Symbolic violence may not be a desirable theory to apply to public schooling?its structuralist limitations render it deterministic, lacking in human agency, and unpalatable to researchers and educators who see schools as viable and productive sites of social transformation. Perhaps for these reasons, it seems little has been written about symbolic violence in schools, and what has been written tends to focus primarily on the symbolic, institutionalized violence imparted by schools and teachers upon students. In this article, I offer (...) a shift in these perspectives. I present symbolic violence as a productive analytical tool in identifying modes of resistance to specific damaging effects of schooling institutions. I also illustrate how symbolic violence victimizes one particularly caring teacher, rendering her compliant in her own victimization, without voice to accurately name her struggles, and?because of her ethic of care?complicit in reproducing damaging institutionalizing practices. Using ethnographic data, I explore symbolic violence via one teacher's reflective, critical narratives. I draw upon the tenets of dialogicality in language to help make more visible the often intangible elements of symbolic violence. And at various points in the article, I discuss the implications of engaging an analytic that ultimately runs counter to my own epistemology, turning to Maxine Greene for insight in the struggle. (shrink)

This book identifies the criteria for successful constitutions in both theory and practice using the research and methodology of Vincent Ostrom.

This book identifies the criteria for successful constitutions in both theory and practice using the research and methodology of Vincent Ostrom.

The photographs that circulated on social media depicting the atrocious acts committed by the Turkish military forces in southeast Turkey are indicative of an aesthetic construction of militarized masculinity that serves as a metonym for the nation‐state. As violence is aestheticized in a gendered fashion in these depictions, the Kurdish resistance movement is shamed as feminine. Gendered shaming, in this context, conjoins racialization and gendering as subjugating mechanisms of the state. Women's peace movements seek to disrupt this heteropatriarchal logic of (...) the state by countering the tripartite alignment of masculinity‐power‐domination with politicized art. In refusing the shame attributed to femininity, the shame that the state desires the Kurdish body to signify, they transfigure shame into honor and resistance. (shrink)

Pieter Lemmens’ neo-Marxist approach to technology urges us to rethink how to do political philosophy of technology. First, Lemmens’ high level of abstraction raises the question of how empirically informed a political theory of technology needs to be. Second, his dialectical focus on a “struggle” between humans and technologies reveals the limits of neo-Marxism. Political philosophy of technology needs to return “to the things themselves”. The political significance of technologies cannot be reduced to its origins in systems of production (...) or social organization, but requires study at the micro-level, where technologies help to shape engagement, interaction, power, and social awareness. (shrink)

The past decade has seen major movements and mobilizations against the new crop of bilateral free trade and investment agreements being pursued by governments in the wake of the failure of global (World Trade Organization) and regional (e.g. Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations, and the defeat of an attempted Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s. However, in spite of much scholarly, non-governmental organization (NGO) and activist focus on transnational global justice activism, many of these movements, such as (...) the major multi-sectoral popular struggle over the recently-concluded US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, are hardly acknowledged in North America and Europe. With a shift in emphasis pushing liberalization and deregulation of trade and investment increasingly favouring lower-profile bilateral agreements, this article maps the resistance movements to these latest shifts in global free market capitalist relations and discusses the disconnect between these (mainly Southern) struggles and dominant scholarly and NGO conceptions of global justice and the global justice movement as well as questions of knowledge production arising from these movements. (shrink)

This article addresses two questions: How should a ‘practical political theory’ approach the ideological struggle between advocates of critical social justice and defenders of free speech? And, what does this conflict tell us about the deficits of one particular tradition of practical political theory — namely, agonistic democracy? The paper’s purpose, then, is to illuminate a concrete contemporary phenomenon through the lens of agonistic theory and, conversely, to use this struggle as an impetus to carve out and address (...) weaknesses in the theory of agonism.I defend an ‘agonistic approach’ to the struggle against two alternatives — first, the claim that there is, conceptually, no ‘real’ conflict between social justice and free speech, and second, the strategy to ‘take sides’ in the conflict. By taking seriously the agonistic core idea that struggle and conflict can be valuable and productive expressions of plurality and inclusivity, I argue that this struggle should be approached as an agonistic conflict — as the welcome and important expression of a diversity of views on central social, moral and political questions.I also show, however, how retaining the focus on the real-life struggle between advocates of critical social justice and free-speech sheds light on the inconsistencies of much agonistic thought. In particular, I will criticize those agonists who limit their conception of the ‘agon’ to respectful struggles, and those who see the agon merely as a tool of emancipation for oppressed groups. Against these visions of agonism, I develop an anti-perfectionist, yet radical, account of agonism with the potential to serve as a guide in complex social and political conflicts. (shrink)

Aurat March [Women’s March] is an annual event organised in various cities across Pakistan to observe International Women’s Day. Since its inception in 2018, the March has been condemned by conservative religious and political segments of society for reasons relating to propriety. This commentary explores how placards predominantly form the object of censure in the movement’s backlash. By reflecting on discourses on mainstream and social media, I first assess the use of placards in constructing networks of feminist voices. I then (...) assess the production of anti-feminist discourses, sparked by commentary on placards and doctored images to promote dis/misinformation campaigns through the convergence of networked misogyny. Placards at Aurat March have therefore constructed a space for resistance—both by the movement and in retaliation to it—shifting the placard to a site of networked struggles over feminist and women’s participation in public spaces. (shrink)

For Hegel, poverty is not simply a misfortune, but, rather, a kind of injury inflicted on one class by another. Though Hegel rejects Marx’s theory of class, he nevertheless anticipates Marx’s idea of the exploitation of one class by another. How, though, do we align this proto-marxist dichotomy between rich and poor with Hegel’s official theory of class; his tripartite theory of estates? I argue that Hegel’s wealthy are chiefly found in the ‘mercantile’ estate, and that they are those intellectual (...) labourers who manage, oversee, and organize the production process. (shrink)

When it comes to injustice, especially racial injustice, rage isn't just an acceptable response-it's crucial in order to fuel the fight for change. Anger has a bad reputation. Many people think that it is counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. It is a negative emotion, many believe, because it can lead so quickly to violence or an overwhelming fury. And coming from people of color, it takes on connotations that are even more sinister, stirring up stereotypes, making white people fear what an (...) angry other might be capable of doing, when angry, and leading them to turn to hatred or violence in turn, to squelch an anger that might upset the racial status quo. According to philosopher Myisha Cherry, anger does not deserve its bad reputation. It is powerful, but its power can be a force for good. And not only is it something we don't have to discourage, it's something we ought to cultivate actively. People fear anger because they paint it in broad strokes, but we can't dismiss all anger, especially not now. There is a form of anger that in fact is crucial in the anti-racist struggle today. This anti-racist anger, what Cherry calls Lordean rage, can use its mighty force to challenge racism: it aims for change, motivates productive action, builds resistance, and is informed by an inclusive and liberating perspective. People can, and should, harness Lordean rage and tap into its unique anti-racist potential. We should not suppress it or seek to replace it with friendly emotions. If we want to effect change, and take down racist structures and systems, we must manage it in the sense of cultivating it, and keeping it focused and strong. Cherry makes her argument for anti-racist anger by putting Aristotle in conversation with Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin in conversation with Joseph Butler. The Case for Rage not only uses the tools of philosophy to articulate its arguments, but it sharpens them with the help of social psychology and history. The book is philosophically rich and yet highly accessible beyond philosophical spheres, issuing an urgent call to all politically and socially engaged readers looking for new, deeply effective tools for changing the world. Its message will resonate with the enraged and those witnessing such anger, wondering whether it can help or harm. Above all, this book is a resource for the activist coming to grips with a seemingly everyday emotion that she may feel rising up within her and not know what to do with. It shows how to make sure anger doesn't go to waste, but instead leads to lasting, long-awaited change. (shrink)

In 1935, the British scholar Eliza M. Butler published The Tyranny of Greece Over Germany, in which she explored the appeal of Greek art and poetry to modern German writers. She argued that Hellenism had exerted a baleful influence on German literature and culture, and that Germans were especially—even dangerously—susceptible to the power of ideas. In her view, the most dangerous Hellenic concept to German culture and society was the daimon, which had reached Germany via the work of Winckelmann. Butler's (...) thesis and methods may be problematic, as some reviewers of Tyranny pointed out, but her work is noteworthy as the product of a scholar who had lived in Germany and was a witness to history, familiar with German language, literature, and culture, writing on Germany during difficult times. As a British scholar who began studying German just before World War I and ended her career after World War II, Butler had an ambivalent relationship with Germany and Germans. But in addition to political factors, she was also influenced by her family, her educational and research experiences in Germany, and her preference for 18th- and 19th-century over 20th-century Germans. Moreover, her perception of Germans and Germanness was consistently posed against her perception of England and Englishness, and she defined the two cultural identities in terms of their relation to each other. Writing Tyranny as the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Butler judged Germans and their relationship to the daimon harshly. In 1956, Butler reconsidered the daimonic in a study of Byron and Goethe, and in this work it received a more sympathetic and nuanced analysis. A comparison of these two works is useful for understanding the evolution of Butler's thought in the 20-year interval between their publication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 3-10 [Access article in PDF] Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. In a recent interview 1 Jacques Rancière opposes his notion of "people" (peuple) 2 to the category of "multitude" as presented by the authors of Empire. As is well known, Rancière differentiates between police and politics, the first being the logic of counting (...) and assigning the population to differential places, and the second the subversion of that differentiating logic through the constitution of an egalitarian discourse which puts into question established identities. "The people" is the specific subject of politics, and this term presupposes a sharp division in the social body which cannot be led back to any kind of immanent unity. Empire, on the contrary, makes immanence its central category and the ultimate ground of the multitude's unity.The main lines of Rancière's critique provide a good starting point for what we have to say about the book. The immanentism of Hardt and Negri would be linked, according to Rancière, to their Nietzschean/Deleuzian ethics of affirmation, which does away with any reactive or negative dimension. Empire would belong, in that respect, to the whole tradition of modern political philosophy, which is profoundly metapolitical: "the kernel of metapolitics is to lead back the precarious artifices of the political scene to the truth of an immanent power which organizes beings in a community and identifies the true community with the grasped and sensible operation of this truth" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 96]. From Hardt and Negri's rejection of any inherent negativity in political subjects, it follows that the power inherent in the multitude has to be a disruptive power, "lodged in all states of domination as its ultimate content, a content destined to destroy all barriers. 'Multitudes' have to be a content whose continent is Empire" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 97]. Disruptive forces operating through a purely immanent movement are what Marxist theory called "productive forces," and there would be, according to Rancière, a strict homology between the place of productive forces and that in which multitudes, as described in Empire, act. Rancière points out that productive forces should not necessarily be understood in any narrow productivist sense: there has been a constant widening of the concept from the strict economism of classical Marxism, to the recent attempts to introduce in it the ensemble of scientific and intellectual abilities, passing through the Leninist attempt to supplement via political intervention a role that productive forces refused to fulfill.I think that Rancière has rightly stressed what I see as the main source of several weaknesses of Empire, including a central one: that within its theoretical framework politics become unthinkable. So I will start from a discussion of its notion of immanence and move later to various other theoretical and political aspects of the book. [End Page 3]Let us start with the authors' discussion of the origins of European modernity. While the usual insistence is on the secularization process, that process would be, "in our view... only a symptom of the primary event of modernity: the affirmation of the powers of this world, the discovery of the plane of immanence. 'Omne ens habet aliquod esse proprium'—every entity has a singular essence. Duns Scotus' affirmation subverts the medieval conception of being as an object of analogical, and thus dualistic predication—a being with one foot in this world and one in a transcendent realm" [Empire 71]. Duns Scotus's insistence on the singularity of being would have initiated an assertion of immanence that the authors describe as a process whose representative names would have been Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Bovillus—other names quoted are Bacon and Occam—and whose point of arrival is Spinoza. "By the time we arrive at Spinoza, in fact, the horizon of immanence and the horizon of the democratic political order coincide completely. The plane of immanence is the one on which the powers of singularity are realized and the one on which the truth of the new... (shrink)

The major epidemics that have been faced by humanity in the known history of the earth have also led to major social, political, commercial and ideological changes. After every major epidemic, humanity has changed its form by reconstructing itself. It is considered that the epidemic, which continues to threaten all humanity, has triggered major changes similar to the epidemics that happened before this one. It seems that one of the most important changes that humanity will comprehend in terms of the (...) subject of the study is to take place in religious structures, which are the centres of individual religious perception and production of religious knowledge. It is certain that after the coronavirus epidemic, each individual is going to seek different meanings again or through current tools, and typologies of religiousness are going to change. Accordingly, it is considered that all the structures, which are the production centre of religious knowledge, take into account the changes in individual religiousness typologies, but are going to have to reshape them in order to overcome the problems that they encounter during the pandemic period. The aim of this study is to provide a foresight about the individual religious tendencies and the future of pure religious groups along with the religions as a centre of religious information production during the post-pandemic period. In addition, the necessary precautions that the state should exercise about individual’s escalating search for meaning, the changing individual religious sense and the probable re-construction of pure religious groups have also been presented. (shrink)

This essay explores the extent to which comparative philosophy can assist decolonial struggle. In order to accomplish this task, I offer not only a description of philosophy's colonization but also an account of how this discipline remains subject to the coloniality of knowledge. In short, insofar as race, gender, class, and sexuality are considered irrelevant or accidental to the production of philosophical knowledge, professional philosophy replicates, if not continues, what Rajeev Bhargava terms the epistemic injustice of colonialism. One response (...) to the colonization of philosophy is “diversification” by means of putting into conversation philosophers, systems, and ideas from differing cultures or regions throughout the world. While a step forward, insofar as philosophical comparisons occur primarily on an East–West axis, philosophers are not necessarily addressing the biases, prejudices, racism, and exceptionalism endemic to their discipline. In fact, such a directionality typically reinforces the sense of historical development that undergirds Western philosophy's self‐understanding. This essay, therefore, offers a series of recommendations for how to radicalize comparative philosophical efforts so as to address global epistemic injustice and aid in the process of decolonization. (shrink)

This article makes two arguments. First, that advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created multiple parallel flows of consumption that allow us to be productive continuously, in the sense of generating value for the economy. Second, the struggle over social time poses emergent challenges for planning and urban design. After introducing the relevant themes, this article explains how value is derived from labour and the process through which time is made economically productive. Next, it is posited (...) that advanced ICTs, especially mobile devices and associated services, create possibilities for multiple flows of time, freeing consumption from territorial and temporal restrictions, and opening up new forms of labour. This discussion elicits some concerns for those interested in communities and urban space. The article concludes with suggestions for adopting a socio-spatial-temporal outlook to urban planning and design, including designing ‘polyrhythmic’ places and planning for public time. (shrink)

This paper criticises the view that, according to Marx, “productive forces” determine “relations of production” and that the growth of the former basically determines the course of history. The particular version of this account discussed is that to be found in G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. The main part of this criticism in:-volves a presentation of what, it is suggested, was in fact Marx's conception of "productive forces", "relations of production" and their relations, and (...) an identification of class-struggle as the primary factor at least for the historically significant periods with which Marx was concerned. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.4 (2001) 3-10 [Access article in PDF] Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? Ernesto Laclau Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000. In a recent interview 1 Jacques Rancière opposes his notion of "people" (peuple) 2 to the category of "multitude" as presented by the authors of Empire. As is well known, Rancière differentiates between police and politics, the first being the logic of counting (...) and assigning the population to differential places, and the second the subversion of that differentiating logic through the constitution of an egalitarian discourse which puts into question established identities. "The people" is the specific subject of politics, and this term presupposes a sharp division in the social body which cannot be led back to any kind of immanent unity. Empire, on the contrary, makes immanence its central category and the ultimate ground of the multitude's unity.The main lines of Rancière's critique provide a good starting point for what we have to say about the book. The immanentism of Hardt and Negri would be linked, according to Rancière, to their Nietzschean/Deleuzian ethics of affirmation, which does away with any reactive or negative dimension. Empire would belong, in that respect, to the whole tradition of modern political philosophy, which is profoundly metapolitical: "the kernel of metapolitics is to lead back the precarious artifices of the political scene to the truth of an immanent power which organizes beings in a community and identifies the true community with the grasped and sensible operation of this truth" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 96]. From Hardt and Negri's rejection of any inherent negativity in political subjects, it follows that the power inherent in the multitude has to be a disruptive power, "lodged in all states of domination as its ultimate content, a content destined to destroy all barriers. 'Multitudes' have to be a content whose continent is Empire" ["Peuple ou multitudes" 97]. Disruptive forces operating through a purely immanent movement are what Marxist theory called "productive forces," and there would be, according to Rancière, a strict homology between the place of productive forces and that in which multitudes, as described in Empire, act. Rancière points out that productive forces should not necessarily be understood in any narrow productivist sense: there has been a constant widening of the concept from the strict economism of classical Marxism, to the recent attempts to introduce in it the ensemble of scientific and intellectual abilities, passing through the Leninist attempt to supplement via political intervention a role that productive forces refused to fulfill.I think that Rancière has rightly stressed what I see as the main source of several weaknesses of Empire, including a central one: that within its theoretical framework politics become unthinkable. So I will start from a discussion of its notion of immanence and move later to various other theoretical and political aspects of the book. [End Page 3]Let us start with the authors' discussion of the origins of European modernity. While the usual insistence is on the secularization process, that process would be, "in our view... only a symptom of the primary event of modernity: the affirmation of the powers of this world, the discovery of the plane of immanence. 'Omne ens habet aliquod esse proprium'—every entity has a singular essence. Duns Scotus' affirmation subverts the medieval conception of being as an object of analogical, and thus dualistic predication—a being with one foot in this world and one in a transcendent realm" [Empire 71]. Duns Scotus's insistence on the singularity of being would have initiated an assertion of immanence that the authors describe as a process whose representative names would have been Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, and Bovillus—other names quoted are Bacon and Occam—and whose point of arrival is Spinoza. "By the time we arrive at Spinoza, in fact, the horizon of immanence and the horizon of the democratic political order coincide completely. The plane of immanence is the one on which the powers of singularity are realized and the one on which the truth of the new... (shrink)

In this paper, I outline what I take to be the most important theoretical claims and innovations of ‘twenty-first century socialism’ in Venezuela. These, I argue, consist of an emphasis on human development through popular-economy initiatives, and the importance of building popular power through the state, rather than by ignoring or fighting against it. I then present evidence on Venezuela’s Socialist Production Units, one of Venezuela’s newest state-supported popular-economy organisations. I argue that, consistent with the twenty-first-century socialism approach, SPUs are (...) sites of human development in which participants are learning to challenge capitalist social relations, while establishing new values and practices. Therefore, we can think of Venezuela’s popular economy as expressing a sharpened class contradiction.However, my case study also shows that holding hands with human development is class struggle directed against the state. This reveals a central theoretical and practical paradox in twenty-first century socialism, namely that, while nurturing initiatives that challenge capital, the Venezuelan state also emerges as an important barrier to overcoming the class relation. This, I argue, is not wholly consistent with the views of theorists of twenty-first century socialism that understand Venezuela’s popular economy as forming a new form of dual power or a parallel state, and who therefore downplay the importance of struggles against the state within the popular economy. The strategic implication is that struggles between popular-economy participants and the state cannot be avoided, and indeed will need to be fostered if the project for twenty-first century socialism is to continue. (shrink)

:In this essay I begin with Foucault's theorization of the convulsive body of the possessed as a site of struggle. Next, I amend this perspective with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion that “the concept is not object but territory” 101). That is, rather than looking at convulsive bodies as objects through which actors struggle, I approach convulsions as evidencing acts of territorialization. Instead of a corporeal object over which actors struggle for ownership, this perspective reframes convulsions (...) as a process of space-making that is constitutive of the space-makers. Amending Foucault's take on convulsions with Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory allows for analysis of “techno-horror” popular entertainments as constitutive processes in the unfolding of new reproductive masculine subjectivities. (shrink)

Avec la précarisation des sociétés salariales se sont développées les économies non-marchandes et non-monétaires mais aussi des économies informelles et de survie. L'espace public apparaît alors fragmenté par des inégalités et des injustices là où les individus et les groupes se mobilisent pour l'accès à une « place » et aux biens moraux. Mais en même temps l'espace public contient des espaces intermédiaires où des résistances collectives au processus de précarisation salariale et la lutte pour la reconnaissance produisent des micro-organisations (...) sociales qui naissent de l'agencement, voire la superposition de formes économiques marchandes et non-marchandes liées à une économie solidaire.Growing precarity within wage-based societies has led to the advent of parallel economies that are neither mercantile nor money-based, as well as informal economies and economies of subsistance. The public sphere thus appears to be fractured by inequalities and injustices, given the mobilising of individuals and groups in the struggle for a "place" and access to moral goods. Yet at the same time, we can find intermediate spaces in the public sphere in which collective forms of resistance to the increasing precarity of wage-based existences and the struggle for recognition have led to the emergence of social micro-organisations borne of the coexistence or even interpenetration of market and non-market economic forms related to an economy of solidarity. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how the application of New Public Management (NPM) and the accompanying rise of academic capitalism in allocating research funds in the German academic field have interacted with a change from federal pluralism to a more stratified system of universities and departments. From this change, a tendency to build cartel-like structures of allocating symbolic capital resulting in oligopolistic structures of appropriating research funds has emerged. This macro level structure is complemented by the strengthening of the traditional oligarchic structures (...) of research, carried out by an increasing number of assistants under the direction of a professor on the meso level. The outcome of this institutional setting is a significant gap between the appropriation of research funds according to the allocation of symbolic capital and the production of knowledge in publications. The application of NPM therefore needs to be explained more as a result of the normative pressure of a globally established model of “rational” administration, and less as a result of its functional effectiveness. This is demonstrated by an empirical analysis with simple and multiple regressions using data on the allocation of research grants and publication records of German chemistry departments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 278-279 [Access article in PDF] Frederick C. Beiser. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 726. Cloth, $59.95. With German Idealism Frederick Beiser adds to his already impressive body of work on classical German Philosophy. The aim of his book is to provide a historical account of the various forms the (...) notion of "idealism" took on in the work of Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Novalis, Friederich Schlegel, and Schelling. While the ruling picture of the period presents German idealism as the "metaphysics of subjectivity" blown up into mythic proportions, Beiser argues steadily and convincingly that "the development of German idealism consists not in an increasing subjectivism but in the very opposite: a growing realism and naturalism" (3).Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to Kant and Fichte. The treatment of Kant weighs in at just under two hundred pages, and is devoted to tracing his struggles with idealism in the pre-critical writings, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Opus postumum. Unresolved Kantian problems serve as the launching pad for Fichte's "practical idealism." Beiser concentrates on Fichte's battles with skepticism and nihilism, his turn to the "primacy of the practical," and his efforts to provide a moral and inter-subjective foundation [End Page 278] for self-consciousness. The rest of the book deals with the ways in which the Kant-Fichte legacy is taken up and transformed into "absolute idealism" by the early Romantics and Schelling. Among the absolute idealists, it is Schelling—"the most inventive, brilliant, and productive" of them all (467)—who receives the most attention.It is a virtue of German Idealism that the trees of interpretive controversy are never mistaken for the idealist forest. In the body of the text, Beiser sticks closely to the task at hand, introducing the reader to the main lines of argumentation and the major philosophical stakes with exceptional skill and clarity. Scholarly debates are carried out mostly in the endnotes. This approach moves things along at a brisk pace, and makes for a refreshingly readable academic tome. It is perhaps inevitable, however, that a book of this scope will crack a little under the strain of its own weight. Three problems stand out. First, rejecting Hegel's self-aggrandizing account of the period is one thing, but it is surely overstating the case to say that the history of German idealism shows us that Hegel "was not the creative and original thinker that his history suggests or that his disciples imply" (11). Beiser's history, at least, does not justify such a claim. Pointing out that Hegelian-sounding ideas were in the air before Hegel started publishing does not suffice. Plato inherited from Parmenides the concern with "being," but this hardly makes him less of a creative and original thinker. Second, Beiser does not live up to his methodological promise to bracket "contemporary philosophical concerns and concepts" (ix). The book is littered with anachronisms. Schlegel is presented as attacking the "myth of the Given" (445-6), for example, while Schelling gives a "transcendental argument" for the self-knowledge of the absolute (589). Beiser also regularly classifies philosophers from the period as either "foundationalist" or "anti-foundationalist" (6-9, 235-9, 444-6), thus putting to work an undeniably contemporary "-ism" for which German, to this day, does not have a direct equivalent.Third, Beiser's treatment of the early German Romantics is too weak to serve as a bridge from Kant and Fichte to Schelling. While he is certainly right to insist that the early Romantics played a crucial role in the development of German idealism, he repeatedly conflates this claim with the less-than-convincing claim that they were philosophers with systematic ambitions. As a result, he seems ill at ease with their work, and has trouble dealing with the form within which they made their contributions. Take Schlegel for example. "For perfectly plausible reasons," we are told, "Schlegel was very skeptical of much... (shrink)

The _why_ and the _how_ of knowledge production are examined in the case of the transnational cooperation between the directors of observatories in the Far East who drew up unified typhoon-warning codes in the period 1900–1939. The _why_ is prompted by the socioeconomic interests of the local chambers of commerce and international telegraphic companies, although this urge has the favourable wind of Far Eastern meteorologists’ ideology of voluntarist internationalism. The _how_ entails the persistent pursuit of consensus (on ends rather than (...) means) in international meetings where non-binding resolutions on codes and procedures are adopted. The outcome is the co-production of standardised knowledge, that is, the development of a series of processes and practices that co-produce both knowledge and ideas about the social order in a force field characterised by negotiations and power struggles. (shrink)

The aim to develop authentic forms of artistic lifestyle and self-expression played a formative role in the foundational period of post-punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The struggle for authenticity during that period was complicated by the artists’ growing awareness of the capitalist economy’s ability to coopt and assimilate the ideal of an authentic counter-culture, that is, to utilize this ideal for exclusively profit-oriented signing, marketing, and production strategies. In this essay, I consider what models of authenticity (...) one can glean from the early post-punk scene and whether some such model might yield a viable ideal of authenticity that is resilient against the threat of inauthentic mainstream cooption: an ideal that can, perhaps, inspire the ongoing contemporary struggle for authenticity. (shrink)

Theories of culture and action, especially after the cognitive turn, have developed more complex understandings of how unconscious, embodied, internalized culture motivates action. As our theories have become more sophisticated, our methods for capturing these internal processes have not kept up and we struggle to adjudicate among theories of how culture shapes action. This article discusses what I call “productive” methods: methods that observe people creating a cultural object. Productive methods, I argue, are well suited for drawing (...) out moments of shared automatic cognition and resonance. To demonstrate the value of productive methods, I describe my method of asking focus group participants to devise and draw AIDS campaign posters collectively. I then 1) show how this productive method made visible distinct moments of both automatic and deliberative cognition, 2) offer an operational definition of resonance and demonstrate how the process of drawing revealed moments of resonance, and 3) suggest how this method allowed me to investigate the relationship between cognition and resonance and their effect on action. To conclude, I discuss strategies for using productive methods and advocate for their use in measuring culture. (shrink)

The Cultural Production of Social Movements offers a theory of cultural practices, protest tactics, strategic planning and deliberation, and movement organizational structures: “ideological contention.” It is a theory of ideology “from below.” The Cultural Production of Social Movements shows how conflicts—both with external political forces and disagreements, dissensus, and the decision-making process internal to social movements—produce knowledge and meanings that, in turn, impact upon and change the practices that contribute to how social movements are structured and organized. The Cultural Production (...) of Social Movements theorizes the relationship between consciously held superordinate ideas, the changing composition of progressive and oppositional social struggles, and the social worlds they hope to inhabit. Analyzing the Black Panther Party, specifically Kathleen Cleaver’s break with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and her contributions to the Party, Operaismo (or Workerism) in Italy and the relationship between shifting organizational strategies, inventive tactics, and novel and expansive ways to theorize class struggles, and the communal composition of “Worker-Recovered Enterprise Movements” in contemporary Argentina, this book shows how movement ideologies change and how meanings structure organizations, mobilizations, and futures. In The Cultural Production of Social Movements ideology is neither a static set of principles, nor is an unconscious orientation towards power and governance. Rather, it is the contentious, democratizing, and deliberative processes—which become realized as tactics in protests, struggles, defeats, and victories—that makes the relationship between movements, and what they “mean” conscious to its participants. (shrink)

The social and scientific debate overfunctional foods has two focal points: one isthe issue of the reliability andtrustworthiness of the claims connected withfunctional foods. You don't have to be asuspicious person to be skeptical vis-à-visthe rather exorbitant claims of most functionalfoods. They promise prevention against allkinds of illnesses and enhancement ofachievements like memory and vision, withouthaving been tested adequately. The second issueis the issue of the socio-cultural dimension offunctional foods and their so calleddetrimental effect on the social and normativemeanings of (...) food, with possibly the effect thatfood in general will be treated like amedicine, with radical individualizing effects.Finally, individuals would only be allowed toeat what their gene-profile prescribes them. Inthis paper, it is argued that food is anon-neutral public good that contributesinherently to the identity of vulnerableindividuals. It should be treated in anon-neutral, but impartial way. Therefore,politics need to intervene in food markets froma justice and ethical point of view with twoaims in mind. The first aim (as an implicationof justice considerations) should be toestablish safety conditions, and to identifyand monitor food safety standards in anobjective and impartial way. Preventive medicalclaims of foods should be allowed on the basisof appropriate and objective testing methods.The second aim (as an implication of ethicalconsiderations) should be to shape conditionsfor a cohabitation of various food styles,including that of functional foods. Moreover,the cultural and symbolic meaning of food in apluralistic society requires that the differentfood styles find some modus of living andinteracting together. As long as functionalfoods comply with safety standards and respectother food styles, they should be allowed onthe market, just like any other food product. (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society can (...) be understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)

This paper focuses on examining the dynamic nature of community supported agriculture (CSA) and the real-world experiences which mark its contours, often making it distinct from the early idealized CSA “model.” Specifically, our study examines the narratives of the farmers of Devon Acres CSA over its duration, in tandem with a survey of recent shareholders in order to understand and explain its evolution. The framework we develop here shows that this CSA is largely characterized by instrumental and functional beliefs and (...) practices, with some elements in the collaborative mode. A key contribution of this research is the development of a framework which helps to highlight the relative fluidity and patchwork quality of CSA participant positions over time. At Devon Acres, the real-world factors and issues influencing CSA evolution are seen to be products of both the local and larger contexts, evident in such areas as shifts in farmer learning and adaptation, differences between beliefs and practices in member volunteer efforts, and changes in farm and resource conditions. With respect to CSA more broadly, we argue that the reality of dominant food system context and site-specific influences on CSA development compels us to rework our attachment to early idealized “model” traits. Expansion in CSA numbers, evidence of adaptation and situated learning, and retention of the local and organic as core traits, speak to the pragmatic yet transformative potential of CSA contribution to food system change. (shrink)

May's monograph concerns one aspect of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. He presents six meditations on the relation between wisdom and knowledge, taking his bearings from a free interpretation of Nietzsche's Nachlaß. In an early notebook entry, Nietzsche remarks that science struggled with wisdom in the ancient Greek philosophers. That is, there was an agon between the salubrious but false Homeric myths and the "true" but toxic products of the drive toward knowledge. May attempts to resurrect this (...) agon by reappraising knowledge and the soul. (shrink)

Foxconn is a distinctive example of compressed modernity in China, which reworks the temporality and spatiality of globalized production and consumption that not only seriously affect human societies in general, but also specifically the new generation of the Chinese working class. Having grown into monopoly capital on the world market, Foxconn stands out as the new phenomenon of capital concentration and centralization, because of its speed and scale of capital accumulation in all regions of China. Unprecedented in history and incomparable (...) to other enterprises all over the globe, Foxconn now has over one million staff and workers in its industrial empire, and is the sole manufacturer for Apple and other brands. This article looks at how Chinese migrant workers, especially Foxconn workers, were induced to work in the world’s largest electronics factory, subjected to multiple pressures of time and speed, despite the fact that their struggle might lead to suicide on the one hand, but, on the other, might also spur daily and collective resistance. Inevitable conflicts and tragedies generated at the grid of compressed modernity eventually calls for reflection on human development. (shrink)

This article insists that solidarity with nonhumans is not only a fundamental aspect of symbiotic existence, but a key aspect of resistance to global imperialism. Whilst Indigenous communities have long nurtured and maintained a rich symbiosis and solidarity with nonhumans, modern western thought and social theory must seriously expand its collective concepts, if it wants to remain relevant for life in the ruins of pandemics, pollution, and production. Drawing from the work of ecological philosopher Timothy Morton and speculative realisms, this (...) article draws attention to the ‘spectral’ or inexhaustible quality of things that is often masked by capitalism and anthropocentrism. The trajectory of this article is dependent on the inspiring ontological creativity of Hardt and Negri's Empire, specifically how it has provided a rich context for the lacunae of politics and education. Social theory movements, such as marxisms and poststructuralisms, may very well be viable… if they include nonhumans. The idea that solidarity is a fundamental aspect of reality means that students and teachers acting in the common interest are not just politically conscious, but more in-tune with our entirely codependent world. (shrink)

Cherry builds the case for rage that boomed in Audre Lorde’s verse and prose. The Case for Rage delivers a systematic vindication of anger’s essential role in anti-racist struggle, where moral and productive anti-racist anger is named ‘Lordean rage’ after the poet, activist and teacher. The book is incredibly timely, offering the thorough investigation of political anger called for following the extensive uptake of the Black Lives Matter movement during the pandemic. The pandemic has, I think, made this (...) book particularly timely for two reasons: first, for starkly revealing (again) which lives are on the front lines and which are least valued, and secondly, for shutting down most of the distractions that could occupy the time and minds of potential allies. With the world (especially of the privileged) at a standstill, those gripped by profound outrage at the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were starved for ways to divert or subdue their anger. Many anguished about what to do with their rage. Cherry provides the answer. By combining philosophical rigour with accessible prose Cherry appeals to both ‘academic and activist, the philosopher and citizen’ (pp. 7-8), delivering a methodical treatment of anger that is apt to change not just how we think about the emotion but what we do with it. (shrink)

In this interview with Andrée Bergeron, Isabelle Stengers casts fresh light on the question of expertise, with which the movement of the intermittents - like other movements both yesterday and today - is now confronted. She recalls that the figure of the expert is not a contemporary « invention » and that it includes multiple realities which are rarely free of political consequences. On the contrary, the choice of the expert, the definition of acceptable questions and the degree of « (...) deafness » to « democratic events », are all eminently political problems. By acquiring the tools to ask the questions that matter to them the collective of intermittents and precarious workers has already created a « democratic event ». Now it is a matter of rising to a double challenge: for the movement, that of fabricating a collective intelligence that can transform the knowledge produced into interventions capable of making people think and feel; and for the researchers in the social science, that of succeeding in considering this event as the experimental science consider the laboratory, namely, as that which makes innovation and learning possible. Constructing the choice of a counter-expertise therefore means learning to double the struggle around what Deleuze and Guattari call axioms with a practical invention of a quite different sort, involving a minority becoming - a collective intelligence that does not contradict but creates. (shrink)

This ‘editorial perspective’ offers reflection on Marxist theory in the narrow domain of social movements and social-movement studies. It offers a brief survey of international class struggles over the last few decades to situate the discussion. It then focuses on the problem of capitalism for social-movement studies, and the particular issue of capitalist totality. It argues that an expansive, processual, historical and temporal conception of class struggle needs to be at the centre of any adequate Marxist approach to social (...) movements, and shows why and how this is so by delving into some contemporary debates over dominant forms of collective action – strike and riot. It also highlights the dialectical relations between production, reproduction and social reproduction, and how the latest revivals of Marxist feminism might guide us through the morass. Finally, it suggests that struggles across these interrelated domains can be linked through an ‘infrastructure of dissent’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article engages with the historiography of the Portuguese empire with reference to Mozambique. It explores the impact of visual archives on existing debates and asks what difference photographs make to our interpretation and understanding of this colonial past. Deprived of their 'historical rights' by the requirements of the Berlin treaties that insisted on 'effective occupation', the Portuguese started to employ a complex of knowledge-producing activities in which photography was crucially involved. This article examines different photographic moments before and (...) during the 'Pacification Campaign' that assured Portugal's authority over the Gaza Empire in southern Mozambique in the 1890s, by official, commercial and missionary photographers. It identifies controversies over the small number of portraits of the Gaza king Ngungunyane that took on distinctive and disputed 'other lives' after their initial production. The realisation of how one image might be disassembled to generate others becomes an exercise - in visual terms - of rethinking colonial violence. A critical engagement with the slippages and repositionings around photographs, and the errors or disputes in various captions, allows for a better understanding of the production of both silence and particular narratives in the archives and popular history. The demonstration of these other lives matters because it stimulates awareness of what is seen, what is made visible, and addresses the desire to look beyond the image to find others in a continuous interrogation of photographic excess. (shrink)

This article explores morality and credibility struggles in connection to two officially sanctioned public Swedish experiments launched in the late 1960s to investigate the (ab)use of alcohol and illicit drugs, especially in relation to young people, and the subsequent decisions to terminate the experiments and research. We argue that these 1960s struggles on how to analyze the effects of increased availability of psychoactive substances must be understood in the light of a simultaneous development of modern (social) science studies. The public (...) display of conflicting expert views on how to investigate and interpret questions of alcohol and drugs in modern society played out in concordance with the growth of social science alcohol and drug research and expertise. The article focuses on the 1960s, a decade that was characterized by profound transformations in Swedish society. In so doing, the article contributes from the perspective of history to debates on the nexus between knowledge production and policy in modern societies. (shrink)

This empirical work attends to the tensions and contradictions medical students articulate when they discuss their objection to industry’s influence in medicine. Findings are based on 50 semi-structured interviews with medical students who are critical of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence in medical education in the United States and Canada. These students advocate evidence-based medicine as one solution to the problems with industry influence in medicine; namely industry bias in medical research. This investigation is an effort to understand why EBM is (...) posed as a solution to industry bias in light of the literature demonstrating the ways that what is considered ‘evidence-based’ is influenced by industry. Participants articulate a struggle to find the ‘best’ evidence in a context where industry interests are integral in the production of medical knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter outlines Marx’s analysis of bourgeois society, the bourgeois form of production, relations of bourgeois production, the mode of production based on capital, and, after 1860, the capitalist mode of production. It starts with the analysis of the value form, its various expressions, its contradictions and crisis-tendencies, and the way in which social forms set the limits to class struggle. Forms and struggles shape the laws of motion of capital accumulation, which, in turn, modify the conjuncture in which (...) forms evolve and struggles occur. The chapter also considers the nature of bourgeois social formations and their implications for economic and political institutions and conflicts. The chapter concludes with reflections on the pursuit of alternatives to capitalist relations that aim to reform capitalism or replace it in the medium- to long-term and the forms of social mobilization required for this. (shrink)

This article starts from the non-juridical meaning of subjectivity that counter-conducts entail and from the asymmetrical forms of refusal they generate. Foucault’s understanding of counter-conducts as productive practices, internal to the regime of norms that they oppose, enables analysing struggles and modes of life that were not defined by Foucault in these terms, or those counter-conducts that are more recent. In the first section, the article engages with the meaning of “counter-conduct,” situating it within the omnes et singulatim nexus, (...) interrogating how the level of multiplicities is at stake in contemporary forms of counter-conduct. Then, it focuses on The Punitive Society, showing that the modes of life and strategies of flight against the capitalist system described by Foucault allow us to grasp the excess of discordant conducts with respect to technologies of power that try to discipline them. In the final section, the article explores the entanglement between singularities and multiplicities at play in the government of refugees, focusing on the spatial disobedience enacted by rejected refugees at Choucha refugee camp in Tunisia. Refugees’ strategic embracement of the condition ofsubjects eminently governed by the humanitarian rationale illuminates a form of biopolitics of the governed. (shrink)

According to recent literature in the sociology of expectations, expectations about the future are “performative” in that they provide guidance for activities, attract attention, mobilize political and economic resources, coordinate between groups, link technical and social concerns, create visions, and enroll supporters. While this framework has blossomed over the past decade in science and technology studies, it has yet to be applied towards a more refined understanding of how the future of the modern agrofood system is being actively contested and (...) understood. I seek to redress this gap by using the sociology of expectations to explain the discursive topography surrounding in vitro meat, a nascent agrofood technology whereby processed meat products are developed from stem cells as opposed to live animals. In discussing the obstacles and challenges which confront the proponents of this technology, I utilize three key concepts from the sociology of expectations: (1) hype, (2) retrospective prospects, and (3) the role of myth, metaphor, and ideology. I find that despite sluggish results and financial setbacks, the controversial legacy of previous agrofood technologies, and persistent cultural skepticism, the core ideological justifications for in vitro meat have proven to be resilient in buoying the technology through rough discursive waters. (shrink)

This study analyzes the gendered nature of recent production and labor force restructuring in the Dominican Republic. Using a longitudinal case study of work relations on a large transnational corporate pineapple plantation, the author explores the production politics involved in the initial corporate attempt to create a wage labor force and the subsequent replacement of employees with contracted labor crews. She demonstrates how female, and then male, labor forces were negotiated in this process and how labor relations became embedded in (...) local gendered institutions. The study reveals how workforces and spheres of work are constituted through struggles over gender, as well as ethnicity and class, in intersecting arenas linking the local community to the global economy. In this case, gender proves critical in shaping both worker identity and the shifting scope and form of resistance to plantation practices. (shrink)

Recent research has highlighted the importance of cultivating the ethical climate of a firm with implications for ethical decision making and consumer confidence. However, there are important lessons still to be gleaned from firms responsible for generating ethical failures. Based on a case study of the Sanlu melamine milk powder scandal in China, this article analyzes the key factors that have affected consumer confidence in Sanlu and highlights main reasons for Chinese consumers’ continued distrust of state dairy enterprises. We explore (...) the causes of business distrust in the Sanlu case from the perspective of Chinese product consumers. We further recommend solutions to repair a crisis of consumer confidence and trust in the domestic dairy industry by considering these stakeholders’ perspectives. (shrink)

Recent work in science and technology studies has looked at how chemical industries manufacture doubt about the toxicity of their products and manage to establish their scientific views in the field of international regulations on toxic substances. Rather than examining yet another “victory” for the industry, this article analyzes the deployment of a “pro-industrial” scientific position, punctuated mainly by failure and opposition. This trajectory is tracked through the analysis of several data sets: archives, scientific documentation, and sociological interviews. The first (...) part of the article charts the development of a biochemical concept, “peroxisome proliferation,” within an academic subfield and its subsequent appropriation by certain industrial parties who used it as a defensive weapon for their commercial interests. Through the example of the International Agency for Research on Cancer and its network of interdependent institutions, the article goes on to analyze the multiple attempts of chemical industry players to establish their interpretation of the concept within the regulatory bodies for carcinogenic substances. The study of such systems of sociological interdependence shows that a full analysis of the “doubt manufacturing” requires an examination not only of the manufacturing process but also of the reception of the ideas produced. (shrink)

In The Case for Rage, Myisha Cherry makes the case for a specific kind of rage, a qualified anger at racial injustice that she calls Lordean rage. Drawing on Audre Lorde's classic essay ‘The Uses of Anger’, Cherry develops the concept of Lordean rage as a productive, liberatory anger and defends it from a variety of objections, ranging from neo-Stoic concerns about anger's capacity for destruction to contemporary worries about the misuse of anger by white allies. The brilliance of (...) the book, I think, lies in its capacity to integrate a wide range of philosophical perspectives and arguments, including those from feminist and critical race theory and analytic philosophy of emotion, and present them in a way that speaks directly to our political and historical moment. The audience for this book is broad: anyone who has ever felt anger at racial injustice will have a stake in this book.Cherry begins with some philosophical distinctions to help delineate the contours of this kind of anger. Lordean rage has a particular object—racial injustice—and a specific motivational stance: ‘It aims at nothing less than transforming our world’ (p. 40). (She leaves it as an open, and interesting, question whether a variation of Lordean rage occurs in other cases of oppression.) For these reasons, Lordean rage demands a non-trivial degree of optimism and hope. It also requires a basic respect for both the victim and the perpetrator of racial injustice (p. 37). This last criterion distinguishes it from other motivating kinds of rage, such as ‘wipe rage’, which seeks to eliminate the object of the rage and ‘narcissistic rage’, which is only concerned with injustices that immediately effect oneself. These distinctions, and other helpful ones, are the subject of Chapter 1, which argues against the tendency to understand anger as a homogeneous or uniform phenomenon. We can’t, Cherry argues, paint anger in such ‘broad strokes’ but need a more nuanced account of how different kinds of angers are operative in different kinds of contexts. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show in what sense the institutions of the welfare state are key to the struggles that are developing around the debt crisis and against the austerity policies carried out in its name. The first part is dedicated to isolating some elements which contribute to explaining the nature of the current crisis of capitalism and the strategic issues at stake in the policies of expropriation of welfare institutions. The second part emphasizes how, around the (...) question of welfare institutions, the crisis articulates two alternative models of society and regulation of a knowledge-based economy. Within this framework, we will put forward a few lines of analysis in order to think of a different model of development, one which is founded on the ‘Welfare of the Common’ as a new mode of production. (shrink)