Problematizing Local Knowledge Preservation of the Complex Social Assemblage in Globalizing Tai Lue communities in Chiang Kham

This article proposes to look at local knowledge preservation as a continual and contested process rather than as a static social activity. The preservation of local knowledge should be studied by situating it within a complex set of relationships among various social actors and organizations, and also within specific spatio-temporal conditions: in this case, the Tai Lue people of Chiang Kham, Phayao, Thailand. The local knowledge of the Tai Lue in Chiang Kham has been revived in accordance with the distinct desires of the local people, local politicians, academic institutions, and local and national governmental sectors. These various agents and organizations make up a social assemblage, in which local knowledge revival and preservation projects take place within a space where distinct cultural, political, and economic meanings are contested. This paper seeks to examine this social activity using the analytical perspective of glocalization. Taking a glocalization approach, local knowledge preservation is problematized as a culturally and socially instrumentalized activity that is pursued by some actors for political and economic identity negotiation. This will be complemented with a strategic essentialism analysis, which can help better illustrate how Tai Lue people utilize their local knowledge to benefit their positions within an increasingly globalized Chiang Kham. Keywords: Glocalization, Local knowledge, Social assemblage, Strategic essentialism, Tai Lue

Epistemologias para convivialidade ou Zumbificação

<p>Inspirado no pensamento de Frantz Fanon, este texto é um diagnóstico do tempo presente encenado como uma “reação psicótica”, cujo esperado efeito colateral é fazer avançar a noção de convivialidade como um espaço de experimentação analítica, onde desigualdade e diferença compartilham a condição de isonomia conceitual. O experimento específico aqui realizado tenta atingir esse objetivo fundindo diferentes registros escriturais e explorando o repertório vernacular da junção brasileira de um Atlântico afro-indígena. Sua aposta analítica, a ideia de zumbificação, é o esboço de uma posição epistemológica cujo trabalho consiste em uma cinética de (pelo menos) três movimentos: 1) a posicionalidade necessária para fazer exigências políticas; 2) o decentramento necessário para atenuar os efeitos prejudiciais tanto do essencialismo (mesmo estratégico) como da inevitável reprodução de padrões hegemônicos excludentes; 3) o voluntarismo necessário para amplificar abordagens epistemológicas subalternizadas de modo que elas possam se tornar mais pervasivas.</p><p> </p><p>Epistemologies for Conviviality or “Zumbification”</p><p>Inspired by Frantz Fanon’s thought, this paper is a diagnostic of the present time, enacted as a “psychotic reaction” that melts together different scriptural registers to advance the notion of conviviality as a space of analytical experimentation, where inequality and difference share the condition of conceptual isonomy. The experiment performed in this article tries to accomplish this goal by exploring the vernacular repertoire of the Brazilian junction of an afro-indigenous Atlantic. Its analytical idea, zumbification, is the sketch of an epistemological subject-position, whose labor consists in a kinesics of (at least) three movements: 1) the situatedness needed for making political demands; 2) the decenteredness necessary for attenuating the harmful effects of (even strategic) essentialism and the unavoidable reproduction of hegemonic exclusionary patterns; 3) the willfulness required for amplifying subalternized epistemological approaches, so that they may become more pervasive.</p><p>Capoeira | Conviviality | Epistemology | Post-colonial theory | Zumbi</p>

Afrocentricism : situating theories of blackness in education

This major research paper will apply theories of postcolonialism with blackness and social spatiality to understand how social discourses on race are reproduced within an educational context. It will argue that the construction of racialized spaces within the school has negatively impacted upon the academic performance of black students. This necessitates a critical analysis of the Eurocentric and racist educational practices and policies that have affected black academic achievement. An exploration of an anti-racist and culturally inclusive Afrocentric curriculum will also be undertaken to determine if an alternative teaching program, which is rooted in African cultural perspectives, can adequately address the effects of internalized oppression. However, Afrocentricism should not be interpreted as a culturally homogenizing theory of practice. It should instead be conceived of as a strategic essentialism. Ultimately, the psychological resistance to anti black racism, provided by Afrocentricism, should be linked to political actions which address socio-economic inequalities.

Afrocentricism : situating theories of blackness in education

This major research paper will apply theories of postcolonialism with blackness and social spatiality to understand how social discourses on race are reproduced within an educational context. It will argue that the construction of racialized spaces within the school has negatively impacted upon the academic performance of black students. This necessitates a critical analysis of the Eurocentric and racist educational practices and policies that have affected black academic achievement. An exploration of an anti-racist and culturally inclusive Afrocentric curriculum will also be undertaken to determine if an alternative teaching program, which is rooted in African cultural perspectives, can adequately address the effects of internalized oppression. However, Afrocentricism should not be interpreted as a culturally homogenizing theory of practice. It should instead be conceived of as a strategic essentialism. Ultimately, the psychological resistance to anti black racism, provided by Afrocentricism, should be linked to political actions which address socio-economic inequalities.

The Essentialist Masturbation: Can the Global East Get any Satisfaction?

While agreeing with Martin Müller’s intent of filling the gap in contemporary social sciences that the lack of interest in the Global East constitutes, the article engages in polemics withsolution postulated by Müller. The Author argues for a conceptualization of the Global East that would not be based on its essence, but rather on its place in the global division of labor. The “strategic essentialism” postulated by Müller is refuted for three reasons: a reactionary character of identity politics as such, its capture by the Right and doubtful value of socio-cultural identity of most societies of Global East. Instead an alter-universalism is proposed that would be different from the colonial universalism of the West and focused on constructing a common front of progressive--emancipatory struggles.

Reappraising the Chinese School of International Relations: A postcolonial perspective

This article aims to revisit the enterprise of the Chinese School (CS) of IR and discuss how it should be viewed and handled in the discipline, specifically from within the analytical framework of the power/resistance nexus put forward by Foucault, Bhabha, and Spivak. The argument of this article is twofold. Firstly, the CS attempts to reinvigorate traditional Chinese concepts (that is, humane authority, the Tianxia system, and relationality), which mimick Western mainstream IR. These concepts channel the CS into a realist notion of power, a liberal logic of cosmopolitanism, and a constructivist idea of relationality. Thus, the CS uses against the West concepts and themes that the West currently use against the non-Western world. Nevertheless, as the second part of the argument will demonstrate, the enterprise of the CS can still be justified because it can be regarded as a reverse discourse; mimicking yet altering the original meanings of the taken-for-granted concepts, ideas, and principles used by mainstream IR scholars. Moreover, with the judicious use of strategic essentialism, the CS can potentially be one local group in a wider effort to contest diffused and decentred forms of Western domination through linking various struggles to form a unified ‘counter-hegemonic bloc’ of post-Western IR in the discipline.

Gender and Peaceful Change

This chapter examines the interplay between gender and peaceful change. It elaborates on how the concept of peace is inherently gendered by drawing upon feminist scholarship. There are a number of ways to conceptualize gender and peaceful change. The “women-peace hypothesis” assumes a proximity between women’s peacefulness and their experiences of maternal care. However, such a construction needs to be treated with caution since transformative peace requires deconstruction of that assumption, while staying attentive to women’s contributions to peacemaking. Debates on strategic essentialism and inclusive peace are also assessed as a way of gaining deeper and more meaningful understandings of gender-just peaceful change. We argue that women’s unique experiences pertaining to peace and conflict should be considered alongside those of men. In addition, we examine the assumption about states with a poor record on gender inequality are more likely to be involved in intrastate conflicts. The last part of the chapter focuses on policy practice, including the adoption of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security and the reorientation in some states toward feminist foreign policy as a platform for peaceful change.

Reading Identity, Reading Essence: A Strategic Essentialist Approach to Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable

The term strategic essentialism, coined by Spivak, is generally understood as “a political strategy whereby differences (within Group) are temporarily downplayed, and unity assumed for the sake of achieving political goals.” On the other hand, essentialism focuses that everything in this world has an intrinsic and immutable essence of its own. The adaption of a particular “nature” of one group of people by way of sexism, culturalization, and ethnification is strongly linked to the idea of essentialism. Mulk Raj Anand’s Bakha is dictated as an outcast by the institutionalized hierarchy of caste practice. He is essentialized as an untouchable by attributing to him the characteristic of dirt and filth. However, unlike other untouchables, Bakha can apprehend the difference between the cultured and uncultured, dirt and cleanliness. Via an analysis of Anand’s “Untouchable,” the present article aims to bring to the forefront the horrid destruction of the individual self that stems from misrepresentations of personality. Through strategic essentialism, it unravels Bakha’s contrasting nature as opposed to his pariah class, defied by his remarkable inner character and etiquette. The term condemns the essentialist categories of human existence. It has been applied to decontextualize and deconstruct the inaccurately essentialized identity of Bakha, which has made him a part of the group he does not actually belong to.