Playing with tension:national charisma and disgrace at Euro 2012

By the time of Euro 2012, deepening tensions of nationalism and internal social struggles were developing across Europe in worsening conditions of systemic crisis. The official football ideology of UEFA conceives Euro 2012 as a civilizing platform for mutual respect and brotherhood between competing nations. In contrast, what I call Hyper-Critical Theory conceives of football competitions like Euro 2012 as part of a de-civilising ‘sports mode of production’ that necessarily produces crisis conditions, alienation and violence on a mass scale, fostering nationalism, militarism and racism. Between these polar perspectives, the figurational sociology of sport associated with Norbert Elias proposes that major international football competitions like Euro 2012 creates and dissipates contingent tensions of ‘group charisma’ and ‘group disgrace’. Study of Euronews ‘post-national’ coverage of Euro 2012 allows their explanatory adequacy to be compared. In a competition structure like the Euros no social group – players, officials, media or fans – is able to disregard entirely the field capabilities of the ‘best minority of 11’ in the serious game of exemplifying the group charisma of nations

National Politics in the Fiction of Rohinton Mistry

Representation of contemporary politics and human problems is a major theme for contemporary litterateurs and social thinkers. A number of prolific and eminent novelists such as Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Khushwant Singh, Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Tharoor, Amitav Ghosh, Arundhti Roy, Kiran Desai and many more have tried to explore the hidden truth and treacherous activities carried out over Indian citizens by their elected political representative on the name of different government schemes. Rohinton Mistry, an Indian of Parsi in origin presently living in Canada, represented contemporary Indian politics in his novels by subverting the conscious or unconscious cultural categorisations associated with the forms of novels focussing on the human condition located in time and space. He tried to show us how politics is used by politicians of all parties to remain in power for fulfilling their vested interest. Present paper is an effort to describe and discuss how political upheavals have an impact on the psyche of common man. It would discuss the theme of politics in the fiction of Rohinton Mistry

Latin Amerika’da sosyal düşüncenin dekolonizasyonuna doğru: İbn Haldun yöntemleri

Six centuries have passed since the death of the great Andalusian thinker Ibn Khaldun, in his time one of the brightest and most universal minds, who gave us considerable insights in all the fields of social thought. In these times we must look for alternative thought patterns that allow us to explain and achieve proposals that may face the decay of regimes based on the abuse of power, violence, spendthrift and inequality, which threaten to destroy the social foundations of life on earth. This is our concern and in this paper we will try to reconsider some of Ibn Khaldun’s ideas in order to formulate alternatives that are both theoretically sound and socially efficient to rebuild our understanding of the social dynamics, and to contribute to the recovery of the dignity, solidarity, justice and austerity that can make collective life a viable foundation for the world that will arise from the present crisis.Ölümünün üzerinden 6 yüz yıl geçen, zamanının en parlak ve evrensel düşünürü olan Endülüslü düşünür İbn Haldun bize sosyal düşüncenin tüm alanlarında çok derin bakış açıları sunmuştur. Günümüzde sosyal yaşantının temellerini sarsan, iktidarlar tarafından gücün istismarı, şiddet, israf, adaletsizlik gibi konulara alternatife bakış açıları getirecek yaklaşımlara ihtiyacımız vardır. Bu yazının amcacıda teorik olarak güçlü ve sosyal olarak etkili olabilecek sosyal dinamikleri yeniden yapılandıracak ve onurlu, güçlü, ve adaletli bir birlikteliği geliştirebilecek ve günümüz krizlerine çözüm getirebilecek olan Ibn Haldun’un fikirlerini gözden geçirmektir

Alliances and Power Distribution during the Balkan Quagmire (1912-1913)

The aim of this paper is to manifest the changing alliance systems at the onset and during the Balkan Wars, as well as to discuss, how the alliance system system contributed to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In order to achieve that goal, a brief introduction to international political system will be provided. It will be noted that the most fertile environment for establishing and maintaining alliances are the bi-polar and multi-polar political systems. The tight alliance systems just before World War I created a multi-polar international system. The multipolar system will be defined and its actors during the time period will be examined.After establishing the theoretical framework of the paper, the second part will provide a brief historical background for the Balkan Wars. The international setting, power structures and the political arena will be dealt with. The next part of the paper will concentrate on interacting alliance structures and their outcomes on the Ottoman Empire. The reason why certain states allied with each other will be discussed.  The paper will discuss how alliance formations resulted in first crippling and then eradicating the Ottoman Empire. It is obvious that the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire is a comprehensive and multi-causal process and the Balkan Wars are not the only cause. This paper, will however attempt, to establish the Balkan Wars contributed to the disintegration process and the First World War finalized it.The final part will analyze the outcomes of the alliances and the multipolar international political system. It will be concluded that the Balkan Wars despite their duration and causes were a major prerequisite in both the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the outbreak of World War I. Due to these two essential functions, the Balkan Wars on its 100thanniversary deserve to be reanalyzed and reconsidered

The Conceptual World of the Ghadarites

The Ghadar movement is framed by scholars variously as socialist or protocommunist, anarchist, secular or religious nationalist. These theoretical frames developed in the European historical contexts to oppose liberalism and modernism.Framing historical experiences of colonialism and resistance to it by using theories developed in radically different conditions of European capitalism and Enlightenment, disrupts history-writing and the historical consciousness of people in the Third World. This article examines the historical consciousness that guided Ghadar resistance to colonial rule. How are we to understand the distinction between system and “lifeworld” that Jurgen Habermas makes in a context where the “system” is capitalist /imperialist/ modernist and the “lifeworld” is South Asian/ Indian Enlightenment/ colonial? What was the “lifeworld” of the Ghadar leaders that informed their understanding of nationalism and state, secularism and religion, liberation and justice? Theories contribute to creating historical consciousness and identity by showing us a view of the world that we can identify with, by providing a sense of continuity with the past. Disruption of South Asia’s historical consciousness has had profound consequences for the people of the subcontinent. This article locates Ghadar consciousness in the structural transformations of South Asia after the end of the First War of Independence in 1857 known as the Great Ghadar. The paper takes common theoretical lenses used to analyse the Ghadar movement in academic scholarship: secular and ethno-religious nationalism, anarchism and socialism as its point of departure to sketch the theoretical and philosophical routes through which Ghadar leaders arrived at comparable values and political positions. It shows how they could be secular, religious, anarchist and socialist simultaneously. The Ghadar movement is important because it is the last major resistance movement that saw South Asia through South Asian lenses and attempted to address problems of colonialism and national independence in ways that was consistent with Indian historical consciousness and cultural and intellectual traditions