Contemporary Political Developments Research Articles

Differently Imagined: Minorities and Majoritarian Politics in India

The rise of the BJP is usually credited for the shift towards the Hindutva politics in India, but other political parties are also not immune to using confession for electoral purposes. This article discusses how, despite living together for years, a large number of Hindus differently imagine the citizens belonging to the minority religious communities and vice versa. The article then examines the political events of the 1980s and analyses how they are linked with the contemporary social and political developments in India.

Economics: In Search of Relevance and Excellence in University Teaching in Sri Lanka

This is an essay on Chapter 4, ‘Economics: In Search of Relevance and Excellence in University Teaching, of the book “Beyond Boundaries: One Hundred Years of Humanities and Social Sciences in Sri Lankan Universities; Volume II: Social Sciences / Premakumara de Silva. [et al.] University Grants Commission, Government Press, Colombo: 2021, 282 pp. (ISBN 978-624- 5980-02-4)” reviewed as a commentary on the evolution of tertiary-level Economics Education under the umbrella of Social Science Education in Sri Lanka. This essay will provide an in-depth and holistic analysis of the content of Chapter 4, highlighting the interconnectedness of most of the disciplines in the social sciences. The chapter attempts to blend the historical orientation of economics with contemporary historical, philosophical, and political developments by taking the reader back in time through the Evolution of Economics teaching in Sri Lanka from university college days to what it is today. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the socio-political culture of the country, together with a lack of knowledge about basic economics, among other things, have been instrumental in leading Sri Lanka to its present predicament. Therefore, understanding and analysing the evolutionary process of economic education has never been more important for Sri Lanka, especially if the country is determined to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.

The Beautiful Public Danube: Water Uses, Water Rights, and the Habsburg Imperial State in the Mid-nineteenth Century

AbstractThis article analyzes an 1869 law from Cisleithania that defined all running waters as public goods. Economic and political actors debated the issue of water rights over several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, as is shown in contemporary publications, proceedings of assemblies, and administrative archives. The legal solution that was ultimately adopted established the management of water rights and uses according to a particular form of property which was intentionally preferred over a system of private appropriation. Looking in detail at what “public good” meant for the actors, this article argues that settling the legal status of rivers served to both consolidate the imperial state's power over society and to make water resources available to a productivist economic system. The new relationships to the environment that emerged during this time were inseparable from contemporary political and economic developments, and legislating was one way to bind these aspects together. Moreover, the case of water rights in the Habsburg Empire adds nuance to binary oppositions between private property and commons that dominate the study of property regimes and environment today. It invites us to consider how the establishment of a productivist economic system rested on a combination of different forms of property and strong state intervention.

Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius, vicar of Švenčionys Parish: the Environment of the Clergyman and his Academic-Publicist Activity

The article is researching the life events of the Lithuanian man of letters, clergyman, ethnographer, folklorist, writer, publicist, historian and translator Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius (Ludwik Adam Jucewicz, 1813–1846) while focusing on the years 1838–1840 when he was serving as the vicar in Švenčionys Parish. It was during these years that such famous works as literary legends as Baltijos jūros karalienė (en. The Queen of the Baltic Sea) and Džiugo kalnas (en. Džiugas Hill) were created. Simultaneously, Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius created the works Lietuvių liaudies priežodžiai (en. Lithuanian Folk Proverbs) and Žemaitijos bruožai (en. The Features of Samogitia) which are still of high relevance to the Lithuanian academic community.
 The article reveals the starting point of the academic-publicist activity of this prominent personality at Vilnius Roman Catholic Spiritual academy which encouraged his academic pursuits in Švenčionys. The article also explores his deeds for the benefit of Švenčionys Parish. Finally, the academic, publicist and creative activity of Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius during this period is researched. The focus is laid on the creative path of the personality in the context of the contemporary political and cultural developments in the society.
 Thereby, the emphasis of the article is not on the investigation of the content of the texts by Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius, but rather on their spread and transfer to other publications thus highlighting the popularity of his writings at the time with the objective to trace the causes of the success of the texts.

Greek identity and education in the seventeenth century: Theophilos Korydalleus’ political movement in the Orthodox East

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Athenian philosopher Theophilos Korydalleus launched a political programme intended to reinvigorate Hellenic culture and education in South-Eastern Europe as a core element of Greek Orthodox identity. Korydalleus’ ideas on political intervention in the educational affairs of the Orthodox Greeks are recorded in one of his public speeches as well as in his private letters. In these texts it is possible to trace the emergence of a group of loyalists and disciples, who worked together in a political movement: a ‘party of friends’. This article presents and discusses sources which have been overlooked or have received little scholarly attention. It identifies the characteristics and the ideological underpinnings of this movement from a political, religious, and educational perspective and analyses Korydalleus’ views on contemporary political developments.

The Theory of Everything: A Sympathetic Critique of Andeas Reckwitz’s The Society of Singularities

Abstract After situating Andreas Reckwitz’s The Society of Singularities within the broader context of the tradition of social theory, we discuss in detail the obvious strengths of this book, notably its impressive range and originality. Subsequently, we elaborate on two limitations of Reckwitz’s argument. Firstly, we argue that Reckwitz’s use of categories such as ‘singularity’ and ‘universality’ is too all-embracing, lacking the clarity and focus needed to sustain a productive line of inquiry. Secondly, and related to the previous point, we contend that Reckwitz’s claims about the recent trend towards increasing singularity are so broad that they are difficult to refute empirically. Further, we discuss briefly contemporary political developments to demonstrate why the core societal issues at stake cannot be explained through all-inclusive categories such as singularity. Finally, we maintain that existence theory can provide an alternative fruitful perspective on some of the phenomena discussed in this book.

Rethinking Diasporic Returns

Abstract This article calls for a rethinking of the concept of diasporic return in light of contemporary religious and political developments in Indonesia. It does so by exploring two modalities of diasporic returns, namely, re-embedding and re-encountering, neither of which necessarily involve transnational travel or any notion of an ancestral homeland, but both of which are nevertheless important to the process of diasporization. Based on ethnographic observation among the Ḥaḍramī diaspora in Indonesia, the article follows the biographical becoming of two nationally prominent figures who had been estranged from their diasporic community. The article traces how these two figures have returned, whether inadvertently or by choice, to the Ḥaḍramī diasporic identity and community. The two cases point to the porosity and contingency of diaspora as both a subjective position and a social formation that enables its members to exit and enter in various ways. They also exemplify forms of diasporic return that unfold in and through, but are not reducible to, national politics. Comparing the two cases and tracing their connections reveal the possible entanglements between diasporic and national politics in Indonesia’s religio-political field that have hardly been recognized by observers of Indonesian politics and religion. By developing the notion of diasporic re-embedding and re-encountering to complicate diasporic return, the article unravels the more complex, politically grounded and ambivalent relations that dynamically form and transform an Indian Ocean diaspora and its relationship to the Indonesian nation.

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Future Challenges for Work-Related Health Promotion in Europe: A Data-Based Theoretical Reflection.

This contribution is a theoretical reflection based on statistical and empirical data as well as concepts proposed by other authors or institutions. Based on the thesis that the respective social developments equally influence and limit the orientation and design of workplace health promotion, this article deals with the challenges that arise from the contemporary social, political and economic developments for a needs-oriented and effective workplace health promotion. On the basis of a historical review of the lines of development in workplace health promotion, beginning with the Ottawa Charter in 1986, the field of tension in which work-related health promotion approaches generally operate is first outlined. Based on the results of a keyword search in relevant European statistics databases and specialized databases on the topics of demographic change, labor migration and digitalization and flexibilization of work, current development trends in the world of work are traced, priority desiderata for a future design of health promotion are derived from these, and their chances of realization are reflected upon. On the basis of the data collected, it becomes clear that today’s world of work is characterized by multidimensional diversification processes, which are accompanied by the risk of worsening social inequalities. The conclusion is that future concepts of workplace health promotion must be more universal than previous approaches, which are often limited to the focus of individual behavioral prevention. The attempt to promote workplace health promotion with economic benefit arguments also runs the risk of reinforcing social inequality. The task of effective workplace health promotion, conversely, must be to initiate critical reflection on current priorities.

Beyond the Classics: Identifying Gaps and Setting Trajectory in Understanding Political Dynamics in Philippine Local Politics

Epistemological frames and theoretical underpinnings are developed precisely to give coherence and cognitive rendering to a rather chaotic appearance of the world and reality to man’s consciousness. These frames offer associations of nuances and concepts that in turn provide cogent systems of understanding, which contribute to man’s unending search for meanings combining as it were his experience of the world and his ability to mentally grasp such experience hence, the Ancient Greek word episteme. In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks are formulated to provide grounding venues for construing the complexities and specificities of social phenomena toward a better understanding of the social world. Concomitantly, these frameworks are assessed and evaluated based on their capacity to utter notions and tell stories of the slice of reality they wish to depict. 
 It is in this respect that this paper offers a critical examination of the most prevalent theoretical frames and epistemic perspectives, herein referred to as classics, deployed in understanding Philippine political local dynamics. In light of Philippine contemporary economic, social, cultural, and political developments, the article identifies some gaps and bumps in these ‘classics’ to offer a research trajectory that scholars in the field can rightly consider. Through a synthesis of existing political paradigms applied in local politics, the paper highlighted nuances that are ignored, realities that are not yet explored, and concepts rendered with over-simplistic meanings, suggesting imperatives for modifications, deconstructions, and even reconstructions.
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Greenland and the Faroe Islands: Denmark’s autonomous territories from postcolonial perspectives

ABSTRACT In July 2021 Greenlanders will be commemorating the 300th anniversary of Danish colonization. The anniversary has come at a time when the world is facing a wave of reflections on the injustices of colonialism. The article aims to contribute to this discussion and frame the history of Greenlandic dependence on Denmark, considering contemporary political development. For comparison, the authors refer to the Faroe Islands as an additional autonomous territory of the Danish realm. Greenland was a colony until 1953 and acquired autonomy in 1979, while the Faroe Islands have never been considered a colony and gained autonomy more than 30 years earlier (1948). To find further similarities and differences in the postcolonial realities in Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the authors compare both countries, using concepts from literature on postcolonialism. Their findings reveal that the number of differences between Greenlandic and Faroese postcolonial realities outweigh the discussed similarities. The authors conclude that the consequences of coloniality are more serious in Greenland. Furthermore, given Greenland's important strategic location in the Arctic region, Greenlanders should be more wary of world powers exploiting their country for economic profit.

Images, Racial Hierarchy, and Critical World Order Studies

This essay contributes to the forum by pivoting from three themes in Debrix’s classic text, <em>Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping</em> — visibility, purity, and order. Specifically, it calls attention to ‘world order’ and its hierarchical features. The racial hierarchical features are always embedded both within contemporary Western discourses and more specifically in the US as a political community that was founded upon, and reinforced by, white supremacist violence. This essay examines the transnational manifestations of racial hierarchies. It also explores via Debrix the role of what is visible in upholding (through performative cruelty) but also challenging such racial hierarchical (dis)orders. It therefore points the way towards confronting world order’s racial hierarchical features. A number of contemporary international relations (IR) and global political developments provide a collective springboard for this critical world order studies approach to racial hierarchy, including the contemporary populist ‘moment’. I specifically focus on work in Historical International Relations, and the detailed scholarship by Robbie Shilliam in rediscovering ‘anticolonial antifascist’ responses in global politics.

Prisoners’ Voices

Frederic Rzewski composed Coming Together and Attica in response to the 1971 uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility. The texts for the works draw upon testimonies of two men who participated in the riot: Samuel Melville and Richard X. Clark, respectively. Rzewski condemns the government crackdown on the uprising through representations of both prisoners and prison. In these and other works, the prisoner is a figure of suffering. Both Melville and Clark suffer through efforts to raise a voice about the hardships of incarceration only to have that voice break apart into fragments and silence. Prison emerges as a space of increasing confinement, conveyed by rigorous compositional schemes that tightly link individual sections and close them off in a larger sealed structure. The musical evocation of confinement along with the expression of psychological distress in the texts creates scenes of suffering. Through these scenes, Rzewski brings out the infliction of pain that scholars have viewed as a fundamental aspect of incarceration. The interaction between the critiques of incarceration and the compositional schemes in Coming Together and Attica is an example of how artists at the time (Steve Reich and sculptor Melvin Edwards) drew upon abstract idioms and materials in works that comment on contemporary political developments.

Introductory Note to Bibliography of Atlantic Canadian Environmental History

Introductory Note to Bibliography of Atlantic Canadian Environmental History Teresa Devor Hall (bio) THE FIELD OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY is still relatively young in Canada, where scholarship explicitly focused on the mutual relations of humans and the rest of nature only became firmly established in the 21st century.1 Yet Canadian historical geographers and historians had already established traditions of inquiry into the relations between people and natural environments. For example, scholars analysed the development of modern Canada in the context of staple trades and the role of hinterland and metropolis in the distribution of resources, population, and finance.2 This bibliography recognizes a lineage of “environmental (or environmentally aware) history in Atlantic Canada” in its tracing of three generations of scholarship, starting with texts by William Francis Ganong, Harold Innis, Arthur Lower, and Andrew Hill Clark.3 Early works tended to treat nature deterministically, as a backdrop or obstacle presenting limits to human will and action, or as primarily a source of staples such as codfish and lumber, rather than as dynamic partner in the making of human communities, industries, and daily life.4 The next generation of scholarship represented in this bibliography emerged in the 1970s. Researchers sought to understand the transformation of particular spaces (geographical), places (cultural), and structures (economic and political) in Atlantic Canada while engaging earlier work and exploring the larger implications of close, bounded studies.5 Some practitioners, including historical geographer Graeme Wynn, described the transformations that humans wrought to the [End Page 163] landscapes that sustained them. But environmental history was not a significant area of exploration for historical geographers or other scholars of the region.6 This bibliography is, primarily, a testament to the f luorescence of environmental history within regional scholarship over the past two decades. Scholars continue to build on the themes and approaches in previous writings while drawing on new intellectual frameworks, and responding to contemporary ecological, scientific, cultural, social, economic, and political developments. These texts reflect theoretical work, including American historian Donald Worster’s tripartite explanation of the field as focusing on “nature, socioeconomic relations with nature, and intellectual and cultural relations with nature.”7 The latter two categories are especially well-represented in the historiography, much of which focuses on fishing, agriculture, and forestry. Most of the French-language Acadian history titles in the pages that follow centre on these three areas of study. Yet regional scholars have also made significant contributions to topics in environmental history, including national parks and heritage sites, environmental movements, natural history, the ecological knowledge of Indigenous and settler inhabitants, transportation, cultural representation, and climate history.8 This predominantly English-language bibliography represents a preliminary survey of over 100 years of inquiry into nature-society dynamics in the region’s past. The author’s choice to cast a wide net in the search for titles reflects a desire to represent the living environmental history of the region’s inhabitants, many of whom have a deep lived experience of interdependence with nature. The inclusion of titles in popular history, Indigenous history, and natural history demonstrates approaches and topics that can effectively foreground our mutual interrelatedness.9 A broad conceptualization of the field thus offers practitioners [End Page 164] innovative strategies and insights.10 Furthermore, the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission require that scholars of the regional past recognize and seek to repair the silences perpetuated within our disciplines. For those of us of settler ancestry, this includes creating opportunities for Indigenous people to speak – within and beyond the academy. The 2020s mark a social-ecological conjuncture of epic proportions. The architects of the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change inform us that human actions in this decade will be decisive in setting a course for the future of life on Earth.11 Researchers in social and natural sciences refer to the current era as the Anthropocene to demarcate the high degree of human influence on the composition of the Earth and atmosphere.12 Students of the emerging field of planetary health argue that environmental degradation creates the context for novel pandemics such as COVID-19.13 Research into past relationships between people and the rest of nature, and the broad dissemination...

Navigating the Backlash against Global Law and Institutions

This article considers the recent ‘Backlash’ against global norms and institutions fuelled by various contemporary political developments within and between states. Understanding the shape, significance and drivers of this phenomenon better is a pre-requisite to developing and analysing possible responses by Australia and other states. The recent rise of populism and ‘illiberal democracy’ especially within major Western democracies has challenged the longstanding and widespread commitment of those states to the rules-based order. These phenomena have also eroded the traditional global leadership, in multilateral forums, of key powers including UN permanent members the United States and the United Kingdom. The populations of these and other states have responded to perceptions of economic and political disempowerment by pressuring political representatives to focus their energies domestically. In order both to appeal and respond to domestic political forces, leaders in these states have sought to target or sometimes scapegoat the international institutions that have hitherto been so useful to their foreign policy agenda. This article examines the consequences of understanding the current populist moment as part of a Backlash against global law and institutions and the ramifications of the Backlash frame for international peace and security. It also considers the implications of the Backlash frame for the international human rights system, the impact of the turn inward for global trade and finance and the Backlash against environmental norms.

Navigating the Backlash against Global Law and Institutions

This article considers the recent ‘Backlash’ against global norms and institutions fuelled by various contemporary political developments within and between states. Understanding the shape, significance and drivers of this phenomenon better is a pre-requisite to developing and analysing possible responses by Australia and other states. The recent rise of populism and ‘illiberal democracy’ especially within major Western democracies has challenged the longstanding and widespread commitment of those states to the rules-based order. These phenomena have also eroded the traditional global leadership, in multilateral forums, of key powers including UN permanent members the United States and the United Kingdom. The populations of these and other states have responded to perceptions of economic and political disempowerment by pressuring political representatives to focus their energies domestically. In order both to appeal and respond to domestic political forces, leaders in these states have sought to target or sometimes scapegoat the international institutions that have hitherto been so useful to their foreign policy agenda. This article examines the consequences of understanding the current populist moment as part of a Backlash against global law and institutions and the ramifications of the Backlash frame for international peace and security. It also considers the implications of the Backlash frame for the international human rights system, the impact of the turn inward for global trade and finance and the Backlash against environmental norms.

The Wings of Atalanta: Essays Written along the Color Line

The Wings of Atalanta: Essays Written along the Color Line

Information and the Indian State: A Genealogy

The category of information has been at the heart of notions about citizenship and governance in all modern societies. This paper constructs a genealogy of information and statehood in India by examining how information as a governing idea was brought into play in successive stages of contemporary Indian history. This first section provides a broad account of the creation of the Aadhaar card project—that attempts to uniquely identify every citizen in the country—and briefly reviews the controversies it has generated. The second portion of the paper provides historical snapshots that illustrate information’s constitutive role in previous versions of the Indian state. Thus, the second section looks at the role information played in constituting colonial government, while the next section examines the nationalist phase in pre-independence India to suggest that information functioned as speculative category that allowed freedom fighters to dream and think the nation. In the fourth section I look at the pre-liberalization period of postcolonial history to trace how information becomes a state “good” that is both strictly controlled and sparsely disseminated while at the same time acting as a spur to a specialized sort of economic activity. Finally, in the fifth and concluding section of the paper, I analyze information’s role in emerging India by revisiting the implications of the Aadhaar card in particular and of informational governance in general, by placing both in the context of contemporary political and administrative developments like the National Population Register and the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Masters Highland Games and imaginations of home

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the journeys of a group of North American Master athletes who travelled to Scotland to compete in the 2014 Masters World Championship Highland Games. Conceptualising, the Masters World Championship Highland Games as a unique form of sport heritage tourism, the paper explores how imaginations of the host venue are caught within individual and collective histories, while also being influenced by the socio-political context of contemporary Scotland.Design/methodology/approachAfter detailing the histories of the Highland games and Scottish emigration, the study draws upon a qualitative methodology to explore how such histories impact the imaginations of the Highland region.FindingsThis paper examines the journeys of athletes to the games, how they understood the games venue space and surrounding areas, and also how the Highland region itself was the site of contested meanings. The study concludes with a discussion of the narratives that frame imaginations of the Highlands and Scotland more broadly.Originality/valueThe paper adds to existing knowledge on sport heritage tourism and considers how conceptualisations of Scotland continue to be renegotiated in light of contemporary political developments.

Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation

Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation