29526 research outputs found
Sort by
African Philosophy and Deep Ecology
No full textThis book investigates African philosophical contributions to the concept of deep ecology, which advocates for rethinking human and non-human relationships within our ecosystems, by promoting the inherent and earned worth of all beings. With ecological crises impacting lives around the world, this book interrogates deep ecology thinking from African philosophical perspectives, highlighting the continent’s important ontological, epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, and broad philosophical contributions. The book investigates issues such as the eco-phenomenology of human / non-human animals’ relations, Ubuntu and the environment, the superiorist fallacy, environmental belongingness, the impact of colonization and modernity on non-human trauma, the politics of ecological narrative about African places, the question of moral status, African socialist perspectives, the question of degrowth, selective subordination, biodiversity loss, land ethics, the ontology of waste, and the concept of personhood in relation to global climate and ecological justice. Providing a significant intervention in our understanding of the ecological crises and our duties toward ecosystems and the non-human other in the twenty-first century, this book is an important read for researchers, advocates and other stakeholders working in the fields of environmental philosophy, climate change, indigenous studies, and African Studies
Digitising the past, preserving the future: creating a digital collection of pre-Columbian crania excavated one hundred-twenty-one years ago by Alfredo Jahn in Lake Valencia, Venezuela
Get PDFIn 1903, the Berlin Museum of Ethnology commissioned Alfredo Jahn Hartman to conduct archaeological excavations in the Lake Valencia basin in Venezuela. Jahn explored two sites, Camburito and El Zamuro, where he unearthed pre-Columbian artefacts and human burials and subsequently sent them to Berlin. More than a century later, we digitised this collection following a detailed protocol to obtain scans with submillimetre accuracy reproducing the geometry and textures of the physical crania. The significance of this work extends beyond the technical digitisation of bioarchaeological samples. These three-dimensional models offer a rare opportunity to revisit and recontextualise this collection. It enables in-depth studies of intentional cranial modification in pre-Columbian societies, enhancing our understanding of the prehistory of the region. Furthermore, it helps preserve these fragile physical samples for future generations. To continue fostering open access and collaboration among specialists, a selection of the digitised collection is available in an online repository
Review of: Drones, tones, and timbres: sounding place among nomads of the inner Asian mountain-steppes
No full textAt the kitchen table with my ancestors
Get PDFThis short personal essay focuses on the possibility of passing feminist thought and action from one generation to another within a family. Inspired by Carrie Mae Weems’ Kitchen Table Series , I imagine a roundtable with my matrilineal ancestors. I examine the question of what constitutes feminisms and whether my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother considered themselves feminists in a place where it is not always easy to be a feminist: former Yugoslavia and its diaspora. I argue that the stories about my ancestors that I heard growing up made me a feminist and, alongside my readings and activism, shaped my understanding of feminisms, even when my ancestors themselves might not have considered themselves feminists
'Sounds like' Redemption?
Get PDFPopular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called natural world of nonhuman species. And, amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. Intervening in these debates, this article traces how notions of “musicality” have been applied to or denied from nonhuman entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. It concludes that debates about the relation between human and animal musics have always reinforced the separation that today they seek to overcome, as this separation is itself rooted in the history of the study of music in nature. The article demonstrates that the study of music in nature has often relied upon an epistemology of origins-listening in which attention to the acoustic is used to formulate implicit evolutionary hierarchies organized along an axis of similarity and difference among species. While who or what is placed within these categories and the relative value of musicality thus derived may have changed over time, this axis of comparison remains in place. As a corrective, the article provokes a new epistemology of listening in which musicality and species are situated becomings
Limits of autocratisation: actors and institutions of democratic resistance and opposition
No full textAs autocratisation gains global momentum, research on democratic resistance has expanded significantly. This introductory article to Limits of Autocratisation examines the actors, institutions, and practices that challenge, resist, or inadvertently enable autocratisation. It develops a framework for understanding opposition(s) across political, civic, and transnational dimensions. Rather than viewing autocratisation as linear, we conceptualise it as an uneven and contested process in which opposition actors navigate multiple constraints to hinder, disrupt, or potentially reverse autocratic advances. The article explores key questions guiding this volume’s case studies from countries at various stages of autocratisation: Which actors and institutions seek to limit autocratisation? What structural, institutional, and agency-related barriers do they face? How do they strategise to overcome these challenges? Rather than proposing universal solutions, we advance a nuanced theorisation of opposition(s) and resistance that accounts for structural conditions, timing, and strategic agency in shaping responses across divergent contexts. The article cautions against simplistic definitions of success or failure when theorising resistance and opposition to autocratisation, emphasising the fluid, contested, and ongoing nature of autocratisation. Ultimately, we propose a context-sensitive yet versatile framework for studying autocratisation’s limits by integrating regional contexts, interdisciplinary and comparative insights, and historical trajectories
Engines of Rebellion: Bosozoku and the Global Language of Youth Subculture
No full textHow biker subcultures from Tokyo to Marseille reveal the global struggle over identity, conformity, and freedo
In and against Development: The World Bank behind the Looking Glass
No full textLong self-proclaimed as “Knowledge Bank”, the World Bank is as active as criticised in its endeavours across scholarship, ideology and policy in practice, serving US interests in the age of globalisation, neoliberalism and financialisation. This Volume focuses on the Bank’s scholarship, meticulously criticising it and assessing alternatives. Its analytical framing draws upon economics imperialism in general, and its evolution through three phases. Corresponding phases of new, newer and newest development economics are identified, with the World Bank taking a leading role in each, with implications for the expanding scope of development economics and its contestations with development studies.See Les
Understanding China’s Foreign Policy Making: The Interaction of Internal and External Factors
No full textThis thesis seeks to build analytical framework bridging the domestic and international factors in driving China’s foreign policy making in Xi’s era. This thesis has been suited with the context of Xi’s first two terms, when it has witnessed with tighter grip of Xi’s personal power within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and in China. At the same time, China’s foreign policy has been experiencing the shift from “keeping a low profile” to assertive and aggressive foreign posture.In the attempt to link the interaction of China’s internal and external factors, the analytical framework this thesis provided identifies four key drivers. With the core of preserving the Party’s legitimacy as the first and foremost driver, the Party-centric nationalism has risen to the second determinant factor driving China’s assertive and aggressive foreign shift; meanwhile, pragmatic approach of economic growth and development takes a back seat to nationalistic sentiments and has been increasingly instrumentalised in shaping China’s foreign policy; and lastly, the least influential variable at a realist dimension of China’s national interests and reputation gives ways to the first three factors.This thesis provides a perspective of relational interaction among the four driving factors. Applying neoclassical realism as an entry point, this theory provides grounding for the integration of domestic and external factors in the making of China’s foreign policy. In addition, this theory’s exploration of state-society relation also inspires the generation of this analytical framework. This research finds that neoclassical realism lacks a strong explanatory power for the specific context of China. In the study of driving forces behind China’s foreign policy making, the analytical framework this research provided reveals that the independent variable and ultimate factor is rooted in China’s domestic arena, with the core of CCP’s legitimacy preservation and the realist national consideration as the least determinant factor— not the other way around in the neoclassical realism’s definition
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage SOAS Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!