scholarly journals Labour Policies of a neo-Fuhrer State: The Nigerian Case

Author(s):  
‘Jimi O. Adesina

This paper examines the labour dimension of the Nigerian state in the period between 1994 and 1998 and argued that it is important to understand the unique nature of the state during this period. While Nigeria was not strange to authoritarian states, the specific mode of constitution of the state during the period requires specific codification—hence the idea of a neo-Fuhrer State. While it is common to analyse the form of constitution of the state during this period as an aberrant form, we argue that the basis and justification of dictatorship was laid by the political content of implementing the set of neoliberal policies that underscored Structural Adjustment Programme. It is in analysing the labour policies of the neoFuhrer State that we appreciate this. The paradox of the nature of response to autocracy at the time is binary: acquiescence on the part of senior union leaders and robust shop floor resistance on the other hand. This is the aspect of the political history of the period that is hardly emphasised and poorly understood. This paper serves as a corrective to both my earlier analysis and the historiography of the period.

Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 144 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-69
Author(s):  
Victor A. Pchelkin ◽  
◽  
Galina Yu. Kuznetsova ◽  
Tatiana А. Zheltonozhko ◽  
◽  
...  

A step-by-step and objective review of the history of the State Planning Committee of the USSR (Gosplan), presented by the authors, helps to form a holistic idea of how the power of the USSR arose and what objective necessity or what subjective factors led to a radical change in the political and socio-economic structure of the country.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-149
Author(s):  
Damien Mahiet

Despite the lively scholarly debate on the place of The Sleeping Beauty (1890) in the political and cultural history of the Franco-Russian alliance in the 1890s, the representation of international relations in the first production of The Nutcracker (1892) has so far received little attention. This representation includes the well-known series of character dances in the second act of the ballet, but also the use of French fashion from the revolutionary era to costume the party guests, the mechanical dolls, the toy soldiers, and even Prince Nutcracker. The fairy-tale world offered a frame that not only promoted the absolutist aspirations of Alexander III's regime, but also solved the symbolic challenge of a problematic alliance between republican France and tsarist Russia. The same visual repertoire informed diplomatic life: four years after The Nutcracker, in 1896, the décor for the state visit of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna in France duplicated that of the fairy-tale world on stage.


Author(s):  
Nicolai Von Eggers ◽  
Mathias Hein Jessen

Michel Foucault developed his now (in)famous neologism governmentality in the first of the two lectures he devoted to ’a history of governmentality, Security, Territory, Population (1977-78) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79). Foucault developed this notion in order to do a historical investigation of ‘the state’ or ‘the political’ which did not assume the entity of the state but treated it as a way of governing, a way of thinking about governing. Recently, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has taken up Foucault’s notion of governmentality in his writing of a history of power in the West, most notably in The Kingdom and the Glory. It is with inspiration from Agamben’s recent use of Foucault that Foucault’s approach to writing the history of the state (as a history of governmental practices and the reflection hereof) is revisited. Foucault (and Agamben) thus offer another way of writing the history of the state and of the political, which focuses on different texts and on reading more familiar texts in a new light, thereby offering a new and notably different view on the emergence of the modern state and politics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Anna Ceglarska ◽  

History of the rise of the Roman Republic as described by Polybius The aim of this article is to refer Polybius’s political theory, included in Book VI of The Histories, to the history of the rise of the Roman Republic. This theme must have been particularly significant for Polybius. For him, Rome was the most perfect example of a mixed government system, and the aim of describing its history was to show the development of this perfect system. The article presents the mutual relation of theory and history, starting with the period of kingship, up to the emergence of the democratic element, i.e. the moment when Rome acquired the mixed system of government. Both the political and social contexts of the changes are outlined. The analysis suggests that Polybius related his political theory to the history of the state he admired, thus providing the theory with actual foundations. Reconstructing his analysis makes it possible to see the history of Rome in a different light, and to ponder the system itself and its decline, even though the main objective of both Polybius and this article is to present its development.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rizka Wahyu Nurmalaningrum

Often the link between politics, economics and history escapes our attention so far. Much of the history of Indonesian development even the political history of the Indonesian nation itself has been forgotten by this millennial era society. They prefer mobile phones rather than books. Prefer cellphones from history. Even though history is important. The successors of the nation in the millennial era are more concerned with social media than knowing the origin of a country. Many do not understand the history of someone who can become president. There are various theories about history, such as Aristotelian theory, and the theory of plateau. Arisstoteles can be made a reference for learning for the ideals of the State with a fair and calm manner. The discussion with this theme takes the example of the fall of Soeharto as President of the Republic of Indonesia.


2004 ◽  
Vol 76 (9) ◽  
pp. 426-436
Author(s):  
Danilo Basta

The history of reception and the history of interpretation of Kant's legal deliberation are not the same even after two centuries. This was not only due to the recipients and interpreters of Kant's thoughts but also and above all due to Kant, i.e., the content and the spirit of his philosophy. The law of the state, the international law, and the cosmopolitan law are the ways to approach the eternal peace, which was considered by Kant as the final goal of the entire international law. The existence of the State is based on the idea of the Initial Agreement. According to Kant, in the Initial agreement all the individuals abandoned their external freedom in order to attain the freedom in a legal order as members of the political union. Kant did not always succeed to stay on the level of his own legal and political principles, and hence the light of his philosophy is sometimes covered with the dark shadows.


Author(s):  
David Polizzi

The phenomenology of solitary and supermax confinement reflects what Giorgio Agamben has defined as the state of exception. The state of exception is defined as the blurring of the legal and political order, which constructs a zone of indifference for those forced to endure this situation. This notion of the state of exception can be applied to the zone of indifference created by the Supreme Court, which seems unwilling to outlaw this harmful practice relative to 8th Amendment protections prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment and the political order which is all too inclined to continue use strategy. One of the central aspects of this “ecology of harm”, is the way in which the very structures of this type of confinement, helps to invite and legitimize abusive attitudes and behaviors in penitentiary staff.


1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 13-31
Author(s):  
Herrick Chapman

Between 1934 and 1938, several million workers took part in the elections, strikes, and protests that made the popular front a pivotal moment in the recent history of France. Giant street demonstrations, the General Strike of November 1938, and above all the massive sit-down strikes of June 1936 made most workers at least momentary actors in the drama of national political life. Yet, for all that has been written about these events, little is known about how labor conflict during the popular front actually affected workers' views. The problem has been in large part one of sources: the speeches, newspapers, leaflets, and memoirs of the period reveal more about trade union leaders and local militants than about the ordinary men and women who made popular protest possible but whose opinions rarely found their way into print. As a result, a number of questions remain largely unanswered: How much of the ethos of the popular front, and how much of the ideology of the Socialist and Communist parties, did rank-and-file workers come to embrace? Which slogans spoke most poignantly to lathe operators at Renault, textile workers in Lille, or sales clerks at the Galeries Lafayette? Were the euphoria of June 1936 and the crushing defeat of the General Strike in November 1938 as important in the lives of these people as they were for labor leaders? How popular, in short, was the political experience of the popular front?


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleida Assmann

The first part of the article invites a fresh look at the often defined concepts of ‘space’ and ‘place’, connecting them to different subject positions, mental frames and projects. The second part addresses memory issues that underlie the political conflict between the state of Israel and Palestinians in the Near East. It will analyse two seemingly incompatible memories related to the same events and topography. The focus of the essay is not only on the divisive force with which two incompatible histories are constructed in the same landscape but also on recent memory practices and performances that raise awareness of this impasse and work towards a more complex and inclusive transnational memory of the entangled history of 1948.


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