scholarly journals Ethnographic Memories

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Maxime Polleri
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Politics Of Knowledge ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

This article explores the similarities between a memoir and an ethnographic work. A memoir stands as an historical account written from personal knowledge. It is a form of writing that should resonate deeply within the heart of the anthropologist, whose very own specificity is to be, first and foremost, an ethnographer. That is, anthropologists are individuals full of (hi) stories, contingence, and subjectivity, who nevertheless struggle to bring “objective” accounts of what had happened under their eyes during fieldwork. I use this short comparative act as a jumping board to examine the politics of knowledge in the history of anthropological inquiry since the Enlightenment. More precisely, this comparison represents an opportunity to look at what is silently invested in the practices of ethnographical writing. In a brief discussion, I highlight the political implications that surround issues of knowledge production, expert voices, and translation amidst the discourse and narrative of anthropologists.

GEOGRAPHY, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND IMPROVEMENT Geography and Enlightenment. Edited by David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. viii+455. ISBN 0-226-48720-2 (hb). $52·00. 0-226-48721-0 (pb). $25·00. Nature's government: science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world. By Richard Drayton. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xxi+346. ISBN 0-300-05976-0. £25·00. Enlightenment geography: the political languages of British geography, 1650–1850. By Robert J. Mayhew. London: Macmillan, 2000. Pp. viii+324. ISBN 0-333-79186-X. £45·00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELIX DRIVER
Keyword(s):  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Lecture Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

What is Enlightenment? Few questions in the history of ideas can have given rise to more controversy, sustained over more than two centuries and extending into the furthest reaches of contemporary thought. In comparison, the ‘where’ of Enlightenment – the sites from which philosophes garnered their evidence, the settings in which their ideas took shape, the networks through which they were disseminated, the contexts in which they were interpreted – has received much less attention. It is not that these geographies have been altogether neglected. Distinctions between different ‘national’ Enlightenments (French, Scottish, English, and so on) are familiar, perhaps all too familiar, to historians of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At a smaller scale, it is difficult to imagine historical accounts of the Enlightenment world without some sort of tour of those paradigmatic sites – the coffee house, the botanic garden, the lecture theatre. There is a geography here, of sorts: but in truth it is often simply a stage for action, a passive background (sometimes ‘national’, sometimes ‘local’) to the real business of social and intellectual change. In recent years, however, intellectual historians in general, and historians of science in particular, have begun to pay more attention to these and many other sites, not simply as inert contexts but as vital components of the making and communication of new knowledge. Thus is a genuine geography of knowledge in the making.

Pragmatism, Practice and the Politics of Critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Livingston
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Practices

Colin Koopman’s Pragmatism as Transition offers an argumentative retelling of the history of American pragmatism in terms of the tradition’s preoccupation with time. Taking time seriously offers a venue for reorienting pragmatism today as a practice of cultural critique. This article examines the political implications third wave pragmatism’s conceptualization of time, practice, and critique. I argue that Koopman’s book opens up possible lines of inquiry into historical practices of critique from William James to James Baldwin that, when followed through to their conclusion, trouble some of the book’s political conclusions. Taking time and practice seriously, as transitionalism invites pragmatists to do, demands pluralizing critique in a way that puts pressure on familiar pragmatist convictions concerning liberalism, progress, and American exceptionalism.

USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'S COMMENTAIRE

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIANNA ENGLERT
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Elements ◽  
Liberal Thought

As part of Benjamin Constant's academic “revival,” scholars have revisited the political and religious elements of his thought, but conclude that he remained uninterested in the nineteenth century's major social and economic questions. This article examines Constant's response to what would later become known as “the social question” in his Commentary on Filangieri's Work, and argues that his claims about poverty and its alleviation highlight central elements of his political liberalism, especially on the practice of citizenship in the modern age. By interpreting social issues through his original political lens of “usurpation,” Constant encouraged skepticism of social legislation and identified the political implications of a “disinherited” poor class. The lens of usurpation ultimately limited the scope of Constant's solutions to poverty. But his attention to social and economic issues prompts us to reexamine the category of “the social” and its uses in the history of liberal thought, particularly the place of class concerns in the French liberal tradition.

scholarly journals A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL FRIJTERS ◽  
ANDREW E. CLARK ◽  
CHRISTIAN KREKEL ◽  
RICHARD LAYARD
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Case ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up

AbstractIn this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. We then discuss possible measures on which a wellbeing orientation could be based, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the political agency of citizens and thus their own evaluations of their lives. We then turn to practicalities and consequences: how would one actually set up wellbeing-oriented decision-making and what difference should we expect from current practice? We end by discussing the current barriers to the adoption of wellbeing as the goal of government, both in terms of what we need to know more about and where the ideological barriers lie.

Religious Themes in Contemporary Art

2016 ◽  
pp. 188-218
Author(s):  
Codrina Laura Ionita
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between art and religion, evident throughout the entire history of art, can be deciphered at two levels – that of the essence of art, and that of the actual theme the artist approaches. The mystical view on the essence of art, encountered from Orphic and Pythagorean thinkers to Heidegger and Gadamer, believes that art is a divine gift and the artist – a messenger of heavenly thoughts. But the issue of religious themes' presence in art arises especially since modern times, after the eighteenth century, when religion starts to be constantly and vehemently attacked (from the Enlightenment and the French or the Bolshevik Revolution to the “political correctness” nowadays). Art is no longer just the material transposition of a religious content; instead, religion itself becomes a theme in art, which allows artists to relate to it in different ways – from veneration to disapproval and blasphemy. However, there have always been artists to see art in its genuine meaning, in close connection with the religious sentiment. An case in point is the work of Bill Viola. In Romanian art, a good example is the art group Prolog, but also individual artists like Onisim Colta or Marin Gherasim, who understand art in its true spiritual sense of openness to the absolute.

Living with friends

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Mai
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Shared Activity ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines Guédiguian’s youth in l’Estaque, a “communist” neighbourhood of Marseille, his political activism, his transition away from the Communist party, and finally a turn toward friendship as a figure for human interaction. The chapter examines the history of l’Estaque. It tells of Guédiguian’s friendship with Gérard Meylan, his meeting Ariane Ascaride, and then his disillusion with the Communist party, corresponding with his entry into filmmaking, but filmmaking that is not so much an industry or an art form as a way of “remaining with friends” through shared activity and cooperation. The chapter turns to the philosophy of friendship since Aristotle to ground this move in what Aristotle calls “eudaimonia” or the flourishing life. From there it discusses the political implications of a human relationship built on philia in a cultural period, our own, in which different figures of human interaction, the figures of the consumer and the entrepreneur are dominant. It concludes with a discussion of how Guédiguian’s cinema offers a way forward to those who have felt politically alienated during a period of economic “neoliberalism.”

The Politics of Slavery

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Brace
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Definition Of

This book asks what it means to describe someone as a slave and explores the political dimensions of that question. It argues against the search for a transhistorical and timeless definition of slavery, and offers a critical interrogation of the dominant liberal discourse on slavery from the Enlightenment to the present. It pays particular attention to the meanings of the slavery / freedom binary and to the connections between the past and the present in understanding ‘old’ and ‘new’ slavery. The book is about what it means to think about slavery as a historical process and as a political relation, both in the history of political thought and in present debates about trafficking and incarceration. It argues that we need to bring the concept of slavery back into our understandings of freedom, labour and belonging, and unravel the assumptions behind the meanings we ascribe to personhood, sub-personhood and humanity. From Aristotle and the idea of natural slavery, through Locke’s conception of civil society, Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and J.S. Mill’s analogy of slavery and marriage to the discourse of modern abolition and the idea of trafficking as slavery, the book interrogates what it means to think about the idea of freedom as the opposite of slavery, and draws attention to the significance of the tensions, ambiguities and silences that surround that conception.

Waqf as a Political Weapon

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 92-124
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier
Keyword(s):  
Initial Phase ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mount Sinai ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Church

Abstract The aim of this article is to highlight the political uses of the legal concept of waqf in a confrontation between an Orthodox and a Catholic institution during the initial phase of the schism within the Church of Antioch. The Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai confronted the hospice of the Franciscans in the court of the Chief Judge of the province of Damascus in 1145/1733. The legal aspects of the lawsuit are an interesting example of the use of the Ottoman judiciary by non-Muslims, but in order to understand the political implications of the case, it needs to be analysed in the broader context of the religious and political tensions of the time. Therefore, a sketch of the history of both monasteries and their endowments is supplemented with a chapter on the role of Sylvestros, Patriarch of Antioch, in Damascus and an examination of the French and Spanish interests within this Ottoman context.

Is Land Inalienable? Historical and Current Debates on Land Transfers in Northern Ghana

Africa ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carola Lentz
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
West Region ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Region I ◽  
History Of

The article traces the history of debates on land transfers in northern Ghana and discusses the ways in which African and European views on land tenure influenced and instrumentalized each other. Using the case of Nandom in the Upper West Region, I analyse how an expansionist group of Dagara farmers gained access to and legitimized control over land previously held by a group of Sisala hunters and farmers claiming to be the ‘first-comers’ to the area. Both groups acknowledge that the Sisala eventually transferred land to the Dagara immigrants, symbolically effected by the transmission of an earth-shrine stone. However, the Sisala interpret this historical event in terms of a ‘gift’, invoking the language of kinship and continued dependency, while the Dagara construe it in terms of a ‘purchase’, implicating exchange, equality and autonomy. These different perspectives, as well as colonial officials' ideas that land ownership was ultimately vested in the ancestors of the first-comer lineage and therefore ‘inalienable’, have shaped early disputes about the Nandom earth shrine and Dagara property rights. Competing conceptions of pre-colonial African land tenure continue to provide powerful arguments in current land conflicts, and shrinking land reserves as well as the political implications of landed property, in the context of decentralization policies, have exacerbated the debate on the ‘inalienability’ of land.

scholarly journals Paradigm debates and marketing theory, thought and practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Tadajewski
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Research ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Marketing Theory ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Politics Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional System

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a history of a number of intellectual debates in marketing theory and consumer research. It outlines the key arguments involved, highlights the politics and acrimoniousness that often accompanied the competition for academic prestige or practitioner remuneration. It weaves the contents of the special issue into its narrative. Design/methodology/approach – This article engages in a broad historical survey of the history of marketing thought, as it pertains to intellectual debate and disputation. Findings – While scholars often articulate objectivity as an intellectual ideal, many of the debates that are explored reveal a degree of intellectual intolerance and this is refracted through the institutional system that structures marketing discourse. Originality/value – This account provides an introduction to the intellectual debates of the last century, highlighting the ebb and flow of marketing thought. It calls attention to debates that are largely under explored and highlights the politics of knowledge production in marketing and consumer research.

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