2,401 research outputs found

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    In this fragile world: Swahili poetry of commitment by Ustadh Mahmoud Mau

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    Sounding the dead in Cambodia: cultivating ethics, generating wellbeing, and living with history through music and sound

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    This dissertation rethinks the ethics of history and trauma in post-genocide Cambodia by examining how Cambodians use a broad repertoire of sounded practices to form relations of mutual care with ancestors, dead teachers, deities, and other predecessors. At its root, the dissertation is the study of an ethical-religious-aesthetic system by which Cambodians recall predecessors’ legacies, care for the dead, and engage ancestors and deities as supportive co-presences. Traditional and popular musics, Buddhist chants and incantations, whispers, and the non-acoustic practice of “speaking in the heart” (niyāy knung citt) are among the primary sounded practices that Cambodians use to engage the dead. Parts One and Two detail those sounded practices and their social implications. I discuss how previous approaches have misinterpreted the nature and capacities of Cambodian music and other ritualized sounds through historicist, colonialist, and secular epistemologies, which cast those sounds as “culture” or “performance” and ignore their capacities as modes of ethics and exchange with the dead. Instead, by rethinking those sounded practices as Cambodian-Buddhist ethics and exchange, I examine how Cambodians fulfill an obligation to care for the ancestors who have supported themselves. I suggest fulfilling that obligation generates personal wellbeing and provides a new model for what living with history can sound like and feel like. Taken together, in Parts One and Two, I detail the non-linear temporalities, types of personhood, ethics, exchange with the dead, and the intergenerational mode of living with history that Cambodians bring into being through music and sound. Part Three zooms further out to discuss how sounded relations with the dead have consequences for national and international politics, which leads to larger critiques of the Cambodian government’s politicization of Khmer Rouge remembrance and international humanitarian efforts that attempt to help Cambodians heal from trauma. Since at least the mid-1990s, a plurality of international activists, scholars, volunteers, and development workers have concluded that Cambodians perpetuate a silence about the Khmer Rouge era that furthers their traumatization. Most observers suggest that Cambodians need to provide public testimony about that violent past in order to heal. This dissertation contests those conclusions, following work in anthropology and trauma studies that problematizes the universalization of the Western psychotherapeutic notion of biomedical trauma and its treatments. I suggest that those calls for a testimonial voice presuppose historicist modes of remembrance and knowledge production that naturalize liberal Western models of personhood, citizenship, justice, wellness, and political agency. To move away from those models, I argue that Cambodian sounded and ritual practices generate what I term “modes of being historical” and “ways of living with history” that are intimate, familial, intergenerational, engage national pasts, and can be a mode of political action. Those “modes of being historical” include but are not limited to telling stories of others’ struggles and deaths. I illustrate how Cambodians have long used a multitude of sounded practices to engage the past, grapple with life’s difficulties, and care for themselves and their ancestors. This dissertation posits that sound studies and ethnomusicology can further the emerging scholarly shifts toward the culturally specific ways people cope with difficult pasts. I propose a new approach to post-violence ethics and history by arguing for the decolonizing possibilities of emphasizing the modes of being historical, ethical relations of mutual care, and ontological entanglements with the dead that Cambodians generate through music and sound

    The Mogadishu Effect: America\u27s Failure-Driven Foreign Policy

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    The October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, commonly referred to as “Black Hawk Down,” transformed American foreign policy in its wake. One of the largest special operations missions in recent history, the failures in Somalia left not only the United States government and military in shock, but also the American people. After the nation’s most elite fighting forces suffered a nearly 50 percent casualty rate at the hands of Somali warlords during what many Americans thought was a humanitarian operation, Congress and the American people erupted in anger. Although the United States has continued to be seen as an overbearing global peacekeeping force in the thirty years since Somalia, the Battle of Mogadishu served as the turning point for a generational foreign policy shift that significantly limited future global intervention because of the overt publicization of battle’s aftermath in the media, domestic and international reactions, and a fear of repeating the same mistakes elsewhere. The first major American loss of life after the Cold War, the battle and the reaction that followed, known as the “Mogadishu effect,” forced President Clinton to rethink the United States’ role internationally. Clinton and his administration struggled to convince the American people that involvement overseas, especially global peacekeeping, was vital to international order after becoming the world’s sole superpower. Congressional hearings, presidential correspondence, government documents, poll results, and numerous media releases across Clinton’s presidency mark the distinct shift in American foreign policy that took place after Mogadishu. Although he inherited involvement in the United Nations mission in Somalia from George H.W. Bush, the failures in Somalia transformed Clinton’s humanitarian involvement in Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda, tarnishing the remainder of his presidency and shifting expectations of significant American involvement in international peacekeeping after the Cold War

    An American Knightmare: Joker, Fandom, and Malicious Movie Meaning-Making

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    This monograph concerns the long-standing communication problem of how individuals can identify and resist the influence of unethical public speakers. Scholarship on the issue of what Socrates & Plato called the “Evil Lover” – i.e., the ill-intended rhetor – began with the Greek philosophers, but has carried into [post]Modern anxieties. For instance, the study of Nazi propaganda machines, and the rhetoric of Hitler himself, rejuvenated interest in the study of speech and communication in the U.S. and Europe. Whereas unscrupulous sophists used lectures and legal forums, and Hitler used a microphone, contemporary Evil Lovers primarily draw on new, internet-related tools to share their malicious influence. These new tools of influence are both more far-reaching and more subtle than the traditional practices of listening to a designated speaker appearing at an overtly political event. Rhetorician Ashley Hinck has recently noted the ways that popular culture – communication about texts which are commonly accessible and shared – are now significant sites through which citizens learn moral and political values. Accordingly, the talk of internet influencers who interpret popular texts for other fans has the potential to constitute strong persuasive power regarding ethics and civic responsibility. The present work identifies and responds to a particular case example of popular culture text that has been recently, and frequently, leveraged in moral and civic discourses: Todd Phillips’ Joker. Specifically, this study takes a hermeneutic approach to understanding responses, especially those explicitly invoking political ideology, to Joker as a method of examining civic meaning-making. A special emphasis is placed on the online film criticisms of Joker from white nationalist movie fans, who clearly exemplify ways that media responses can be leveraged by unethical speakers (i.e., Evil Lovers) and subtly diffused. The study conveys that these racist movie fans can embed values related to “trolling,” incelism, and xenophobia into otherwise seemingly innocuous talk about film. While the sharing of such speech does not immediately mean its positive reception, this kind of communication yet constitutes a new and understudied attack on democratic values such as justice and equity. The case of white nationalist movie fan film criticism therefore reflects a particular brand of communicative strategy for contemporary Evil Lovers in communicating unethical messages under the covert guise of mundane movie talk

    The mobilising power of corruption: assessing anticorruption movements in Brazil

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    Corruption is a long-lasting problem the world over. Capitalism, modernisation, development, and democracy were not able to reduce it. If these global transformations have failed, why would people be expected to do something about it? When conditions are right, people actually do something about it, and they are sometimes victorious. But what are the contextual and institutional conditions under which constructive anticorruption social movements form and thrive? The answer to this research question is related to corruption perception and the nature of information. Using qualitative techniques such as case studies and process tracing, I analyse two anticorruption laws initiated and enacted through popular initiatives in Brazil. As in contrast, I analyse a third bill, the 10 Measures against Corruption, which was not successful, despite also counting on a significant anticorruption mobilisation. These three events depict the conditions under which people organise and react against corruption. In comparing them, information appears as a crucial variable in the mobilising process, being capable of transforming people’s apathy and cynicism into political participation.Keywords: social movements, anticorruption, corruption, corruption perception, political participation, accountabilit

    Homosexuals are revolting : a history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973 -1993

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    Defence date: 14 January 2019Examining Board: Professor Pieter M. Judson, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Laura L. Downs, EUI (Second Reader); Professor Diarmaid Ferriter, University College Dublin; Doctor Sean Brady, Birkbeck, University of London.This project explores the history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland from 1973 to 1993. Using primary archival material and oral interviews it challenges the current historical narrative which presupposes that gay and lesbian activism in Ireland was confined to a legal battle to decriminalise sexual activity between males and confined to the activities of one man, David Norris. The project broadens the campaign for gay rights in Ireland to include other individuals, organisations, concerns, aims, strategies, and activities outside Dublin. In particular, the thesis demonstrates the extent to which there were numerous gay and lesbian organisations throughout Ireland which utilised the media, the trade union movement, student movement and support from international gay/lesbian organisations to mount an effective campaign to improve both the legal and social climate for Ireland’s gay and lesbian citizens. While politicians in recent years have claimed credit for the dramatic changes in attitudes to homosexuality in Ireland, this project demonstrates the extent to which these dramatic changes were pioneered, not my politicians, but rather by gay and lesbian activists throughout Ireland, in both urban and provincial regions, since the 1970s. The project considered the emergence of a visible gay community in Ireland and its impact on changing perceptions of homosexuals; the important role played by lesbian women; the role of provincial gay/lesbian activists; the extent to which HIV/AIDS impacted the gay rights campaign in Ireland; and how efforts to interact with the Roman Catholic Church, political parties, and other important stakeholders shaped the strategies of gay/lesbian organisations. Homosexuals are revolting: A history of gay and lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973-1993, reveals the extent to which gay and lesbian activists were important agents of social and political change in Ireland, particularly in terms of Irish sexual mores and gender norms. This project helps to contextualise the dramatic changes in relation to homosexuality that have taken place in recent years in Ireland and encourages scholars to further explore the contribution of Ireland’s queer citizens to the transformation of Ireland in the twentieth- and twentieth-first century.Chapters 1 'Smashing the wall of silence: Irish Gay Rights Movement' and chapter 3 'Decentring the metropolis: gay and lesbian activism in Cork, forging their own path?' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article '“Homosexuals are revolting” : gay & lesbian activism in the Republic of Ireland 1970s -1990s' (2017) in the journal 'Studi Irlandesi: a journal of Irish studies

    The Court and Capital Punishment on Different Paths: Abolition in Waiting

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    The American death penalty finds itself in an unusual position. On the ground, the practice is weaker than at any other time in our history. Eleven jurisdictions have abandoned the death penalty over the past fifteen years, almost doubling the number of states without the punishment (twenty-three). Executions have declined substantially, totaling twenty-five or fewer a year nationwide for the past six years, compared to an average of seventy-seven a year during the six-year span around the millennium (1997-2002). Most tellingly, death sentences have fallen off a cliff, with fewer the fifty death sentences a year nationwide over the past six years – compared to highs of over three hundred per year in the mid-1990s. The last two years have seen only eighteen death sentences per year nationwide – fewer than two per capital jurisdiction. This article examines the dynamics underlying this great decline of the American death penalty and assesses the likelihood of its continued diminution. At the same time capital punishment is withering in practice, the prospects for constitutional abolition via judicial decree have also decreased substantially, as the U.S. Supreme Court has shown marked hostility toward constitutional regulation of the death penalty. This new hostility replaces a jurisprudence that was increasingly hospitable to extensive regulation – even judicial abolition – of American capital punishment. The Court’s recent decisions threaten to jettison the jurisprudential commitment to “evolving standards of decency” as the touchstone for interpreting the Eighth Amendment in favor of a more limited originalist approach to gauging “cruel and unusual” punishments. The Court also appears eager to discourage end-stage litigation and to remove obstacles to both state and federal executions. The simultaneous decline of public support for the death penalty and judicial regulation of the death penalty has produced “abolition in waiting” – a marginalized practice that will remain on the books until changes in the composition of the Court permit reassessment of the death penalty’s constitutionality

    Grand narrative and the Islamic State: investigating propaganda, education and narrative in Dabiq

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    The emergence of the Islamic State (IS) Caliphate in 2014 in Iraq and Syria brought with it a profound challenge to Western visions of the political order of the Middle East. The group’s system of belief and understanding of religious knowledge confronted long-held and Western -backed grand narratives emphasising the primacy of secularism and liberalism to social and political reality. This thesis is concerned with interrogating the dominant themes of the grand narrative of the Islamic State militant group, focussing on their online magazine propaganda series Dabiq. It analyses these texts using thematic coding analysis. Using the work of philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, specifically his text The Postmodern Condition, this thesis applies the theory of grand narrative to understand the reasons why once-dominant Western grand narratives have collapsed. This has led to an incredulity toward universal or liberal grand narratives, resulting in a retreat that has allowed powerful anti-modern forces such as IS to take advantage and institute their own narrative and systems of knowledge. The thesis begins with an introduction that maps out its motivation, structure and goals. Chapter One conveys the substance of Lyotard’s work and the nature of the areas of enquiry. Chapter Two presents the issues of ideology and imaginaries (Western and Islamic) and the importance of education to grand narrative. Chapter Three illustrates the history and influence of Western and non-Western colonialism in shaping the state of grand narrative in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chapter Four outlines the West’s relationship to the Enlightenment and how this shaped Western attitudes to grand narratives of knowledge and education, while also examining the challenge offered to this by Islamic educational forces. Chapter Five explicates this comparison further between Western and Islamic forms of learning, while Chapter Six discusses methodology and thematic coding, and Chapter Seven discusses the analysis of the themes of Dabiq. This thesis concludes that the three dominant themes of the grand narratives found in Dabiq are: 1) the importance of the Caliphate to unleashing individual and collective transformation; 2) jihadist activism and 3) the prophetic methodology as the system of knowledge within the Caliphate. By analysing these themes we can understand how the grand narratives of IS are not truly educational but propagandistic in nature. This thesis argues that a genuinely liberal grand narrative offers the truest challenge to that of IS, but that this requires a deep and authentic commitment to the values of liberalism that Western political forces have often failed to realise
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