Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice

The Case for an Unprincipled Foreign Policy

Drawing from Dancy's notion of ethical particularism, we explore why foreign policy doctrines are counterproductive in terms of crafting sound responses to complex, fluid and dynamic events. However, despite their horrible track record, foreign policy dogmas remain ubiquitous--a phenomenon which is largely a function of how useful they are in the political sphere

People of the Book: Empire and Social Science in the Islamic Commonwealth Period

Social science is often described as a product of 19th century Europe, and as a handmaiden to its imperial and colonial projects. However, centuries prior to the Western social science enterprise, Islamic imperial scholars developed their own ‘science of society.’ This essay provides an overview of the historical and cultural milieu in which 'Islamic' social science was born, and then charts its development over time through case studies of four seminal scholars -- al-Razi, al-Farabi, al-Biruni and Ibn Khaldun -- who played pivotal roles in establishing fields that could be roughly translated as psychology, political science, anthropology and sociology. The axioms undergirding Islamic social science are subsequently explored, with particular emphasis paid to the relations between said axioms and the discursive tradition, 'Islam.' The essay concludes with an exploration of how looking to social science enterprises beyond the ‘modern’ West can clarify the purported relationships between social science and empire

From Political Liberalism to Para-Liberalism: Epistemological Pluralism, Cognitive Liberalism & Authentic Choice

Advocates of political liberalism hold it as a superior alternative to perfectionism on the grounds that it avoids superfluous and/or controversial claims in favor of a maximally-inclusive approach undergirded by a free-standing justification for the ideology. These assertions prove difficult to defend: political interpretations of liberalism tend to be implicitly ethnocentric; they often rely upon a number of controversial, and even empirically falsified, assumptions about rationality--and in many ways prove more parochial than their perfectionist cousins. It is possible to reform political liberalism to address these challenges, but generally at the expense of the supposed normative force and universality of the liberal project. However, this para-liberal approach is much better in keeping with contemporary findings in sociology, psychology and cognitive science--and can much more effectively accommodate the illiberal challenge

Building on Nietzsche's Prelude: Reforming Epistemology for the Philosophy of the Future

Drawing from the "anti-philosophies" of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, and deploying a methodology which synthesizes critical theory with evolutionary psychology and contemporary cognitive science, our analysis demonstrates: 1. Justifications, in any context, are oriented towards social manipulation and bear no relation to any "cognitive processes." 2. The role of logic is overstated, both with regards to our justifications, and also our cognition. 3. Truth and falsity are socio-linguistic functions which have no bearing on any "objective reality." Insofar as these claims are correct, the methods and aims (both normative and descriptive) of "classical epistemology" are invalidated. We offer up a proposal as to what a more useful/meaningful epistemology might look like, exploring how such a reformulation might affect conceptions of "knowledge" and "rationality.

Symbolic Capitalism: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite

The early 20th century saw the rise of a new constellation of social and cultural elites whose wealth and status was tied to the production and manipulation of symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstractions, drawing from Bourdieu, let us call them symbolic capitalists. From the outset, symbolic capitalists have defined themselves as champions of the desperate, vulnerable, marginalized and otherwise disadvantaged in society. However, as they have grown in affluence and influence, various forms of inequality have not only persisted, they’ve grown. And although symbolic capitalists are among the most likely in the U.S. to identify as antiracists, feminists, environmentalists, or ‘allies’ to LGBTQ Americans, they are also among the primary beneficiaries of systemic and institutional inequalities. Their lifestyles and social position are contingent on exploiting and reproducing many of the social conditions they explicitly condemn. This dissertation seeks to explore the role social justice discourse plays in the political economy of the symbolic professions

Using spectral indices to assess land degradation in the Wadi al-Muhamadi basin, west of Anbar, Iraq

Land degradation is characterized by the reduction and loss of biological and economic productive capacities of lands. It is a global phenomenon and often has adverse effects at the local level. This study is to assess the state of land degradation in the Wadi al-Muhamadi basin, west of Anbar. Using spectral evidence based on remote sensing data and the results of space data. To assess land degradation and vegetation cover changes in the valley basin, and spectral data (EMI - LDI - DBSI - SI - CI - NDVI) were used to calculate the values ​​of degradation within the lands of the basin. The results showed that the area of ​​barren lands is constantly increasing by 0.02, 52.61 and 42.57% For the study years sequentially. Area of ​​simple improvement with dense vegetation decreased by 0.12 and 0. 16 and 0.42% for the same years, respectively