scholarly journals THE CULTURE OF THE LATIFUNDIA

Author(s):  
Alexandra Mulino Giannattasio

Researching for socio-educational transformation implies elucidating the hegemonic cultural, political and economic problems of a social formation; in this case, of the Venezuelan social formation. In the field of education, the dominant approaches obfuscate the political stance of teachers by minimising their potential as organic intellectuals capable of transforming their environment. Both naïve empiricism and idealism permeate the sociological and pedagogical reflections that legitimise the colonial and neo-colonial phases established by the culture of the latifundia. This article takes a look at the culture of the latifundia as a structural and cultural remnant of Spanish colonialism as found in the novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Social and educational changes must start with an analysis of the roots; that is, the epistemic-theoretical and cultural foundations that constitute the processes of institutionalisation of Venezuelan education, with the ultimate purpose of discovering the conceptual and methodological devices that hinder the qualitative leap needed in the socio-educational task, which is mainly political-ideological.

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Matt Sheedy

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.


Author(s):  
Vered Noam

This chapter examines the story of the internecine struggle between the two Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, which brought the Hasmonean commonwealth to its end. Only in Josephus is the story of the murder of a righteous man, Onias, juxtaposed to the central tradition regarding the siege of the temple during this war, although this too was clearly an early Jewish tradition. In the rabbinic sources, the story of the siege and the sacrificial animals underwent multiple reworkings, and it is the Babylonian Talmud that reflects the more original version and message of the story. If in Chapter 2, we saw the “rabbinization” of the figure of John Hyrcanus, here the story itself underwent this process and its original moral message was replaced by multiple halakhic implications. In both corpora, this dissension between brothers is seen as the leading cause of the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. This was in contradistinction to the political stance represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which interpreted the Roman occupation as proof of the sinfulness of the Hasmonean state from its very inception.


Public Choice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Dold ◽  
Tim Krieger

AbstractIn the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, a battle of ideas emerged over whether ordoliberalism is part of the cause or the solution of economic problems in Europe. While German ordoliberals argued that their policy proposals were largely ignored before, during and after the crisis, critics saw too much ordoliberal influence, especially in form of austerity policies. We argue that neither view is entirely correct. Instead, we observe that the battle of ideas is largely independent of the countries’ actual responses to the Eurozone crisis: pragmatic self-interest on behalf of governments rather than their ideological convictions played a crucial role in political reactions. We explain this dynamic game-theoretically and highlight a number of reasons for the decoupling of the political-pragmatic debate from the ideological-academic discourse. In addition, we argue that ordoliberals themselves contributed to the ideological misuse of their own program: the ordoliberal Freiburg School ceased to be an active research program and instead grew to resemble a tradition which all too often disregarded the international academic discourse, in particular in macroeconomics. As a result, ordoliberal thinking was abused by its proponents and critics alike to emphasize their preconceived Weltanschauung (worldview). We end our paper with some thoughts on how a contemporary ordoliberalism can be constructively used to react to some of the challenges of the ongoing Eurozone crisis.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi Evenstad ◽  
Aslaug Andreassen Becher

Abstract: This article discusses the intentions and experiences from architects and pedagogues involved in planning and establishing kindergartens with new building topologies in Oslo. The National Kindergarten effort (St.meld.nr. 24 2002-2003) with the political aim that all children between one and six years should have the right to attend kindergarten, led to a huge development of kindergarten buildings all over Norway. Many of the buildings were designed as new typologies named base and zone kindergartens. There are barely research on processes and consequences of the changes in physical structures in educational institutions. The results of the research presented here are based on a case study of processes in four municipalities in Oslo. It shows that the staff working in the new buildings had scarcely any knowledge of the intentions behind the new design, and the support in  establishing pedagogical work in new physical frames was limited. The aim of the article is to expand the knowledge about connections between architecture and pedagogic, and point to the importance of involving the staff/professionals in educational changes where the physical environment is at stake. These findings may be relevant to other transformations involving organizational and architectural changes. Sammendrag: Artikkelen drøfter intensjoner og erfaringer hos arkitekter og pedagoger involvert i planlegging og etablering av barnehager med nye bygningstypologier i Oslo. Barnehageforliket (St.meld.nr.24 2002-2003) innebar et politisk vedtak om barnehageplass for alle og førte til en massiv utbygging av barnehager over hele landet. Mange av de nye byggene ble oppført med nye typer planløsninger (base- og sonebarnehager). Det finnes lite forskning om prosesser og konsekvenser knyttet til endring av fysiske strukturer i pedagogiske institusjoner. Forskningsresultatene som presenteres i artikkelen er basert på en casestudie av prosesser i fire bydeler i Oslo, og viser at personalet i de nye byggene hadde lite kjennskap til intensjoner bak byggenes utforming og opplevde lite støtte i etableringsprosessen. Artikkelens formål er å bidra til kunnskap om betydningen av å involvere personalet i pedagogiske reformer og i utvikling av det fysiske miljøet. Funnene kan ha overføringsverdi til andre reformer som innebærer organisatoriske og arkitektoniske endringer.   


1963 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-252
Author(s):  
Michael Crowder

President Nkrumah, in opening this Congress in the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, called for the objective scientific study of Africa. He urged: ‘While some of us are engaged with the political unification of Africa, Africanists everywhere must also help in building the spiritual and cultural foundations of the unity of our continent.’ This appeal had in a sense already been answered by the arrival of scholars from nearly every State in Africa.


1997 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 482-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Jeffrey Tatum

To the extent that one subscribes to the proposition, by now a virtual principle of criticism (at least in some circles), that literary texts constitute sites for the negotiation, often vigorous, of power relations within a society, the reader of Catullus can hardly avoid some consideration of the poet's attitude toward contemporary political matters. It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced. Mommsen argued that Catullus responded to the enormities that followed the reinvigoration of the First Triumvirate at the conference of Luca in 56 by occupying a thoroughly optimate position. Wilamowitz, on the other hand, insisted that Catullus' lyrics reflect only moments of the author's individual experience, amongst which expressions of personal distaste for certain public figures naturally appear but nothing which can appropriately be taken as indications of a political stance. The approach of Wilamowitz has proved more influential, followed in spirit if not in specifics by numerous commentators. To the degree that Catullus has been assimilated to the Augustan elegists, whose poems have been deemed by a scholar of the stature of Veyne to be anti-political in nature, it has been all the easier to reject the idea that Catullus adopts a political position, an assessment strongly maintained in a recent study by Paul Allen Miller, for whom the rejection of all political engagement is the sine qua non of true lyric poetry. Mommsen's optimate Catullus has lately found his champion, however, in a careful article by H. P. Syndikus. Although Miller and Syndikus, like Wilamowitz and Mommsen, draw diametrically opposed conclusions concerning politics in Catullus' poetry, they are agreed nevertheless that politics can be regarded as a relatively straightforward term: it refers to statecraft, matters of government, and party strife. Other readers, however, have been more self-conscious in their theoretical concerns, a salutary consequence of which has been a shift by some to a less narrow conception of the field of reference appropriate to discussions of ‘the political’ in Latin literature.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giangiacomo Bravo ◽  
Mike Farjam

Surveys measures of environmental concern are know to only weakly predict self-reported environmental behaviour. In addition, self-reported and actual behaviour may not match in empirical settings. To better explore the relation among these variables and the political stance of participants, we ran an online experiment with 805 US residents. Four key variables – environmental concern, self -reported environmental behaviour, observed environmental behaviour (in the form of carbon compensation), and political attitudes – were measured and their interactions in promoting pro-environment behaviour were analysed. We found that self-reported measures hardly held any correlation with real behaviour and that political attitudes mainly predicted self-reported measures, not real environmental behaviour.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Ivanov ◽  
◽  
Irina V. Fotieva ◽  
Irina A. Gerasimova ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the heritage of the Roerich family – Nikolai Konstantinovich, Elena Ivanovna, Yuri Nikolaevich, Svyatoslav Nikolaevich, and its role in the current sit­uation of world crisis, especially for the Eurasian geopolitical space. The authors substan­tiate the thesis that the political and cultural views of the Roerich family matured parallel to the movement of the Eurasians and in a number of aspects specify many their ideas. The authors reveal and explore the relevance and predictability of the key principles held by the Roerich family concerning the perspectives of Russia and the areas of Eurasian co­operation. In the legacy of the Roerich family, the main features of the impending global crisis are described in a visionary way. They saw a way out of the crisis in establishing the primacy of culture over economy, the primacy of the spiritual over the material. The Roerichs warned of the dangers of a barbaric relationship with nature, robotization and decomposition of consciousness. Their warnings about the dangers of a mechanical civilization are confirmed in the work of modern analysts. According to Roerichs, the ideal of cooperation and cooperation should become the basis of relations between peoples. The Roerichs emphasized the special importance of the Russian-Mongolian and Russian-Indian ties forming a geopolitical and spiritual “middle cross” of Eurasia. The commonality of the environmental, cultural and economic problems of the two great mountain regions of the Earth is a solid foundation for future cooperation between scien­tists in the space of Eurasia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Javier Olivas Osuna ◽  
José Rama

Spain has been one of the hardest hit countries by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this crisis presented a window of opportunity for VOX, as it has for other far right parties, to raise its visibility as opposition force. This paper investigates whether the discourse of VOX has evolved during the pandemic and affected the political dynamics in Spain. This article proposes a new multidimensional strategy to measure the degree of populism in political communications, via quantitative and qualitative content analysis. It dissects the parliamentary speeches of the leader of VOX, Santiago Abascal, in the debates for the approval and extension of the “state of alarm” to fight against COVID-19 between March and June 2020. In order to assess the changes and relative intensity of populist features in Abascal’s parliamentary speeches we compared them with his speech during Pedro Sánchez’s investiture session as the Spanish President of the Government, in January 2020, and VOX’s latest political manifestos—2019 European and Spanish General Elections—, as well as with speeches of the representatives of the five main parties and coalitions during the COVID-19 debates in the Spanish Congress.Our paper shows that populists’ discourses are context-dependent and that their performances are not only shaped by crisis but also constitutive of crisis. The density of populist references in Abascal’s speeches grew steadily during the period analysed. Morality and antagonism overshadowed sovereignty and society as key populist attributes, and the tone of the discourse became increasingly hyperbolic. Moreover, Abascal’s discursive performances had a sort of contagion effect in other parties in the parliamentary sessions studied. People’s Party (Partido Popular–PP) leader Pablo Casado chose to follow VOX and harshly criticized the government, meanwhile the discourses of the speakers of Together We Can (Unidas Podemos–UP) and Catalan Republican Left (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya–ERC), adopted a demonizing rhetoric against VOX and PP also grounded on a populist logic of articulation. This polarizing dynamic between competing Manichean discourses contributed to reinforce the sense of crisis by adding a political dimension to the already existing health and economic problems.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 196
Author(s):  
Jorgen Sandemose

<p>This article presents a criticism of Nancy Fraser’s influential essay “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode. For an Expanded Conception of Capitalism”. After a short introduction determining Fraser’s theoretical stance amidst the critical waves around Karl Marx’s positions, her concept of “abodes”, thought to be hidden from Marx’s view of the capitalist order, is analyzed. Thereupon, certain limitations of her interpretation of the “economic” dimension in Marx’s work is pointed out, and also how they lead to misconceptions of the theory of the social formation as a whole. Furthermore, it is shown how Fraser is tempted to introduce ill-considered and alien elements into Marx’s view of the international economy (the world market), thereby rendering meaningless a Marxian concept of the political. Towards the end, the distinctively empiricist aura in which Fraser’s theory is presented is being criticized: It represents a rupture with any possible revolutionary theory.</p>


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