Introduction. Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to revive our common political vocabulary, both everyday and academic, and to do so critically. Its entries do not seek to present a definitive history of a concept or an idea, nor do they attempt to summarize or exhaust a range of views regarding certain concepts. The volume's contributors, although well versed in the history of the concept on which they write and the role it plays in various theoretical discussions, seek to present their own original reflection on the question of what is that concept and thereby what sort of work a rethinking of that concept can do for us now. Each addresses a concept posed in the traditional Socratic question format, “What is X?” “What is that thing about which we speak? ” In so doing, the authors take the position of a questioning subject and assume a more direct and personal responsibility than is the academic norm for the answer they give and for the very act of providing such an answer.

Deciding what is and what is not political is a fraught, perhaps intractably opaque matter. Just who decides the question; on what grounds; to what ends–these seem like properly political questions themselves. Deciding what is political and what is not can serve to contain and restrain struggles, make existing power relations at once self-evident and opaque, and blur the possibility of reimagining them differently. This book seeks to revive our common political vocabulary—both everyday and academic—and to do so critically. Its entries take the form of essays in which each contributor presents her or his own original reflection on a concept posed in the traditional Socratic question format “What is X?” and asks what sort of work a rethinking of that concept can do for us now. The explicitness of a radical questioning of this kind gives authors both the freedom and the authority to engage, intervene in, critique, and transform the conceptual terrain they have inherited. Each entry, either implicitly or explicitly, attempts to re-open the question “What is political thinking?” Each is an effort to reinvent political writing. In this setting the political as such may be understood as a property, a field of interest, a dimension of human existence, a set of practices, or a kind of event. This book does not stand upon a decided concept of the political but returns in practice and in concern to the question “What is the political?” by submitting the question to a field of plural contention.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 374-395
Author(s):  
Rafael Ignacio Estrada Mejia ◽  
Carla Guerrón Guerron Montero

This article aims to decrease the cultural invisibility of the wealthy by exploring the Brazilian emergent elites and their preferred living arrangement: elitist closed condominiums (BECCs) from a micropolitical perspective.  We answer the question: What is the relationship between intimacy and subjectivity that is produced in the collective mode of existence of BECCs? To do so, we trace the history of the elite home, from the master’s house (casa grande) to contemporary closed condominiums. Following, we discuss the features of closed condominiums as spaces of segregation, fragmentation and social distinction, characterized by minimal public life and an internalized sociability. Finally, based on ethnographic research conducted in the mid-size city of Londrina (state of Paraná) between 2015 and 2017, we concentrate on four members of the emergent elite who live in BECCs, addressing their collective production of subjectivity. 


2008 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Pieter-Jan Van Bosstraeten

Op 11 oktober 1978 splitste de Belgische Socialistische Partij zich als laatste van de drie unitaire partijen op in twee autonome partijen. Langs Franstalige zijde werd éénzijdig de Parti Socialiste opgericht, twee jaar later volgde de Socialistische Partij. De splitsing vormde het eindpunt van een lange en bewogen geschiedenis van de socialistische eenheidspartij.Ondanks het feit dat heel wat auteurs reeds een licht hebben geworpen op de belangrijkste gebeurtenis uit de na-oorlogse geschiedenis van de BSP, is het antwoord op de vraag naar de oorzaken van de splitsing vrij eenduidig. Overwegend wordt aangenomen dat de splitsing van de BSP het gevolg is van een moeilijke samenwerking in het kader van het communautaire dossier. Andere oorzaken worden amper aangehaald, of onvoldoende verduidelijkt. Tevens wordt slechts het politiek-tactische aspect van het communautaire dossier uitvoerig besproken. In de bestaande literatuur wordt zo goed als nergens dieper ingegaan op de inhoudelijke elementen die binnen de partij problemen teweegbrachten.Onderzoek van twee cruciale documenten heeft de mogelijkheid geboden het verhaal van de splitsing beter te reconstrueren. Daarbij is gebleken dat de splitsing van de partij in een ruimer kader dient te worden geïnterpreteerd dan het communautaire dossier. Aan de splitsing van de partij ging een lang proces van autonomisering en vleugelvorming vooraf. Bovendien werd aangetoond dat de problematiek inzake het Egmont-Stuyvenbergpact niet de enige directe oorzaak vormde voor de splitsing van de partij, in de periode 1977-1978. Enkele andere oorzaken hebben daartoe eveneens bijgedragen.________The division of the Belgian Socialist Party. Two explanatory documentsOn 11 October 1978 the Belgian Socialist Party divided into two autonomous parties, the last of the three unitary parties to do so. First the French speaking section unilaterally founded the ‘Parti Socialiste’, two years later the ‘Socialistische Partij’ followed. The division constituted the termination of the long and eventful history of the socialist unitary party.In spite of the fact that many authors have already shed light on the most important event from the post-war history of the BSP, the answer to the question about the causes for the division are fairly unequivocal. The majority of opinions favour the view that the division of the BSP was the consequence of the difficulty of collaborating within the framework of the community dossier. Other causes are hardly cited, or insufficiently elucidated. Moreover only the politico-tactical aspect of the community dossier is discussed in detail. The existing literature hardly ever carries out a more thorough examination of the intrinsic elements that caused problems within the party.The investigation of the two crucial documents has offered the opportunity to provide a better reconstruction of the division. This showed that the division of the party should be interpreted within a larger framework than the community dossier alone. A long process of autonomisation and the formation of political wings preceded the division of the party. It also demonstrated that the issues concerning the Egmont-Stuyvenberg pact were not the only direct cause for the division of the party, during the period 1977-1978. There were several other causes that also contributed to this division.


Author(s):  
James Whitehead

The introductory chapter discusses the popular image of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in television, film, theatre, fiction, the history of literary criticism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its countercultures, including anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Existing literary-historical work on related topics is assessed, before the introduction goes on to suggest why some problems or difficulties in writing about this subject might be productive for further cultural history. The introduction also considers at length the legacy of Michel Foucault’s Folie et Déraison (1961), and the continued viability of Foucauldian methods and concepts for examining literary-cultural representations of madness after the half-century of critiques and controversies following that book’s publication. Methodological discussion both draws on and critiques the models of historical sociology used by George Becker and Sander L. Gilman to discuss genius, madness, deviance, and stereotype in the nineteenth century. A note on terminology concludes the introduction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Santos ◽  
Maria Hurtado-Ortiz ◽  
Laurenne Lewis ◽  
Julia Ramirez-Garcia

This study examined the validity of the Implicit Model of Illness Questionnaire (IMIQ - Schiaffino & Cea, 1995) when used with Latino college students (n = 156; 34% male, 66% female) who are at-risk for developing diabetes due to family history of this disease. An exploratory principal-axis factor analysis yielded four significant factors – curability, personal responsibility, symptom variability/seriousness, and personal attributions – which accounted for 35% of variance and reflected a psychosocial-biomedical common sense perspective of diabetes. Factor-based analyses revealed differences in diabetes illness beliefs based on students’ age, generational status, acculturation orientation, and disease experience of the afflicted relative.


1992 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-333
Author(s):  
Robert M. Healey
Keyword(s):  

John Knox considered himself a preacher, not a writer of books. His History of the Reformation of Religion in the Realm of Scotland is an extended sermon on the duty of Scottish Christians to rely solely, obediently, and unflinchingly on God. The printed work contains five books, but Knox did not write Book 5. In Book 4, Knox made the point that the Lord authorizes and requires all Christians (even common subjects, when they are able to do so) to correct their rulers' religion and to compel them to obey God's commandments. For Knox, no more history was needed. His sermon was “compleat.”


Author(s):  
John B. Nann ◽  
Morris L. Cohen

This introductory chapter provides an overview of legal history research. An attorney might conduct legal history research if the law at question in a legal dispute is very old: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are well over two hundred years old. Historical research also comes into play when the question at issue is what the law was at a certain time in the past. Ultimately, law plays an important part in the political and social history of the United States. As such, researchers interested in almost every aspect of American life will have occasion to use legal materials. The chapter then describes the U.S. legal system and legal authority, and offers six points to consider in approaching a historical legal research project.


At least four writing systems—in addition to the Phoenician, Greek, and Latin ones—were used between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE to write the indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula (the so-called Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over three thousand inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the western Mediterranean world with the exception of the Italian peninsula. The aim of this book is to present a state of the question that includes the latest cutting-edge scholarship on these epigraphies and the languages that they transmit. To do so, the editors have put together a volume that from a multidisciplinary perspective brings together linguistic, philological, epigraphic, numismatic, historical, and archaeological aspects of the surviving inscriptions. The study of these languages is essential to achieve a better understanding of the social, economic, and cultural history of Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. They are also the key to our understanding of colonial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at the root of the spread of these languages and also of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played an important role in the final expansion of the so-called Palaeohispanic languages.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven D Edwards ◽  
Jeanette Hewitt

It was reported in 2006 that a regime of ‘supervised self harm’ had been implemented at St George’s Hospital, Stafford. This involves patients with a history of self-harming behaviour being offered both emotional and practical support to enable them to do so. This support can extend to the provision of knives or razors to enable them to self-harm while they are being supervised by a nurse. This article discusses, and evaluates from an ethical perspective, three competing responses to self-harming behaviours: to prevent it; to allow it; and to make provision for supervised self-harm. It is argued that of these three options the prevention strategy is the least plausible. A tentative conclusion is offered in support of supervised self-harm.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franz A. J. Szabo

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.


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