scholarly journals The Ontopolitics of Mountain Bike Trail Building: Addressing Issues of Access and Conflict in the More-than Human English Countryside

Somatechnics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-339
Author(s):  
Jim Cherrington
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Phenomenological Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Political Democracy ◽  
Mountain Bike ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Human Landscape

In recent years there have been calls for scholars working within sport and physical culture to recognise the (increasing) confluence of nature and culture. Situated within an emerging body of new materialist research, such accounts have shown how various activities are polluted by, fused to, and assembled with non-human entities. However, more work is needed on the political possibilities afforded by non-human agency, and by extension, the implications that such flat ontological arrangements might raise for the management and governance of physical culture. Building on research conducted with mountain bike trail builders, this article seeks to explore what it means to know, to be, and to govern a human subject in the Anthropocene. Specifically, I draw on James Ash’s (2019) post-phenomenological theory of space and David Chandler’s (2018) notion of onto-political hacking to show how the playful, contingent, and transformative practices of the mountain bike assemblage confront the linear and calculated governance of the English countryside. In doing so, mountain bike trails are positioned as objects of hope that allow for a collective re-imagining of political democracy in a more-than-human landscape.

Humanising the Dehumanised: Emotion and Being in the Violence of the Islamic State (IS): An Alternative Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quraysha Bibi Ismail Sooliman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
Ongoing Project

This paper considers the effect of violence on the emotions of IS fighters and the resultant consequences of those emotions as a factor in their choice to use violence. By interrogating the human aspect of the fighters, I am focusing not on religion but on human agency as a factor in the violence. In this regard, this paper is about reorienting the question about the violence of IS not as “religious” violence but as a response to how these fighters perceive what is happening to them and their homeland. It is about politicising the political, about the violence of the state and its coalition of killing as opposed to a consistent effort to frame the violence into an explanation of “extremist religious ideology.” This shift in analysis is significant because of the increasing harm that is caused by the rise in Islamophobia where all Muslims are considered “radical” and are dehumanised. This is by no means a new project; rather it reflects the ongoing project of distortion of and animosity toward Islam, the suspension of ethics and the naturalisation of war. It is about an advocacy for war by hegemonic powers and (puppet regimes) states against racialised groups in the name of defending liberal values. Furthermore, the myth of religious violence has served to advance the goals of power which have been used in domestic and foreign policy to marginalise and dehumanise Muslims and to portray the violence of the secular state as a justified intervention in order to protect Western civilisation and the secular subject.

Political Science: Seeing Like a Subversive Social Scientist

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-437
Author(s):  
Meredith L. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Democracy

Much of the work of political science revolves around institutions—the structures through which politics happens. Leaders enter the frame, of course, but often as institutions in human form: presidents, premiers, populists, and mobilizers who serve to channel and direct who does what and what they do, much like an agency or law. We might trace this pseudo-structural, largely mechanical reading of human agency to political scientists of an earlier era: the behavioralists of the 1950s and 1960s. James C. Scott began his career as just such a scholar. For his dissertation-turned-book, Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the Beliefs of an Elite, Scott surveyed a gaggle of Malaysian bureaucrats to examine, effectively, the extent to which their values and assumptions supported or subverted the new democracy they served. Although itself fairly prosaic, that work foreshadows the political grime and games that soon pulled Scott in more promising directions theoretically, whether scrutinizing Southeast Asia or global patterns: disentangling structure from norms, finding agency around the margins of class and state, and rethinking how power looks and functions.

Deleuze and Italian Thought

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felice Cimatti
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Giacomo Leopardi ◽  
The One

The tradition of Italian Thought – not the political one but the poetic and naturalistic one – finds in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze a way to enter into the new century, the century of immanence and animality. In fact, Deleuze himself remained outside the main philosophical traditions of his own time (structuralism and phenomenology). The tradition to which Deleuze refers is the one that begins with Spinoza and ends with Nietzsche. It is an ontological tradition, which deals mainly with life and the world rather than with the human subject and knowledge. Finally, the text sketches a possible dialogue between Deleuze and the poet-philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, one of the most important (and still unknown) figures of Italian Thought.

Interview with Vicki Kirby

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 261-271
Author(s):  
Daniel McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In this interview, Vicki Kirby discusses her research into the relationship between nature and culture, focusing in particular on her recent edited collection, What If Culture Was Nature All Along? The volume appears in the ‘New Materialisms’ series, and so the interview begins by situating the collection with respect to the recent materialist turn in social theory. Kirby discusses the influence of deconstruction on her thought, and the way that she draws upon Derrida to think through recent research in the life sciences and its implications for understanding the relationship between matter, life, and communication. She also goes into the political implications of her work and the relationship between biopolitics and biodeconstruction.

scholarly journals Mahbub Djunaidi, Seniman Politik Nahdlatul Ulama (1960-1987)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Farhan Nugraha ◽  
Muhammad Fakhruddin ◽  
Humaidi Humaidi
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Democracy ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Organizational Experiences ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nahdlatul Ulama ◽  
The Ideal

Abstrak: Nahdlatul Ulama merupakan salah satu organisasi Islam terbesar di Indonesia. Organisasi ini lahir tentu dari para tokoh-tokoh besar yang menggawanginya, salah satunya Mahbud Djunaidi. Kemampuan politiknya diperoleh dari berbagai pengalaman organisasi dan kemampuan dalam kepenulisan. Adapun permasalahan yang diangkat dalam penelitian ini yaitu bagaimana riwayat politik Mahbub Djunaidi sebagai aktivis politik Nahdlatul Ulama pada tahun 1960-1987. Berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguraikan perjalanan politik Mahbub Djunaidi (1960-1987). Berdasarkan permasalahan dan tujuan penelitian tersebut, maka metode yang digunakan adalah metode historis yang terdiri dari tahap heuristik, kritik sumber, interpretasi dan historiografi. Hasil dari penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Mahbub Djunaidi memiliki konsep khittah plus. Demokrasi politik ala Mahbub Djunaidi adalah cita-cita demokrasi yang diperjuangkan melalui garis politik.Kata Kunci: Mahbub Djunaidi, Demokrasi Politik, Nahdlatul Ulama.Abstract: Nahdlatul Ulama is one of the largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia. This organization was born of course from the big figures who oversee it, one of them Mahbud Djunaidi. His political abilities are obtained from various organizational experiences and abilities in writing. The problem raised in this research is how the political history of Mahbub Djunaidi as a political activist of Nahdlatul Ulama in 1960-1987. Based on these problems, this study aims to describe the political journey of Mahbub Djunaidi (1960-1987). Based on the problems and objectives of the research, the method used is the historical method which consists of heuristics, source criticism, interpretation and historiography stages. The results of the study show that Mahbub Djunaidi has the concept of khittah plus. Political democracy in the style of Mahbub Djunaidi is the ideal of democracy which is fought for through political lines. Keywords: Mahbub Djunaidi, Political Democracy, Nahdlatul Ulama.

scholarly journals The statue of Glauco. Reflections on human nature during the pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marchetti
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Democracy ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Project

The statue of Glauco that the sea and the storms have disfigured so as to make its appearance more like a ferocious beast than a god, is the famous image with which Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the Discourse on the origin of inequality, questions himself on Human Nature, in a reflection that will have its purpose both in the political project of the Contract and in the pedagogical project of the Emilio. The image serves in fact to reiterate that that deterioration, that ugliness, is only external and that the statue (the man) has remained in its depths beautiful and good, since in him the feeling of piety, of his own and of his remains unchanged. dignity and the vocation to freedom of others. If this were not the case, there would be no possibility for political democracy and democratic education. The growing social inequalities, the artificialization of feelings and relationships due to technology, as well as the spread, after the pandemic, of a sort of mass "claustrophilia", a love for the closed, for one's own, with the consequent rejection of everything that comes from "outside", which is different, foreign or new, seems instead to give credit to Hobbes's thesis, namely that Human Nature is violent and aggressive and that man is always a wolf for the other man. However, it will be the task of the arts, sciences and, above all, of education, to demonstrate that, under the debris left by the salt, Glauco has remained good and that he can rediscover his true essence, the beauty of his original substance.

scholarly journals Early Soviet battles for goal-setting of physical culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-104
Author(s):  
M.M. Sainchuk ◽  
А.М. Sainchuk
Keyword(s):  
Goal Setting ◽  
The Political ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Political Situation

The article considers the early Soviet battles of various stakeholders for the purpose of physical culture. Institutionalization of physical culture of this period took place in the conditions of acute theoretical discourse, personal conflicts over goal setting. It has been established that during the 1920s the health-improving (hygienic) goal setting of physical culture under the leadership of M.O. Semashko fought on two fronts: the first was with M.I. Podvoisky «Proletcult»; the second – with B.O. Kal'pus "militarization". The end of the 1920s put an end to the controversy over the value goal setting of Soviet physical culture, which is associated with the reduction of the influence of M.O. Semashko. From the 1930s onwards, the goal of physical culture in the USSR, like all other institutions, would depend on the political situation. Adequately articulated goals that meet social demands and expectations are able to form a pool of stakeholders and trigger institutionalization, which identified during the work on the article.

Revolution Revisited: The Structuralist-Voluntarist Debate

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Kamrava
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Category ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractThere are three ideal types of revolutions: spontaneous, planned and negotiated. The role and importance of structural factors versus human agency vary according to the general category to which a particular revolution belongs. In spontaneous revolutions, both the transition and conslidation phases are heavily conditioned by prevailing structural factors, especially those that result in the weakening of ruling state institutions and the political mobilization of one or more social groups. By contrast, in planned revolutions self-declared revolutionaries take the lead in both mobilizing supporters and weakening the state, in fact often having a highly elaborate ideological—as well as tactical and strategic—blueprint for the acquisition and consolidation of power. Negotiated revolutions see the greatest coalescence of forces involving both structural developments and human agency. The seeds of the revolution have germinated, but the prevailing structural developments are not by themselves sufficient to bring about the revolution's success. Actors representing both state and society must step in to negotiate, and only then might the revolution succeed and be consolidated.

Re-Placing the state

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Motion ◽  
Physical Movement ◽  
The City

This concluding chapter addresses the issue of the place of the city directly, and discusses the broader implications of place in relation to the metaphysics of human agency. As the space of physical movement, or locomotion, place is apparently depoliticized from the outset; for the political depends on the free, which, even if conceived as the voluntary and naturalized, is nevertheless contrasted with the external motion that is blocked by force. However, the casuistry concerning the local motion of citizens shows how the space of the political has to contend with the space of external movement, the same space in which animals move, which resists even as it supplements the voluntary and juridical construction of the state.

Constructing human agency

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Natural Agents ◽  
The World ◽  
Theological Differences

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document