29526 research outputs found
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From Victim to Perpetrator: Majoritarian Policing and the Inversion of Justice in Uttar Pradesh
Full text linkOn grounds of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi between 2021 and 2023, this paper analyses 20 cases of police violence, which occurred during the December 2019 protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. I argue that majoritarian practices of policing, through legal and extra-legal mechanisms, “unmake” the victims of violence. Instead, police procedures frame victims as perpetrators. The unmaking of the victims and subsequent criminalization occur through layers of discursive, procedural, investigatory, and legal strategies employed in everyday policing. In a Kafkaesque turn in law and society, I identify the omissions, exclusions, and invocations that result in a devastating deprivation of justice
The enterprise rate of profit in key US sectors 1994–2020: An examination of the tendency towards the equalization of sectoral profit rates and a critique of Hulten and Wykoff fixed capital stock valuations in the US
Full text linkThis article examines enterprise profit rates in key US sectors. Competition between capitals of different compositions modifies values into prices of production to equalize profit rates. These prices of production are further modified into enterprise profit rates when financial payments, rents and interest are treated as a cost. This article applies data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to show that (notwithstanding widely differing technical, value and organic compositions of capital, rates of turnover, proportions of productive and unproductive capital and rates of surplus value) competition tends to equalize profit rates in all sectors barring finance, insurance and real estate. It applies a method that rejects the use of neo-classical, Hulten and Wykoff, fixed capital stock (FCS) estimates (widely used in Marxian rate of profit estimates) as described in the United Nations (UN) System of National Accounts (SNA). This article estimates the overvaluation implicit in the Hulten and Wykoff statistics by sector and develops original sectoral rates of turnover, the organic composition of capital, annual rate of surplus value and enterprise rates of profit from 1994 to 2020
Dressing up the Manchu Way: Visual Representations of Women’s Hair and Dress in China and Beyond, 1850s-1940s
No full textThis thesis examines Manchu identity through visual representations of women’s hair and dress from the 1850s to the 1940s, challenging conventional Sino-centric and Euro-American modernity frameworks. It argues that even after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, distinct sartorial markers retained in female Manchu coiffure and attire were crucial in signifying and perceiving ethnic identity and elite status. By analysing visual materials including paintings, photographs, pictorial newspapers and films, this research assesses how the dress manifested, shaped, and sustained Manchu identity during the late Qing and early Republican periods. The investigation centres on how Manchu women’s unique hair and dress visually constructed ethnic identity in opposition to the Han, examining their impacts on perceptions of Manchu identity across genders, ethnicities, classes, cultures, social status and time. Key research questions include: To what extent did these visual signifiers embody or disrupt the changing connotations of Manchu identity? How did the creation, dissemination, and reception of images of women dressed in Manchu styles differ across various groups? And how do these representations challenge or reinforce dominant historical narratives about Manchu identity? Primary sources comprise a diverse array of visual materials and associated texts in Chinese, English, Japanese and Manchu. Findings reveal that Manchu women’s hair and dress functioned as key signifiers manifesting and maintaining ethnic identity and elite status during late Qing and Republican China. Their physical forms and visual representations continued to develop in China, Europe and the USA, indicating desirability and popularity despite anti-Manchu sentiment, misunderstandings and misrepresentations, thereby challenging dominant narratives. The analysis uncovers historical and political biases in the creation, collection, and interpretation of images of female Manchu attire, highlighting how shifts in power dynamics have shaped the representations and understanding of Manchu dress and identity. This interdisciplinary study foregrounds women and Manchu perspectives, highlighting the crucial role of prioritising previously marginalised subjects, materials and viewpoints in understanding history and culture. It transcends traditional art historical focus on gendered stereotypes of fashion in female hairstyle and dress, broadening the analysis to encompass ethnic tensions and cultural identity. The study underscores the importance of visual culture and material evidence in understanding the evolution of Manchu women’s sartorial styles, contributing to feminist discourses on dress and identity beyond late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China
Bodies of Knowledge: Material Practices of Reproductive Resistance
No full textThis paper explores how embodied practices such as traditional midwifery, herbal contraception and self-managed abortion networks operate as critical forms of reproductive resistance. In contexts where formal healthcare systems are inaccessible, coercive or culturally alienating, these material practices offer alternative routes to bodily autonomy. Drawing on decolonial feminist theory, the paper interrogates how such practices challenge state control, biopolitical regulation and medicalised narratives of reproductive health. Through case studies from Latin America, the Global South and the Global North, the paper highlights the knowledge systems sustained by women, queer communities and traditional practitioners in resisting colonial and patriarchal control over fertility and birth. It also explores how these practices form counter-publics rooted in care, solidarity and ancestral knowledge, even when operating in the shadows of legality or legitimacy. This paper asks: what happens when resistance is not a public spectacle but a quiet, embodied routine? And how do such practices complicate mainstream feminist and human rights discourses that centre legality and access over autonomy and tradition
Political Thought on Uprisings: Essays on Just Rebellion
No full textThis book explores the philosophical and political dimensions of rebellion, revolts, and revolutions by examining and comparing various cases, from multiple cultural perspectives throughout history. Chan utilizes these cases to explore the range of differing principles, rationales, and ethics underlying what constitutes a "just rebellion" and explain the motivating thought behind rebellions
River Rights – Framing, Recognition and Beyond
No full textThis chapter starts by engaging with the conceptual framing of river rights. It highlights some of the potential that the river rights discourse offers as an alternative to the dominant paradigm of sustainable development. A river rights framing provides a basis to question the primacy that sustainable development effectively gives to economic development and its anthropocentric understanding of nature. Other elements considered include the potential of a river rights framing for rethinking the top-down nature of environmental protection, for moving away from the property rights focus that has been the highlight of water law, and for giving more attention to people’s concerns in addition to the support that natural sciences offer to environmental protection. The next section examines the evolving river rights jurisprudence, focusing on the two decisions of the Uttarakhand High Court concerning Ganga and Yamuna. The last section then offers some pointers towards rethinking river rights. This includes framing river rights within a context of equity, engaging with the balance of rights and obligations, and considering potential modes of representation. It concludes by suggesting that river rights should be conceived as rights that bring together the anthropo- and eco-centric dimensions of protection through a framing as eco-human rights
Introduction
No full textThe state of rivers throughout the world is a cause for concern. Large rivers like Ganga and Yamuna have been the subject of much attention, and various remedial measures have been introduced for years with varying levels of success. On the contrary, small rivers are usually seen, at best, as tributaries of something more important, but are often not considered. This is what made us decide to start our enquiry with a small dying river. The Champa River, a small tributary of the Ganga River in Bihar's Bhagalpur district, is one of thousands of such rivers. It may seem inconsequential in the context of the broader Ganga basin, but it is nonetheless a full river, with its own catchment, biodiversity and riparian communities. It is recognised as a critically endangered water system, and for all practical purposes is a dead river since it has little to no flow for large parts of the year. Some of the reasons of its degradation are extraction of silt, garbage dumping and riverbed encroachments by settlements. As a result, the erstwhile river is now locally known as Champa Nala. Recently, the Government of Bihar has marked nineteen rivers for rejuvenation, and Champa Nala is one of them
Organised forced migration and the external drivers of eliminationist politics
Full text linkThis article examines external drivers of eliminationist politics, by bringing in the geopolitical and foreign policy context as explanatory factors in cases of organised forced migration (OFM). Drawing on examples from an ongoing dataset-building project, we identify and explicate a number of direct and indirect externally-driven pathways to organised forced migration. First, powerful actors have historically used OFM to engage in eliminationist politics in external polities in the context of imperial rule and interventionism, by engineering the demographic profiles of societies to stabilise their own rule, reflect their geopolitical preferences or secure labour for other colonial projects. Second, powerful states have redrawn boundaries and negotiated war settlements that have shifted local dynamics in ways that involved OFM as methods of ordering and reordering territorial boundaries after the fighting stops. Finally, states have employed organised forced migration in pursuit of a wide array of foreign policy objectives. Our piece illustrates these dynamics by presenting illustrative examples and highlighting the value-added of incorporating international factors into our understanding of eliminationist politics
Diasporic geopolitics and differentiated policies of transnational repression
Full text linkThis article examines transnational repression as an aspect of diasporic geopolitics, i.e. the state use of populations abroad to strategically exercise power and influence vis-à-vis other states. Building on existing literature, we examine how states have crafted differentiated diaspora engagement strategies in which some segments of the diaspora are elevated, some are ignored, and others are repressed. The mechanisms by which they do so can range from direct (e.g. government targeting, harassment, surveillance and coercion); to indirect (e.g. exploiting tensions within the diaspora, spreading propaganda, fostering mistrust, or inciting violence between groups); to mediated (e.g. engaging third parties via interstate cooperation, intelligence sharing and policing). By unpacking different mechanisms and actors involved with transnational repression, we show the extent to which states rely on the mobilization of social forces and international-systemic structures in their use of targeted coercion against populations in the context of pursuing geopolitical influence
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