the modern culture.

An Intersectional Approach to the “Mobility Trap” That Ensnares Migrant Youth in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaorong Gu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Urban China ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Migrant Youth ◽  
Political Economic

This essay explores the theory of intersectionality in the study of youths’ lives and social inequality in the Global South. It begins with an overview of the concept of intersectionality and its wide applications in social sciences, followed by a proposal for regrounding the concept in the political economic systems in particular contexts (without assuming the universality of capitalist social relations in Northern societies), rather than positional identities. These systems lay material foundations, shaping the multiple forms of deprivation and precarity in which Southern youth are embedded. A case study of rural migrant youths’ ‘mobility trap’ in urban China is used to illustrate how layers of social institutions and structures in the country’s transition to a mixed economy intersect to influence migrant youths’ aspirations and life chances. The essay concludes with ruminations on the theoretical and social implications of the political-economy-grounded intersectionality approach for youth studies.

Traditions and Transformations

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Regina Marler
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Female Role ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Florence Nightingale ◽  
The Status ◽  
Childhood Home ◽  
Octavia Hill

Modernist, feminist, experimental: the terms we now most associate with Virginia Woolf all presuppose a break with conventions and a rejection of the status quo in art and power relations. Yet all her life, Virginia Woolf kept returning in memory to her childhood home, to the crowded Victorian family in which she was raised, where boys went to the best schools that Sir Leslie Stephen could afford, and girls, however clever or gifted, were shaped for charitable work, for motherhood, for marriage to prominent men. This obsessive turning back is a kind of pained nostalgia: a lament, a grievance, a comfort—and the engine of even her most avant-garde work. This chapter explores the traditions and assumptions of that potent childhood world, in part through the prism of three conservative female role models her mother, Julia Stephen, chose for her daughters: Mrs. Humphry Ward, Octavia Hill, and Florence Nightingale.

scholarly journals Gestation, equality and freedom: ectogenesis as a political perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Cavaliere
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Positive Case ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Human Fetuses ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
The Status ◽  
Limited Scope

The benefits of full ectogenesis, that is, the gestation of human fetuses outside the maternal womb, for women ground many contemporary authors’ arguments on the ethical desirability of this practice. In this paper, I present and assess two sets of arguments advanced in favour of ectogenesis: arguments stressing ectogenesis’ equality-promoting potential and arguments stressing its freedom-promoting potential. I argue that although successfully grounding a positive case for ectogenesis, these arguments have limitations in terms of their reach and scope. Concerning their limited reach, I contend that ectogenesis will likely benefit a small subset of women and, arguably, not the group who most need to achieve equality and freedom. Concerning their limited scope, I contend that these defences do not pay sufficient attention to the context in which ectogenesis would be developed and that, as a result, they risk leaving the status quo unchanged. After providing examples of these limitations, I move to my proposal concerning the role of ectogenesis in promoting women’s equality and freedom. This proposal builds on Silvia Federici’s, Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s and Selma James’ readings of the international feminist campaign ‘Wages for Housework’. It maintains that the political perspective and provocation that ectogenesis can advance should be considered and defended.

scholarly journals Bodily abjection and the politics of resistance in Tom Paulin’s Greek tragedies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Torrance
Keyword(s):  
Open Channel ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Status ◽  
Politics Of Resistance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Political Actions

Abstract Tom Paulin’s Greek tragedies present extremes of bodily abjection in order to service of a politics of resistance that is tied, in each case, to the political context of the drama’s production. The Riot Act (1984), Seize the Fire (1989), and Medea (2010), share a focus on the degradation of oppressed political groups and feature characters who destabilize the status quo. Yet the impact of disruptive political actions is not ultimately made clear. We are left wondering at the conclusion of each tragedy if the momentous acts of defiance we have witnessed have any power to create systemic change within politically rigged systems. The two 1980s plays are discussed together and form a sequence, with The Riot Act overtly addressing the Northern Irish conflict and Seize the Fire encompassing a broader sweep of oppressive regimes. The politics of discrimination in Medea are illuminated by comparison with similar themes in Paulin’s Love’s Bonfire (2010). Unlike other Northern Irish adaptations of Greek tragedy, Paulin’s dramas, arrested in their political moments, present little hope for the immediate future. Yet in asking us to consider if individual sacrifice is enough to achieve radical change they maintain an open channel for political discourse.

scholarly journals KONVERSI KEAGAMAAN PASCA 1965, MENGURAI DAMPAK SOSIAL BUDAYA DAN HUBUNGAN ISLAM KRISTEN DI PEDESAAN JAWA

Harmoni ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-240
Author(s):  
M. Alie Humaedi
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Heating Up ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Islam and Christianity in various regions is often confronted with situations caused by external factors. They no longer debate the theological aspect, but are based on the political economy and social culture aspects. In the Dieng village, the economic resources are mostly dominated by Christians as early Christianized product as the process of Kiai Sadrach's chronicle. Economic mastery was not originally as the main trigger of the conflict. However, as the political map post 1965, in which many Muslims affiliated to the Indonesian Communist Party convert to Christianity, the relationship between Islam and Christianity is heating up. The question of the dominance of political economic resources of Christians is questionable. This research to explore the socio cultural and religious impact of the conversion of PKI to Christian in rural Dieng and Slamet Pekalongan and Banjarnegara. This qualitative research data was extracted by in-depth interviews, observations and supported by data from Dutch archives, National Archives and Christian Synod of Salatiga. Research has found the conversion of the PKI to Christianity has sparked hostility and deepened the social relations of Muslims and Christians in Kasimpar, Petungkriono and Karangkobar. The culprit widened by involving the network of Wonopringgo Islamic Boarding. It is often seen that existing conflicts are no longer latent, but lead to a form of manifest conflict that decomposes in the practice of social life.

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