Political struggles over the logic of human needs quantification

In politics we will always have friends, opponents and outsiders. They constantly appear to us and at that moment when we have won one and as such has lost the support of the electorate. But political struggle goes on with other people who use the loss of one to take his post in the electorate. But even the opposition has its announced and not announced opponents. The purpose of this research is that through the theoretical and empirical elaboration of the topic we will collect data on the political power struggle between the four main political parties in Macedonia. By means of statistical data, previous surveys and surveys of 100 students we will analyze various indicators and will make their interpretation. Today, in our political and social level, we all work against one another. To work against others, strategies must be prepared to carry out self-proclaiming to the people, how to deface the opponent, how to elaborate, reveal discoveries about the shortcomings and weaknesses of the enemy camp. It is summed up in the goals - to have information that the other is corrupt, unable,so that we can attack. But the question is that working against others is it becoming a political philosophy and permanent strategy,is it becoming a business, but also a struggle without any moral boundaries, especially in Macedonia but also in Albania and Kosovo.

Water, Infrastructure and Power: Contention and Resistance in Post‐colonial Cities of the South

This article discusses how forms of humour have been mobilised to negotiate, subvert or sustain various paradigms of structural oppression. By so doing, it highlights the shift between the sacred and the profane; the religious and the secular in performance activism by looking into humour as a genre of Resistance Art, both among secular and religious actors. As case studies, ‘Christian’ comedians Charbel Khalil and animator Ralf Karam exemplify the former (the secular); and ‘Sunni’ Palestinians (involved in nationalist struggle) and the ‘Shi‘a’ resistance movement Hizbullah, the latter (the religious). The rapid evolution of Hizbullah from a marginal splinter group to a dominant segment in Lebanese, regional and international politics enhanced its orientation towards cultural and artistic productions by giving them more weight and visibility in public space. Hizbullah believes that art is the most eloquent and effective means of Islamic propagation; thus relating public interest (maslaha) to reform, resistance, mobilisation and political struggle. That might explain why Hizbullah invests heavily in performance activism. As a Resistance Movement, Hizbullah considers purposeful art, or ideologically motivated art, as Resistance Art. In its ideology, Hizbullah regards popular culture as a site of struggle between: (1) the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups in society, the subaltern groups, or the ‘oppressed’, and (2) the forces of ‘incorporation’ operating in the interest of dominant groups in society, or the ‘oppressors’. As an Islamic protest (jihadi) movement, Hizbullah considers Resistance Art as counter-hegemonic art, which aims at rectifying individuals and reforming society by portraying art as pious–moral productions that provoke serious thought and discussion, rather than what it considers the ‘purposeless’ ‘art for the mere sake of art’. All of the above, including Hizbullah, consider humour as an ‘agency’; as a socially constructed phenomenon. Both Khalil and Karam support the dictum of ‘scourge of evil laugh’. Their works exemplify the theatre of the absurd: absurdist drama or tragic comedy, replete with oxymora, which Hizbullah also subscribes to. Since Khalil and Karam consider their comic works as ‘artistic resistance’ (muqawama faniyya), then how does their humour differ from Hizbullah’s Resistance Art? Unlike Khalil and Karam, Hizbullah does not consider ‘the widest possible spectrum of humorous expression an artistic, cultural, and social good’ (Schweizer, 2020, p. 36), rather only performance activism of Resistance Art and its derivatives of didactic and purposeful-oriented art and performances.

Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido. Race, Radical Activism, and the Third World Left

The scale effects of financialization: The Fair Credit Reporting Act and the production of financial space and subjects

Review of Arnall & Chenoweth (2025): Universality and Translation: Sites of Struggle in Philosophy and Politics

Universality and translation. Sites of struggle in philosophy and politics

Politics is a public effort directed at the allocation of resources, both material and symbolic. Quite often it involves conflict in the form of a public struggle over the allocation of resources. Informed by Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this article offers a political reading of constructivism (a theoretical perspective here called Political Constructivism). It maintains that politics is guided by a conscious effort by political agents to control the commonsensical understanding of social reality using the media of political concepts, metaphors, symbols, and — the focus of this article — names and definitions. Political agents regard controlling the commonsense as one of the most effective political tools. They understand that it can be controlled by attaching meanings to political concepts, by linking metaphors and symbols to ideas, and by linking events to classes of events through naming and defining. This article examines the civic warring in Israel over the defining and naming of the Second Lebanon War as a case in point. Defining and naming the event involved a political struggle to frame the commonsense, gain the upper hand in the political process of constructing socio-political reality, and reap the political gains. The article argues that the political struggle was resolved by what I call a weak Kripkean-like defining, in other words, defining by naming.

Correlation Analysis Between Structure Financial System and Economic Growth in Romania

Over the past two hundred years or so, there has been a remarkable growth in the professionalization of occupations. This article identifies a range of social theories that may be used as maps and compasses to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of professionalization and the roles of professional education and particularly continuing professional education (CPE) in these processes. Underlying the article is the notion that educators working in this field are poorly served by the lack of adequate social theory. The article discusses limitations inherent in technicist and instrumentalist theories and various forms of liberal functionalist theory of professionalization and CPE. It then goes on to suggest the beginnings of an alternative critical social theory that may inform our thinking about professionalization and CPE. It suggests that sites of continuing professional learning and education may usefully be conceptualized as sites of struggle, and identifies a number of areas of tension and contradiction that, it is argued, must inform debates about the aims, purposes and structure of CPE, about who should gain access to what forms of knowledge, and about which forms of knowledge should be seen as most valuable. It suggests that these questions are primarily political and cannot be resolved in instrumental and technical terms alone. The contradictions and tensions identified give rise to ethical issues, issues of competence, excellence and mediocrity, issues surrounding the role of the state, professional self-regulation and monopolization, the links that may or may not be developed with wider political and industrial struggles of working people, issues concerned with occupational imperialism vs. the legitimation of occupations, professionalization and bureaucratization, and issues concerning professionalization and globalization. The hope is that this article will provoke further theorizing. In particular, I hope that it will stimulate critical research, which will look historically at the professionalization of a range of occupations and the role of CPE in this process.

Bridging various approaches to border studies, this fascinating and far-ranging collection assembled by Alejandro Madrid is solidly grounded in the aural culture particulars of the US-Mexico transnational soundscape. Music is the thing, but not without critical considerations of identity, history, gender, sexuality, and generation, among other topics. Madrid insightfully sketches the historiography of borderland studies from early treatments by Herbert Eugene Bolton to Américo Paredes’s ethnographic work at mid-century (including the invention of the term “Greater Mexico” to designate the migrant diaspora beyond political boundaries). Especially important in this was the critical identification of Mexicans as people who commonly faced Anglo discrimination and violence in the US Southwest. This approach (similarly undertaken by Carey McWilliams roughly around the same time) defined border culture in terms of social, economic, and political struggle. Subsequent treatment by Chicano scholars officially gave rise to the field of border studies — a disciplinary undertaking that both paralleled social movement efforts while simultaneously challenging the hegemony of Anglocentric approaches in history, literature, and film studies. Ten years on, further articulations on the part of Renato Rosaldo and Gloria Anzaldúa (among others in both the United States and Mexico) invoked an expanded notion of the border to focus on itinerant subjectivities. “Align[ing] . . . with some of the projects in cultural and postcolonial studies, particularly the recognition of agency among marginal, subaltern border subjects . . . the notion of hybridity became central in arguing the fluidity of border subjects to navigate in and out of cultural networks” (p. 7). Although a rich undertaking by and large, the postmodern cultural turn — according to scholars such as Pablo Vila and others — “largely avoided a multiethnic discussion of the borderlands that would include non-Mexicans, African-Americans, as well as the large variety of indigenous and ethnic communities on both sides of the border” (p. 8). Under Madrid’s editorial vision, the many musical expressions discussed in Transnational Encounters (from reggae to cumbia, from rock and roll to rap to waila to pop to nortec and beyond) reveal a number of genres less associated with the borderlands. Further, their consideration makes available a way to “explore how music allows the construction of a wide variety of networks of belonging and how different understanding[s] of the border and the borderlands are born and challenged by these forms of musical expression and their performance complexes” (p. 9).Highlights include Alejandro Madrid’s treatment of spirituals sung by the Black Seminoles in small-town Coahuila; a history of the 1960s Tijuana Sound by Josh Kun; informative discussion of Monterrey’s alternative scene by Ignacio Corona; Cathy Ragland’s biographic consideration of key norteño personality, Golden Age comedian, actor, and singer “El Piporro” (Eulalio González Ramírez); Helena Simonett’s engagement with Sonoran rap (and in one case, its curious connections to traditional Yoreme local culture); and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera’s insightful class and cultural analysis of gay dance clubs in Phoenix.Throughout the volume contributors continually confound received knowledge of the borderlands. Sure, we get the backstory that upon first glance appears somewhat refrito, but soon fresh tracks can be heard. Rather than just replaying a soundtrack of scratchy corrido and norteño hits, Luis Alvarez reveals deeply grooved social networks centered on reggae music in and between borderlands communities. Sydney Hutchinson’s creative piece “Breaking Borders/Quebrando fronteras” helps us greatly in better appreciating the cultural and political meanings of social dance. Mark C. Edberg reminds us of the complexity that is the narcocorrido genre. Donald Henriques traces the rise of “the modern mariachi” constructed through electronic means. José E. Limón tells of intergenerational tensions among Mexican-Americans in regard to Tejano music. Joan Titus’s investigation of Tohono O’odham (Southern Arizona) waila dance, music, and contemporary festival is a revelation, while Jesus A. Ramos-Kittrell’s listening to cumbia in Monterrey shows how the genre has constantly been refreshed and renewed to fit the changing times. Margaret E. Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-Barriga engage in a bit of “necro-citizenship” in chronicling the “El Veterano” conjunto festival activities of South Texas. New Mexican “manito” (fellow nuevo mexicano, from hermanito or “little brother”) musical and dance history on the part of Brenda M. Romero suggests a specific New Mexican aesthetic, while Lillian Gorman’s review of “El gringo” unpacks the seeming cultural contradiction of being “más gringo que el McDonald’s, pero mexicano en el corazón” (p. 325).In sum, Transnational Encounters delivers readers equal parts substantial information and original research in sync with insightful social and cultural analysis. True to Madrid’s synthetic vision of an integrated border studies, the essays bring the region alive. Like an outdoor music festival with multiple stages and guided cultural tour all in one, readers will want to experience each of the different offerings while simultaneously dialing up the appropriate sound samples to play along.

In Agents of God, sociologist Jeffrey Guhin describes his year and a half spent in two Sunni Muslim and two Evangelical Christian high schools in the New York City area. At first, these four schools could not seem more different, yet they are linked by much: these are all schools with conservative thoughts on gender and sexuality, with a hostility to the theory of evolution, and with a deep suspicion of secularism. And they are all also hopeful that America will be a place where their children can excel, even as they also fear the nation’s many temptations might lead their children astray. Guhin shows how these school communities use boundaries of politics, gender, and sexuality to distinguish themselves from the outside world, both in school and online. Within these boundaries, these communities have developed “external authorities” like Science, Scripture, and Prayer, each of which is felt and experienced as a real power with the ability to make commands and coerce action. For example, people can describe Science itself as showing something or the Bible itself as making a command. By offloading coercion to these external authorities, leaders in these schools are able to maintain a commitment to religious freedom while simultaneously reproducing their moral commitments in their students. Drawing on extensive classroom observation, community participation, and interviews with students, teachers, and staff, this book makes an original contribution to religious studies, sociology, and education.

Catholic Social Teaching and the Allocation of Scarce Resources John Langan S.J. (bio) I shall approach the issue of justice in the allocation of scarce resources from the viewpoint of Catholic social teaching, as developed over the last century. This teaching is found primarily in the social encyclicals issued by popes from Leo XIII (1878–1903) to John Paul II (1978- ), but also in the pastoral letters of the various bishops’ conferences, especially in the United States and in Latin America. These documents, which enjoy a high standing in Catholic teaching but which are not taken as binding in all their particulars, form part of a tradition of moral and social theorizing that a contemporary American would regard as “communitarian.” On social questions, this tradition also has shown itself to be historicist in that it is capable of modifying itself in significant ways in response to changing political and economic situations. It normally approaches issues from a universalist perspective, though it has shifted from a preoccupation with the concerns of the industrial societies of Europe to an advocacy of much of the reform agenda of the Third World. Rooted in classical and biblical sources and modified in the course of the last [End Page 401] century to include a principled acceptance of religious freedom, of human rights, and of democratic political institutions, the Catholic social tradition proposes a number of ideas that can serve as the basis for significant criticism of currently dominant liberal modes of organizing and interpreting advanced industrial societies. These ideas do not form a countertheory to liberalism so much as they indicate ways in which a religious organization that includes both hierarchical and egalitarian elements in its structure and that has both moral commitments and practical responsibilities with regard to health care can draw on its intellectual resources to develop alternative strategies for the reform of health care. I shall survey six ideas that figure prominently in Catholic social teaching and that are relevant to the allocation of scare resources in American health care. Space constraints require that I present them in a very condensed fashion, without tracing the complex development they have undergone in the internal Catholic debate or subjecting them to much criticism. First, Catholic social teaching, especially the great encyclical of John XXIII, Pacem In Terris (PT 1963), affirms the full range of human rights recognized in such modern documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949). In addition to the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights added to the original U.S. Constitution (1791), the Universal Declaration includes rights “to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services” (PT 11). Catholic social teaching has not committed itself to one particular way of institutionalizing these rights, but it effectively endorses the comprehensive West European welfare states that the Christian Democratic political parties helped to construct in the period after 1945. Second, Catholic social teaching has accorded a central organizing role to the notion of the common good, the realization of which “is the whole reason for the existence of civil authorities” (PT 54). The common good, however, is not to be understood as identical with the interest or the power of the state; rather, it “embraces the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby men are enabled to achieve their own integral perfection more fully and more easily” (PT 58; quoting Mater et Magistra). John XXIII is particularly anxious to affirm that the common good cannot be construed so as to exclude some groups or to violate the rights of individuals and that it must include both physical and spiritual goods (PT 55–61). The notion of the common good has both an inherent attractiveness and a vagueness that cries out for specification and clarification. But in the contemporary situation it serves to remind us that “individual citizens and intermediate groups are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common welfare” (PT 53). Third, while an insistence on the primacy of the common good and on the [End Page 402...

Addressing Shortcomings in Contingency Standards of Care

BackgroundBrazil is a populous high/middle-income country, characterized by deep economic and social inequalities. Like most other Latin American nations, Brazil constructed a health system that included, on the one hand, public health programs and, on the other, social insurance healthcare for those working in the formal sector. This study analyzes the political struggles surrounding the implementation of a universal health system from the mid-1980s to the present, and their effects on selected health indicators, focusing on the relevant international and national contexts, political agendas, government orientations and actors.Main textIn the 1980s, against the backdrop of economic crisis and democratization, Brazil’s health reform movement proposed a Unified Health System (SUS), which was incorporated into the 1988 Constitution. The combination of a democratic system with opportunities for interaction between various developmental and social agendas and actors has played a key role in shaping health policy since then. However, the expansion of public services has been hampered by insufficient public funding and by the strengthening of the private sector, subsidized by the state. Private enterprises have expanded their markets and political influence, in a process that has accelerated in recent years. Despite these obstacles, SUS has produced significant health-status improvements and some (although incomplete) reductions in Brazil’s vast health inequalities.ConclusionsWe find that a combination of long-term structural and contingent factors, international agendas and interests, as well as domestic political struggles, explains the advances and obstacles to building a universal system in an economically important yet unequal peripheral country. Further consolidation of SUS and reduction of health inequalities hinge on the uncertain prospects for democracy and national development, on enlarging the political coalition to support a public and universal health system, and on strengthening the state’s ability to regulate the private sector.