15 research outputs found
A Political Economy of Access: Infrastructure, Networks, Cities, and Institutions
Why should you read another book about transport and land use? This book differs in that we won’t focus on empirical arguments – we present political arguments. We argue the political aspects of transport policy shouldn’t be assumed away or treated as a nuisance. Political choices are the core reasons our cities look and function the way they do. There is no original sin that we can undo that will lead to utopian visions of urban life. The book begins by introducing and expanding on the idea of Accessibility. Then we proceed through several major parts: Infrastructure Preservation, Network Expansion, Cities, and Institutions. Infrastructure preservation concerns the relatively short-run issues of how to maintain and operate the existing surface transport system (roads and transit). Network expansion in contrast is a long-run problem, how to enlarge the network, or rather, why enlarging the network is now so difficult. Cities examines how we organize, regulate, and expand our cities to address the failures of transport policy, and falls into the time-frame of the very long-run, as property rights and land uses are often stickier than the concrete of the network is durable. In the part on Institutions we consider things that might at first blush appear to be short-run and malleable, are in fact very long-run. Institutions seem to outlast the infrastructure they manage. Many of the transport and land use problems we want to solve already have technical solutions. What these problems don’t have, and what we hope to contribute, are political solutions. We expect the audience for this book to be practitioners, planners, engineers, advocates, urbanists, students of transport, and fellow academics
Songs of life from fluvial worlds: A river, the state and Bengali Muslim char-dwellers in Assam, India
This dissertation looks at state-society relations of marginalized people living in liminal and (now) vulnerable ecologies. It is set in the fluvial and unstable landscapes called Chars or river-islands in Assam, a northeastern state in India. Using ethnography and archival sources, it looks at the historically marginalized Bengali Muslims living in these ‘chars’ and their interactions and experiences with a post-colonial majoritarian state, not just in the background of ‘jatiyotabaad’ or Assamese nationalism but also the rise and consolidation of a Hindutva regime both in India and Assam.
This narrative of state-society relations between Bengali Muslim char-dwellers and a majoritarian state is complicated by the fluvial and unpredictable ecological processes and Assam being a borderland state, sharing boundaries with other nations. Thus, as much as this dissertation understands char-dwellers’ relationship with the state through their everyday interactions, it also evaluates this relationship through events such as the ‘anti-immigration’2 Assam Movement or the more recent citizenship project called the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
This dissertation thus, in its quest to understand state-society relations, has been informed by and makes commentary on concepts such as violence, fluvial environment, immigration, citizenship, bureaucracy, affect, among others. Using the works of Baruch Spinoza (2002), Gilles Deleuze (1994, 1997) Pierre-Félix Guattari (1987 co-authored with Deleuze) and Sara Ahmed (2014), this dissertation finds affect to be rhizomatic which is a principle guiding both this dissertation’s methodology and as it will be established, the state-society relations in this context. Thus, while
it evaluates the violence that is characterized of this state-society relationship, the thesis will show that it is marked by beyond violence.
What are the varied dimensions, the other elements that characterize this state-society relation in a borderland state that historically has grappled with ‘anti-immigration’ sentiments but now also faces a fascist Hindu regime, while a river erodes and floods even more violently?
That is the story that this dissertation aims to understand
Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies
Colonialismos e pós-colonialismos são todos diferentes, mesmo quando referidos exclusivamente à situação lusófona. Neste contexto, mais do que procurar boas respostas, importa determinar quais as questões pertinentes aos nossos colonialismos e pós-colonialismos lusófonos.
Com efeito, problematizar a própria questão é começar por descolonizar o pensamento. Em nosso entender, esta é uma das tarefas candentes no processo de re-imaginação da Lusofonia, que passa, atualmente, pela procura de um pensamento estratégico que inclua uma reflexão colonialista/pós-colonialista/descolonialista.
Esta tarefa primeira, e mesmo propedêutica a qualquer construção gnoseológica, de descolonizar o pensamento hegemónico onde quer que ele se revele, não pode deixar de implicar as academias, centros de produção do saber e do conhecimento da realidade cultural, polÃtica e social. Neste sentido, descolonizar o pensamento sobre a Lusofonia passará por colocar em causa e instabilizar o que julgamos já saber e ser como ‘sujeitos lusófonos’, ‘paÃses lusófonos’, ‘comunidades lusófonas’.
Trata-se, assim, de instabilizar a uniformidade, mas também as diferenças instituÃdas, que frequentemente não são mais do que um novo género de cânone integrador e dissolvente da diferença. Por outro lado, não podemos deixar de praticar uma atitude vigilante, de cuidado e suspeição, em face do discurso sobre a diferença irredutÃvel, que pode tornar-se (como no passado) na estéril celebração do exótico. Fazer com que a diferença instabilize o que oficialmente se encontra canonizado como ‘diferença dentro do cânone’, implica negociar e re-inscrever identidades sem inverter dualismos. Uma reflexão pós-colonial no contexto lusófono não pode evitar o exercÃcio da crÃtica à s antigas dicotomias periferia/centro; cosmopolitismo/ruralismo, civilizado/selvagem, negro/branco, norte/sul, num contexto cultural de mundialização, transformado por novos e revolucionários fenómenos de comunicação, que têm também globalizado a marginalidade.
A tarefa de re-imaginar a Lusofonia implicará necessariamente a deslocação, inversão ou até implosão, do pensamento dual eurocêntrico, obrigando-nos a repensá-la dentro de uma mais vasta articulação entre local e global
Colonialisms, post-colonialisms and lusophonies: Proceedings of the 4th International Congress in Cultural Studies
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Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies
In the second volume a wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed in imperial frontier zones
Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies
In the second volume a wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed in imperial frontier zones
New Heteronormativity: The Gay-Straight Tipping Point in Suicide Prevention Amongst Male University Students in the U.S.
Ed. D. Thesis.In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst university students
aged between 25 and 34, and the second leading cause of death overall for people aged
between 15 and 34. Men die by suicide at four times the rate of women across all age groups,
at roughly 20 deaths per 100,000 individuals. This has been the case since the 1950s and
stubbornly persists; defying interventions and harm reduction efforts designed to contain it.
While such figures and trends are reflected across much of the western world, the U.S. has a
particular problem. Young men at university are at the epicentre of the crisis. Prevention
efforts increasingly focus on identities and social lives, with research fractured along concepts
of sexuality, masculinity, and social constructs. This thesis examines this multifactorial, social
ecology, and adopts a phenomenological framework to understand the place of prevention in
the social and private spheres of male students at U.S. university campuses. The study
explored the lived experiences of 29 students and utilised interpretative phenomenological
analysis. The study found considerable understanding of constructed and socio-political
factors amongst the group, including how recent shifts in the U.S. government had
contributed to societal views of young men. Despite this self-insight, wavering resilience, and a
growing frustration with the failure of statutory systems and the government to intervene has
led to stalled prevention efforts in many university contexts. Academic and public health
models must, jointly, find new means to consider wider influencing arenas on suicidality,
heteronormativity, masculinity, sports, politics, and their place in the higher education
environment. Findings are of considerable importance to agencies related to, and working at
the forefront of, suicide prevention efforts and the intersection of masculinities and
suicidalities