Deconstructing and Reconstructing. Embracing Alternative Ways of Producing, Classifying and Disseminating Knowledge

U ovom kratkom radu autori se zalažu za temeljito preispitivanje i reorganizaciju proizvodnje znanja. Intelektualna i kulturna nejednakost dio su socioekonomske nejednakosti. Kako možemo stvoriti bolji svijet ako nismo načisto s premisama znanja koje o tom svijetu imamo te načinom na koji se ono proizvodi? Moramo pažljivo razmotriti što je utišano, a što se glasno izgovara, što je zamagljeno, neprimjetno iako je očigledno ili čemu je dano središnje mjesto. Zadatak nije samo jasno razabrati ono što se ukazuje nakon što se iskopaju te duboko ugrađene pretpostavke. Riječ je i o tome da je potrebno stvoriti nove riječi, nove metode i nove institucije koje neće ponoviti iste greške. Zalog je sljedeću generaciju odgojiti drugačije kako bi bila spremna ucrtati novi put za proizvodnju, klasifikaciju i korištenje znanja na konstruktivniji i inkluzivniji način.In this short piece, we argue for a fundamental reconsideration and reorganization of knowledge production. Intellectual and cultural inequality are part and parcel of socioeconomic inequality. How can we create a better world if we are not clear about the premises behind the knowledge that we have about that world and how it is produced? We need to look carefully at what is silenced and what is said out loud; at what is obscured, hiding in plain sight, or given centre stage. Not only is the task at hand to see clearly what comes into view when these embedded assumptions are excavated. It is also to create new words, new methods, and new institutions that do not repeat the same mistakes. It is a plea to train the next generation differently, so they are prepared to chart a new path toward producing, classifying, and using knowledge in more constructive and inclusive ways

Urban markets and diversity: towards a research agenda

In this paper we advocate the study of local street markets to explore fundamental issues about the relationship between economy and society. This relationship evolves over time and we believe that it has been recast in an age of increasing cultural diversity and neo-liberal state regulatory structures. In street markets we can see how diversity and the nature of economic transactions become mutually constitutive. We argue that cultural diversity propels local markets, while everyday interactions in markets influence intercultural relationships. These complex processes are affected by the spatiality of markets and the regulatory environments within which they operate. We conclude by framing a research programme on street markets and discuss a number of methodological complications that would need to be addressed in this endeavour

Ashamed to wait: Want to become invisible (Australia)

Cet article est basé sur la réaction et les émotions d’une Vietnamo-Australienne apprenant un matin que de jeunes Vietnamiens ont mortellement agressé d’autres Vietnamiens. La manière dont la presse à sensations a rapporté l’événement la rend honteuse de son identité vietnamienne et de ce que son corps en révèle. L’auteure analyse les sentiments de honte créés par l’attente d’appartenance à une société australienne qui s’autoproclame multiculturelle. Elle insiste sur cette honte de l’attente, ainsi que sur la passivité et l’agressivité occasionnelle auxquelles elle conduit.The paper focuses on a Vietnamo-Australian woman’s reaction and feelings on hearing about a spectacular attack in which seve-ral Vietnamese young men killed other Vietnamese. The sensational reporting of the event made her feel ashamed of her Vietnamese identity and body. The paper reflects on the feelings of shame created by the experience of waiting for inclusion in the self-declared multicultural society of Anglo-Celtic Australia. It highlights the feeling of shame that this waiting creates and the passivity or occasional aggressivity it leads to

Under western eyes again? Rights vernacular and the gender culture \u27clash\u27

Gender features prominently in debates about the clash between human rights and culture, where ‘culture’ is often portrayed as a supreme obstacle to the realisation of women’s rights. Sometimes framed as an ethical conundrum between universalism and cultural relativism, the clash between culture and rights recites one as always and inevitably undercutting the other — culture undermines rights, and the imposition of human rights damages culture. An innovative attempt at recasting this clash has been a focus less on abstract philosophical debates and more on the cultural politics of rights — in particular, how they are made relevant to everyday life. Anthropologists Merry (2006; 2008a) and Levitt and Merry (2009; 2011) propose the analytical and ethnographic study of vernacularisation by demonstrating how, in local contexts, women’s human rights are remade in the vernacular. This approach has yielded rich knowledge about the myriad ways in which expectations of female inferiority and masculine entitlement to violence are contested — not through the import of Western ideas of human rights, but through the local idiom. This article considers the productive contribution of vernacularisation to this contested terrain, while also pointing to the limits that issue from its dependence on distinguishing the global from the local. Today, these two spaces are not so clearly discerned — particularly in multicultural settings where the local and the global are fused, and where human rights are translated into a vernacular of current political anxieties to do with racial and cultural difference. This is a vernacular that disguises or disavows racism through the language of human rights. These themes are illustrated and explored through the case study of a small community event in an outer suburb of Melbourne, where gender, culture and religion play out through both local and international rights vernacular