Speculative Literature in Modern Society: Octavia Butler and the Tragedy of the Commons

What leads to peaceful prosperity and what leads to destructive collapse in any society? While it may seem daunting or overwhelming to dissect the success or collapse of a multi-faceted society, there are lenses and tools through which we are able to do so, such as political theory and speculative dystopian fiction. By using lenses to analyze the society in which we live, we are able to recognize the seeds of both prosperity and destruction in our society that may otherwise be overlooked or ignored. The speculative dystopian fiction of Octavia Butler may be considered as building upon the political theory of the tragedy of the commons. Butler provides her American audience an analysis of the root causes of this tragedy, as well as some possible preventative measures or solutions. We are able to read her novel, The Parable of the Sower, as a warning against ignoring current trends in our society which could lead to our tragedy of the commons. Octavia Butler was an American author of speculative dystopian fiction, and was the first science fiction novelist to be awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 1955. She was born in California on June 22, 1947 and died in Washington on January 24, 2006. Butler was well-known for critiquing social hierarchies and inequalities as well as for exploring what forms healthy, sustainable communities. Her first novel in her Parable Series, The Parable of the Sower, introduces Butler’s reader to a broken community in a divided society after an environmental apocalypse. Through her protagonist, Lauren Olamina, Butler shows her reader the flaws and failures in society that lead to the community’s collapse as well as how a community can be rebuilt

Genocide: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

This article surveys risk factors for genocide and genocide prevention from the perspectives of four social science disciplines: sociology, social psychology, political science, and economics. Each discipline brings a valuable set of concepts and tools to bear in genocide research. Moreover, fruitful multi- and inter-disciplinary collaboration across the four disciplines (and other fields) is shedding new insights into why genocide has have been such a recurring tragedy in human affairs and how such atrocities can be prevented

The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons: A New Problem. An Application to the Fisheries.

The operation and management of common property resources (“the commons”) have been exhaustively examined in economics and political science, both in formal analysis and in practical applications. “Tragedy of the Commons” metaphor helps to explain why people overuse shared resources. On the other side, Anti-Commons Theory is a recent theory presented by scientists to explain several situations about new Property Rights concerns. An “anti-commons” problem arises when there are multiple rights to exclude. Little attention has been given to the setting where more than one person is assigned with exclusion rights, which may be exercised. We analyze the “anti-commons” problem in which resources are inefficiently underutilized rather than over-utilized as in the familiar commons setting. In fact, these two problems are symmetrical in several aspects.Anti-Commons Theory; Property Rights

Agonising choices : tragedy and international relations - a tragic vision of humanitarian intervention in the Bosnian War

Tragedy is one of the oldest metaphorical lenses of International Relations. The tragic vision of politics, from Thucydides to contemporary realist theorists, lies at the core of classical realism. However, it is striking how rarely the concept of tragedy has been applied to the discourse of humanitarian intervention. This lacuna is a weakness on both the intellectual and political levels, as nowhere are clashes between competing ethical perspectives more glaring. An examination of the concept of tragedy, as conceived from its Greek origins, can illuminate an understanding of the morally contradictory imperatives created by armed intervention. Using the Bosnian War as a case study, Greek classical tragedy provides a framework to grasp the agonising choices and insoluble ethical dilemmas brought about by humanitarian intervention, in contrast to mere narratives of salvation. The argument conveyed in this article seeks to reconcile a tragic vision with the idea of progress and political action. It concludes by suggesting that the fundamental lessons that lie at the heart of tragedy should be associated with another major concept in Greek culture, namely, the Aristotelian idea of phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’.http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=RIShj2021Political Science

Facing the tragedy of change in the semiotic process : the role of science

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552We offer an interpretation of the concepts of integrity and quality of science based on semiotics. Science is a key component of the semiotic process in society, its role being the selection of representations of relevant events for guiding policy with the ultimate goal of preserving society's identity. The fitness of scientific information depends on the definition of its usefulness and relevance, and, therefore, on the identity of the 'self' of the semiotic process. Several distinct definitions of identity co-exist that are negotiated across levels (individuals, households, communities). Growing feelings of belonging to a post-truth world signal a failure in the preservation of the integrity of the semiotic process: scientific crises are coupled with social and political crises in an impredicative way. It is concluded that science should evolve from being a mere source of facts to a source of insights about how to deal with the tragedy of change

Seeking Relevance: Toward A Strategic Plan for Political Science

Surveys suggest that in the 1970s most political scientists wished they had chosen a different profession, a true tragedy, as Ricci (1984) writes. We discuss the causes of alienation, but also offer data suggesting that the situation had improved markedly by 1999. We speculate that this has much to do with a better job market and more realistic expectations about that job market. Nonetheless, all is not well. Both conservative senators and prominent political scientists continue to question the importance of Political Science (e.g., Cohen 1999). The APSA has attempted to increase its relevance by returning to its Progressive roots, attempting to shape public policy in a statist direction. We argue that such attempts will lack empirical power and political legitimacy, and thus will have little impact. Instead, using lenses borrowed from strategic planning and from the public personnel management literature, we argue that our field should build stronger links with the applied world. Second, APSA needs to study and systematize public personnel issues of the field, much as we have already (quite properly) done regarding race and gender issues. Third, we should encourage political debate within the field. This would require valuing political diversity and intellectual flexibility. Finally, to a considerable degree the Political Science niche is that of a prep school for lawyers. This is not the right market for us. Rather, given American voters\u27 remarkable ignorance of the political system, we should take over new markets: undergraduate civic education and the training of secondary social studies teachers. In this way we can, over time, assure both a more rational electorate and our own relevance

In Defense Of Technology

During the Middle Ages, i.e. the Dark Ages, man\u27s worldview was largely dominated by mysticism, irrationality, and collectivism. The universe was widely perceived as epistemologically unknowable and meta­physically malevolent, dooming man to suffering and tragedy. Given the widespread political and social instability, as well as the ravages of un­stoppable plagues and warmongering nations, such conclusions were not totally unreasonable. The Enlightenment and its corollary, the Scientific Revolution, delivered western civilization from the Dark Ages into an age of reason, science, and individualism. What was once perceived as un­knowable, uncertain, and malevolent, became knowable, certain, and be­nevolent. The universe became a place where man could flourish, instead of rot in his own misery. As science took hold, the world seemingly became more knowable, more livable, and more suitable for the pursuit of human desires and happiness. This rational, scientific,and individualist worldview was reborn in the Scientific Revolution, and its subsequent development of technology

The South African War: Implications and Convictions of Postwar Politics and Policy

Apartheid in South Africa is a widely known tragedy in the realm of history and political science. In order to understand the racism and prejudice that served as the framework of apartheid, it is important to understand it’s inception and the ripe settings for its implementation. The aim of this paper is to trace and depict the events leading up to apartheid, including the Boer Wars and the consequences of Britain’s Scorched Earth policy. Using works such as Professor Higginson’s “Hell in Small Place: Agrarian Elites and Collective Violence in the Western Transvaal, 1900-1907,” and primary documents from Jan Smuts, I conclude and emphasize the importance of pre-apartheid policies and military strategies that set the framework for an apartheid state

Lukács and Nietzsche: Revolution in a Tragic Key

György Lukács’s Marxist phase is usually associated with his passage from neo-Kantianism to Hegelianism. Nonetheless, Nietzschean influences have been covertly present in Lukács’s philosophical development, particularly in his uncompromising distaste for the bourgeois society and the mediocrity of its quotidian values. A closer glance at Lukács’s corpus discloses that the influence of Nietzsche has been eclipsed by the Hegelian turn in his thought. Lukács hardly ever mentions the weight of Nietzsche on his early thinking, an influence that makes cameo appearances throughout his lifetime writings. During the period of his adherence to a Stalinist approach to communism, his new subjectivity seems to be re-constituted through a disavowal of his earlier romantic anti-capitalism. Implicit in Lukács’s attack on Nietzsche in the Destruction of Reason (1952) is an acerbic reaction to the mute presence of the latter in his earlier thought. Apart from his ignorance of the unreliability of the collection of the Will to Power edited by Peter Gast and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his battle against the anti-proletariat Nietzsche in the Destruction is waged on a metaphysical, non-historical plain. Lukács’s pre-Marxist works (Soul and Form, On Poverty of Spirit, and The Theory of the Novel) in a sense betray the instance of a writer who writes most of someone where he omits his name. Thus perceived, Lukács’s early corpus lends itself to a symptomatic reading. This essay seeks to extract the Nietzschean undercurrents of Lukács’s work through a reflection on the romantic anti-capitalist tendencies that the young Lukács shared with Nietzsche. For although it may appear that Nietzsche lacked a clear politics, his criticism of the bourgeois ethos as a structure based on debt/guilt [Schuld], and his critique of modern value-system and nihilism paved the way for the emergence of Lukács’s theory of reification. Nietzsche’s category of 'transvaluation of values’ suggests a total transfiguration of reality, a radical rupture with the ordinary state of things, and as such carries within itself a revolutionary promise. Drawing a distinction between political romanticism and romantic politics, I argue that romantic anti-capitalism contains a potential for the latter. The essay further traces the link between Lukács’s ‘romantic politics’ and the persistence of a thought of the tragic (a ‘tragic vision’) in his texts that, despite its temporary decline during his realist period, is undismissable in different constellations of his thought

The democratical ideal and the Oresteia between 'Back to Basics' and cultural studies, between old and new historicism

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