scholarly journals Planetary Boundaries and the Challenge to Governance in the Anthropocene

Author(s):  
David Chandler

This article considers the challenge to governance posed by new Anthropocene discourses of planetary boundaries. The first section introduces the problematic of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch and also as symptomatic of the end of modernist ontological and epistemological assumptions of the divide between culture and nature. The Anthropocene is thus seen to fundamentally decentre the human as subject and the temporal linearity of Enlightenment progress. The second section analyses the implications of this closure for critical approaches to governance, which increasingly accept and reproduce these ontopolitical assumptions. The tasks of governance thus become transformed, no longer seeking to imagine alternative futures but rather drawing out alternative possibilities that already exist in the present. Governance becomes increasingly an act of affirmation rather than a discourse of change and transformation. The third section expands on this point to consider how contemporary governance approaches articulate the status quo in increasingly radical and enabling ways.

Author(s):  
Milka Marie-Madeleine Malfait

Throughout its history, Artsakh had to guard against the external threats of Neo-Ottomanism. At the present time it is especially relevant. September 27, 2020 marks escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – which means Artsakh in Armenian. This led to six weeks of cease fire, humanitarian disaster, which killed many people and destroyed cultural and religious heritage of Artsakh. The mountainous region is surrounded by Azerbaijani land, although populated by Armenians. Due to the political novelty of this issue, the author employed analytical and descriptive method. The acquired results demonstrate that the history repeats itself in Neo-Ottomanism, which has been a threat to Artsakh and Armenia since its emergence until the present day. In recent years, the concept of reunification with Armenia, as well as the independence of Artsakh, outlined the prospects for the future. The third solution to the conflict became the ceasefire agreement of 9 November 2020, nobly negotiated by Russia to save Armenia from military collapse. However, this solution is more painful than the status-quo. The main conclusion consists in the statement that the international community should be more vigilant and prevent the expansion of such threats.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Sonia Zarco-Real

The first literary manifestations to emerge in the context of the Spanish Civil War endeavored to create a legitimizing discourse for each of two contending Spains, the National Spain and the Republican Spain, by means of poetic appropriation of urban spaces. Nevertheless, this was not a Spain divided only in two, between leftists and rightists or Socialists and Cedistas, but rather a territory comprised of many parallel wars sparked prior to 1936. According to historian Enrique Moradiellos, the nuclei of three disparate and opposing political agendas arose from the physical foundation of these two Spains, ‘the reformist-democratic, the reactionary-authoritarian and the revolutionary-collectivist [agendas] that responded to the same triad of models that emerged in Europe in the wake of the devastating impact of the Great War of 1914 and that competed to achieve political and institutional stabilization’ (2004: 125). This ‘reform, reaction and revolution’ triangle that acted as the protagonist of the Great War would also settle into the fratricidal spaces of Spain and its cultural products. In this context, my essay will analyse the mechanisms of appropriation of Madrid’s spaces employed by each of these three political agendas as they are presented in Madrid, de Corte a Checa (1938) by Agustín de Foxá. Following the map of the capital we will see how both, the agenda of a modern anti-traditional space driven by the Second Republic and the anti-bourgeois revolutionary agenda that stood for the destruction of the status quo and the implementation of a Communist Orthodox regime, present a threat to the conservative ideal that represented the monarcho-Catholic centralism of the third agenda. This threat is manifested in the dismantling of Madrid through the ‘de-Hispanicization’ (Foxá) of the mythical spaces of the sacred (churches and convents), historic (statues and palaces) and domestic (house interiors) cityscapes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Pieniążek

Abstract Presentation of contemporary trends in development of such residential units as peripheral housing estates in large Polish cities, as exemplified by Warsaw, is the objective of the paper. Such units are compared with their counterparts being built in Berlin. Research was carried out in three housing estates in the western part of the Bemowo District of Warsaw, i.e. Lazurowa (developer J.W. Construction), Nad Jeziorem (developer DoR Group) and Villa L’Azur (developer Bouygues Immobilier Polska). The first two were completed at the turn of 2008/2009. The third is in the final stage of construction. All three are located inside immediate city borders. Within framework of research were carried out analysis of developers’ materials, cartographic materials from the City Hall as well as field research. The results were juxtaposed with research made in 2008 in Berlin.


Author(s):  
Jonathan M. DiCicco ◽  
Victor M. Sanchez

International relations analysts often differentiate between status-quo and revisionist states. Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory among sovereign entities, and more. Analyses of revisionist states’ foreign policies and behaviors have explored sources and types of revisionism, choices of revisionist strategies, the interplay of revisionist and status-quo states, and the prospects for peaceful or violent change in the system. Intuitive but imprecise, the concepts of revisionism and revisionist states often are used without explicit definition, reflective discussion, or rigorous operationalization. For these reasons, efforts to conceptualize and measure revisionism merit special attention. Highlighted works promise to improve understanding of revisionism as a phenomenon, as well as its use in theoretical and empirical analyses of international conflict, war, and the peaceful accommodation of rising powers. Three questions guide the survey. First, who is seeking to revise what? This question opens a foray into the realm of the status quo and its distinct components, particularly in the context of rising and resurgent powers. Second, what is revisionism, and how is it detected or recognized? This question prompts an exploration of the concept and how it is brought to life in scholarly analyses. The third guiding question invites theoretical perspective: How does revisionism help one understand international relations? Provisional answers to that question open avenues for future inquiry.


Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 762-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail Loukianov

The article analyzes the relationship of conservatives to the political order that arose after the 1905 revolution. It suggests that by the start of World War I, a dissatisfaction with the status quo had become a characteristic feature of Russian conservatism. The archaic formula “orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” was the quintessential conservative discourse, both for nationalist supporters of conservative reforms and for opponents of any innovation such as Dubrovin’s All-Russian Union of the Russian People. But this formula existed in sharp contradiction to the realities of “renewed Russia.” Conservatives continually underscored the lack of correspondence between reality and their conservative dogma. In conservative circles, the growth of social tensions on the eve of the war was also understood as evidence of the inadequacy of the new political order. Because of this, Russian conservatives did not aspire to preserve the Third of June system and did not try to restore it after February 1917.


Author(s):  
Alicia Allison

Words fail to describe what an honour it has been to have been part of the ninth edition of the Pretoria Student Law Review. The sense of satisfaction is overwhelming in this being the third edition I have had the privilege to be a part of. Having spent three years as part of this publication I cannot begin to describe and expand upon all that I have learnt in this time, but one thing which I guarantee is the bright and prosperous future of the legal profession of South Africa. With each successive edition I see a thirst and hunger for knowledge from law students, each year those yearnings becoming more intense and providing us with the most thought provoking and well-founded articles. The desire to challenge the status quo, to reject the notions of complacency and outright refusal of facile thought is truly something all these writers should be proud of and us along with them. To read and to write is the essence of not only thought, but of life itself.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 685-739
Author(s):  
Mathias Eggert ◽  
Jens Alberts

Abstract Researching the field of business intelligence and analytics (BI & A) has a long tradition within information systems research. Thereby, in each decade the rapid development of technologies opened new room for investigation. Since the early 1950s, the collection and analysis of structured data were the focus of interest, followed by unstructured data since the early 1990s. The third wave of BI & A comprises unstructured and sensor data of mobile devices. The article at hand aims at drawing a comprehensive overview of the status quo in relevant BI & A research of the current decade, focusing on the third wave of BI & A. By this means, the paper’s contribution is fourfold. First, a systematically developed taxonomy for BI & A 3.0 research, containing seven dimensions and 40 characteristics, is presented. Second, the results of a structured literature review containing 75 full research papers are analyzed by applying the developed taxonomy. The analysis provides an overview on the status quo of BI & A 3.0. Third, the results foster discussions on the predicted and observed developments in BI & A research of the past decade. Fourth, research gaps of the third wave of BI & A research are disclosed and concluded in a research agenda.


Author(s):  
Matthew J. Hornsey ◽  
Jolanda Jetten

This chapter examines the psychological tensions between protecting the status quo within groups and engaging in intragroup change. In the first section we review two research traditions that imply self-reinforcing cycles of stability and preservation of the status quo: (a) research on conformity and the punishment of deviance and (b) research examining biases toward shared knowledge in small decision-making groups. In the second section we provide the counterpoint to these theoretical traditions, exploring several reasons why, despite psychological pressures that appear to favor majority opinions and shared assumptions, intragroup change and reform is a robust reality of group life. In the third and final section of this chapter we move on to examine who within the group is most likely to push for change; who within the group is more effective at pushing for change; and what are the effective strategies for initiating change.


1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bell

THERE ARE SOME BOOKS THAT ARE BETTER KNOWN FOR their titles than their contents. Mine is one of them. Various critics, usually from the Left, pointed to the upsurge of radicalism in the 1960s as disproof of the book's thesis. Others saw the work as an ‘ideological’ defence of ‘technocratic’ thinking, or of the ‘status quo’. A few, even more ludicrously, believed that the book attacked the role of ideals in politics. It was none of these.The frame of the book was set by its sub-title, On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Yet the last section looked ahead. After observing young left-wing intellectuals express repeated yearnings for ideology, I said that new inspirations, new ideologies, and new identifications would come from the Third World.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timon McPhearson ◽  
Christopher M. Raymond ◽  
Natalie Gulsrud ◽  
Christian Albert ◽  
Neil Coles ◽  
...  

AbstractThe scale, pace, and intensity of human activity on the planet demands radical departures from the status quo to remain within planetary boundaries and achieve sustainability. The steering arms of society including embedded financial, legal, political, and governance systems must be radically realigned and recognize the connectivity among social, ecological, and technological domains of urban systems to deliver more just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient futures. We present five key principles requiring fundamental cognitive, behavioral, and cultural shifts including rethinking growth, rethinking efficiency, rethinking the state, rethinking the commons, and rethinking justice needed together to radically transform neighborhoods, cities, and regions.


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