Legitimacy deficit will define Libya elections

Significance The Paris Conference on Libya on November 12 presented a superficial show of international consensus in support of elections. However, reports indicate growing worries about the risk of rushing to elections. Impacts Candidates for the presidency and parliament will campaign in their regions, but will not present clear policy programmes. The political challenge to the legal basis for elections will not reach any clear conclusion or prevent the elections taking place. The likelihood of voter fraud and intimidation by armed groups will prevent the elections being regarded as free and fair.

Faiva: Trials of Skill: the Song and Dance of Tongan Politics, 1773-1993

<p>The work embarks on a quest to discover the parameters of faiva, the dances, martial arts, aquatic and land-based sports which are exhibited on Tongan festival grounds as trials of skill. The work is organised as a succession of festivals (katoanga), shows, receptions, night concerts, funerals, and regattas spanning 200 years, from the 1770s to the 1970s. The work employs a strategy of Juxtaposing ethnographic and historical evidence. This technique enriches historical records with an ethnographic reading, and allows historical insight into the choreographic and aesthetic conventions of Tongan performances. It indicates which accounts to trust and what sense to impute to fragments. Contest on the festival ground, contest in twentieth century social status rivalry, and contest in eighteenth century political challenge, all follow the same codes. The work proposes a new paradigm for interpreting Tonga's political history. That paradigm is faiva. The work proposes a critical theory for reading Tongan records. Tongan accounts are not intended to recount historical origins, but to validate new configurations. In politics, history, and faiva, the eighteenth century objective was to harness the realm of the sacred. Part I is an ethnographic description of villagers rehearsing a dance in 1971, torn between reluctance to fulfill feudal obligations to the ruling aristocracy, and the appeal of retaining a reputation as the island's leading dancers. Of all tasks, presentation of a faiva was given priority. Part II is a historical reconstruction of the repertoire of the late eighteenth century. Here each faiva is seen exhibited in its lakanga : appropriate occasion. Martial arts and implement dances accompanied presentations between chiefs contesting for power. Mock battles followed presentations to the gods. Night dances were lit by torchlight. High-ranking women processed at the weddings of sacred chiefs. Appropriate settings enhanced the peculiar aesthetic of each faiva; political and religious agendas added force to performances. Part III describes the process of a new repertoire emerging, and the social fabrication of its legitimacy. The Appendix assembles an eighteenth century repertoire of choreographies and song texts, demonstrating that records exist for the scholarship of early Tongan music and dance.</p>

Faiva: Trials of Skill: the Song and Dance of Tongan Politics, 1773-1993

<p>The work embarks on a quest to discover the parameters of faiva, the dances, martial arts, aquatic and land-based sports which are exhibited on Tongan festival grounds as trials of skill. The work is organised as a succession of festivals (katoanga), shows, receptions, night concerts, funerals, and regattas spanning 200 years, from the 1770s to the 1970s. The work employs a strategy of Juxtaposing ethnographic and historical evidence. This technique enriches historical records with an ethnographic reading, and allows historical insight into the choreographic and aesthetic conventions of Tongan performances. It indicates which accounts to trust and what sense to impute to fragments. Contest on the festival ground, contest in twentieth century social status rivalry, and contest in eighteenth century political challenge, all follow the same codes. The work proposes a new paradigm for interpreting Tonga's political history. That paradigm is faiva. The work proposes a critical theory for reading Tongan records. Tongan accounts are not intended to recount historical origins, but to validate new configurations. In politics, history, and faiva, the eighteenth century objective was to harness the realm of the sacred. Part I is an ethnographic description of villagers rehearsing a dance in 1971, torn between reluctance to fulfill feudal obligations to the ruling aristocracy, and the appeal of retaining a reputation as the island's leading dancers. Of all tasks, presentation of a faiva was given priority. Part II is a historical reconstruction of the repertoire of the late eighteenth century. Here each faiva is seen exhibited in its lakanga : appropriate occasion. Martial arts and implement dances accompanied presentations between chiefs contesting for power. Mock battles followed presentations to the gods. Night dances were lit by torchlight. High-ranking women processed at the weddings of sacred chiefs. Appropriate settings enhanced the peculiar aesthetic of each faiva; political and religious agendas added force to performances. Part III describes the process of a new repertoire emerging, and the social fabrication of its legitimacy. The Appendix assembles an eighteenth century repertoire of choreographies and song texts, demonstrating that records exist for the scholarship of early Tongan music and dance.</p>

Queer insurgency: Slava Mogutin and the politics of camp

The subject of this article is Russo-American artist Slava Mogutin. A close associate of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Lotta Volkova, Mogutin has been based in New York since 1995. While he originally shot to fame as a poet and novelist, Mogutin is today better known as a performance artist, filmmaker and photographer. The aim of my article is to locate Mogutin, and in particular his fashion photography, within current debates around the representation of masculinity and the construction of masculine subjectivity/-ies. More specifically, using a visual analysis methodology, I analyse the camp aesthetics of Mogutin’s fashion imagery. In a number of ways, Mogutin’s camp aesthetic raises questions about displacement and identity, the clash between individual desires and social norms and – as he puts it – ‘what it means to be a young man in the modern world’. It also constitutes an avowedly political challenge, not just to the state-sponsored homophobia and heteronormativity of Mogutin’s native Russia but also to the identity politics underpinning today’s fashion industry. I conclude by suggesting that Mogutin’s openly political form of camp might pose a challenge to the traditional Sontagian view of camp as apolitical.

Physical Education Teacher Training: the Challenges of Teaching Legitimation in the Debate Center

This study aims to analyze the way the themes related to the political, curricular and didactic aspects, are being addressed by publications related to Initial Training (IT) at the Physical Education (PE) degree level. Thereunto, a bibliographic research was developed, taking as a background the productions published from 2013, linked to the Brazilian College of Sport Sciences. Thus, from 708 publications, 29 texts addressed the theme and constituted the final sample. From the political point of view, it is clear that most concerns are related to the National Curriculum Guidelines and not to the formation of a subject with the political capacity to teach. In the curricular perspective the studies address themes related to the contents of Initial Training (IT), curricular internships/Pibid, epistemological debate, curricular fragmentation and the division of formation. Concerning the didactic aspects, themes emerged which were associated mainly to supervised internships. Thus, we have the impression that IT is not developing a training process capable of translating into the school environment the legal and theoretical gains that the area has achieved in recent decades, which could help overcome the gap that the Brazilian School Physical Education (SPE) has experienced since it has entered into crisis. Keywords: Teacher Training. Political Challenge. Curriculum Challenge. Didactic Challenge. ResumoEste estudo tem como objetivo analisar a forma como as temáticas referentes aos aspectos políticos, curriculares e didáticos, estão sendo tratadas pelas publicações relacionadas à Formação Inicial (FI) em nível de licenciatura em Educação Física (EF). Para isso, desenvolvemos uma pesquisa bibliográfica, tomando como pano de fundo as produções publicadas a partir de 2013, vinculadas ao Colégio Brasileiro de Ciências do Esporte. Assim, de 708 publicações, 29 textos abordavam a temática e constituíram a amostra final. Do ponto de vista político, percebe-se que a maioria das preocupações estão relacionadas com as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais e não com a formação de um sujeito dotado de capacidade política para exercer a docência. Na perspectiva curricular os estudos abordam temas ligados aos conteúdos da Formação Inicial (FI), estágios curriculares/Pibid, debate epistemológico, fragmentação curricular e a divisão da formação. Acerca dos aspectos didáticos, emergiram temáticas vinculadas principalmente aos estágios supervisionados. Dessa forma temos a impressão de que a FI não está desenvolvendo um processo formativo capaz de traduzir no ambiente escolar os ganhos legais e teóricos que a área conseguiu nas últimas décadas, os quais poderiam ajudar a superar o hiato que vive a EFE brasileira desde que entrou em crise. Palavras-chave: Formação de Professores. Desafio Político. Desafio Curricular. Desafio Didático.

Literatur – grundsätzlich mehrsprachig!? Das politische Potenzial literarischer Mehrsprachigkeit heute, am Beispiel von Barbi Marković’ Superheldinnen

Literature – Multilingual on Principle?! The Political Potential of Literary Multilingualism Today, using the Example of Barbi Marković’s Superheldinnen. Research on literary multilingualism is increasingly based on the assumption that literature per se is multilingual. This is true for concepts such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘polyphony’, in which multilingualism occurs in the form of social, regional and historical variants within one major language. Similarly, it applies to Rainier Grutman’s concept of hétérolinguisme, which expands Bakhtin’s notion and includes actual language changes. Recently, Till Dembeck has even called for a philology of multilingualism that would accommodate literary multilingualism in literary criticism. Using Barbi Marković’s novel Superheldinnen (2016) as an example, I discuss this recent development in multilingual literary studies and analyse concepts, forms and function of literary multilingualism. In so doing, I underline the transcending character of literary multilingualism that expresses itself on various levels: linguistically, formally, medially and with respect to culture. Thus, I aim to illustrate the enormous political potential of literary multilingualism. In fact, multilingualism in literature, as opposed to literature in times of a “monolingual paradigm” (Yasemin Yildiz), poses a political challenge on various levels. Concepts, such as national literature, literary field, but also literary studies and their institutions (i.e. language departments) reach their limits if literature is understood as being multilingual. In the second part of this article, I discuss the difficulties that come with literary prizes, literary studies and the access to the literary field. These often express themselves as concrete problems for individuals who, for instance, have difficulties accessing the literary field.

Ukraine, Quo Vadis? Thirty Years. Results and Lessons

The article in the cycle dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence reviews some of the results and lessons learned over the years. This date could have been the occasion for a thorough and comprehensive analysis. This opportunity was not taken advantage of at the Jubilee Celebrations held, and the issues of modernization and development remained pending and urgently require resolution. Chief among them the author considers decisive release of social energy, restoration of historical continuity of state forms, search of optimal model of new Ukrainian state, its relations with society and external environment. Ukraine needed to overcome the inertia and social entropy of previous decades, clearly define objectives and select more carefully the means to achieve them. It faces the daunting political challenge of finding the best balance between freedom and order, national statehood and globalization. For this purpose, it will be necessary to reboot the political system of the Ukrainian republic. Ukraine has such an opportunity and this is interesting.

Implementation of the principles of open government within the ombudsmen's activity (foreign practices)

In many states, the implementation of the principles of open government is defined as the current common trend and political challenge since it includes the procedure of administrative reform, revising the regulations for public officials for better trust between the government and society. Pursuing the mechanism of open government, states adopt national plans, introduce specialized bodies, although often the process of implementing the principles of public administration and control over this process is entrusted directly to the bodies — participants in the experiment. At the same time, ombudsman institutions, which are represented in many countries, has all the initial prerequisites to play an essential role in the open government. The mission that ombudsmen can complete in open government is twofold. On the one hand, as an institutional entity within the state, ombudsman can apply all the principles of open government in his activities, which as close as possible to the philosophy of the principles of openness, transparency, accountability. In this case, ombudsman can serve as a testing ground or an example of the successful implementation of principles for other bodies in the state. On the other hand, ombudsman, by virtue of their direct powers, is entitled to monitor problems in public administration and participate in the implementation of administrative reform. The article describes the foreign practices of involving ombudsmen in open government process.

How food systems change (or not): governance implications for system transformation processes

This paper argues that supporting food system transformation requires more than obtaining science-based understanding and analysis of how components in the system interact. We argue that changing the emergent properties of food systems (what we call food system synthesis) is a socio-political challenge that is affected by competing views regarding system boundaries and purposes, and limited possibilities for central steering and control. We point to different traditions of ‘systems thinking’ that each emphasize particular types of interventions for achieving system change, and argue that food systems are best looked at as complex multi-dimensional systems. This implies that we need to move beyond rational engineering approaches to system change, and look for approaches that anticipate and accommodate inherent social tensions and struggles in processes of changing food system dynamics and outcomes. Through a case study on the persistence of an undesired emergent property of food systems (i.e. poverty) we demonstrate that a multi-level perspective (MLP) on system transformation is useful in understanding both how food system transformation has happened in the past, and how desirable transformations is prevented from happening today. Based on such insights we point to key governance strategies and principles that may be used to influence food system transformation as a non-linear and long-term process of competition, negotiation and reconfiguration. Such strategies include the creation and nurturing of diversity in the system, as well as process interventions aimed at visioning, destabilization and formation of discourse coalitions. Such governance interventions imply a considerable re-orientation of investments in food system transformation as well as a rethinking of the role that policy-makers may play in either altering or reproducing undesirable system outcomes.