Biological identity and ‘restitution’ in Argentina. Further critical arguments

In this paper we will briefly explain the context in which the appropriation of 500 children occurred during the most recent Argentinian dictatorship, in order to analyze the political demand of identity restitution of these people. We will describe the phenomenon of restitution that took place thanks to the strategy of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, and we will analyze both the role of genetics on the restitution as well as some criticisms to a notion of biological identity considered to emerge from it. We will situate those criticisms in the philosophical debate over personal identity. The main purpose of this paper is to offer two arguments against an alleged genetic notion of personal identity. Firstly, a theoretical argument presents reasons on the basis of contemporary biological knowledge and, secondly, a practical argument refers to the productive role of biotechnologies. Finally, we will discuss some problems that arise from the criticisms themselves in order to give reasons for a defense of the restitution demand.

Discussion of Azerbaycanism Idealism in Resulzade’s Thought in the context of Small Nation Model

Nationalism emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as a doctrine which rendered a decisive influence on the maturation of modern order, modern politics and state-governance. Hence, nationalism can be used to explain the process of nation-building of sovereign nations. Because nationalism explains the transformation of an existing state. In contrast, Miroslav Hroch uses the term national movement instead of nationalism to explain the nation-building processes of small nations. In this study, the last phase of the nation-building process in Tsaristruled Azerbaijan is going to be discussed by using Hroch’s A, B, C model of oppressed nations. In this context, I am going to discuss Mehmet Emin Resulzade’s national ideal (mefkure) and his debate of Azerbaijanism. Resulzadeh, has provided to contain political demand for the purpose of independence within the framework of the national ideal of the national movement. For this reason, Resulzadeh’s thought and nationalism have been shaped as Azerbaijan centred. This study argues that the process of nationalism can only be explained by Horch’s A, B, C model, considering the fact that Tsarist-ruled Azerbaijan had no state or national existence before the respective national movement which took place under the Tsarist rule.

Artificial Suffering: An Argument for a Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology

This paper has a critical and a constructive part. The first part formulates a political demand, based on ethical considerations: Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems. The second part lays the first conceptual foundations for an open-ended process with the aim of gradually refining the original moratorium, tying it to an ever more fine-grained, rational, evidence-based, and hopefully ethically convincing set of constraints. The systematic research program defined by this process could lead to an incremental reformulation of the original moratorium. It might result in a moratorium repeal even before 2050, in the continuation of a strict ban beyond the year 2050, or a gradually evolving, more substantial, and ethically refined view of which — if any — kinds of conscious experience we want to implement in AI systems.

Adapting a Circular Economy in Regional Strategies of the European Union

The transition towards a sustainable circular economy (CE) model is seen as a solution to keep the consumption of the earth’s resources within planetary boundaries. In the regional context, the CE is promoted through various policy actions, one being the smart specialisation concept. This paper provides a novel approach to examining the spatial adaption of a CE through a conceptual framework of research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (S3) in Europe. This interdisciplinary research presents a multi-country comparison of S3 implementation in Europe in 12 regions that have defined the CE as a priority area. The data consist of interviews with representatives of organisations responsible for the regional S3 process. The findings indicate that a political demand exists for proceeding further with the construction of transformative activities involving the CE, but the models and stages of implementation vary. In addition, most regions still struggle with building specific monitoring and evaluation measures and mechanisms for the CE. Despite these challenges, promoting the CE as a strategic priority through the S3 process has, at least in some regions, helped define the CE targets and actions by focusing on existing regional assets and future potential.

A Educação do Campo como opção decolonial: a experiência de construção do Instituto de Agroecologia Latino-Americano (IALA-amazônico)

This article focuses on the experience of building the Amazon IALA, particularly from the specialization course on “Rural Education, Agroecology and Agrarian Issues in the Amazon”, developed in a partnership between the Federal University of South and Southeast Pará and Via Campesina. The reflection points to some analytical shifts towards a decolonial option in education from a pedagogical experience connected politically and epistemologically to the social struggles and disputed territories in southeastern Pará. Education as a political demand of the people of the countryside transforms the context of conflicts rather than the realization of the pedagogical dynamics that thus becomes an integral part of the subjects' political subjectivation processes. The encounter with social struggles also becomes a recognition of the forms of denial of the possibilities of epistemic agency to subaltern individual and collective subjects, leading to an option for epistemic disobedience, to restore these wasted experiences to the field of knowledge and thus, broaden the meanings of the relationship between the university and social movements, facing the contradictions of the institutionalization processes, expanding the forms of knowledge circulation and ensuring the dialogue of knowledge as an effective practice.

Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse – ein Verfassungsgebot?

Die Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse ist zu einer allgegenwärtigen politischen Forderung avanciert. Die Bundesregierung berief eine Kommission „Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse“, der Bund und einige Länder gründeten Heimatministerien. Verbreitet ist die Annahme, das Grundgesetz verpflichte den Staat auf die Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse. Dieser Beitrag begibt sich auf die Suche nach einer solchen Staatszielbestimmung. Dabei wird er nicht fündig: weder in Art. 72 II GG noch im Bundesstaats- oder im Sozialstaatsprinzip noch unter angeblich mitgeregelten Verfassungsvoraussetzungen. Schließlich erhebt der Beitrag verfassungspolitische Bedenken gegen Staatszielbestimmungen im Allgemeinen und eine Staatszielbestimmung „Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse“ im Besonderen. Der politische Prozess kann und muss frei entscheiden, ob und wie der Staat auf die Gleichwertigkeit der Lebensverhältnisse hinarbeitet. Creating equivalent living conditions throughout Germany became an ubiquitous political demand. The Federal Government appointed a commission „Equivalent living conditions“ and as well as some Länder established a ministry of homeland. According to a widespread assumption, the Basic Law obliges the state to create equivalent living conditions. This journal article is looking for such a national objective in the Basic Law. The search fails. The alleged objective can neither be found in article 72 of the Basic Law nor in constitutional principles or among constitutional preconditions, which are supposed to be positivized. Finally, this article raises doubts against national objectives in constitutional law in general and the suggested objective „Equivalent living conditions“ in particular. The political process can and should decide freely, whether and by which means the state should work towards equivalent living conditions.

‘Cyclone Not Above Politics’ : East Pakistan, disaster politics, and the 1970 Bhola Cyclone

On 12 November 1970, the Bhola Cyclone swept across the southern districts of East Pakistan, killing over 300,000 people. Small islands were swept away and dead bodies of humans and cattle lay strewn across the devastated landscape. Following the news of the destruction, journalists, students, artists, and political workers rushed to the affected area with basic relief supplies, without waiting for the Military Law Administration (MLA) to intervene. The cyclone's occurrence just three weeks prior to the first general elections in Pakistan added a new dimension to the already simmering political crisis. The extensive media coverage of the disaster brought the pitiful state of infrastructural development and lack of governance in East Pakistan under local and global scrutiny. The cyclone and the corresponding issues soon became embroiled within the larger political demand for regional autonomy. The MLA came under attack from sections of East Pakistan's politicians, press, and public, as well as international political actors, for its poor disaster governance. This article uses the Bhola Cyclone of 1970 as the lens to explore the complex interconnections between environmental disasters and a key issue of governance. While the Bhola Cyclone has been a subject of recent discussions, this article uses a disaster-politics analytical framework to understand the disaster's role in the subsequent political turbulence and the emergence of Bangladesh.

The extinction of the Ukrainian culture of the Polish-Ukrainian-Slovak borderland and the image of the “Ukrainian Banderite” in Polish and Czechoslovak literature, journalism and cinematography, mid-1940s–1980s

The aim of this study is to outline the process of the extinction of Ukrainian culture in south-eastern Poland as a result of Polish resettlement actions and the activities of the Ukrainian underground movement (i.e., the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in the post-war period (1944–1947). Concurrently, the study offers an analysis of the image of the “Ukrainian Banderite”, created by propaganda in Polish and Czechoslovak literature, journalism, and cinematography in the period from the mid-1940s to the end of the 1980s. The authors state that both in Poland and in Czechoslovakia the analysed topic has been subject to certain cyclical waves of interest, or current political demand or usefulness, but always according to an established and politically accepted template. The black-and-white reception of the issue, propaganda fictions, the concealment of facts, and the disproportionate highlighting of others, which were applied in the literary and film production of the real-socialist period, only distorted the historical objectivity of the issue and created a complicated stereotype in the collective memory.

The Sex of History, or Object/Matters

The mandate to think of Stonewall as a global historical event within South Asia necessitates a difficult act of translation. Was my goal as a historian of sexuality and South Asia to decentre the primacy of Stonewall with local historical events of import? Or was it more epistemological, to address instead the question of why historical causality and memorialization works differently within the fabular geography that is South Asia? In other words, did the history of the Stonewall riots create more of a political demand on subaltern collectivities to ‘produce’ their own seismic historical event, or did it foreground even further the epistemological divide between the West and the Rest? This brief essay is a meditation on these questions and more.