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When is Hoarding? Temporal Regimes, Material Time and the Domestic Life of Accumulations in Japan
No full textThis article reconsiders hoarding not as a psychological disorder, but as a social phenomenon embedded in the temporality of social life. Drawing on ethnographic research in Japan, it explores local understandings of accumulation by embedding them in the biographical trajectories of participants, in the everyday rhythms of consumption and disposal, and in the material temporalities that emerge when objects are taken out of circulation. By bracketing pathology, I focus on the ways in which what could be described as hoarding in the Anglophone world emerges as matter of concern in different temporal registers. My data also reveals systemic barriers to disposal, such as rigid waste collection schedules that privilege middle-class norms, making accumulation a social, not merely personal, deviance. This approach does not claim cultural superiority but suggests an alternative framework—one that locates hoarding within broader social and temporal dynamics rather than the individual psyche
The confluence of Sharīʿa and Statutory Law: theoretical foundations and practical applications of Islamic legal doctrines in shaping Egyptian Intellectual Property Statute
No full textEgypt incorporates Sharīʿa into its legal system as a constitutional obligation, although the degree of its application varies across different branches of law. Certain fields, such as family law, are directly shaped by Sharīʿa, whereas others, including intellectual property (IP), are predominantly influenced by modern secular European laws. Traditional Islamic jurists, in contrast to their modern counterparts, did not generally treat IP as a distinct and autonomous branch of law, but rather as a collection of related principles. This raises the question of how Egyptian law, informed by Sharīʿa, addresses the protection of employee inventions. It also prompts consideration of whether Sharīʿa principles could serve as a renewable legislative source for innovation protection or whether they remain primarily of historical significance. A horizontal comparative approach between Egyptian law and Islamic law is employed to examine the scope of protection afforded to employees in respect of inventions. The analysis begins by considering whether IP has a basis within Islamic law and how it is perceived by Islamic jurists. It then addresses the nature of employment contracts under both Islamic and Egyptian law, with particular reference to inventions created by employees in the course of their employment. Finally, it compares the Egyptian legal framework with Islamic principles, focusing on the entitlement of employees to financial rights arising from their inventions
Debating Economic Policy for South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Transition: from Scholarship and Ideology to Policy in Practice: Critical Reconstructions of Political Economy. Vol.8
No full textThe reasons for South Africa’s full and rapid post-apartheid embrace of neoliberal economic policy remain controversial. Drawing on the author’s own participation in policy debates, this volume establishes there were alternatives available that were either dismissed or not even considered. Explanations for policy failings have to be sought in determinants such as globalisation, financialisation, capital flight, corporate restructuring and Black Economic Empowerment. The text offers extensive surveys of relevant literature including the developmental state, industrial and social policy, privatisation, trade policy, the Harvard School, comparative experience and the deficiencies in the country’s National Development Plan and New Growth Pat
Rethinking financialisation from a housing industry perspective: delayed asset price inflation in Turkey
Get PDFThis paper is an exploration of housing financialisation by drawing upon the productive dynamics of the housebuilding industry. The housing financialisation literature has two distinct branches, one focusing on the macroeconomic mechanisms through which the imbalances in the housing market could reflect deeper macroeconomic fragilities. The other branch puts the emphasis on the commodification of housing as a commodity, mostly due to the withdrawal of the state as a provisioner. This study bridges the gap between these two literatures on housing financialisation by introducing the productive dynamics of the housebuilding industry itself as an explanatory factor, which has not been addressed by either of those literatures. It has two distinct but interrelated contributions. First, it provides a case that can demonstrate the various ways in which the commodification of housing can take place without necessarily the withdrawal of the state by using Turkey as an example. Second, by showing how this development took place in the context of public land availability to accommodate increasing supply and the sectoral interlinkages with the more ‘productive’ energy sector, it explains why the disruptive macroeconomic effects of that strategy could be delayed for a prolonged period
Creative Expression and Political Resistance among Young Urban Congolese
Get PDFThis article is about how young Congolese artists use performative ambiguity to navigate a political landscape of state surveillance and restrictions on civil liberties. It highlights how early-career painters, photographs and slam poets purposefully embed ambiguous meanings in their performance to protest political oppression. While such forms of performance operate from a covert and subtle repertoire of protest against the political restriction of civil liberties, the article interprets them within the broader theoretical framework of political resistance. The analysis makes a critical reappraisal of Georges Balandier’s concept of evasion, which he originally developed to understand how African societies reorganised themselves, through indirect and concealed tactics, to resist colonial rule and its prohibition. This study reinterprets evasion in a contemporary postcolonial context, and it argues that performative ambiguities are politically oriented to challenge the authoritarian status quo. They represent symbolic forms of political subversion through which the artists assert agency, reclaim public space and catalyse social change. Under conditions of political duress, Congolese artistic production is transformed into a critical space of negotiation between power, identity and freedom
Transforming Tradition: A Comparative Legal Analysis of 19th-Century Codified Waqf Law in the Ḥanafī School within the Ottoman Empire and Egypt
Get PDFThis study examines the transformations of waqf law within the Ḥanafī school during the 19th century, focusing on the late Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Drawing on two foundational works Itḥāf al-akhlāf fī Aḥkām al-Awqāf by ʿUmar Ḥilmī and Qānūn al-ʿAdl wa al-Inṣāf fī al-Qaḍāʾ ʿalā Mushkilāt al-Awqāf by Qadrī Pasha—as primary sources, the research explores the early codification of waqf law and its impact on classical Ḥanafī jurisprudence. These texts are analysed to uncover how codification efforts reshaped waqf law to align with the administrative and legal frameworks of the modern state, while tracing the underlying legal methodologies and historical dynamics driving this transformation. The study offers a comparative analysis of classical Ḥanafī jurisprudence and its codified form, identifying key continuities and deviations introduced through codification. Particular attention is given to how these changes reflected broader Tanzimāt reforms in the Ottoman Empire and modernization policies in Egypt under Muḥammad ʿAlī. While the codification process sought to maintain the Ḥanafī framework, it introduced significant shifts in legal theory and practice, moving away from the pluralistic character of Islamic jurisprudence toward a more centralized and standardized system. By examining the legal reforms alongside their social and historical contexts, this thesis aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how Islamic legal traditions interacted with modernity and state centralization in the 19th century. The research contributes to the broader discourse on the adaptation of Islamic law within the structures of modern governance
A Microeconomic Application of the Metabolic Rift Theory: Working Conditions, Income and Consumption-Based Emissions
Get PDFDo working conditions determine consumption-based emissions? This article develops a microeconomic framework that integrates Marx’s metabolic rift theory, world ecology, and Marx’s labor process theory to analyze the relationship between income, working conditions, and consumption based-emissions. The framework introduces a metabolic parameter to model a U-shaped relationship between consumption-based emissions and income, where emissions initially decrease with rising income before increasing beyond a turning point. Additionally, this metabolic parameter integrates working conditions, a proxy for worker stress, pressure, exhaustion, and alienation, which shape the relationship between income and consumption-based emissions. Exhaustive working conditions drive higher emissions through convenience-focused consumption, while improved working conditions may increase discretionary consumption among high-earning workers. These theoretical insights highlight the dual impact of working conditions and open pathways for empirical research on labor, consumption, and ecological sustainability
Silence as reflective agency: A multilingual JFL learner's longitudinal trajectory
Get PDFThis longitudinal case study explores the use of silence as a form of reflective agency by a multilingual learner of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) during a year-long study abroad in Japan. Drawing on ethnographic phenomenology, the study examines the trajectory of a multilingual user, Emma, and her use of reflective silence, which illustrates the development of her L2 interactional competence. The data comprise a pre-offer survey, an activity diary, four interviews conducted over 12 months, and a post-re-entry questionnaire. The analytical approach promotes macro-level interactional improvement through silence. It emphasizes the nature of learner agency, as it is facilitated and informed by introspection, ongoing self-monitoring, and flexibility in learning – both of which serve as core catalysts of L2 proficiency. The results illustrate that reflective silence in learning has a developmental nature, encompassing linguistic, emotional, cognitive, sociocultural, and interactional aspects. It adds that reflective silence may be largely unconscious, while being promoted by an active, self-initiated reflexivity. It also implies that Emma's developed multilingual repertoire and learned metaplastic insights into L2 learning were crucial in the elaboration of interactional repertoires. Based on Emma's voices, the paper provides pedagogical implications to make the emergent function of silence in L2 acquisition apparent
At the Intersections of Disability Justice, Anti-Coloniality and the Violence of Translation: A Reading of Janani’s Juliet
No full textThis chapter uses its author’s engagement with Pankaj Rishi Kumar’s 2019 documentary, Janani’s Juliet, to consider multiple processes of translation and mediation. Drawing upon disability justice and anti-colonial scholarship, the chapter asks what this film does with and through Shakespeare, and with and through the play whose rehearsals it follows: Chandala, Impure, a Tamil adaptation of Romeo and Juliet by the Puducherry-based Indianostrum theatre group. With this Tamil-language play currently only “available” as mediated through a documentary aimed at a non-Tamil audience, the chapter uses it to examine broader questions about accessibility and identity that extend to the author’s own cultural and linguistic heritage
The right to complain can’t solve the housing crisis
No full textAwaab’s Law, that has just come into effect, gives tenants of social housing new powers against neglectful landlords. But Elizabeth Storer and Nikita Simpson warn that the right to complain, while a step in the right direction, has limited powers amidst a full blown housing crisis
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