scholarly journals Compensatory Cultures: Post -2008 Climate Mechanisms for Crisis Times

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (99) ◽  
pp. 66-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ella Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Compensatory Responses ◽  
Global North ◽  
Dominant Structure ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
Do So ◽  
Compensatory Consumption

This paper charts emerging scholarship on what I conceptualise as 'compensatory cultures'; cultures that are, in essence, compensatory responses to crisis, but are presented and received as desirable, even preferable ways of organising life. Since the 2008 crash, precarity has become a new normal and a dominant structure-of-feeling in the global north. I argue that compensatory cultures alleviate precarity's affective impacts, enabling 'business as usual', yet do so in ways that perpetuate that precarity and the conditions that reproduce it. I survey literature on compensatory urbanisms, compensatory labour and compensatory consumption; demonstrating the compensatory as a pervasive mechanism operating across various cultural settings in the post-recession, austerity context. The work explored reveals compensatory cultures as central in remaking places, structuring social relations and producing meaning in crisis times.

scholarly journals The materiality of languages in engagements with the environment

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Siragusa ◽  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Human Actors

Abstract Communication, an apparently intangible practice, does in fact affect the way people engage with their social worlds in very material ways. Inspired by both ethnographic and archival-driven research, this special issue aims to fill the gap in studies of language materiality by addressing entanglements with other-than-human agencies. The contributions of this special issue on verbal and non-verbal communicative practices among Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Global North and the South interpret language materiality as practice- and process-oriented, performative, and embodied relations between humans and other-than-human actors. The articles cover three major sub-themes, which ostensibly intertwine to a greater or lesser degree in all the works: (in-)visible actors and elements-related language; language materiality narrating and producing sociality; and the emotions and affect of language. The topic of this special issue, the materiality of languages, manifested in multiple engagements with the environment, proves particularly critical at the moment, given the current environmental crisis and the need to comprehend in more depth social relations with numerous other-than-human agencies.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

scholarly journals Sociocultural Mechanisms of Conflict: Combining Topic and Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models in an Analysis of Afghanistan, 1979-2001

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Karell ◽  
Michael Raphael Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Do So

How do sociocultural dynamics shape conflict? We develop a relational understanding of how social relations, culture, and conflict are interwoven. Using this framework, we examine how combatants' associations with cultural elements affect the interpersonal relationships underlying conflict dynamics, as well as how these relationships engender associations to cultural elements. To do so, we first introduce a novel analytical approach that synthesizes computational textual analysis and stochastic actor-oriented models of longitudinal networks. We then use our approach to analyze a two-level socio-semantic graph representing both the cultural domain and social relationships of prominent militants operating in one Afghan province, Balkh, between 1979 and 2001. Our results indicate that militants' interpersonal comradeships rely, in part, on their connections to cultural elements and relative power. Comradeship, in turn, fosters militants' connections to cultural elements. We conclude by discussing how conflict studies can continue to build on insights from cultural sociology, as well as how cultural sociology and socio-semantic network research can benefit from further engaging conflict studies and developing our analytical approach. We also highlight provisional insights into endogenous mechanisms of conflict resolution and cultural change.

Webs of Community

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-161
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Kin Relations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Indian Control ◽  
Do So

A network of Indian trading villages dominated the tributary rivers of the Ohio and fostered Indian control over the exchange process. The face-to-face exchange process that characterized these villages ushered in a golden age of Indigenous prosperity as Indian women sought new types of cloth, incorporated silks and calicoes into their wardrobes, and demanded silver ornaments to highlight and decorate their clothing. Kin-based networks controlled trade as well as social relations in the region. Traders who sought a share of this prosperity resided in these Indian trading villages and carefully observed Indigenous trade protocols. Those who failed to do so found themselves unwelcome in Indian villages. Change was ongoing: newcomers were incorporated, populations multiplied, and village life was defined by evolving kin relations. These changes occurred within the framework of an Indian world, one that was increasingly shaped by Miami hegemony over the Wabash region. Intermarriage blurred social borders and simultaneously created pathways to authority and power.

The New Normal: Twelve Months of Resiliency and Recovery in Christchurch

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme J. McColl ◽  
Frederick M. Burkle
Keyword(s):  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Objective Measure ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Access To Health ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
One Year ◽  
Earthquake Survivors ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACTThe series of earthquakes and aftershocks that have hit Christchurch, New Zealand, for more than one year has been severe and sustained, resulting in major damage to homes, buildings, essential services, and resources in water, sewerage, food, access to health care, energy for heating and cooling, and unprecedented challenges to resiliency. Large swathes of destroyed buildings, land damage, and liquefaction have made rebuilding impossible for many. Populations have moved or report that they either wish to or plan to do so. For those who remain, a ”new normal” mindset has taken hold and serves as an objective measure for the process that defines daily life and future decisions. The new normal serves as an uncomfortable but realistic guideline by which further resiliency can be measured. A number of factors have led to the development of the new normal state for the Christchurch earthquake survivors.(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2012;6:33-43)

scholarly journals Worlding cities through transportation infrastructure

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Creighton Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
Master Plan ◽  
City Managers ◽  
Local Stakeholders ◽  
Urban Modelling ◽  
Global North ◽  
Do So

This paper engages with emerging literature on worlding cities in analysing the contested ways in which mid-sized cities attempt to ‘globalize’ through the redevelopment of urban infrastructure, and in particular, transportation infrastructure. The paper focuses specifically on the World Heritage City of Penang, Malaysia and critically examines controversies over the extensive urban redevelopment and regeneration projects that have emerged since 2012. In particular, it examines the ambitious Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP), which has posed considerable implications for the city’s heritage landscapes, but also several socio-environmental impacts. The paper analyses the state government’s vision for the PTMP, before turning to an alternative strategy and critique of this plan put forth by local civil society organizations. As I demonstrate, both plans make use of worlding strategies in ‘selling’ their particular vision for the city’s future, but the ways they do so are markedly different. In reviewing this case, the paper challenges the conceptualization of inter-referencing and urban modelling practices as it is currently documented in the literature on worlding cities. What is novel in Penang is the way local stakeholders identify comparable cities outside of the Global North as models to follow, rather than established mega- or ‘world’ cities, which act as more realistic reference points. In doing so, the paper highlights key technologies of governance that are being used to counter the neoliberal worlding strategies put forth by city managers.

scholarly journals Make development great again? Accumulation regimes, spaces of sovereign exception and the elite development paradigm of China's Belt and Road Initiative

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Uneven And Combined Development ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Development Paradigm ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article studies what I describe as “state-coordinated investment partnerships,” an investment modality central to the deployment of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These partnerships bring together state and business actors to export overcapacity and address infrastructural demands in underdeveloped markets. To do so, they require accumulation and sovereignty regimes that mirror, in contingent ways, similar social arrangements within China. The superposition of such regimes and the interests and social imaginaries of local actors produces forms of uneven and combined development and shapes the contours of the BRI's emerging developmental and geoeconomic footprints. The BRI exports also an elite development paradigm which promotes urbanization, connectivity and economic growth over participatory approaches. This paradigm projects a depoliticized version of China's present into the BRI's future to justify social and environmental dislocations, and shields Chinese firms from civil society scrutiny. My analysis rejects this elite perspective and favors a labor-centric approach that unearths the social foundations of the BRI. From this perspective, despite relevant differences in format, the BRI's quintessential investment modality is closely aligned to a contemporary global current of public-private partnerships endeavored to mobilize public resources and state power for the expansion of capitalist social relations.

Mediating Conflicts, Creating Bonds

2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-50
Author(s):  
Luca D’Anna
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Do So

The present paper discusses the patterns of interaction between the Islamic religion and the universal categories of verbal politeness described by Brown, Levinson (1987). The two scholars based their theory on the existence of two contrasting sets of ‘face-wants’ (negative and positive) and on the speakers’ necessity to preserve them while, at the same time, pursuing their goals. Verbal politeness provides means that enable the speaker to do so without endangering his social relations. While the phenomenon is, in itself, universal (i.e. found in all known cultures), its outer manifestations tend to be culturally bound. Amongst Maghrebi Arabic-speaking societies, the object of the present study, the ‘code’ of verbal politeness heavily draws on the Islamic religion. The present paper, thus, aims to analyse the interplay between Islam and the different strategies described by Brown and Levinson, by means of a wide exemplification that will highlight general trends and underlying structures.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document