Contemporary Theoretical Debates Research Articles

Eliminate Structural Injustices or Perpetuate Them: Indigenous Peoples and Transitional Justice in the Criminal Court System of Taiwan

ABSTRACT∞ In 2017, Taiwan’s government proposed reforms to the Indigenous Specialized Criminal Court (ISC) within its criminal court system (court system). Situated within the contemporary theoretical framework of transitional justice, this article explores the theoretical significance of these reforms and examines their actual state of implementation. Firstly, the article points out that the court system has led to structural injustices like the erasure of culture and socio-economic disadvantages for indigenous peoples, highlighting the limitations of the conventional transitional justice model in addressing these injustices. As a response, the ISC reform adopts strategies that differ from the conventional model. The article then attempts to develop an enhanced transitional justice model that includes structural injustices within its scope and explains the ISC reform initiatives and their inherent transitional justice significance. Finally, by evaluating the implementation status of the ISC reform, the article elucidates its theoretical implications and the feedback it offers to contemporary theoretical debates.

Reform, redevelopment and rent: Dilemmas of the social function of property in the private domain of the Brazilian metropolis

This paper discusses the disappointing outreach of Brazilian urban reform by analyzing the underlying tensions and contradictions of its key principle, that is, the social, function of property (SFP), from a perspective of contemporary theoretical debates on the double nature of rent (i.e., related to monopoly positions and emerging from market, circulation). The SFP principle is grounded in anti-rentier, agrarian reform thinking, which stressed that individual monopoly landowners should not be allowed to retain their property for speculative purposes and use it productively to increase food supplies. In contemporary dense cities, however, using property “productively” implies redevelopment, that is, transformation of existing structures of the built environment, into alternative ones. This has two implications, one related to the essence of the SFP, (its being), the other regarding what it means having a SFP in an urban setting. In relation to the former, despite its anti-rentier stance, in cities the SFP triggers a redevelopment-rent nexus due to the circulation of rents in non-competitive markets. Regarding the latter implication, having a SFP in cities requires complex, open-ended and utilitarian negotiations between state and non-state actors aimed at the appropriation of rents to articulate the conflicting interests of individual property owners with the collective good. The theoretical argument of the paper is illustrated with a short, heuristic case on redevelopment in the city of São Paulo, while its conclusion provides elements for a research agenda on the limits of market-based, reformist versus right- based planning beyond this specific context.

Call for Submissions

The editors invite your submissions to the following issues scheduled to appear in 2024. Send one hard copy of the manuscript double-spaced, including endnotes, along with an electronic copy (by e-mail attachment or in a shared folder online), following the style guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed., chap. 14 on documentation). More specific contributor guidelines may be consulted on the journal website. Manuscripts should not exceed 10,000 words inclusive of notes. Illustrations accompanying a manuscript should be submitted ideally in the form of TIFF digital files, and permissions for their reproduction must be provided before publication. Submissions pass through anonymous specialist review before publication. We do not consider articles that have been published elsewhere or are under simultaneous consideration with another publisher. Send to:Edited by Manuela Bragagnolo and John Jeffries MartinVolume 54 / Number 1 / January 2024Physiognomy was, as is well known, one of the most influential disciplines of the Renaissance. Based on the interpretation of bodily signs to read inner moral and intellectual inclinations, physiognomy developed in the West from the twelfth century and quickly acquired the status of a scientia normale in European universities. Drawing on both medical and divinatory origins, the science enjoyed great success in the sixteenth century, when, as Michel Foucault has famously demonstrated, the curiosity in decoding the secrets of nature placed physiognomic investigation in the framework of a new attention to signatures and sympathies. Physiognomy was grounded on the idea of a strong connection between body and soul. At its height, physiognomic pursuit functioned as a window opening onto the heart, lifting the veil of dissimulation and making visible invisible inner moral inclinations. The early modern period thus witnessed the emergence of a physiognomic mentality. But what has not been understood well so far is how jurists, judges, and more generally Renaissance legal culture theorized and made use of physiognomy and other related practices of reading the bodies or even the minds of those accused of crimes. This special issue seeks to show that late medieval and early modern culture was, indeed, deeply physiognomic not only in its literature and its theories but also in judicial practice. We invite contributions not only from scholars of the law but also from those working in any discipline (art history, history, literature, philosophy, or religion) whose work might cast light on this aspect of late medieval and early modern legal culture. Contributions may stress either courtroom practice or physiognomic theory more generally.Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2022Volume 54 / Number 2 / May 2024For this open-topic issue of the journal, the editors invite articles that are both informed by historical inquiry and alert to issues raised by contemporary theoretical debate. We expect that essays will be grounded in an intimate knowledge of a particular past and that their argumentation reveal a concern for the theoretical and methodological issues involved in interpretation. We are particularly committed to work that seeks to overcome the polarization between history and theory in the study of premodern Western culture.Submissions may be sent starting September 1, 2022Deadline for submission of manuscripts: March 1, 2023

Normalising spatial vulnerability in the era of climate crisis? Private property, informality, and post-disaster planning in peri-urban east Attica/Greece

This paper focuses on the peri-urban space of east Attica and aims to theorise the politics of recovery planning following the wildfire of 23 July 2018, showing the crucial interrelations between vulnerability, space and land development processes in an era of climate crisis. Certain processes of land development increase vulnerability, creating a greater risk of disasters. Through critical discourse and content analysis, we trace the genealogy of peri-urban land development trends in Greece, and explore connections with contemporary theoretical debates, focussing on the burnt area of east Attica as a paradigmatic case study. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding dimensions beyond, beside, outside or even within recovery policies and planning, such as land ownership, private property, formal and informal practices and institutional adaptations during climate crisis. Considering particular land development processes as an inherent and integral part of spatial vulnerability regimes, we argue that, insofar as they maintain and reproduce the factors that produce and reproduce it, post-disaster recovery policies and planning may actually normalise spatial vulnerability, thus leading to future disasters.

Call for Submissions

The editors invite your submissions to the following issues scheduled to appear in 2023. Send one hard copy of the manuscript double-spaced, including endnotes, along with an electronic copy (by e-mail attachment or in a shared folder online), following the style guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed., chap. 14 on documentation). More specific contributor guidelines may be consulted on the journal website. Manuscripts should not exceed 10,000 words inclusive of notes. Illustrations accompanying a manuscript should be submitted ideally in the form of TIFF digital files, and permissions for their reproduction must be provided before publication. Submissions pass through anonymous specialist review before publication. We do not consider articles that have been published elsewhere or are under simultaneous consideration with another publisher. Send to: Michael Cornett, Managing EditorJournal of Medieval and Early Modern StudiesDuke University340B Trent HallBox 90656Durham, NC 27708JMEMS@duke.eduhttps://jmems.trinity.duke.eduVolume 53 / Number 2 / May 2023For this open-topic issue of the journal, the editors invite articles that are both informed by historical inquiry and alert to issues raised by contemporary theoretical debate. We expect that essays will be grounded in an intimate knowledge of a particular past and that their argumentation reveal a concern for the theoretical and methodological issues involved in interpretation. We are particularly committed to work that seeks to overcome the polarization between history and theory in the study of premodern Western culture.Submissions may be sent starting September 1, 2021Deadline for submission of manuscripts: March 1, 2022Edited by James SimpsonVolume 53 / Number 3 / September 2023The truth wreckage inflicted by Trumpism might deliver a salutary jolt to literary scholars. Trumpistas may celebrate the forever-constructed nature of truth, but that is precisely what literary scholarship had been doing for decades. Long before Roland Barthes pronounced his fatwa on authors and authorship in 1968, in fact, the “intentionalist fallacy” had long excised the author and his or her intentions from serious interpretation. Defenses of intentionalism are routinely dismissed as “conservative.” The self-inflicted disciplinary damage caused by this proscription has been considerable: other practitioners in the human sciences (notably in law and ethics) place intention at the center of their heuristic practice; they remain baffled by the claim that interpretative study of any kind can be conducted without some appeal to intention.A journal devoted to medieval and early modern studies has a special, further role to play in any reevaluation of how intention might function interpretatively. Our notion of intention is historically grounded: intention rose dramatically from the early twelfth century as a heuristic device in legal and penitential discourse especially. We invite submissions from late medievalists and early modernists in a range of disciplines (penitential theology, law, biblical hermeneutics, and literature especially) that draw on their historical vantage point to elucidate and refresh the interpretative role of intention.Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2022

Freedom of speech within political parties

AbstractThe expulsion of party members for the expression of dissent is a common practice in democratic states around the world, which can have momentous consequences for individual parties and the political system at large. In this article, we address the question of whether limitations on party members’ free speech can be defended on normative grounds. Drawing on a conception of parties that sees them as broader membership organisations that allow citizens to exercise political agency in a unique fashion, as well as on insights from the broader normative-theoretical literature on organisations, we build a strong presumptive case that interference with party members’ political freedoms is normatively problematic. Exploring numerous weighty arguments in favour of limiting freedom of speech within parties, we find that none of them provides a knock-down argument against our case. The argument we advance has important implications for contemporary theoretical debates about parties and partisanship, and for the regulation of parties’ internal affairs more generally.

Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions

Special issue introduction: Post-national formations and cosmopolitanism

In the last quarter of the 20th century the study of globalisation was refined in many ways and especially in the direction of conceptualising the connections, entanglements and interdependencies of the global. An array of terms arose to capture these complexities, many containing the suggestion of superseding the nation. The terms ‘post-national’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ are two fields that have come to signify thispossibility. Our contributors engage with the idea of the post-national in a variety of manifestations, focusing on addressing fundamental questions related to the extent and durability of post-national expressions. This collection of articles trace contemporary theoretical debates, and provide empirical material in a variety of contexts using multiple approaches. Collectively, they affirm the relevance of the category of the post-national, and related cosmopolitan outlooks, while charting the mixed, ambivalent, and sometimes reactionary responses to it.

Hypochondria as a Poetic Disease : Medicine and Ethics in the Case of an Early Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Poet

Medical knowledge reached a wider range of social strata in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Popular medical books described diseases and how to cure them, and the press regularly addressed the topic of having a healthy body. Meanwhile, representations of the perfect body became an increasingly important problem for neoclassical art. This case study investigates how Dániel Berzsenyi (1776–1836), one of the important Hungarian poets of the early nineteenth century, thought about the human body. For him, the representation of the body was, on the one hand, an artistic problem which raised questions concerning manners of imitation and, on the other hand, an artistic problem which was associated with the display of human virtues and thus with ethical discourse. Berzsenyi gave an account of his illnesses, which can be traced back to hypochondria, in a private letter. His self-analysis has three layers. First, his private letter could be read as part of a sensible epistolary novel. I argue that Berzsenyi introduced himself as a sensible hero, who was ill because of his own uncontrollable emotions. Second, hypochondria has a medical context. Considering the continued influence, in Berzsenyi’s time, of the ancient doctrine of bodily fluids, I demonstrate that this disease may have become a mental illness associated with poets. The reason for this is that the emotions entertained by the sensible man led to the emergence of physical symptoms which were associated with the hardly definable concept of hypochondria. Third, one’s relationship to one’s body could be a moral issue. Berzsenyi attempted to assert his own moral superiority by describing his own illness. Thus, his letter also fit into a moral context of the contemporary theoretical debates in which he was involved. My paper shows how aesthetics, ethics, and medicine were interconnected and how different forms of knowledge circulated between the forums of the arts and other social forums.

Center for Subjectivity Research: History, Contribution and Impact

Abstract In this article, we describe the history and impact of the Center for Subjectivity Research (cfs) since its inception in 2002 and until 2020. From its very beginning, cfs was structured to facilitate and carry out interdisciplinary research on human subjectivity, taking phenomenology as an important source of inspiration. We cover some of the most important research areas in which cfs has had a national and international impact. These include developing the field of existential hermeneutics, opening a dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophy, creating a multi-dimensional account of the self, exploring the interrelations between I, you and we, and conceptualizing and assessing self-disorders in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Over the years, research at cfs has demonstrated the vitality of the phenomenological tradition, and shown how phenomenology can contribute to contemporary theoretical and scientific debates.

Taking Sides: Urban Wandering as a Decolonial Translation Practice in the Americas

Abstract: Colonialism fragments meaning. This essay takes up colonial fragmentation of meaning as a question of translation. It offers a decolonial methodology to unpack the political stakes as one moves back and forth across the colonial line. The methodology is based on a conscious process of urban wandering or drifting, what the Situationists called the “derive.” Two case studies of itinerant decolonial theorizing follow. The first is a sketch of the militarized border between the US and Mexico, and the second example has to do with Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In the case studies, translating is treated as a question of “tuning in” as one tunes into a conversation, or, alternatively, as if into a radio frequency. The metaphor of translation-as-tuning-in allows us to address practical and concrete questions of translation in everyday settings, as well as contemporary theoretical debates in translation studies. Keywords: translation; colonialism; decolonial methodology; border; derive

The challenge of occupational prestige for occupational identities: Comparing bricklaying and automation technology apprentices in Switzerland

Occupational prestige, the hierarchical perception of occupations, is a neglected issue in studies on vocational education and training, although the attractiveness of apprenticeship programs is strongly affected by their prestige. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines the identity strategies of apprentices whose training programs lack prestige. It understands not only identity but also prestige as dynamically and relationally constructed in everyday life and thus empirically contributes to contemporary theoretical debates about occupational prestige. It compares two occupations - bricklaying, which requires lower/medium skills, and automation technology, which requires higher skills - and shows that both are faced with a lack of prestige, although unequally, thus leading the apprentices to employ different strategies to valorize and engage with the training. These strategies draw on the meaning that the apprentices find in their work, the advanced skills the training requires, the variety of work tasks involved and the career possibilities the occupations provide. The results demonstrate that the apprentices are confronted with a vocational-academic divide that exists in many countries. This divide poses a threat to apprentices' identities, and their strategies aim to either maintain or reverse it. Although the prestige of apprenticeships is related to objective differences between both educational tracks and occupations, social actors can negotiate superiority and inferiority. Thus, the article also provides some practical recommendations for how apprentices confronted with a lack of social recognition can be encouraged to continue engaging with their training.

Концепции гражданства и сословность в русской истории — преемственность и / или разрыв

The author studied the development of the concept “people” in contemporary history tak­ing into account its possible interpretation as a bearer of sovereignty. This concept goes back to the time of early bourgeois revolutions. The author holds that there are certain parallels between the ideology of citizenship, the development of the concept “people / nation” and the interpretation of the concept “citizenship”. Contemporary theoretical debates about citizen­ship are fully applicable to the history of the interpretation of citizenship in Russia. The Unit­ed States or Great Britain have a century-long tradition of citizenship. Unlike them, Russia has gone through several stages of radical changes associated with deep political and social transformations, hence a variety of understanding of the concept analysed. A paradoxical interpretation of the concept "citizen" in Russia became evident in the 18th century. Then a citizen and a subject tended to be used either as synonyms or “citizens” were understood as a social group related to nobility. Thus, the concept analysed was used in a variety of meanings and contexts. The same duality in the interpretation of citizenship within the class society manifested itself on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. The class-based duality of citizenship was also noticeable during the Soviet period. After the radical break with the past proclaimed by the Bolsheviks, the old class stratification system had to be changed. In the first month after the Revolution, the Bolsheviks officially abolished estates, titles and ranks. Under the 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR, the concept “class” became a legal term in Soviet Russia. Only “workers” received political rights and thus full citizenship. The official civil status or citi­zenship was an integral part of the ideology of workers and “exploited” classes as opposed to “non-working, bourgeois elements”. The idea of citizenship ceased to depend on territory and nationality. As a result, a group of people was legally deprived of citizenship while perma­nently residing in the state. Paradoxically, in Soviet Russia citizenship was defined through its absence, through what it was not. The concepts of citizenship and classhood during the Imperial and So­viet periods often coexisted, complementing each other and forming a bizarre synthesis of traditional and modern approaches to the interpretation of the concept of citizen­ship.

A theoretical overview on the expression of time in digital cinema

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to present and discuss different theoretical perspectives, such as Steven Shaviro’s post-cinematic and Garret Stewart’s postfilmic notions, in a search to better understand the consequences of digital technology to film image and narratology. Its hypothesis is that contemporary fiction time might be a prolongation and an effect of the postmodern condition, unfolding in a sense of continuous presentness through the lack of actual movement and materiality of the digital form. More specifically, I combine what the contemporary theoretical debate has to offer on the issue of the index film, or its lack.

Enhancing the Efficacy of Religious Peacebuilding Practice: An Exploratory Evidence-Based Framework for Assessing Dominant Risks in Religious Peacebuilding

The ‘risk assessment’ in peacebuilding has become a standard, if sometimes slightly formulaic and performative, element of project design and written proposals. Largely driven by donor requirements and organisational procedures, the relatively new discipline and practice recognised as ‘Religious Peacebuilding’ has taken on many of the elements of ‘secular’ peacebuilding, including the risk assessment. This means that organisations increasingly have to attempt to understand the associated risks to projects with a religious dimension often without any specific guidelines, and in many cases, any relevant knowledge or previous experience of working with religious actors in peacebuilding. Consequently, the primary objective of this paper is to propose the first risk assessment framework for peacebuilding projects which explicitly focus on religious dimensions and actors. The framework is based on analysis of case studies and project evaluations from a number of contexts; and has the potential to make a tangible difference to the efficacy and impact of peacebuilding projects in a variety of post-conflict contexts. This paper will also briefly consider how the proposed framework relates to contemporary theoretical debates concerning the instrumentalization of religion, and increasing technocracy in peacebuilding theory and practice.

E.H. Carr and IPE: An Essay in Retrieval

AbstractAlthough the work of E.H. Carr has a prominent place in the scholarly history of international relations (IR), it is notably absent from the discipline of international political economy (IPE). This is puzzling, because Carr's analysis of international politics places a strong emphasis on the organic connection between politics and economics on an international scale. On this reading, his principal publications on IR can also be seen to chart a sophisticated conceptualization of what I want to label historical IPE. This essay retrieves such a reading of Carr for the discipline of IPE. It begins by interrogating the way in which Carr's work has been appropriated by modern IPE scholarship, in order to highlight the limited use made of the political economy dimension of his research. I then explore the historical and political economy aspects of Carr's writings to consider how his contribution might advance recent contemporary theoretical debate in the discipline. I pay particular attention to how his work charts an historical conception of IPE that can synthesize and move beyond the rationalist/constructivist binary that currently dominates theorizing in the discipline.

Challenges in planning transition to adulthood for young people who have special educational needs and disabilities: professional and managerial perspectives

This study reviewed perceived changes to planning and management of transitions to adulthood for young people with special educational needs and disabilities in three local authorities in England, following implementation of the Children and Families Act (2014). Wenger's ‘community of practice’ theoretical framework was used to examine how groups of professionals and managers working in education, health and social care in three areas, set about implementing selected radical changes required by the legislation. Telephone interviews with sixteen participants were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. Themes identified related to professional activity, planning and organisation, implications for young people and families and outcomes. There were indications of shifts in professional conceptualisations and reported practices as a result of the Act. Participants described enhanced cross‐service communication and co‐ordinated working practices, achieved though service restructuring, co‐location and changed lines of accountability. An increased emphasis on long‐term planning and involving young people in planning and decision‐making was evident with regard to defining outcomes, and living and working as an adult. The results are considered in relation to the extent that mandated change can influence attitudes and cultures within communities of practice, contributing to the contemporary theoretical debate to incorporate issues relating to power.

“Western” Histories of World Literature

Abstract This article reviews attempts to define histories of world literature during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. It submits that “World Literature” and national philology are two sides of the same coin, in that they serve to produce specific national identities and legitimize colonial hegemonic practices. Astonishingly, some patterns of these early histories of world literature can still be observed in contemporary theoretical debates on the subject. Thus, it is argued that, rather than dismissing this heritage of Western historiography (with or without condemnation), we should strive seriously to come up with alternative histories, wherein “West” is no longer treated as synonymous with “world,” and vice versa. The West should be seen as just one form of society and culture among the many others, all of which are due consideration when invoking the term “world.”

A Mixed-Method Study of Same-Sex Kissing Among College-Attending Heterosexual Men in the U.S.

This is the first research to assess the prevalence of same-sex kissing among college-attending, heterosexual men in the United States. We utilized a mixed-method study of 442 quantitative surveys and 75 in-depth interviews with participants from 11 universities in order to understand the frequency, context and meanings of same-sex kissing. We found that the prevalence of kissing on the cheek among these participants was 40%, and kissing on the lips 10%. Both types of kisses were predicted by positive attitudes toward gay men and both types of kissing were generally described as non-sexual expressions of affection. We situate these empirical results within contemporary theoretical debates about masculinities and contend that the meanings associated with heterosexual masculinity are undergoing a profound shift in U.S. culture. This trend of same-sex kissing needs further attention to fully understand these shifts and the emerging homosocial and tactile experiences of young American men.

Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory

AbstractOver the last twenty years, comparative political theory has emerged as a distinctive contribution to contemporary theoretical and methodological debate in making the case for greater engagement between “Western” and “non-Western” traditions. While comparative political theory includes multiple methodological approaches and numerous objectives, this article argues for an interpretive method that combines conceptual and contextual analysis to demonstrate both the malleability of concepts and the varying implications that these concepts can have for political action in particular settings. The contextualized comparison need not necessarily be between Western and non-Western cases. This article argues for a “contextualizing concepts” approach and exemplifies this through an analysis of three cases where the concept of reconciliation has been articulated as a means of transforming divided societies since the 1990s: South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Australia.