The Question of Conscience in Why am I Doing This?

Author(s):  
ADEYEMI AMOS ADEGBOYEGA

Greatly concerned and obsessed with the state of affairs in the country, literary artists more often than not, call to conscience the sensibilities of their audience, politicians inclusive. Against the prebendal nature of politics which is characterized by different anarchist tendencies in Nigeria, literary artists find justification for their craft as they seek ultimately to re-organize the society and confront its perils. This is the crux of this study. My concern is to rationalize Abubakar Gimba’s Why am I Doing This? banking on the interrogative undertone of the title, a variation from the norm. This interrogative undertone as will be explicated herein questions the rationalities – of the author and the actors in his observations as documented. Four essays from the collection were purposively sampled to demonstrate this. Deploying the literary tool of postcolonialism, this study a critical qualitative analysis submits that Abubakar Gimba laments the anathema and apathy that pervades the Nigerian society despite the professed democratic system of governance. He unveils the hidden and sad truths of modern Nigeria in its raw and naked form. These truths contradict her democracy. It is against this that Gimba hopes for a change in the status-quo and modus operandi of statecraft.

Author(s):  
ADEYEMI AMOS ADEGBOYEGA

Greatly concerned and obsessed with the state of affairs in the country, literary artists more often than not, call to conscience the sensibilities of their audience, politicians inclusive. Against the prebendal nature of politics which is characterized by different anarchist tendencies in Nigeria, literary artists find justification for their craft as they seek ultimately to re-organize the society and confront its perils. This is the crux of this study. My concern is to rationalize Abubakar Gimba’s Why am I Doing This? banking on the interrogative undertone of the title, a variation from the norm. This interrogative undertone as will be explicated herein questions the rationalities – of the author and the actors in his observations as documented. Four essays from the collection were purposively sampled to demonstrate this. Deploying the literary tool of postcolonialism, this study a critical qualitative analysis submits that Abubakar Gimba laments the anathema and apathy that pervades the Nigerian society despite the professed democratic system of governance. He unveils the hidden and sad truths of modern Nigeria in its raw and naked form. These truths contradict her democracy. It is against this that Gimba hopes for a change in the status-quo and modus operandi of statecraft.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-39
Author(s):  
Prof. I Made Arya Utama

The challenges of current and future Law Theories are not solely derived from within the Law itself, but also from the external about the law's enforceability in society. Therefore, the legal theories are currently experiencing anomalies. Legal Theory currently faced with the need to be able to bring about justice, certainty, order, and the benefits of protecting human rights as well as the sustainability of living creatures and the environment.The method applied in this article is the normative legal research method with the source of legal material from the legislation and related literature. Library study became the technique of collecting the legal material and qualitative analysis applied to the legal material which has been described to produce the conclusion of the problems studied in this article.The legal theory undergoes a shift following the perspective of legal scholars from classical times, modern times, and postmodern thinkers. The Depelovment Law Theory and Progressive Law Theory that grew up in the Postmodern era seeks to free the minds of the status quo, adopt legal ideas that are in line with the needs of the Indonesian people and the state that is moving in the crossroads of modernization. Laws are required to promote conscience implemented through legal products established by competent authorities, just laws, and laws protecting people and the environment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Valentini

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not exist in the first place? Many answer by invoking Rawls's natural duty ‘to further just arrangements not yet established’, treating it as a ‘normative bridge’ between institutional demands of distributive justice and individual responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances. I argue that this response strategy is unsuccessful. I show that the more unjust the status quo is due to non-compliance, the less demanding the natural duty of justice becomes. I conclude that, in non-ideal circumstances, the bulk of the normative work is done by another natural duty: that of beneficence. This conclusion has significant implications for how we conceptualize our political responsibilities in non-ideal circumstances, and cautions us against the tendency – common in contemporary political theory – to answer all high-stakes normative questions under the rubric of justice.


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Saban ◽  
Muhammad Amara

AbstractThe status of Arabic in Israel gives rise to question. Israel is a rare case of an ethnic nation-state that grants the language of minority group with a legal status which isprima facieone of equality. Both Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel. What are the reasons for this special state of affairs? The answer is threefold: historic, sociological and legal. In various ways the potential inherent in the legal status of Arabic has been depleted of content, and as a result of that, as well as other reasons, the socio-political status of Arabic closely resembles what you would expect the status of a language of a minority group in a state that identifies itself as the state of the majority group to be. This answer, however, is another source of puzzlement – how does such a dissonance between law and practice evolve, what perpetuates it for so long, is change possible, is it to be expected?We present an analysis of the legal status of Arabic in Israel and at the same time we proceed to try and answer the questions regarding the gap between the legal and the sociopolitical status of Arabic. We reach some of our answers through a comparison with the use of law to change the status of the French language in Canada. One of these answers is that given the present constellation in Israel, the sociopolitical status of Arabic cannot meaningfully be altered by legal means.


2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Andrea Theocharis ◽  
Marcus Graetsch

We all study political science, but - what do we actually do here anyway? This essay expresses our thoughts about our subject. The everyday life in University doesn’t seem to give enough space for questioning what is this all about. Maybe a debate on that issue does not exist extensively because of fears of the loss of entitlement. The aim of this essay is to support the heightening of student’s awareness about the status quo of research and teaching in political science as we can judge it from our modest experiences. Trying to get to the basis of such a problem is not easy. The things here written are surely not the state of the art, but they could shine a better light on the problem what had been called the 'politics of political science' in an earlier Internet discussion on the IAPSS website. This paper should be understood as a start for a discussion, where we all can express our surely different experiences and ideas.


Author(s):  
Inês Carvalho ◽  
Carlos Costa ◽  
Anália Torres

The purpose of this chapter is to reveal women top-level managers' gender awareness in relation to two aspects: 1) perceptions of discrimination and 2) views of what could be done towards gender equality (by the state, organizations, and women themselves), so that more women can advance their careers. Women top-level managers in the Portuguese tourism sector were interviewed. The interview data suggests that discrimination might still be pervasive in the Portuguese tourism industry. However, many women do not perceive it as “real” discrimination and have contradictory discourses about it. Informants were also asked what could be done so that more women advance in their careers. They place the solution to the problem of gender equality mostly in women's hands. While some of the strategies proposed by women confront the gender order, others align with the status quo by ensuring that women “fit in” without challenging existing structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Noa Balf

The Oslo peace process has effectively stalled and failed. In this article I show that by positioning the Oslo process and any political and civic forces involved with it as tainted by irrational and emotional weakness, neo-conservative figures and institutions within Israel have successfully argued for a hyper-masculinized Israeli security paradigm. In this configuration, the process of cooperation and the acknowledgement of Palestinian claims are viewed as weak and reprehensible, while aggressive military strategies, deterrence, and the demand for unequivocal Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s terms are perceived as rational and responsible actions that protect Israeli interests. By conflating security with the state, Israeli political leaders perpetuate the conflict rather than resolve it.


1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 512-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Rousseau ◽  
Christopher Gelpi ◽  
Dan Reiter ◽  
Paul K. Huth

The literature on the democratic peace has emerged from two empirical claims: (1) Democracies are unlikely to conflict with one another, and (2) democracies are as prone to conflict with nondemocracies as nondemocracies are with one another. Together these assertions imply that the democratic peace is a dyadic phenomenon. There is strong support for the first observation, but much recent scholarship contravenes the second. This paper assesses whether the democratic peace is a purely dyadic, a monadic, or perhaps a mixed dyadic and monadic effect. Our analysis offers two important advances. First, our model directly compares the dyadic and monadic explanations by using the state as the unit of analysis rather than the potentially problematic dyad. Second, our model controls for an important but overlooked confounding variable: satisfaction with the status quo. Our results indicate that the initiation of violence within crises is predominantly a dyadic phenomenon, but we also find evidence suggesting a strong monadic effect regarding the emergence of crises.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-361
Author(s):  
Feriha Perekli

This article traces a process of modifications undertaken by anti-systemic tawhidi Islamists over two decades. Disillusioned with the failure to capture the state through an Iranian-style mass uprising, tawhidi Islamists began to disengage in large numbers from their holy cause starting from the 1990s. As those who disengaged were co-opted by parliamentarian Islamism, the activists who persisted abandoned their revolutionary approach. In spite of engaging in a tactical revisionism, they retained their non-accommodationist stance vis-à-vis the established political order. Yet, in the late 2000s, they accommodated with the new established order, rendering their anti-systemicness obsolete. The article maintains that (1) despite disengagements, tawhidi Islamism as a movement did not completely vanish, but instead committed core activists continued their mobilization by reevaluating their tactics; (2) accommodation with the status quo became possible as the new established order and its policies were perceived as opportunities toward advancing Islamist mobilization.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document