Sebastian Veg (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9789888390762
- eISBN:
- 9789888455614
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390762.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Over the past 10 or 15 years in China, there has been unprecedented critical public discussion of key episodes in PRC history, in particular the Great Famine of 1959-1961, the Anti-Rightist movement ...
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Over the past 10 or 15 years in China, there has been unprecedented critical public discussion of key episodes in PRC history, in particular the Great Famine of 1959-1961, the Anti-Rightist movement of 1957, and the Cultural Revolution, with the wave of Red Guard apologies. These discussions are quite different from previous expressions of traumatic or nostalgic memories of the Mao era, respectively in the 1980s and 1990s. They reflect both growing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian control over history exercised by the Chinese state, and the new spaces provided for counter-hegemonic narratives by social media and the growing private economy in the 2000s. Unofficial or independent journals, self-published books, social media groups, independent documentary films, private museums, oral history projects, and archival research by amateur historians have all contributed to embryonic public or semi-public discussion. The present volume provides an overview of these new forms of popular memory, in particular critical memory, of the Mao era. Focusing on the processes of private production, public dissemination, and social sanctioning of narratives of the past in contemporary China, it examines the relation between popular memories and their social construction as historical knowledge. The three parts of the book are devoted to the shifting boundary between private and public in the press and media, the reconfiguration of elite and popular discourses in cultural productions (film, visual art, literature), and the emergence of new discourses of knowledge in popular history.Less
Over the past 10 or 15 years in China, there has been unprecedented critical public discussion of key episodes in PRC history, in particular the Great Famine of 1959-1961, the Anti-Rightist movement of 1957, and the Cultural Revolution, with the wave of Red Guard apologies. These discussions are quite different from previous expressions of traumatic or nostalgic memories of the Mao era, respectively in the 1980s and 1990s. They reflect both growing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian control over history exercised by the Chinese state, and the new spaces provided for counter-hegemonic narratives by social media and the growing private economy in the 2000s. Unofficial or independent journals, self-published books, social media groups, independent documentary films, private museums, oral history projects, and archival research by amateur historians have all contributed to embryonic public or semi-public discussion. The present volume provides an overview of these new forms of popular memory, in particular critical memory, of the Mao era. Focusing on the processes of private production, public dissemination, and social sanctioning of narratives of the past in contemporary China, it examines the relation between popular memories and their social construction as historical knowledge. The three parts of the book are devoted to the shifting boundary between private and public in the press and media, the reconfiguration of elite and popular discourses in cultural productions (film, visual art, literature), and the emergence of new discourses of knowledge in popular history.
Richard De Ritter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719090332
- eISBN:
- 9781781707241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090332.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to ...
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For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to be wise’. This chapter questions the social utility of the intellectual capital that this formulation allows women to accrue. It compares accounts of female readers with their male counterparts, asking how the issue of gender helps to distinguish leisured wisdom from unproductive indolence. Using the example of Edgeworth's Belinda, it revisits the idea of reading as symbolic labour, attending both to its positive agency and its limitations.Less
For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to be wise’. This chapter questions the social utility of the intellectual capital that this formulation allows women to accrue. It compares accounts of female readers with their male counterparts, asking how the issue of gender helps to distinguish leisured wisdom from unproductive indolence. Using the example of Edgeworth's Belinda, it revisits the idea of reading as symbolic labour, attending both to its positive agency and its limitations.
Di Wang
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501715488
- eISBN:
- 9781501715556
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501715488.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This book explores urban public life through the microcosm of the Chengdu teahouse. Like most public spaces, the teahouse was and still is an enduring symbol of Chinese popular culture, stemming back ...
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This book explores urban public life through the microcosm of the Chengdu teahouse. Like most public spaces, the teahouse was and still is an enduring symbol of Chinese popular culture, stemming back centuries and prevailing through political transformations, modernization, and globalization. The time period covered begins basically with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949-50, goes through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era. We see clearly that the role and importance of the teahouse changed abruptly, going from severe constriction in its operations to a time when public spaces flourished unrestricted. During the Mao era, the state achieved tight control over society generally, and it was able to penetrate to the very core of society in order to control almost all its resources. Thus, the spaces usually available for sociality and for the natural development of social activities were sharply limited. The post-Mao economic reforms were a turning point in public life because everyday life was dominated by sweeping “open-market” economic reforms that were structured within a unique type of socialist political system, and to a significant degree public life moved away from state control. This book can enhance our understanding of public life and political culture in Chengdu under the Communist state, with its political needs and agendas; from there we may reflect on the situation of other Chinese cities.Less
This book explores urban public life through the microcosm of the Chengdu teahouse. Like most public spaces, the teahouse was and still is an enduring symbol of Chinese popular culture, stemming back centuries and prevailing through political transformations, modernization, and globalization. The time period covered begins basically with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949-50, goes through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era. We see clearly that the role and importance of the teahouse changed abruptly, going from severe constriction in its operations to a time when public spaces flourished unrestricted. During the Mao era, the state achieved tight control over society generally, and it was able to penetrate to the very core of society in order to control almost all its resources. Thus, the spaces usually available for sociality and for the natural development of social activities were sharply limited. The post-Mao economic reforms were a turning point in public life because everyday life was dominated by sweeping “open-market” economic reforms that were structured within a unique type of socialist political system, and to a significant degree public life moved away from state control. This book can enhance our understanding of public life and political culture in Chengdu under the Communist state, with its political needs and agendas; from there we may reflect on the situation of other Chinese cities.
Patrick Collier
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474413473
- eISBN:
- 9781474426824
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413473.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The materiality of print objects took on increased significance with the explosion of print culture in the late nineteenth century, as artists from Henry James to the modernists sought to ...
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The materiality of print objects took on increased significance with the explosion of print culture in the late nineteenth century, as artists from Henry James to the modernists sought to differentiate themselves from the mass of print culture. The pursuit of distance from commoditized print culture—whether it took the form of theories of aesthetic autonomy or the creation of specialized micro-markets—necessarily involved writers, editors, and other print professionals with the materiality of texts. This setting produced widely divergent attempts to gain symbolic capital through the creation of material print objects—from expensive editions de luxe to egalitarian political gestures such as Harold Monro’s poetic broadsides and cheap periodicals. This chapter surveys the field of material texts and the problems of literary value in the early twentieth century, which it elucidates using theories of cultural value ranging from Walter Benjamin and Pierre Bourdieu to Barbara Herrnstein-Smith and cultural anthropologist David Graeber.Less
The materiality of print objects took on increased significance with the explosion of print culture in the late nineteenth century, as artists from Henry James to the modernists sought to differentiate themselves from the mass of print culture. The pursuit of distance from commoditized print culture—whether it took the form of theories of aesthetic autonomy or the creation of specialized micro-markets—necessarily involved writers, editors, and other print professionals with the materiality of texts. This setting produced widely divergent attempts to gain symbolic capital through the creation of material print objects—from expensive editions de luxe to egalitarian political gestures such as Harold Monro’s poetic broadsides and cheap periodicals. This chapter surveys the field of material texts and the problems of literary value in the early twentieth century, which it elucidates using theories of cultural value ranging from Walter Benjamin and Pierre Bourdieu to Barbara Herrnstein-Smith and cultural anthropologist David Graeber.
Camilo D. Trumper
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520289901
- eISBN:
- 9780520964303
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520289901.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics and the Struggle for the Street in Chile is a cultural history of the street in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, the hemisphere’s first ...
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Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics and the Struggle for the Street in Chile is a cultural history of the street in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, the hemisphere’s first democratically elected Socialist president. Santiago became a contested political arena during Allende’s 1000 days in power. Residents across the political spectrum engaged in a heated battle to claim public space and challenge the terms and limits of political contest. Santiaguinos occupied public spaces in ways that appear fleeting, ephemeral, or mundane, but that challenged the sites and forms of legitimate political debate in Chile. Ephemeral Histories studies the tactics of political conflict— marches and protest, posters and murals, and documentary film and street photography—and sheds light on the contours of a public sphere of political debate rooted in urban practice. Street art, for instance, was both vehicle and window into a wider attempt to claim public spaces as a means of reimaging political citizenship. Graffiti, posters and murals might last an hour or a day before they were torn down or painted over, but they allowed a wide range of urban residents to redefine how and where politics was done and debated, and to reimagine the very mode of legitimate political debate in democracy and again in dictatorship. In fact, santiaguinos turned again to ephemeral political practices to rebuild political networks and reestablish political debate after the bloody military coup that deposed Allende on September 11, 1973. Placing urban and visual culture at the center of a story of political change over time, Ephemeral Histories traces the connections and continuities in political citizenship and practice in democracy and dictatorship. It suggests that the regime’s violence did not represent a clean rupture with the past, but a brutal engagement with the history of urban politics under Allende.Less
Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics and the Struggle for the Street in Chile is a cultural history of the street in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, the hemisphere’s first democratically elected Socialist president. Santiago became a contested political arena during Allende’s 1000 days in power. Residents across the political spectrum engaged in a heated battle to claim public space and challenge the terms and limits of political contest. Santiaguinos occupied public spaces in ways that appear fleeting, ephemeral, or mundane, but that challenged the sites and forms of legitimate political debate in Chile. Ephemeral Histories studies the tactics of political conflict— marches and protest, posters and murals, and documentary film and street photography—and sheds light on the contours of a public sphere of political debate rooted in urban practice. Street art, for instance, was both vehicle and window into a wider attempt to claim public spaces as a means of reimaging political citizenship. Graffiti, posters and murals might last an hour or a day before they were torn down or painted over, but they allowed a wide range of urban residents to redefine how and where politics was done and debated, and to reimagine the very mode of legitimate political debate in democracy and again in dictatorship. In fact, santiaguinos turned again to ephemeral political practices to rebuild political networks and reestablish political debate after the bloody military coup that deposed Allende on September 11, 1973. Placing urban and visual culture at the center of a story of political change over time, Ephemeral Histories traces the connections and continuities in political citizenship and practice in democracy and dictatorship. It suggests that the regime’s violence did not represent a clean rupture with the past, but a brutal engagement with the history of urban politics under Allende.
Benjamin F. Soares
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748622856
- eISBN:
- 9780748670635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622856.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
Chapter 8 considers the importance of the secular state, the development of the public sphere, and mass media, as well as the impact of these on Nioro as a social and religious space at the end of ...
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Chapter 8 considers the importance of the secular state, the development of the public sphere, and mass media, as well as the impact of these on Nioro as a social and religious space at the end of the twentieth century. Returning to the question of the Hamawiyya and its absent shaykh, it discusses the development of a new incipient tradition of Islam that allows some to bypass some of the debates between Muslims in this religious center.Less
Chapter 8 considers the importance of the secular state, the development of the public sphere, and mass media, as well as the impact of these on Nioro as a social and religious space at the end of the twentieth century. Returning to the question of the Hamawiyya and its absent shaykh, it discusses the development of a new incipient tradition of Islam that allows some to bypass some of the debates between Muslims in this religious center.
Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9789888390809
- eISBN:
- 9789888390441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390809.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
By tracing the trajectory of Chinese danmei fandom in the past two decades, this chapter explores the possibility of danmei as a model of grassroots globalization. The chapter focuses on three key ...
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By tracing the trajectory of Chinese danmei fandom in the past two decades, this chapter explores the possibility of danmei as a model of grassroots globalization. The chapter focuses on three key aspects of Chinese danmei fandom: the establishment of online and offline infrastructures, the formation of different danmei circles, and the emergence of a women-dominated online public sphere. The authors seek to use the example of danmei fandom to challenge the masculinized, top-down model of thinking about transnational cultural flows that overemphasizes national origin, the industrial player, the official economy, and the competition for soft power at the expense of other glocalized, noninstitutionalized, nonprofit, noncompetitive ways of cultural exchange.Less
By tracing the trajectory of Chinese danmei fandom in the past two decades, this chapter explores the possibility of danmei as a model of grassroots globalization. The chapter focuses on three key aspects of Chinese danmei fandom: the establishment of online and offline infrastructures, the formation of different danmei circles, and the emergence of a women-dominated online public sphere. The authors seek to use the example of danmei fandom to challenge the masculinized, top-down model of thinking about transnational cultural flows that overemphasizes national origin, the industrial player, the official economy, and the competition for soft power at the expense of other glocalized, noninstitutionalized, nonprofit, noncompetitive ways of cultural exchange.
Patrick Crowley
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940216
- eISBN:
- 9781786944245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940216.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This Introduction offers a critical political and social context for Algeria 1988-2015. It makes the case for thinking about the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities and the need to do ...
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This Introduction offers a critical political and social context for Algeria 1988-2015. It makes the case for thinking about the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities and the need to do so through a range of methodological approaches that are attentive to the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. It argues for the need to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. Reviewing the chapters that compose the volume it makes the case for a form of enquiry that offers historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in our approach to understanding contemporary Algeria. In particular, it makes the case for the existence of a variety of cultural public spheres in Algeria and their importance to the country’s transition.Less
This Introduction offers a critical political and social context for Algeria 1988-2015. It makes the case for thinking about the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities and the need to do so through a range of methodological approaches that are attentive to the weft and warp of everyday cultural production and political action. It argues for the need to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. Reviewing the chapters that compose the volume it makes the case for a form of enquiry that offers historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will prompt nuance in our approach to understanding contemporary Algeria. In particular, it makes the case for the existence of a variety of cultural public spheres in Algeria and their importance to the country’s transition.
Steven Gormley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474475280
- eISBN:
- 9781474491013
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474475280.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
The first half of this chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas’s two-track model of democratic politics avoids the two charges Chantal Mouffe raises against his deliberative approach, namely, rationalism ...
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The first half of this chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas’s two-track model of democratic politics avoids the two charges Chantal Mouffe raises against his deliberative approach, namely, rationalism and individualism. Habermas’s account of an ‘anarchic’ public sphere of informal opinion-formation does not require the elimination of the passions, nor is it blind to collective actors. Quite the opposite. The second half argues that Mouffe’s agonism is beset by internal difficulties. First, her account of the affective dimension of collective identifications insufficiently theorises the role of the passions and fantasy in democratic life. Second, her claim that a universal ‘we’ is a conceptual impossibility is not sufficient defended. Third, there is a continual slip between a possible and a necessary antagonism that is no mere slip: rather, it reveals an unresolved dilemma at the heart of her project.Less
The first half of this chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas’s two-track model of democratic politics avoids the two charges Chantal Mouffe raises against his deliberative approach, namely, rationalism and individualism. Habermas’s account of an ‘anarchic’ public sphere of informal opinion-formation does not require the elimination of the passions, nor is it blind to collective actors. Quite the opposite. The second half argues that Mouffe’s agonism is beset by internal difficulties. First, her account of the affective dimension of collective identifications insufficiently theorises the role of the passions and fantasy in democratic life. Second, her claim that a universal ‘we’ is a conceptual impossibility is not sufficient defended. Third, there is a continual slip between a possible and a necessary antagonism that is no mere slip: rather, it reveals an unresolved dilemma at the heart of her project.
Benjamin F. Soares
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748622856
- eISBN:
- 9780748670635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622856.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
The concluding chapter returns to the question of changing ideas about and practices of Islam and some of the ongoing tensions around Islam and authority in Mali and particularly in Nioro as a ...
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The concluding chapter returns to the question of changing ideas about and practices of Islam and some of the ongoing tensions around Islam and authority in Mali and particularly in Nioro as a profoundly transformed Islamic religious center.Less
The concluding chapter returns to the question of changing ideas about and practices of Islam and some of the ongoing tensions around Islam and authority in Mali and particularly in Nioro as a profoundly transformed Islamic religious center.
Alyssa Mackenzie
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781942954088
- eISBN:
- 9781786944122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954088.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas in relation to feminist periodicals of her time. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, it considers The Freewoman (edited by ...
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This chapter discusses Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas in relation to feminist periodicals of her time. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, it considers The Freewoman (edited by Dora Marsden) and Time and Tide (edited by Lady Margaret Rhondda) alongside Woolf’s imagined Outsiders’ Society. The chapter finds numerous shared concerns and strategies between these feminist periodicals and Woolf’s writings in and about Three Guineas, including questions of distribution, cost, allegiance to official movements, and relationship to readers. Critics have often interpreted Three Guineas as advocating a withdrawal from the public sphere; however, this chapter argues that implicit in Woolf’s discussion of women and the potential for political action is a model of feminist periodical publication, oriented towards rather than turning away from a Habermasian public sphere.Less
This chapter discusses Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas in relation to feminist periodicals of her time. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, it considers The Freewoman (edited by Dora Marsden) and Time and Tide (edited by Lady Margaret Rhondda) alongside Woolf’s imagined Outsiders’ Society. The chapter finds numerous shared concerns and strategies between these feminist periodicals and Woolf’s writings in and about Three Guineas, including questions of distribution, cost, allegiance to official movements, and relationship to readers. Critics have often interpreted Three Guineas as advocating a withdrawal from the public sphere; however, this chapter argues that implicit in Woolf’s discussion of women and the potential for political action is a model of feminist periodical publication, oriented towards rather than turning away from a Habermasian public sphere.
Justin Clemens, Christopher Dodds, and Adam Nash
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208920
- eISBN:
- 9789888313839
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208920.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter demonstrates how the introduction of large screens to contemporary public spaces function to assimilate diverse arts, commercial, and public forms into a conservative regime. On the one ...
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This chapter demonstrates how the introduction of large screens to contemporary public spaces function to assimilate diverse arts, commercial, and public forms into a conservative regime. On the one hand, the new opportunities that accompany the large public screens are subverted by the logic of capitalist accumulation, which informs a public address designed to achieve high volumes of individual engagement, rather than high quality public engagement. On the other hand, new opportunities to enhance public engagement are subjected to bureaucratic modes of governance, which pre-emptively censor content such that it extends and satisfies conservative regimes of early broadcast regulation. The authors argue that the confluence of capitalist and bureaucratic regimes governing big screens effectively balkanise audiences, valorise nondemocratic forms of participation, and privatise public spaces.Less
This chapter demonstrates how the introduction of large screens to contemporary public spaces function to assimilate diverse arts, commercial, and public forms into a conservative regime. On the one hand, the new opportunities that accompany the large public screens are subverted by the logic of capitalist accumulation, which informs a public address designed to achieve high volumes of individual engagement, rather than high quality public engagement. On the other hand, new opportunities to enhance public engagement are subjected to bureaucratic modes of governance, which pre-emptively censor content such that it extends and satisfies conservative regimes of early broadcast regulation. The authors argue that the confluence of capitalist and bureaucratic regimes governing big screens effectively balkanise audiences, valorise nondemocratic forms of participation, and privatise public spaces.
John Borneman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226233888
- eISBN:
- 9780226234076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226234076.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The prolegomenon depicts the relation between a therapist and his client, who was sexually abused by his mother from the age of six and one-half to fourteen, became one of Berlin’s leading pimps, ...
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The prolegomenon depicts the relation between a therapist and his client, who was sexually abused by his mother from the age of six and one-half to fourteen, became one of Berlin’s leading pimps, and, after serving 8 years in prison, founded a charity devoted to sexually abused children. The anthropologist accompanies the two men as they do public readings of a book the therapist wrote about the client’s life and self-transformation. And he explores the basis for therapeutic empathy in their relations with mothers, fathers, and their own pasts. What kind of intervention was he, an American anthropologist, observing in this public reading of the personal reflections from someone’s therapy? What kind of treatment is this, where the private details of the patient’s life are discussed in public and justified as having positive therapeutic effects on his wellbeing? Does presenting the story of the client’s abuse by his mother in public constitute a form of atonement for his pimping, facilitating his goal of Wiedergutmachung: making amends for his past, modifying his hate of women, transforming his self, and protecting children from a fate such as his. And what are we to make of the alleged psychic change of this man?Less
The prolegomenon depicts the relation between a therapist and his client, who was sexually abused by his mother from the age of six and one-half to fourteen, became one of Berlin’s leading pimps, and, after serving 8 years in prison, founded a charity devoted to sexually abused children. The anthropologist accompanies the two men as they do public readings of a book the therapist wrote about the client’s life and self-transformation. And he explores the basis for therapeutic empathy in their relations with mothers, fathers, and their own pasts. What kind of intervention was he, an American anthropologist, observing in this public reading of the personal reflections from someone’s therapy? What kind of treatment is this, where the private details of the patient’s life are discussed in public and justified as having positive therapeutic effects on his wellbeing? Does presenting the story of the client’s abuse by his mother in public constitute a form of atonement for his pimping, facilitating his goal of Wiedergutmachung: making amends for his past, modifying his hate of women, transforming his self, and protecting children from a fate such as his. And what are we to make of the alleged psychic change of this man?
Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231172516
- eISBN:
- 9780231542975
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172516.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Explores unusual – and often culturally problematic – models of masculinity and their relationship to food, taking into consideration male characters as nurturers and caretakers both in the private ...
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Explores unusual – and often culturally problematic – models of masculinity and their relationship to food, taking into consideration male characters as nurturers and caretakers both in the private and the public sphere. The analysis considers how these films operate in seeming opposition to films that tend to use food unobtrusively to reinforce dominant models of masculinity. Under closer examination, movies such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallström, 1993), Heavy (James Mangold, 1995), Eat Your Heart Out (Percy Adlon, 1997), and later Spanglish (James L. Brooks, 2004) and Sideways (Alexander Payne 2004), reveal that these seemingly different and innovative images reiterate mainstream forms of manhood and thus reinforce gender hierarchies. Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994) provide the necessary background to the discussion about the relationship among men, cooking, and masculinity.Less
Explores unusual – and often culturally problematic – models of masculinity and their relationship to food, taking into consideration male characters as nurturers and caretakers both in the private and the public sphere. The analysis considers how these films operate in seeming opposition to films that tend to use food unobtrusively to reinforce dominant models of masculinity. Under closer examination, movies such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallström, 1993), Heavy (James Mangold, 1995), Eat Your Heart Out (Percy Adlon, 1997), and later Spanglish (James L. Brooks, 2004) and Sideways (Alexander Payne 2004), reveal that these seemingly different and innovative images reiterate mainstream forms of manhood and thus reinforce gender hierarchies. Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee, 1994) provide the necessary background to the discussion about the relationship among men, cooking, and masculinity.
Azmi Bishara
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197602744
- eISBN:
- 9780197610886
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197602744.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Middle Eastern Politics
This chapter discusses the transformation of sectarianism from a channel for public participation in the political sphere into an obstacle to this participation. Identity politics, which includes ...
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This chapter discusses the transformation of sectarianism from a channel for public participation in the political sphere into an obstacle to this participation. Identity politics, which includes sectarianism, means popular participation in service of political interests presented as the interests (in our case) of the ta’ifa. And although this sectarianism politicizes the masses and drives them into the public sphere, it nonetheless quickly becomes an obstacle to popular participation, and specifically to democratic transformation. It is no coincidence that there are no federations or confederations of ta’ifas. A federation in a modern state is either merely administrative or based on ethnic and cultural units. But collective rights are possible in a liberal democracy, assuming that they are based on citizens’ rights.Less
This chapter discusses the transformation of sectarianism from a channel for public participation in the political sphere into an obstacle to this participation. Identity politics, which includes sectarianism, means popular participation in service of political interests presented as the interests (in our case) of the ta’ifa. And although this sectarianism politicizes the masses and drives them into the public sphere, it nonetheless quickly becomes an obstacle to popular participation, and specifically to democratic transformation. It is no coincidence that there are no federations or confederations of ta’ifas. A federation in a modern state is either merely administrative or based on ethnic and cultural units. But collective rights are possible in a liberal democracy, assuming that they are based on citizens’ rights.
Rachel Rinaldo
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199948109
- eISBN:
- 9780199345960
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199948109.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Sociology of Religion
In the post 9/11 world, Islam and feminism are widely viewed as incompatible. Sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s ethnography of Muslim and secular women activists in Jakarta, Indonesia highlights the ...
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In the post 9/11 world, Islam and feminism are widely viewed as incompatible. Sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s ethnography of Muslim and secular women activists in Jakarta, Indonesia highlights the diverse ways they engage with Islam and feminism and use them in their activism and their daily lives. Mobilizing Piety compares different forms of women’s activism in a globalizing metropolis. Examining a feminist NGO, Muslim women’s organizations, and women in a Muslim political party, Rinaldo demonstrates that the Islamic revival and democratization in Indonesia are helping to shape new kinds of agency for women activists, some of whom are influenced by both Islam and feminism. Rinaldo shows how these new kinds of agency have emerged from the increasing interactions between the fields of Islamic and gender politics in Indonesian public life since the 1990s. As Islam becomes a primary source of meaning in the Indonesian public sphere, Rinaldo shows how some women activists mobilize Islam to argue for women’s empowerment and equality, while others use Islam to advocate a more Islamic nation. Women activists in Indonesia are transforming global discourses of Islam and feminism, embodying new forms of agency and identity, and creating social change. Mobilizing Piety presents a new conceptual framework for studying religion and politics, showing how an examination of interpretation allows for a more nuanced understanding of how religion can underpin very different visions for the future.Less
In the post 9/11 world, Islam and feminism are widely viewed as incompatible. Sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s ethnography of Muslim and secular women activists in Jakarta, Indonesia highlights the diverse ways they engage with Islam and feminism and use them in their activism and their daily lives. Mobilizing Piety compares different forms of women’s activism in a globalizing metropolis. Examining a feminist NGO, Muslim women’s organizations, and women in a Muslim political party, Rinaldo demonstrates that the Islamic revival and democratization in Indonesia are helping to shape new kinds of agency for women activists, some of whom are influenced by both Islam and feminism. Rinaldo shows how these new kinds of agency have emerged from the increasing interactions between the fields of Islamic and gender politics in Indonesian public life since the 1990s. As Islam becomes a primary source of meaning in the Indonesian public sphere, Rinaldo shows how some women activists mobilize Islam to argue for women’s empowerment and equality, while others use Islam to advocate a more Islamic nation. Women activists in Indonesia are transforming global discourses of Islam and feminism, embodying new forms of agency and identity, and creating social change. Mobilizing Piety presents a new conceptual framework for studying religion and politics, showing how an examination of interpretation allows for a more nuanced understanding of how religion can underpin very different visions for the future.
Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474456319
- eISBN:
- 9781474496353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474456319.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The last chapter of the book synthesises the discussions of the relation between constituent power, freedom, and institutional politics throughout the book. The chapter argues that it is one thing to ...
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The last chapter of the book synthesises the discussions of the relation between constituent power, freedom, and institutional politics throughout the book. The chapter argues that it is one thing to counter the perceived groundlessness and formlessness of constituent power with the formalism of political institutions, but that it is a more ambitious task altogether to re-conceptualise the constituent power as encompassing the dual ambition of both constituting new political regime forms and a care for the stability and durability of those institutions. The council tradition, the chapter argues, provides an excellent vantage point for such re-conceptualisation of the constituent power. Moreover, the chapter argues that democracy have always been criticised for being anarchic, formless, and volatile – starting with Plato and Aristotle and reiterated by numerous political thinkers throughout history. The ambition of institutionalising the constituent power without exhausting it, which is the object of this chapter, is thus also an attempt to defend democracy against this critique, but without relinquishing its relation to radical transformation. Council democracy, in this interpretation, becomes a way of controlling the constituent power without completely exhausting it, thereby giving the citizenry continual access to the powers of self-transformation, co-creation and constituent freedom.Less
The last chapter of the book synthesises the discussions of the relation between constituent power, freedom, and institutional politics throughout the book. The chapter argues that it is one thing to counter the perceived groundlessness and formlessness of constituent power with the formalism of political institutions, but that it is a more ambitious task altogether to re-conceptualise the constituent power as encompassing the dual ambition of both constituting new political regime forms and a care for the stability and durability of those institutions. The council tradition, the chapter argues, provides an excellent vantage point for such re-conceptualisation of the constituent power. Moreover, the chapter argues that democracy have always been criticised for being anarchic, formless, and volatile – starting with Plato and Aristotle and reiterated by numerous political thinkers throughout history. The ambition of institutionalising the constituent power without exhausting it, which is the object of this chapter, is thus also an attempt to defend democracy against this critique, but without relinquishing its relation to radical transformation. Council democracy, in this interpretation, becomes a way of controlling the constituent power without completely exhausting it, thereby giving the citizenry continual access to the powers of self-transformation, co-creation and constituent freedom.
Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231172516
- eISBN:
- 9780231542975
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172516.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Considers instead the relationship between women and food, in professional and domestic environments. Cooking is presented as a way for women to assert themselves and their independence, while at the ...
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Considers instead the relationship between women and food, in professional and domestic environments. Cooking is presented as a way for women to assert themselves and their independence, while at the same time allowing unconventional negotiations of gender, class, and race with their environment. Fried Green Tomatoes (Avnet, 1999), No Reservations (Hicks, 2007) and its German predecessor Mostly Martha (Nettelbeck, 2001), Waitress (Shelly, 2007), The Ramen Girl (Robert Allan Ackerman, 2008), and Julie & Julia (Ephron, 2009) present the lead (white) female characters as powerful and autonomous, but the films collectively work to undermine the characters’ political agency at the expense of their ability to function in the kitchen. As such, they tend to privilege a heterosexist perspective and elevate white characters over characters of color.Less
Considers instead the relationship between women and food, in professional and domestic environments. Cooking is presented as a way for women to assert themselves and their independence, while at the same time allowing unconventional negotiations of gender, class, and race with their environment. Fried Green Tomatoes (Avnet, 1999), No Reservations (Hicks, 2007) and its German predecessor Mostly Martha (Nettelbeck, 2001), Waitress (Shelly, 2007), The Ramen Girl (Robert Allan Ackerman, 2008), and Julie & Julia (Ephron, 2009) present the lead (white) female characters as powerful and autonomous, but the films collectively work to undermine the characters’ political agency at the expense of their ability to function in the kitchen. As such, they tend to privilege a heterosexist perspective and elevate white characters over characters of color.
Nadine Sika
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9789774165368
- eISBN:
- 9781617971365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774165368.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter analyzes the extent to which the Egyptian public sphere, especially religious institutions were controlled by the ruling authoritarian regime. Eventually, both the state's dominance over ...
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This chapter analyzes the extent to which the Egyptian public sphere, especially religious institutions were controlled by the ruling authoritarian regime. Eventually, both the state's dominance over institutions and society, along with the established religious institutions' discourse, became stagnant, which precipitated the development of new social movements that were able to mobilize people beyond the stagnant religious discourse. These developed a new discourse, based on human rights, freedoms and social equality. Through developing their new discourse, new secular social movements did not undermine Egyptian's religious consciousness, but rather developed new ideals, in harmony with the Egyptian political culture, but beyond the constraints of the main religious institutions.Less
This chapter analyzes the extent to which the Egyptian public sphere, especially religious institutions were controlled by the ruling authoritarian regime. Eventually, both the state's dominance over institutions and society, along with the established religious institutions' discourse, became stagnant, which precipitated the development of new social movements that were able to mobilize people beyond the stagnant religious discourse. These developed a new discourse, based on human rights, freedoms and social equality. Through developing their new discourse, new secular social movements did not undermine Egyptian's religious consciousness, but rather developed new ideals, in harmony with the Egyptian political culture, but beyond the constraints of the main religious institutions.
Andrew Ryder
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781529200515
- eISBN:
- 9781529200560
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529200515.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
A core message of the book is that authoritarian populism (Brexit nationalism) is a state of affairs where emotions are orchestrated by an increasingly demagogic subsection of the elite to polarise, ...
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A core message of the book is that authoritarian populism (Brexit nationalism) is a state of affairs where emotions are orchestrated by an increasingly demagogic subsection of the elite to polarise, mobilise and demonise, a reactive, illiberal and antagonist form of politics. It presents a threat in that although perhaps it has manifested itself in one of its most extreme forms in Britain through Brexit, it is in fact an endemic threat to all of Europe. In January 2019 a group of thirty lead European thinkers, writers, historians and nobel laureates, declared that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes” and the consequences would be “calamitous” if the rising tide of populism was not challenged. The final section of the book seeks to identify the panacea to the rise of authoritarian populism and forms of agonism, both in Britain and Europe. Britain’s future relationship with the EU will be a key determiner in Britain’s course as a nation, hence the book advocates Britain’s eventual re-entry into a reformed European Union grounded within the concept of Social Europe and a conception of identity that is inclusive and accommodated in a structural framework that is deliberative and egalitarian. The chapter also seeks to challenge ‘post-truth’ politics through a reformed public sphere and inclusive and bridging speech acts and rhetoric. Finally, the chapter reflects on the value of critical multiculturalism as a mechanism that might dispel monoculturalism and nativism.Less
A core message of the book is that authoritarian populism (Brexit nationalism) is a state of affairs where emotions are orchestrated by an increasingly demagogic subsection of the elite to polarise, mobilise and demonise, a reactive, illiberal and antagonist form of politics. It presents a threat in that although perhaps it has manifested itself in one of its most extreme forms in Britain through Brexit, it is in fact an endemic threat to all of Europe. In January 2019 a group of thirty lead European thinkers, writers, historians and nobel laureates, declared that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes” and the consequences would be “calamitous” if the rising tide of populism was not challenged. The final section of the book seeks to identify the panacea to the rise of authoritarian populism and forms of agonism, both in Britain and Europe. Britain’s future relationship with the EU will be a key determiner in Britain’s course as a nation, hence the book advocates Britain’s eventual re-entry into a reformed European Union grounded within the concept of Social Europe and a conception of identity that is inclusive and accommodated in a structural framework that is deliberative and egalitarian. The chapter also seeks to challenge ‘post-truth’ politics through a reformed public sphere and inclusive and bridging speech acts and rhetoric. Finally, the chapter reflects on the value of critical multiculturalism as a mechanism that might dispel monoculturalism and nativism.