scholarly journals Writing the Grotesque in Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones"

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Katerina Psilopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Black Family ◽  
Southern Gothic ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
Carson Mccullers ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Status ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
The Grotesque

In her work, Jesmyn Ward has revitalized the Southern Gothic tradition and its tropes to better reflect the realities of Black American life in the 21st century. This essay explores the reconfiguration of the grotesque body in Ward's sophomore novel, Salvage the Bones, which follows an impoverished Black family in Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. In contrast to her literary predecessors, Ward defines the grotesque as a state of debility imposed on Black bodies and then deemed uniquely problematic to them as a class and race, rather than the result of centuries of structural oppression. As such, she understands the trope as encompassing far more than bodily or intellectual difference, the way in which it was previously utilized by Southern writers like William Faulkner and Carson McCullers. Instead, Ward theorizes the grotesque as a biopolitical state, in which populations that do not conform to the status quo, and specifically the dominant capitalist mode of production and consumption, are driven to the margins and their lives deemed expendable. 

scholarly journals Paradox of Deadwood Circular Bioeconomy in Kenya’s Public Forests

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7051
Author(s):  
Sylvester Ngome Chisika ◽  
Joon Park ◽  
Chunho Yeom
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Forest Resource ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Policy Suggestions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Domestic Use ◽  
Public Forests ◽  
Environmental Functions

With the rising demand for energy, the forest-based circular bioeconomy is gaining recognition as a strategy for sustainable production and consumption of forest resources. However, the forest-based bioeconomy remains underexplored from the perspective of deadwood conservation in public forests. While conducting a literature review and examining the case of Kenya, this study fills a gap in the literature to provide policy suggestions for sustainable forest resource utilization. The results from global literature indicate that deadwood performs essential social, economic, and environmental functions in the circular bioeconomy and sustainable development. Similarly, in Kenya, deadwood resources provide many socially beneficial bioproducts and services. However, the absence of scientific research and detailed guidelines for deadwood conservation may lead to the distortion of the ecological balance in public forests because of the legally sanctioned removal of deadwood, particularly firewood. Moreover, if the status quo remains, with approximately 70% of the growing population consuming deadwood for domestic use and the demand increasing, as shown by the current wood deficit in the country, there will be a major dilemma concerning whether to conserve deadwood for biodiversity or energy. Therefore, averting crisis and providing maximum deadwood value to society requires guidelines and comprehensive research in addition to a cultural and behavioral shift in energy consumption in a manner that embraces the forest-based circular bioeconomy of deadwood.

scholarly journals The chemicals (formaldehyde and toluene) influence on soil microorganisms of leached chernozem

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Natalya Anatolyevna Ilyina ◽  
Tatyana Valentinovna Fufaeva ◽  
Natalya Anatolyevna Kazakova ◽  
Nataliya Mikhailovna Kasatkina ◽  
Evgeniya Alexandrovna Vilkova
Keyword(s):  
Soil Microorganisms ◽  
Heterotrophic Bacteria ◽  
Soil Formation ◽  
Chemical Production ◽  
Leached Chernozem ◽  
Physico Chemical ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Status ◽  
Number Of Microorganisms ◽  
Bacteria And Fungi

The paper assesses the status of the soil cover associated with the pollution of its waste chemical production and consumption. The authors present the data of formaldehyde and toluene influence on the abundance of actinomycetes, heterotrophic bacteria and fungi, as these groups of microorganisms provide self-purification capacity of the soil and participate in soil formation processes. In this paper microbiological and physico-chemical methods of research are used. The study of species composition changes of some soil microorganisms groups of leached chernozem under the influence of formaldehyde and toluene showed that this factor causes changes in the complex of soil microorganisms. This factor is reflected in the decreased species richness and diversity and increase of pollution-tolerant microorganisms. These studies investigate a number of microorganisms that provide self-purification capacity of the soil and participate in soil formation. The results show the nature of the influence of different doses of formaldehyde and toluene on the structure and functioning of the complex of soil microorganisms, as well as reveal the mechanism of action of chemicals (formaldehyde and toluene) on soil microbiota associated with its resistance and the manifestation of toxicity of the soil.

scholarly journals Drumming the Barrels of Hope? Bioeconomy Narratives in the Media

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Peltomaa
Keyword(s):  
Policy Framework ◽  
Natural Resource Use ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Media ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
Narrative Policy Framework ◽  
Mode Of Production

Bioeconomy as one mode of the transition towards a more sustainable mode of production and consumption has been addressed in several policy fields. Bioeconomy has raised hope not only in the quest for a more sustainable future, but also offers new possibilities, especially in countries with vast natural resources. By using the Narrative Policy Framework, I assess the kinds of bioeconomy narratives promoted by the media and the future they suggest, for the case of Finland. Flexible concepts such as bioeconomy can be harnessed to promote different, and even contrasting, objectives. Besides growth-oriented promises, bioeconomy seems to simultaneously raise controversial questions related to techno-social path dependencies and the sustainability of natural resource use. The narratives seem also to lack roles for certain actor groups, such as citizens, which might challenge the legitimacy and, thus, the future of bioeconomy. The role of civil society should also be better addressed by scholars in the field, as it plays an important role in the sustainability of bioeconomy.

The Spiralling Economy: Connecting Marxian Theory with Ecological Economics

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-442
Author(s):  
Crelis Rammelt
Keyword(s):  
System Dynamics ◽  
Ecological Economics ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Marxian Theory ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Fundamental Causes ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
Marxian Analysis ◽  
Mode Of Production

The capitalist mode of production and consumption is caught in a double bind: its expansion destabilises natural systems and fails to curb social inequities, while slowdown destabilises the inner workings of the economic system itself. To better understand what is happening in this phase of instability, this article proposes a System Dynamics representation that combines elements of Georgescu-Roegen's Ecological Economics with Marxian theory. Specifically, it draws from a diagram recently developed by David Harvey to communicate Marx's political economy in its totality; Harvey's diagram is then adapted to incorporate the flow-fund model developed by Georgescu-Roegen. The contribution made by this adaptation is twofold: first, it allows us to emphasise key connections and discrepancies between the two traditions; second, it extends System Dynamics into (eco-)Marxian analysis, which serves to visualise the fundamental causes and consequences of a spiralling, ever-expanding capitalist economy.

Grotesque Possible Worlds

Tekstualia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 325-339
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Starnawski
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Grotesque

The author of the articles shows that the grotesque is one of the most interesting ways of diagnosing changes and crisis in the anthroposphere (as a continuation of thinking about the subject from the middle of the seventeenth century through to postmodernity). According to Thomas Mann, the grotesque is one the most active notions in contemporary art. Its productivity results from the subject’s tendency to self-fulfilment, self-cognition, and self-definition; it is an independent vision and position in the “me – the world”, “me – community” relations. The grotesque is a strongly philosophical proposition, which bases its discourse on a conscious protest against present values and on transgressing all limiting and oppressive conventions. Therefore, the grotesque enhances the status of the subject, but it neither defends nor affi rms the subject in a direct manner. Apart from the social dimension, the grotesque also has numerous metaphysical references, the expression of which can be found in Kierkegaardian understanding of the metaphysical crisis as despair. Facing piercing emptiness, the human being tries to find some support and resorts to anything only to make a leap into the future. Laughter is only a manifestation of horror vacui, a specific dialectic moment devoid of any prospect of purification or comfort. What dominates a grotesque work is its open structure. The motifs which shape the spatiotemporal order do not always form a cause-and-effect system. Deliberately incoherent themes (logical coherence is not an aim) seem to be rather “deconstructors”, not constructors of the plot; they are intermittent, provoke the impression of a secret, a gleam, the absurd.

scholarly journals Incorporación de los saberes ancestrales en la educación ordinaria.//Incorporation of ancestral knowledge in ordinary education.

Ciencia Unemi ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (30) ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
Pablo Alfredo Suárez-Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Ancestral Knowledge ◽  
The Status ◽  
Enrique Dussel ◽  
Knowledge Object ◽  
General Mode ◽  
Mode Of Production

El presente trabajo discute esenciales fundamentos históricos, antropológicos, económicos e ideológicos del modo de producción de conocimiento a partir del modo de producción de vida general del ser humano, a fin de cuestionar las matrices de la hegemonía epistemológica racionalista de la modernidad capitalista, que ancla su razón de ser en una estructura económico-política dominante que destruye material e intelectualmente al Otro para construirlo como objeto dominado y de conocimiento, lo cual se traduce en el posicionamiento centenario de una dicotomía jerárquica conocimiento/”saberes ancestrales”, y realiza, finalmente, algunas sugerencias respecto de la incorporación de los denominados saberes ancestrales en la educación ordinaria. Con base en las premisas críticas del materialismo histórico de Karl Marx y la filosofía y la ética de la liberación de Enrique Dussel, entre otros, se apunta brevemente la necesidad de replantear el problema de la validación de todo saber o conocimiento en la vida, lo cual implica subvertir las bases epistemológicas de las diversas disciplinas con base en un diálogo teórico-práctico intercultural en equidad, y los fundamentos económicos, éticos, políticos e ideológicos que nutren tales bases y que destruyen, invisibilizan, discriminan e instrumentalizan las producciones materiales e intelectuales contrarias o contradictorias al statu quo del capital. AbstractThis paper discusses essential historical, anthropological, economic and ideological foundations of the mode of production of knowledge from the general mode of production of life of the human being, in order to question the matrices of the epistemological rationalist hegemony of capitalist modernity, which anchors its raison d'être in a dominant economic-political structure that materially and intellectually destroys the other in order to construct it as a dominated and knowledge object, which translates into the centenary positioning of a hierarchical knowledge/"ancestral knowledge" dichotomy, and finally makes some suggestions regarding the incorporation of so-called ancestral knowledge into ordinary education. Based on the critical premises of Karl Marx's historical materialism and Enrique Dussel's philosophy and ethics of liberation, among others, the need to rethink the problem of the validation of all knowledge or knowledge in life is briefly pointed out, which implies subverting the epistemological bases of the diverse disciplines based on an intercultural theoretical-practical dialogue in equity, and the economic, ethical, political and ideological foundations that nourish such bases and that destroy, invisibilize, discriminate and instrumentalize the material and intellectual productions contrary or contradictory to the status quo of capital.

scholarly journals Towards Sustainable Energy Trends in the Middle East: A Study of Four Major Emitters

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1615
Author(s):  
Norhan Bayomi ◽  
John E. Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Sustainable Energy ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Total Energy Consumption ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Status ◽  
Growing Economy ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2 ◽  
Rich Countries

Energy is a key ingredient to facilitate economic development in the Middle East. Expectations for a rapidly growing economy in the next decade will likely cause an increase in the fraction of energy consumed domestically limiting what is available for export. These challenges are the biggest for resource-rich countries, since their economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports alongside an energy-intensive economy. Thus, the paper addresses the question of how the development of energy systems among resource-rich countries has changed over the past three decades and what role can they play in the sustainable development of the region’s energy system and emission reduction goals? To address this question, we present an overview on energy trends in four resource-rich countries in the Middle East, which nearly account for 76% of the region’s energy-related emissions and about 77% of total energy consumption. These countries are namely, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Accordingly, we present a comparative energy analysis between the four countries through examining historical and current energy trends, the structure of energy supply, the status of renewable deployment and energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Results from the analysis showed that inefficient energy production and consumption have played a role in the deterioration of the energy landscape of the four countries compared to the global energy system. Thus, this highlights the necessity for suitable energy strategies and effective policies that will be central to sustainable energy development. The analysis presented here could be used to better understanding of the impacts of current gaps and inefficiencies in large energy consumers in the Middle East.

Climate Change and the People's Health

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Friel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Integrated Network ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Policy Vision

Climate change threatens humanity and the planet on which we live. Social inequities, including in the health outcomes that different population groups enjoy, also pose a threat to humanity and our freedom to live healthy and flourishing lives. This book makes three key contributions to the current understanding of climate change and health inequity. First, it describes how climate change interacts with the social determinants of health and exacerbates existing health inequities. Second, the book introduces the concept of a “consumptagenic system.” This is an integrated network of market-based policies, processes, governance, and modes of understanding that fuel unhealthy and environmentally destructive production and consumption. Finally, the book outlines some of the progressive steps that are necessary to move from denial and inertia toward effective mobilization against the status quo and hope for the future. The book argues that this requires a systems approach and calls for action that uses fit-for-purpose knowledge and analytical tools from across the sciences, social sciences, and even humanities. The book finishes with the offer of a policy vision and describes some pathways forward across economic, social, and health policy domains that will reduce inequality, mitigate further environmental degradation, and improve health.

“Why Me?”– Questions of Racial Equity and Institutional Racism in Academia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Anne Tate
Keyword(s):  
Black Studies ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Black Bodies

Beginning with the necessary question “Why me?,” I look at a system which bars BIPOC bodies and theory. In her open letter to the US Black Studies academic community, Sylvia Wynter (1994 ) spoke about the problem of “no human involved” (“NHI”) in the policing and incarceration of Black bodies as being pertinent for how Black studies was positioned institutionally. This same white supremacist governance and surveillance “NHI” exists in universities on both sides of the Atlantic. There is something very wrong with the system of which I am a part that persistently and consistently bars BIPOC bodies and theory and only avails our presence and thought a marginal position on the proviso that the status quo of whiteliness ( Yancy 2008 ) is not disturbed. Nothing really changes in terms of anti-BIPOC racism. Rather, it remains strangely the white supremacist (settler) colonial same within Canadian race-evasive multiculturalism and UK ‘post-race’ racism.

A ‘Lasting Transformation’ of Capitalist Surplus: From Food Stocks to Feedstocks

2012 ◽  
Vol 60 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 192-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Food Waste ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Waste Policy ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Waste Food

In this article I link surplus food with the politics of capitalist production and consumption in order to shed some useful light on the strange case of food not being food once it has been discarded but not thrown away. I develop an analysis of waste policy as a dimension of capitalist surplus management (after Sweezy, 1962 ) by reconfiguring Claus Offe's (1984) essay on the state and social policy and construe waste policy as effecting a ‘lasting transformation’ of non-accumulating capital into accumulating capital. My intention is to provide a sketch of the labyrinthine semantic and political structures emerging around waste (in general) and waste food (in particular). I show that transforming waste food into capitalist surplus is a multi-layered and multi-stranded endeavour embedded in larger political, economic and cultural arrangements and cosmologies. I undertake this analysis of the transformation of waste into surplus by exploring, first, waste as an imaginary construct; second, the strange case of discarded food not being ‘discarded’ (and not being ‘food’, either); third, the convoluted cosmology of European waste policy; and, fourth, aspects of political sociology which help to reveal the status of waste as a source of capital accumulation. I conclude by proposing a sociological account of food waste that situates the critique of excess not in the ignorant, sordid voraciousness of individual citizens but in the structures and institutions of capitalist accumulation.

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