Political Concepts Research Articles

CULTURAL POLITICS OF EX-NONMAINSTREAM RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS MUHDI AKBAR IN THE SELAYAR ISLANDS

<p>Non-mainstream religious movements are a characteristic feature of island regions isolated by the sea. This movement first existed as a societal need at that time. This article attempts to answer the question of how a community of ex-nonmainstream religious movements carries out cultural politics to survive amid the increasingly dominant mainstream religion. This study is based on interview data and observations conducted on several informants. Movement history manuscripts are also a secondary data source in this research. Objectively, it was found that the ex-Muhdi Akbar community carried out cultural politics in three forms. First, they reoriented their movement from focusing on religion and politics to social and cultural ones. Second, open membership regulations and freedom in choosing an official religion means they have a higher emotional bond. Third, accommodation in the government strengthens their position as religious people and does not deviate so that the problems they previously experienced can be minimized. This form of cultural politics is a formula for the success of a non-mainstream religious movement.</p>

Research on the Infiltration of Scientific Spirit in High School Biology Teaching Under the Background of Curriculum Ideology and Politics

Curriculum thinking and politics is an exploration of moral education reform and a strategic measure to carry out the fundamental task of cultivating people. High school is a key period for students to form correct values. In addition to ideological and political courses, other courses also need to play the function of educating people, and take courses as the carrier to provide value guidance to students in the process of knowledge imparting and ability training. High school biology is a fundamental course in natural sciences and an important carrier for cultivating students’ scientific literacy. However, through questionnaire surveys and interviews at internship schools, it was found that the infiltration of scientific spirit into high school biology teaching is not ideal. Teachers have insufficient understanding of ideological and political education in the curriculum, and they cannot fully tap into educational materials in textbooks. The methods for infiltrating scientific spirit are relatively single, making it difficult to balance ideological and political infiltration with knowledge teaching. This article selects the scientific spirit as an ideological and political element based on the needs of national development and the characteristics of the discipline, and permeates it into biology teaching. Finally, the teaching effectiveness is evaluated through various methods. The aim is to enrich the theoretical research of thinking and politics in senior biology curriculum, and to provide teaching reference for teachers to cultivate students’ scientific spirit in biology teaching. After conducting questionnaire surveys and interviews with students and teachers, the following conclusions were drawn: firstly, although the teachers and students of the school have a limited understanding of ideological and political education in the curriculum, most of them support the integration of ideological and political education into biology teaching. Secondly, some teachers still place more emphasis on imparting knowledge in their teaching and have not fully utilized the educational value of biology. The implementation of ideological and political education in biology teaching is not ideal. Thirdly, overall, the penetration of scientific spirit in biology teaching is not satisfactory and needs further strengthening. In summary, teachers need to strengthen their exploration of textbooks and deepen their understanding of teaching design in their daily teaching process, in order to continuously improve their ideological and political education for students and fully leverage the educational value of biology. Integrating scientific spirit into biology teaching is not only in line with the ideological and political concepts of the curriculum, but also in line with the core competencies of the discipline, which can better leverage the educational value of biology.

Political Epistemology without Apologies

AbstractPolitical epistemology has become a popular field of research in recent years. It sets itself the ambitious task to intertwine epistemology with social and political theory in order to do justice to the relationships between truth and politics, or reason and power. Yet many contributions either expand arguments and concepts from traditional epistemology to political phenomena or use existing theories and frameworks from social and political theory to address the politics of epistemological questions. The former approach (prominent, e.g., in the epistemic injustice debate) leads to an epistemisation of political phenomena and concepts coupled with their de‐politicization, the latter approach (prominent, e.g., in Frankfurt School critical theory) leads to a politicization of epistemic phenomena and concepts coupled with their de‐epistemisation. Instead, it is argued that political epistemology requires reworking even basic concepts, due to its three foundational commitments: It is committed to the claim that socio‐material conditions of existence matter epistemically (minimal materialism), to the self‐reflection of the socio‐material conditions of political epistemology's own arguments and theories (radical self‐reflexivity), and to a specific form of epistemic humility (epistemic non‐sovereignty). Using the notion of normativity as an exemplary problem, the article closes by highlighting the difficulty of maintaining these three commitments.

‘Time becomes memory, and memory becomes the ditch in which we drown’: rethinking modes of knowing the past in Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer (2020)

ABSTRACT This article argues that historical novels play a crucial part in rethinking contemporary modes of knowing the past. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics and Judith Butler’s thoughts on precarious life, this article elucidates the close relationship between modes of knowing the past and progressive politics in the present, crystallised in the political concept of grievability. National histories paint the picture of ‘a past without strangers’, in the terms of Achille Mbembe, creating narrow circles of grievability which do not challenge established solidarities and structures of political inequalities in the present. This article goes on to demonstrate that historical novels may subvert this nationalist fantasy through the portrayal of liminal characters in liminal spaces. Ian McGuire’s The Abstainer (2020), set in an intra-European colonial context, continually breaks the frame of what is considered a grievable life by criticising a mode of knowing the past that prioritises mourning the dead over caring for the needs of the living in the present. In conclusion, this article argues that The Abstainer ultimately proposes a radical and paradoxical mode of knowing the past: It urges us to recognise that commemoration of the dead may become an obsessions and justification for acts of violence, and encourages us to rethink not just what histories we tell, but also how we tell them.

Chasing the authoritarian spectre: Detecting authoritarian discourse with large language models

AbstractThe paper introduces a deep‐learning model fine‐tuned for detecting authoritarian discourse in political speeches. Set up as a regression problem with weak supervision logic, the model is trained for the task of classification of segments of text for being/not being associated with authoritarian discourse. Rather than trying to define what an authoritarian discourse is, the model builds on the assumption that authoritarian leaders inherently define it. In other words, authoritarian leaders talk like authoritarians. When combined with the discourse defined by democratic leaders, the model learns the instances that are more often associated with authoritarians on the one hand and democrats on the other. The paper discusses several evaluation tests using the model and advocates for its usefulness in a broad range of research problems. It presents a new methodology for studying latent political concepts and positions as an alternative to more traditional research strategies.

Motions in Pictures: From Habermas’s Informal Political Sphere to Formal Politics in the Films Footloose, Land and Freedom and The Beguiled

This article analyses three historical fiction films, Footloose, Land and Freedom and The Beguiled, to help illuminate aspects of politics and political theory. We study them to explore the relationship between Habermas’s concepts of the lifeworld and political spheres, which analysts have critiqued as opaque. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, we debate prevailing understandings of the implications of his work for deliberative democracy via an exploration of the films. By expanding the definition of the term ‘motion’ (otherwise known as ‘draft resolution’), we relate this concept to these Habermasian themes. Thus, this paper analyses feature film case studies as they incorporate motions into fictionalised accounts. We suggest that focusing on these movies’ motions, embedded in unfolding narratives, can help reconceive Habermas’s work to illustrate fluidity in how people and ideas may move between informal and more formal spheres. Ultimately, by showcasing the importance of motions in political participation, via these movies, we advance the idea that motions may be seen as part of a ladder of involvement, providing further opportunities for encouraging participation.

The Druze in the army: a (very) limited entrance ticket to Israeli (Jewish) society

This article explores the complex and often contradictory experiences of the Druze community in Israel, specifically examining how military service has shaped their identity and integration into Israeli society. While military service is typically viewed as a means of achieving social equality and inclusion, the Druze continue to face discrimination despite fulfilling their national obligations. Using semi-structured interviews, this study investigates the implications of the Druze's compulsory conscription, focusing on concepts of reciprocity, convertibility, and identity politics. Findings reveal that while military service reinforces the Israeli identity among Druze youth, it fails to provide the expected access to equal rights and full citizenship, thus perpetuating their marginalized status within an ethno-republican state.

Entre dois mundos: um exame da recepção de ideias da Revolução Francesa em Raízes do Brasil

There is no doubt that the Enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and fraternity have been very present in the history of several Ibero-American nations. In the case of Brazil, however, the state, guided by these noble ideals, has often engendered their opposite. The lack of certain essential services and guarantees for citizens in the Brazilian state is undeniable. Knowing the importance of such principles in Brazil, the aim is to understand how Sérgio Buarque de Holanda uses certain emblematic concepts of Enlightenment philosophy and what role they played, in his perception, in Brazilian political formation.

Politinio mąstymo metmenys Immanuelio Kanto kritinėje filosofijoje

Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy revolutionised thinking and left unanswered the question of how politics as philosophy and science is possible. Hannah Arendt was right to associate politics with the reflective power of decision, but she left unanswered the questions of what conception of politics is implied by Kant’s critical system and what are the limits of political philosophy and political science. The paper argues that politics is an aesthetic idea and therefore has no objectively universal definition and remains necessarily open to interpretation by various epistemic and political communities. Aesthetic ideas also substantiate the possibility of political science as symbolic cognition and reformulate the challenge of political philosophy to confine politics solely within the judgment.

Political Communication Study: A Review

Political communication is one of the most fundamental and crucial concepts in politics and communication studies. This article systematically reviews existing relevant literature to the definition of political communication and theoretical and empirical study of political communication. It hopes to provide some guidance for this field, with the aim of promoting the development of political communication study. This study finds that digital technology is quietly and powerfully shaping a new political communication landscape and the political communication study is showing an increasingly strong trend of interdisciplinary intersection and integration, with computational and experimental social science methods continuing to empower and become new research directions.

The Medical Professional Elimination Program and the Ideology and Motivation of Nazi Physicians.

The appointment of a new chancellor in 1933 marked the beginning of the Third Reich in Germany. The ideology of the Nazi Party focused on establishing a pure Aryan state characterized by nationalism and racial superiority. Their goals would be achieved through a totalitarian form of government that enforced the subjugation, exclusion, and elimination of those they defined as inferior minorities, particularly Jews, who were depicted as non-human. Implementation of the Nazi ideology required the exclusion of Jewish people and other dissenters, particularly Jewish physicians, from their professions. The exclusion of Jewish physicians, referred to herein as a "Medical Professional Elimination Program," was gradually imposed on other Jewish professions in nations absorbed by the Third Reich, and particularly enforced by incorporated Austria. Why did German and Austrian doctors support the Nazi racial ideology, the removal of Jewish physicians from every possible sphere of influence, and subsequently participate in criminal medical research and experimentation, as well as euthanasia of perceived non-contributors to society, and become involved in refining the effectiveness of the death camps? Was the Medical Professional Elimination Program an opportunistic political concept, or was it part of an entrenched ideology? With these questions in mind, the lives of four key Nazi physicians and two institutions are examined.

The Political Potential of Autonomous Time Generation in Jean Genet's The Balcony

With the development of timekeeping machinery in the late Middle Ages, time became publicly visible on mechanical dials. This way of spatializing time aimed to crystallize the flow of time and experience into eternity at a single moment, reaching its peak in the 19th century. The natural rhythm of time and the discrete temporality of personal experience were strictly unified into a series of points, distributed along a historical timeline that never turns back. This unidirectional arrow of time remains evident in the study of The Balcony. Research on The Balcony has primarily focused on its political expressions in space, often overlooking the potential of theatrical temporality. This indicates that studies of the political aspects of The Balcony are overly focused on the dimension of visibility, neglecting the exploration of theatrical invisibility. This article will utilize textual data and analysis, based on Deleuze's theory of Aion time, to develop a discussion on the pure formal time in Genet's theater, incorporating relevant political concepts to explore its autonomously generated political potential further, focusing on the characteristics of theatrical time that continuously provoke questioning and ambiguity.

Examining Ukraine’s EU Candidate Status: (When) Does the Accession Process Turn from Political to Legal?

This article explores the nature of the notion “candidate country status” in the context of EU accession. In particular it enquires whether the candidate status, which was granted to Ukraine by the European Council on 23 June 2022, has any actual legal implications or is the whole accession process up to the point where accession agreement is signed entirely devoid of legal consequences. Legal doctrine seems to generally answer this question in the affirmative, explaining that the candidate status was a rather political concept bearing primarily symbolic relevance. However, the example of Ukraine, which was granted candidate status much more rapidly than a number of other countries before it, challenges to explore the topic in more depth, in particular by delving into the CJEU’s existing case law on candidate status and the possibility of challenging the granting of candidate status through litigation in the CJEU.

Constituent power and independence movements: On the founding and foundation of political orders and the meaning of political independence

This paper links the debates on constituent power and European independence movements in order to develop a theoretically compelling and empirically grounded conception of constituent power, as well as to assess in how far constituent power contributes to the meaning of political independence. In its first part, it builds upon recent republican contributions to the debates on corporate, joint and collective agency and argues that, even on individualist grounds, constituent power can convincingly be understood as a surplus of collective agency that corporate agency cannot encompass. In the second part of the paper, these preliminary theoretical considerations are confronted with the debates about Scotland's constitutional future and the 2014 independence referendum. This examination suggests further differentiation, but also facilitates insights into the interplay of the constituent power of the people with corporate forms of agency, as well as into changes of constituent peoples. In the final part, the paper inverts the perspective of inquiry to show that, once one is conscious of the complex relation between popular sovereignty and sovereignty that conceptions of corporate and collective agency help us to grasp, constituent power also proves to be an element of a compelling political conception of political independence.

Strategy Of The Local Government Of Mamasa Regency In Preventing Religious Conflicts To Realize National Security

Managing diversity based on local democracy is a preventive step to prevent prolonged conflicts toward social reintegration. Religious segmentation is used as a way to unravel the political conflicts that previously echoed in this area. Efforts to carry out the representation of religious identity (Islamic-Christian) in each Regional Election event are used as a new political format to minimize the tension of identity politics that can erode the spirit of community togetherness. Representation politics is then manifested in the form of pairs of candidates to occupy the position of regional head until the last twenty years have been institutions that have the ability to maintain unity and unity. This research uses a qualitative approach. For data collection techniques, researchers conduct interviews, observation, and documentation procedures. The theories and concepts used in this study include strategy theory, peace theory, conflict theory, conflict prevention concept, Conflict early Warning and Early Response System (CEWERS) concept, and state defense concept. Based on the results of the study, it can be understood that overall, conflict management carried out by the government, both the central government and local governments, is very poor. Efforts to resolve conflicts only occur at the elite level and do not include people who suffer more and lose more due to conflict. An elitist resolution will only meet the interests and demands of the elite. The demands of the masses that should also be accommodated are ignored. As a form of strategic steps of the local government of Mamasa Regency in preventing conflicts in the administration of government and its relationship with the roots of religious conflicts in Mamasa Regency, some of the descriptions of the steps taken include the Education and Socialization Approach, Increasing the Role of the Religious Harmony Forum (FKUB), Strengthening the Economy and Social Welfare, Fair and Transparent Law Enforcement, and Inclusive Infrastructure and Public Facilities Development.

Polite Social Practices in 18th-century Scotland

This article explores the role and influence of elite women in 18th-century Scotland, focusing on their engagement with polite social practices during the Scottish Enlightenment. The Scottish Enlightenment, characterized by its integration of various disciplines and emphasis on both theoretical and practical knowledge, was a period of significant cultural intellectual development. Central to this movement was the concept of politeness, which shaped the social interactions of the elite and played a crucial role in their personal and societal advancement. Elite women were integral to the social fabric of this era, participating in mixed-gender activities and shaping the cultural landscape through their involvement in social gatherings, education, and print culture. Despite being formally excluded from public office and direct political power, these women exercised significant influence through social networks, family ties, and patronage, subtly navigating the political and intellectual currents of their time. The study highlights how these women, while adhering to socially accepted norms, found ways to circumvent formal exclusions, thereby contributing to the broader cultural and political life of Scotland. Their participation in polite sociability not only facilitated their integration into elite society but also played a vital role in the broader program of social improvement that characterized the Scottish Enlightenment. This article underscores the complex interplay between gender, power, and politics, revealing how elite women helped shape “The Golden Age” of Scotland through their engagement in polite social practices.

The visual construction of the people’s country and the Chinese nation: political aesthetics in the Ethno-documentaries of New China

This paper discusses the political positioning of the people and the cultural image of the Chinese nation through the lens of the Social-historical Scientific Documentary Films of China’s ethnic minorities (hereafter referred to as “the Ethno-documentaries”) by restoring the problem to the site of the investigation of humanities and social sciences and the General Surveys on (Folk) Arts in the early years of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. Through detailed analysis of specific Ethno-documentary films, this paper explores how the social sciences conducted its “Social and Historical Investigation of China’s Ethnic Minorities” via the medium of film to convey the advanced social concepts and ideological work of the new regime through the historical narrative of art and politics. This study highlights three key points. First, the “Chinese nation” as a modern political concept dates its origins back to the 1920s with the emergence of the “National Heritage Reorganization Movement” and the “Doubting Antiquity School.” However, it was only through the medium of the Ethno-documentaries that this concept was visually and aurally represented in films for the first time, which draws our attention to the fact that the entry point for understanding modern China lies in discerning the relationship between culture and politics. Second, when discussing the relationship between culture and politics, this study juxtaposes the Ethno-documentaries and “art for workers-peasants-soldiers,” which developed during the same period. These two forms of art focus respectively on national history and the suffering of the lower classes of society, and it is this intertextual nature of the historical narrative that jointly anchors the cultural and historical view of New China. Lastly, historical view is the core of the humanities, social sciences, and art disciplines in New China. Previous studies have mainly attributed certain phenomena to the “politicization” or “pan-politicization” of a particular historical period due to disciplinary barriers and cultural trauma and have stopped discussing such topics in depth. In contrast, the significance of the political aesthetics in the Ethno-documentaries is to have transformed classical Chinese artistic language into a modern one to represent the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. It also raises a question of re-sinicization of many modern political issues that have persisted until now: How do today’s Chinese art works vividly depict the prosperity of this country and its hardworking and courageous people?

The Political Economy of Energy Security in Wartime Yemen

Abstract The politics of energy provision and the governance of the electricity sector are well-studied topics. However, there is a gap in information when it comes to comprehending how violent conflict interacts with the political economy of the electricity and energy sector. This paper examines the relationship between energy provision and conflict within the context of the ongoing war in Yemen. It illustrates how developments in the conflict trajectory since the war’s onset in 2015 have shaped new forms of energy politics. These developments are reflected in fragmented institutional arrangements, transformed subsidy politics, adaptive grassroots solutions, and emergent war economies, all of which highlight the changing nature of energy security beyond conventional state-centric paradigms. The Yemeni case thus demonstrates an emerging energy landscape in which the sector and war dynamics are deeply intertwined and evolving simultaneously.

Troubling environmental governance: citizen legal experiments with transboundary commons

ABSTRACT Environmental phenomena shed light on the fiction that inter-state borders constitute on some level, and the limitations of state-based environmental governance. Transboundary watersheds, in particular, flow across borders of different kinds, evincing the interdependence of water bodies, both human and nonhuman. The lack of cross-border comprehensive environmental governance imposes regional forms of inequity and inefficient forms of water protection. In Central America, to address such problems, citizens have created a legal prototype for how transboundary watersheds could be governed as a commons going forward. This endeavour has been led by Salvadorans, concerned as they are by their country’s position as a lower co-riparian and their significant interdependence with transboundary water bodies. I argue that, in addition to destabilizing established approaches to environmental governance, the legal prototype opens avenues for forms of earthly politics and multispecies justice by placing the reproduction of life, human and nonhuman, side by side.

Julius Malema, from Masupatsela to the Formation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF): Historical Narrative

Julius Malema was born in 1982 during the apartheid era in South Africa and began his political journey at an early age. As he rose in the political space, he became prominent, playing a critical role in reviving the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). He was exposed to formal politics from the age of nine when he joined Masupatsela (Trailblazers), the youth brigade of the African National Congress (ANC) at the time. He rose to positions of power through joining the ranks of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), the ANCYL, and post his expulsion from the ANCYL, established his own organisation, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), of which he is the current president, also known as the commander in chief (CiC). The article interrogates Malema's role in South African politics, and how he contributed to growing factionalism in the ANC. First, the article discusses Malema's early stages of joining politics, and his gradual growth, until he became the president of the ANCYL in 2008. Second, the article discusses his role in the politics of the mother body, the ANC, that is, in policies. Third, the article scrutinise why Malema was expelled from the ANCYL and, last, the emergence of the EFF in 2013 and its radical stance in the politics of South Africa.