scholarly journals The university, the city and the clown: A theological essay on solidarity, mutuality and prophecy

Author(s):  
Stephan De Beer

This essay is informed by five different but interrelated conversations all focusing on the relationship between the city and the university. Suggesting the clown as metaphor, I explore the particular role of the activist scholar, and in particular the liberation theologian that is based at the public university, in his or her engagement with the city. Considering the shackles of the city of capital and its twin, the neoliberal university, on the one hand, and the city of vulnerability on the other, I then propose three clown-like postures of solidarity, mutuality and prophecy to resist the shackles of culture and to imagine and embody daring alternatives.

Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith

This chapter examines the role of taxation in the culture of contentment. In the age of contentment, macroeconomic policy has come to center not on tax policy but on monetary policy. Higher interest rates, it is hoped, will curb inflation without posing a threat to people of good fortune. Those with money to lend, the economically well-endowed rentier class, will thus be rewarded. The chapter first considers the role of monetary policy in the entirely plausible and powerfully adverse attitude toward taxation in the community of contentment before discussing the relationship between taxation and public services, and between taxation and public expenditures. It shows that public services and taxation have disparate effects on the Contented Electoral Majority on the one hand, and on the less affluent underclass on the other.


Educação ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Evandro Coggo Cristofoletti ◽  
Milena Pavan Serafim

The economic and political changes in the world, from the 1970s, changed the political education of the Public Institutions of Higher Education in the world. The direction of these changes was clear: the university approachedthe market and the company and created interaction mechanisms that did not exist. The article therefore reviews the academic literature that interprets the relationship between university and market/company from two perspectives: approaches that positively position of interactions, exposing their motivations, interests and forms of interaction, especially the notions on Knowledge Economy and Entrepreneurial University; approaches that observe this interaction critically and reflectively, exposing the problems of interaction, its negative aspects and the reflection of the true role of the public university from the perspective of Academic Capitalism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (9) ◽  
pp. 118-129
Author(s):  
Y. Zinin

The overthrow of M. Gaddafi with the assistance of NATO in October 2011 led to the collapse of the vertical of power and institutions of the state and sentenced Libya to a deep systemic crisis. The article examines the peculiarities and role of the tribal factor in the current events in Libya, a country with deeply divided, multi-composite societies (DDS). It is characterized by tribal, regional, racial and ethnoreligious diversity. With 90% of its population having tribal roots, the number of tribes passes 140. This diversity has left its mark on the course of events, affected the struggle for power. The author sums up the shifts that have taken place in the tribal segment of society in recent decades. The rush of members of different tribes to the city led to their fragmentation, diminution of their former structure. The bonds of kinship, the spirit of solidarity, the traditional behaviour of the tribesmen have been to different extents eroded. However, the influence of a tribe or genus that play the role of a bonding society remains essential. This was especially evident after the advent of dual power in 2014, the author assumes. The two poles of domination – Tripoli and Tobruk are trying to play this card to their advantage. On the other hand, the security vacuum caused by the fall of the regime spontaneously filled forces, including regional tribal groups. The scholar tracks how various tribal councils and other entities here and there take on the functions of maintaining resilience and order, ending infighting, returning hostages, etc. In doing so, they often turn to the traditional usual right – Urf. The author agrees with a number of Libyan scholars and other foreign researchers that there are now some signs of a breeding tribal identity in Libya. At the same time, this process is multi–directional, as in Libya, a country with a deeply divided society, tribes can both engage in conflicts and contribute to their peaceful denouement. The researcher draws attention to the fact that the relationship between tribalism and Islamists is rather contradictory. The latter use to argue that “Islam is the solution to all problems.” But their entry into the arena of politics in Libya after October 2011 did not prevent the de facto collapse of the country and the growth of sectarian standoff. And that according to the author divides society and plays into the hands of certain political forces. In this atmosphere, tribal polarization and the general alienation of society are at risk of growth. The author analyzes the relations between tribal and national identities in a country where the process of consolidation of the population into a single nation has not yet been completed.


Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer

This article reflects on the unfinished task of liberation – as expressed in issues of land – and drawing from the work of Franz Fanon and the Durban-based social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. It locates its reflections in four specific sites of struggle in the City of Tshwane, and against the backdrop of the mission statement of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, as well as the Capital Cities Research Project based in the same university. Reflecting on the ‘living death’ of millions of landless people on the one hand, and the privatisation of liberation on the other, it argues that a liberating praxis of engagement remains a necessity in order to break the violent silences that perpetuate exclusion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Georgios Stamelos ◽  
Georgios Aggelopoulos

This paper focuses on the development of interdisciplinarityin the Master’s programs in Greek universities. For our analysis, we searched for tools from the Sociology of Organisations (Mayntz) and the Sociology of Science (Whitley). We argue that the University and its keyactors have adopted interdisciplinarity, firstly, as a means to increase institutional funding, and secondly, with care so as not to disturb theinternal institutional structure and the power relations between the key actors in the University. Indeed, on the one hand, universities, responding to the public calls for interdisciplinary programs, took advantage of the European support program for Greece in order to enrich their infrastructures. On the other hand, the new structures and functions (interdisciplinary Master’s programs) remain loose and weak. So the central role of the Department and laboratories remains intact. As a consequence, the internal relations of the institutional actors are protected. Thus, interdisciplinarity seems to be a low priority issue. However, it is interesting to consider that more than 10 years after theend of European funding, the majority of these programs remains active.


Author(s):  
Holden Thorp ◽  
Buck Goldstein

The role of faculty forms the heart of the university in terms of its scholarship, patient care, and teaching. It is important that the university and the faculty rededicate themselves to outstanding teaching; the erosion of teaching by tenured faculty is contributing to the strain in the relationship with the public. Tenure, academic freedom, and shared governance are all indispensable concepts in the functioning of a great university that are mysterious to those outside the academy. Communicating the importance of these concepts is a critical need for higher education.


2021 ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Christelle HOPPE

This article presents the highlights of the learning experience within the teaching-learning scheme of French as an additional language as it was proposed to international students at the university to ensure pedagogical continuity during the health crisis between April and June 2020. Through vignettes that give an overview of the course, it proposes, on the one hand, to reflect on the pedagogical choices that were made in order to measure their effects effectively. On the other hand, it looks at the role of the tasks and the way in which they stimulate interaction, articulate or organise the cognitive, conative and socio-affective presence at a distance in this particular context. What emerges from the experience is that the flexible articulation of a set of tasks creates an organising framework that helps learners to shape their own curriculum while supporting their engagement. Overall, the pedagogical organisation of the device has led to potentially beneficial creative and socio-interactive use.


2020 ◽  
pp. 136843022091577
Author(s):  
Özden Melis Uluğ ◽  
Brian Lickel ◽  
Bernhard Leidner ◽  
Gilad Hirschberger

Previous research in the Turkish–Kurdish conflict context highlighted two opposing conflict narratives: (a) a terrorism narrative and (b) an independence narrative. In this article, we argue that these narratives are relevant to protracted and asymmetrical intergroup conflict (e.g., independence struggles), and therefore have consequences for conflict- and peace-related outcomes regardless of conflict contexts. We tested this generalizability hypothesis in parallel studies in the context of Turkish–Kurdish (Study 1) and Israeli–Palestinian relations (Study 2) among majority group members (Turks and Jewish Israelis, respectively). We also investigated competitive victimhood as a potential mediating variable in the relationship between conflict narratives on the one side and support for non-violent conflict resolution, forgiveness, and support for aggressive policies on the other, in parallel studies with the two aforementioned contexts. We argue that the terrorism narrative is essentially a negation of the narrative of the other group, and the independence narrative is a consideration of that narrative; therefore, competitive victimhood would be lower/higher when the narrative of the other is acknowledged/denied. Results point to the crucial relationship between endorsing conflict narratives and conflict- and peace-related outcomes through competitive victimhood, and to the possibility that these conflict narratives may show some similarities across different conflict contexts.


Author(s):  
Ilit Ferber

Language and pain are usually thought of as opposites, the one being about expression and communication, the other destructive, “beyond words,” and isolating. Language Pangs challenges these familiar conceptions and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between pain and language in terms of an essential interconnectedness rather than an exclusive opposition. The book’s premise is that the experience of pain cannot be probed without consideration of its inherent relation to language, and vice versa: understanding the nature of language essentially depends on an account of its relationship with pain. Language Pangs brings together discussions of philosophical as well as literary texts, an intersection especially productive in considering the phenomenology of pain and its bearing on language. The book’s first chapter presents a phenomenology of pain and its relation to language. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a close reading of Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), which was the first modern philosophical text to bring together language and pain, establishing the cry of pain as the origin of language. Herder also raises important claims regarding the relationship between human and animal, sympathy, and the role of hearing in the experience of pain. Chapter 4 is devoted to Heidegger’s seminar (1939) on Herder’s text about language, a relatively unknown seminar that raises important claims regarding pain, expression, and hearing. Chapter 5 focuses on Sophocles’ story of Philoctetes, important to Herder’s treatise, in terms of pain, expression, sympathy, and hearing, also referring to more thinkers such as Cavell and Gide.


Urban History ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
MIKKEL THELLE

ABSTRACT:This article investigates the emergence of the Copenhagen slaughterhouse, called the Meat City, during the late nineteenth century. This slaughterhouse was a product of a number of heterogeneous components: industrialization and new infrastructures were important, but hygiene and the significance of Danish bacon exports also played a key role. In the Meat City, this created a distinction between rising production and consumption on the one hand, and the isolation and closure of the slaughtering facility on the other. This friction mirrored an ambivalent attitude towards meat in the urban space: one where consumers demanded more meat than ever before, while animals were being removed from the public eye. These contradictions, it is argued, illustrate and underline the change of the city towards a ‘post-domestic’ culture. The article employs a variety of sources, but primarily the Copenhagen Municipal Archives for regulation of meat provision.


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