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Collective Memories, Concepts and Experiences: Two Angles on the Political Process of Meaning Making
Get PDFThis article explores the connection between concepts and memories. Although the meaning-making capacity of concepts is well recognised, their role in the formation and contestation of collective memories is rarely addressed by International Relations (IR) scholars. To clarify this relationship, the article discusses the mutual grounding of concepts and memories in experiences. It argues that concepts and collective memories interact in the creation of meaning and develops two heuristic angles to characterise these processes: first, it explores how concepts shape and organise the content of collective memory, and second, it discusses how collective memories impact and guide the meaning attributed to politically salient concepts. In both processes, we argue, the representation of and relation to experiences plays a key role. The article illustrates the two angles with two examples: (1) how the use of different concepts shapes the epistemic recovery of the Haitian Revolution by historians, and (2) how the memory of the Holocaust impacts the German government’s interpretation of the concept of genocide
Tenderness as the Norm: Rorty on “Intense Mental Pain”
No full textIn this chapter, I elaborate Richard Rorty’s idea of agential pain by directly relating it to recent developments in critical social epistemology and Cora Diamond’s framework for making sense of what it is to lose concepts. Focusing on Rorty’s reflections on 1984, I contend that if one takes Rorty’s concerns about cruelty to their logical conclusion, doing so puts pressure on Rorty’s ‘shallow’ centrism. For, if cruelty towards agents is evocative of modern institutional design, then, contra Rorty’s own flippant dismissal of Marx-inspired political theory, radical change is required to not better cope with but overcome the status quo
Modern Chinese Foodways
No full textAn edited collection that explores the multifaceted experiences of Chinese culinary modernity both within and outside of mainland China from the mid-19th century to present. Modern Chinese Foodways defines some of the major processes by which Chinese food and foodways have become modern, with a focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The editors, Jia-Chen Fu, Michelle T. King, and Jakob A. Klein, highlight four prominent areas of change: commodification of food production; the scientization of expertise and the development of new food technologies; the creation of new culinary identities based on gender, ethnicity, and nation; and the circuits of migration taking place since the nineteenth century. The collection argues that Chinese food and foodways are very much modern—not a given in the face of the chorus of voices that insists on emphasizing its ancient roots—in ways that both recall the experiences of other cultures, as well as in ways unique to China's own historical trajectory. The book combines incisive, original scholarship by thirteen leading voices in the field with editorial essays on the past and future of Chinese food studies to frame the field of inquiry for the next generation of Chinese food studies scholars. Demonstrating the significance of modern Chinese foodways to the phenomenon of culinary modernity writ large, which is still largely shaped by Euroamerican perspectives and priorities, Modern Chinese Foodways is the first book of its kind
The Fourth Cinema: Morality, and Tragedy in African Cinema
Get PDFThis paper focuses on the concept of “The Fourth Cinema” whose questions of morality and tragedy as well as deep history and recorded history are interwoven and inseparable. This is important not solely to clarify specific misinterpretations but also to resist an impending misinterpretation of the concept of the fourth cinema. Based on Soyinka’s “The Fourth Stage”, the paper discusses how the metaphysics of sacrifice in Yoruba oral traditions can be taken from its ritual contexts to explain what I have termed “The Fourth Cinema.” In doing that, I give a new interpretation to Soyinka’s The Fourth Stage and therefore develop the Fourth Cinema with the aim to discuss its philosophical, spiritual, and historical relevance in African cinema such as, Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba, Femi Lasode’s Sango, and Tunde Kelani’s SaworoIde. I therefore show the social relevance of the fourth cinema not solely to the questions of morality, and tragedy in the (post)colonial world but also to education and decolonial cinematic storytelling in Africa and beyond
One Tune, Two Egypts
No full textThe film sets Umm Kulthum’s performance of “Hubb Eyh?” (What is this Love?) into dialogue with the song’s interpretation by the comic actor Muhammad Saad in the 2002 film El-Limby. The juxtaposition accentuates Saad’s parody of the diva at the same time that it reveals a humorously stark contrast between the rarefied atmosphere at an Umm Kulthum concert in1960s Egypt and the raucousness that has come to be associated with popular music in subsequent decades
Race and Racism in Political Ecology
No full textIn recent years, a rich and informative literature on race and racism in political ecology has emerged which challenges mainstream understandings of climate breakdown and forms of environmental harm. This chapter reviews and builds on these contributions by way of an analysis of race in relation to value in the political ecology of the world system. The central argument here is that race is a key mechanism by which labour and nature are cheapened for the purposes of value extraction and accumulation, which in turn generate the exhaustion of planetary ecosystems. As many critical scholars have long argued, global capitalism requires the input of free or undervalued resources and labour in order to function and generate surplus value. However, the condition of being free or cheap is not a natural fact, but instead one socially produced by means of race and in articulation with other cheapening constructs such as gender, class, and caste. This chapter reviews the existing literature on race and ecology, before indicating how the roles of both the international scale and the production of value could be further developed in the literature. Ultimately, the chapter illuminates how race can be understood as a powerful means of organizing ecology and should therefore be central as a key analytic in the discipline of political ecology
The Structural Order of Neoliberal Racial Capital
No full textThis chapter explores the structural order of neoliberal racial capital as both replacement for and continuation of the colonial order of value extraction from Global South to North. Neoliberalism is presented as a counter-revolution against decolonization, which has worked to restore flows of value by undermining Global South sovereignty, protecting international capital markets from the collective will of Southern peoples, and solidifying racial hierarchies of finance that structure unequal exchange and extraction. The neoliberal order restored and extended what this chapter identifies as the “plantation mode of finance,” which extracts from, and alienates, the Southern social base and delivers cheapened resources to the metropolitan market. Central to maintaining financial hierarchies within this order is the mobilization of risk as a mode of racial extraction in itself. Finally, the chapter covers how the continuing atrophy of socioecological life has been facilitated and accelerated by the structural order of neoliberal racial capital
The 'Crown Jewels' of the UN Human Rights System
No full textUN Special Rapporteurs are independent human rights experts on global thematic or country-specific issues, who investigate human rights violations in states, develop international legal standards, and provide technical advice to states. This article provides, first, a brief overview of recent interventions by these experts and their historical origins. Second, it investigates the multiple meanings of the independence of these experts, based on their shared characteristics and the heterogeneous uses of independence. Finally, it analyzes the multiple professional dispositions that such actors embody through the example of Heiner Bielefeldt, the first German Special Rapporteur
Heterogeneous fertility responses to the two-child policy: growth-induced domestic migration and income effect
No full textThe deteriorating demographic structure in China has already invalidated its one-child policy ineffective. However, smoothing the ripple effects generated by this policy will require more comprehensive population policies. This context led to the introduction of the two-child policy in China. This paper examines the effects of the two-child policy by observing the regions that were previously subject to the one-child rule. The findings indicate that a geographic mismatch between people’s willingness to have children and household income has resulted in an uneven distribution of birth rates following the implementation of the two-child policy, with higher birth rates concentrated in rural areas experiencing rapid urbanization. As the Chinese economy progresses towards a higher level of urbanization, population policies aimed at encouraging larger families will become less effective, as fertility norms will have permanently altered in tandem with the rising costs of urban living. With more affluent populations less likely to have more than one child, understanding how to increase fertility rates in demographic groups that have not fully transitioned to the advanced urban sector will be crucial for developing effective population growth policies
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