Homeless shelters and the blues

In this article, I analyze the emergence of New York City’s infrastructure of homeless shelters dialectically, relationally, and historically. The members of Boogie Down Productions met in an incipient New York City homeless shelter in the mid-1980s. Their relationship and music is a window into a critical political consciousness of men living in homeless shelters because the artists gave expression to an emergent structure of feeling of resistance taking hold during intense changes to New York’s political economy and its institutions. The paper first analyzes homeless policy and infrastructural change through a reading of archival sources and government reports and documents. The second section understands oral histories conducted with men living in a New York City homeless shelter as blues geographies—insurgent, critical explanations of these institutional spaces. Shelter residents actively challenge the material conditions, relations, and values that produce homeless shelters as essential instruments of the carceral state. I argue that they activate this resistance to the naturalization of shelters, and themselves as homeless, by narrating carceral spaces as abolitionist spaces.

Poetic Utterances and Socio-Political Commitment in Ọbasa’s Poems

Yorùbá literary critics such as Olabimtan (1974a), Fo ̣ lọ runs ̣ ọ (1998), among ̣ others, have classified D. A. Obasá as a unique colonial poet whose poems ̣ were committed to the promotion of Yorùbá cultural heritage. Tus, a lot of critical works that exist on Obasa’s poems largely concentrate on the cultural ̣ and the philosophical dimensions with little or no focus on the socio-political commitment of the poet. The objective of this study therefore, was to examine the socio-political commitment of Obasa and his poetic utterances. The research methodology is descriptive. It is a corpus study or content analysis of the poetry books. Poems that are relevant to socio-political issues in the three books (Ìwé Kinni Awon Akéwì, ̣ Ìwé Kejì Awon Akéwì and ̣ Ìwé Kéta ̣ Àwoṇ Akéwì) were analyzed within the theory of Nativism. The major findings of the study were that: the selected poems have diverse socio-political themes as related to traditional politics, colonial politics, Yorùbá civil wars, first world war, migration and the need to remember one’s home or country; some of the poems were used as viable tool for political education; while others were essentially to ignite political consciousness in the readers. The paper concluded that Obasá was a committed poet who used his poetic utterances to disseminate, analyze, and educate the readers on the socio-political climate of colonial days. His non-violence ideological position in resolving socio-political issues is in consonance with the theory of Nativism and it is recommended for modern Yorùbá society and other African societies.

Contextual meanings of political vocabulary

Political vocabulary is one of the most relevant subjects of study of modern linguistics, constantly updated, it serves as an indicator of the state of the political sphere of society and the political consciousness of a person. The article is devoted to lexemes that have firmly entered the current political vocabulary of our time: democracy, liberal, patriotism, patriot, nationalism, nationalist, opposition, president. Based on the analysis of modern explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, as well as the dictionary of political terms, it is concluded that terminological, special vocabulary in the modern political language is often used in an unusual meaning. In the article, using the method of contextual analysis, the evaluative connotative element of the meaning of the indicated lexemes is investigated. It is concluded that lexemes acquire a positive or negative evaluative value, first of all, depending on the context, the actual terminological meaning is leveled when used. The revealed meanings are non-systemic, accordingly, they are not fixed in dictionaries, while they are obvious to the carrier and are frequent. This indicates the specific nature of the modern political language, which is influenced by the modern journalistic style. The research results can be used to analyze controversial cases of the use of political vocabulary.

Neoliberal Fatigue: The Effects of Private Refugee Sponsorship on Canadians’ Political Consciousness

Private sponsorship has become a primary way that refugees access resettlement to Canada. Key in this program are the private Canadians who volunteer their money, time, and labor to sponsor and support refugees. Drawing on 25 interviews, this article examines the insights that these privileged citizens of the global north gain as they help refugees struggling with the marginalizing consequences of neoliberal austerity in their new hostland. While sponsors learn about the challenges facing working-class racialized newcomers (otherwise obscured to sponsors by their racial, class, and citizenship privileges), the program robs sponsors of the time and mental bandwidth to reflect on the structural nature of these challenges. Consequently, sponsors rarely understand refugees’ struggles as public troubles necessitating broader intervention, including modest policy reform. I call this cognitive outcome neoliberal fatigue. I conclude by discussing how this fatigue thwarts social change and reinforces neoliberal capitalism.

The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World

The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World is a cohesive collection of studies by Japanese, Russian and Central Asian scholars deploying previously unexplored Russian, Mongolian, and Tibetan sources concerning events and processes in the Central Asian Buddhist world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set in the final days of the Qing empire when Russian and British empires were expanding into Central Asia, this work examines the interplay of religious, economic and political power among peoples who acknowledged the religious authority of Tibet's Dalai Lama. It focuses on diplomatic initiatives involving the 13th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs during and after his exile in Mongolia and China, as well as his relations with Mongols, and with Buriat, Kalmyk, and other Russian Buddhists. It demonstrates how these factors shaped historical processes in the region, not least the reformulations of both group identity and political consciousness.

Lecture 8: Hegemony and Rhetoric Analysis

The connection between rhetoric and hegemony leads us back to Kenneth Burke’s work on political critique and the subtle ways discourse shapes political consciousness. This lecture also looks at how Ernesto Laclau connects rhetoric and the theory of articulation; Joseph Nye’s work on soft power; Timothy Borchers’ discourse on the work of rhetorician Dana Cloud; and Robert Ivie’s thoughts on balancing the opposing notions of identification and division. La connexion entre rhétorique et hégémonie nous ramène aux écrits de Kenneth Burke sur la critique politique et les façons subtiles dont le discours forme la conscience politique. Ce cours examine aussi : la manière dont Ernesto Laclau relie la rhétorique et et la théorie de l’articulation; le travail de Joseph Nye sur le soft power (« pouvoir de convaincre »); les réflexions de Timothy Borchers sur l’œuvre du rhétoricien Dana Cloud; et les pensées de Robert Ivie sur l’utilité d’équilibrer les notions opposées d’identification et de division.

Politicizing Poverty

This chapter explains how poor-led political activism politicizes public discourse about poverty, as well as fosters the critical, political consciousness of people living in poverty. It shows how poor-led organizations and movements harness this collective consciousness to develop and advance more radical, pro-poor policies for poverty reduction and development. The chapter spotlights the work of urban slum dweller political mobilizations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, especially Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and some of its founding member-groups; the piqueteros workers’ movement in Argentina; the landless rural movements in Latin America, particularly the MST in Brazil, its global spinoff, La Vía Campesina, and the rural empowerment group, Nijera Kori, in Bangladesh. These examples serve to show how poor groups politicize poverty both within public discourse and in the eyes of members of poor communities.