Youth Life Writing, Networked Media, Climate Change: The Challenge of Testimony to the Future

This article examines some of Greta Thunberg’s life writing as an example of the creativity and ingenuity with which some young people engage with the identity category of ‘youth’ in their life writing. It argues that Thunberg’s activism uses personal testimony in order to amplify expertise testimony as an epistemic source that demands action on climate change. This strategic use of life writing produces a paradoxical, but seemingly effective, form of life writing in which Thunberg provides personal testimony to the future. The article analyses how this paradoxical form of testimony is produced by situating Thunberg’s life writing in the context of the social and political investment in youth as an identity genre central to understanding of the human life course, and to how political responsibility is figured in contemporary western democracies. Drawing on theories of new media as an affective site in which life unfolds, rather than being represented, the paper concludes by reflecting on how Wendy Chun’s argument that networks involve the twinning of habituation and crisis mirrors Thunberg’s argument that action on climate change demands that habitual ways of living and acting must be rethought in response to the climate crisis.

Path to Accessibility: The current state of disability access in Aotearoa New Zealand museums

<p>The New Museology posits museums and galleries as institutions entwined with issues of social justice and political responsibility. The relationship between museums and their communities is the founding aspect of this theoretical and practical framework. ‘Path to Accessibility’ explores the ways museums and galleries around Aotearoa New Zealand are engaging with communities of people with disabilities, consulting both with representatives from the disability sector and cultural organisations from around the country. This dissertation addresses a current gap in the literature available on how New Zealand museums are adapting to the needs of these audiences; a shift that is necessary given one in four New Zealanders identifies as having lived experience of disability. It also forges a valuable contribution to the field of museum studies by drawing on theory such as audience development and visitor research, and utilising emancipatory research frameworks from disability studies, as well as conducting original research on an under-examined topic. The research comprised a multi-method approach to ensure credibility. Focus group and interview stages collected the experiences and viewpoints of existing museum visitors with disabilities. This provided a foundation on which to create a nationwide survey of 41 museums and galleries. The survey explored multiple aspects of disability access, including physical ingress, inclusive exhibition design, tailored public programming, digital accessibility, and levels of disability representation in staff and management positions. The findings of this research project reveal that museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand are for the most part considering disability access in some way. However, actioning related initiatives is often limited to achieving minimum legislative requirements rather than approaching it comprehensively as part of wider audience development strategies. The analysis of data gathered puts forward a number of suggestions around improving practice in New Zealand museums, central to which is establishing relationships with communities of people with disabilities and their advocacy groups to ensure long-term sustainability. These recommendations have global applicability for museum practice as comparative overseas studies demonstrate strong similarities to the New Zealand context.</p>

Path to Accessibility: The current state of disability access in Aotearoa New Zealand museums

<p>The New Museology posits museums and galleries as institutions entwined with issues of social justice and political responsibility. The relationship between museums and their communities is the founding aspect of this theoretical and practical framework. ‘Path to Accessibility’ explores the ways museums and galleries around Aotearoa New Zealand are engaging with communities of people with disabilities, consulting both with representatives from the disability sector and cultural organisations from around the country. This dissertation addresses a current gap in the literature available on how New Zealand museums are adapting to the needs of these audiences; a shift that is necessary given one in four New Zealanders identifies as having lived experience of disability. It also forges a valuable contribution to the field of museum studies by drawing on theory such as audience development and visitor research, and utilising emancipatory research frameworks from disability studies, as well as conducting original research on an under-examined topic. The research comprised a multi-method approach to ensure credibility. Focus group and interview stages collected the experiences and viewpoints of existing museum visitors with disabilities. This provided a foundation on which to create a nationwide survey of 41 museums and galleries. The survey explored multiple aspects of disability access, including physical ingress, inclusive exhibition design, tailored public programming, digital accessibility, and levels of disability representation in staff and management positions. The findings of this research project reveal that museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand are for the most part considering disability access in some way. However, actioning related initiatives is often limited to achieving minimum legislative requirements rather than approaching it comprehensively as part of wider audience development strategies. The analysis of data gathered puts forward a number of suggestions around improving practice in New Zealand museums, central to which is establishing relationships with communities of people with disabilities and their advocacy groups to ensure long-term sustainability. These recommendations have global applicability for museum practice as comparative overseas studies demonstrate strong similarities to the New Zealand context.</p>

Young people – citizens in times of climate change? A childist approach to human responsibility

The matters of climate change are presently of concern existentially and ethically to the children and the youth. Worldwide school strikes in 2018–2019 and the Fridays for Future movement demonstrate how the young citizens assume socio-political responsibility. However, what possibilities do children and young people actually have to influence global discourse? Are adequate thought structures in place for them to be taken seriously in matters of concern to them? Given that children and youth engage with the issues of climate change, with a concern for their own future and that of our planet, the aim of this article was to take a child-centred ethical perspective and to theoretically explore conditions for intentional inclusion of children and their ethical concerns. In such a critical exploration, aspects of identity politics and intersectionality are reviewed. Empirical results from an interview study with children aged between 10 to 12 years are presented demonstrating that climate changes are of existential and ethical importance to them. Thereafter, a ‘childist’ perspective is introduced and discussed. The interviews were carried out during 2019 in eight schools in South Africa and Sweden. The children were individually interviewed with a method allowing for open responses. The schools in both countries were located in areas where a lack of water had been experienced. In this article, a theoretical framework is developed based on the ethical recognition of a commonly shared human responsibility and using the concept of ‘empowered inclusion’. It recognises children in their own right and identifies vulnerability and interdependence as being foundational to human existence.Contribution: In present times, as the concern for their own future, that of future generations and that of the planet is becoming an integral part of the identities of children and youth, both existentially and ethically, this article brings to this special issue a discussion of conditions for a child-centred view on human responsibility.

Social framework of historical responsibility: in search of rational grounds for historical estimates

Автор статьи настаивает на необходимости определения оснований социальной ответственности, чтобы избежать апелляции к эмоциям и моральному дискурсу при оценке исторических событий. Показано, что идеи И. Канта не дают возможности разрешить проблему ответственности вне свободы и концептуализировать коллективную ответственность. Некоторые решения предложены Х. Арендт, осмысляющей политическую ответственность как коллективную. Структурный подход А.М. Янг позволяет перенести акцент на деперсонализацию в условиях большого числа посредников, последствия действий которых невозможно просчитать, и оценивать ответственность в категориях каузальности. Говоря о присвоении коллективной ответственности личностью и оценивая степень ответственности, необходимо учитывать уровень вовлеченности в структуру и качество выполняемых задач. In the proposed article, the author insists on the need to determine the grounds of social responsibility, since this will avoid appeals to emotions and moral discourse when evaluating historical events. At the first step, the author turns to the ideas of I. Kant, showing that the resources of his theory do not allow solving the problems of responsibility outside of freedom and conceptualizing collective responsibility. The author finds some solutions in X. Arendt, conceptualizing political responsibility as a collective one. A.M. Young's structural approach allows us to shift the focus to depersonalization in the conditions of a large number of intermediaries, the consequences of whose actions cannot be calculated, and to assess responsibility in the categories of causality. Thus, the author speaks about the assignment of collective responsibility by an individual; while assessing the degree of responsibility, it is necessary to take into account the level of involvement in the structure and quality of the tasks performed. This allows us to understand the role of historical dynamics actors without emotional and moral assessments.

the presidential and the semi-presidential system

In this research we dealt with the aspects of the presidential system and the semi-presidential system, and he problematic of the political system in the Kurdistan Region. Mainly The presidential system has stabilized in many important countries, and the semi-presidential concept is a new concept that can be considered a mixture of parliamentary and presidential principles. One of the features of a semi-presidential system is that the elected president is accountable to parliament. The main player is the president who is elected in direct or indirect general elections. And the United States is a model for the presidential system, and France is the most realistic model for implementing the semi-presidential system. The French political system, which lived a long period under the traditional parliamentary system, introduced new adjustments in the power structure by strengthening the powers of the executive authority vis-à-vis Parliament, and expanding the powers of the President of the Republic. In exchange for the government while remaining far from bearing political responsibility, and therefore it can be said that the French system has overcome the elements of the presidential system in terms of objectivity and retains the elements of the parliamentary system in terms of formality, so it deserves to be called the semi-presidential system. Then the political system in the Kurdistan Region is not a complete parliamentary system, and it is not a presidential system in light of the presence of a parliament with powers. Therefore, the semi-presidential system is the most appropriate political system for this region, where disputes are resolved over the authority of both the parliament and the regional president, and a political system is built stable. And that because The presence of a parliamentary majority, which supports a government based on a strategic and stable party coalition, which is one of the current problems in the Kurdistan region. This dilemma can be solved through the semi-presidential system. And in another hand The impartiality of the head of state in the relationship with the government and parliament. The head of state, with some relations with the government, can participate in legislative competencies with Parliament.

Fundamental values of European legal culture in the provisions of the polish constitution 1791

The article reveals the importance of legal culture for the social and state life of any country and for ensuring the life of both an individual and social groups, communities and humanity as a whole, which is due to its ability to involve a person in the system of legal values, accumulate legal experience and transfer it from generation to generation. It is noted that the European legal culture, in addition to natural rights, democracy, the rule of law, has other values that ensure the sustainable development of society, social justice and legal progress. It is emphasized that the analysis of legal monuments, which are so rich in European state-legal history, helps to trace the evolution of the formation of value-legal guidelines in modern Europe. Based on the analysis of the text of the Polish Constitution of 1791, those provisions that contain the fundamental values of European legal culture that have become value guidelines for the further state-legal development of Poland are highlighted. All values that stem from their content are divided into two groups: 1) values that reflect the value guidelines of the Polish society of that time (patriotism, religious tolerance, freedom, dignity, equality, property, inviolability of legal certainty, people); 2) values that reflect value guidelines for the organization of state power (the principle of sovereignty of the people, the principle of separation of powers, the principle of popular representation, the constancy of the constitution, the principle of majority, the principle of political responsibility). According to the results of the study, the Polish Constitution of 1791 is an example of an amazing symbiosis of traditions and innovations, when such progressive values as patriotism, religious tolerance, people, territorial integrity, freedom, the principle of sovereignty of the people, the principle of separation of powers, political responsibility, the principle of popular representation, the principle of majority coexist with traditional estate privileges and the institution of dependent peasants. It is indicated about the special attitude of the Polish people to this document as a certain state symbol.

Responsibilities for Climate Damage within Borders: Reconciling Liability with Shared Responsibility

The literature on climate justice has primarily focused on distributing the benefits and burdens of climate change, particularly those related to the costs of mitigation and adaptation. As such, less attention has been paid to emerging political issues surrounding loss and damage caused by the failure of mitigation and adaptation. This paper aims to fill this gap through discussions on reparative justice, which is correlated with the concept of liability. Since the concept of liability has controversial implications in climate politics and theory, investigating reparative justice for climate damage must clarify how the concept of liability can reconcile with the normative theory of political responsibility. This paper begins with the question of how the distributive justice scheme fails to discuss climate damage, by arguing that the scheme does not necessarily recognise a prior injustice and misses the need for reparation for the extensive scope of climate loss and damage. Then, it shows that the concept of reparation, which differs from compensation, holds more promise in giving the proper due for climate loss and damage. Finally, after comparing the liability model and the shared responsibility model proposed by Iris Young, this paper concludes by proposing that the hybrid model of liability and shared responsibility can be used to avoid limitations of the concept of liability.

Unfounding

This chapter, ‘Unbounding’, illuminates the opposition between peace as a project of making and the founding or refounding of a political community through civil political action. The chapter examines how peacemaking was implicated in South Sudan’s violent failure as a new political community. Without diminishing domestic elite political responsibility for the destruction of order and civility, the chapter analyses how this collapse was possible within the context of a heavily internationalized peacemaking, statebuilding and peacebuilding effort. By ordaining a government-in-waiting that needed no further legitimacy from its people, and focusing on a technocratic and transactional mode of ‘building’ peace and state in southern Sudan after war, international intervention made a peace without politics in southern Sudan between 2005 and 2011. The new political beginning of independence, the founding of a new political community, became a mirage when overtaken by the memories and wounds of intra-southern violence, rekindled political rivalries and the militarized, corrupted and coercive logic of power to rule that quickly pulled South Sudan down into war.