Ideological Questions Research Articles

Confronting the Apocalyptic Utopia: Comic Survivalism in Laura Gustafsson's Wilderness Warrior

ABSTRACT Visions of postapocalyptic survival abound in contemporary culture. In the Finnish cultural and literary landscape, where such ideas have historically been extremely marginal, narratives of societal collapse have started appearing during the last ten years. This article examines Laura Gustafsson's novel Korpisoturi (Wilderness Warrior, 2016) as a critical assessment of survivalist ideology in contemporary popular culture. By focusing on questions of gender portrayal and environmental ideology, the article suggests that the novel can be approached as a comical deconstruction of a survivalist mind-set and its representation in postapocalyptic fiction. Through its humorous portrayal of a “prepper” protagonist, Wilderness Warrior renegotiates some of the inherent ideological characteristics of apocalyptic utopianism. With its critique of the paradigmatic cultural notions of global ecological catastrophes, the novel also offers a humorous account of the ultimate unnarratability of disaster in the age of the Anthropocene.

Zgodovina kot servis

During the downfall of Marxist regimes in Eastern Europe, the communists in Slovenia were focused on the further implementation of their far-reaching plans. While doing so, they did not forget to maintain the conscience of the past. During the preparations for their eleventh congress, the commission for history of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia and the Section for Ideological Questions of Historiography of the Marxist Centre of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia had a joint meeting on 7 November 1989. Both authorities rejected the full-scale listing of the Party in the past as being unreasonable; they also opposed the discontinuation of the authorities whose purpose in the Party was to preserve the conscience of the past. Božo Repe, the author of the record of the meeting, stated that the Party needed them as a “service”. At the meeting, the communists also formed guidelines for individual entries in the Encyclopaedia of Slovenia, which proves a strong political and ideological interference with the work of the editorial board.

PHILOSOPHICAL BASES OF TOLERANCE

The article is devoted to philosophical comprehension of tolerance. This problem is connected with a number of fundamental philosophical and ideological questions concerning the person’s understanding of his identity, possibilities and limits of knowledge and understanding, dialogue of cultures and civilizations. The article substantiates the need to move from discussing the issue of tolerance of an entity or group of individuals to a culture of tolerance.

Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp.

Reviewed by: Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller Ulrike Schneider Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000357 Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, written in 1912 and first published in 1915 in René Schickele's journal Weiße Blätter, was not the only narrative that dealt with animal figures as protagonists. Readers of Kafka's work are familiar with Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk; Jackals and Arabs; and the character Red Peter from A Report to an Academy. In addition to Kafka there were other German Jewish writers—from Heinrich Heine in the nineteenth century to the screenwriter and author Curt Siodmak, who escaped to the United States in 1933—who depicted anthropomorphized animals. Jay Geller interrogates the intentions of these representations in Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. Focusing on the period from 1750 until the 1940s, Geller avoids a simplification of political and ideological questions. He is interested in the "development of such animal figures by Jewish-identified, pre-eminently Germanophone writers during the Era of the Jewish Question in order to inquire … about what may be going on when they are telling animal tales and composing animal poems" (5). On the one hand, he discusses different representations of animal figures and their humanization as a result of social and political developments. On the other hand, he points out the history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism in the German states from the Middle Ages and the association of Jews with animals and animality in Christian and later racist writings. His work discusses well-known and widely explored authors such as Heine and Kafka; specific studies by Sigmund Freud, including The Rat Man and The Wolf Man; prose texts by Gertrud Kolmar, Felix Salten, and Max Brod; and Maus by Art Spiegelman. However, the emphasis is on the mentioned "major" German Jewish authors. Geller's book is composed of an introduction, eight chapters, and an afterword. His notes function partly as a commentary elucidating the historical and social backgrounds of the different periods. Most of these chapters derive from lectures, as becomes noticeable with some repetitions in the analysis of Freud and Heine. The following detailed description of the first chapter should clarify the whole structure of the book. The chapter "'O Beastly Jews': A Brief History of an (Un) Natural History" gives an overview of the identification of Jews with images of nonhuman creatures and how the image of "the Jew" and "the Jew-Animal" had developed over the centuries. The depiction of Christian—and later European, especially German—imagination of Jews and pigs, wolves, dogs, apes, or goats demonstrates the formation of stereotypes, starting with the Christian polemical bestiaries of the Middle Ages. Geller incorporates illustrations that he uses to demonstrate the broad impact of antisemitism in "humorous" postcards, journals, or pamphlets since the nineteenth century. Among these images is the 1899 Museé des Horreurs from France, which caricatured Alfred Dreyfus and the Jews and non-Jews who [End Page 252] supported him. By analyzing the illustrations, Geller emphasizes that it is not only the question "of analogizing or identifying Jews with animals per se, but rather with animals that threaten the human/animal hierarchical opposition that helped sustain the social order" (44). Geller offers a complementary and extended perspective on sources about medieval Jewry. In his discussion of human-animal hybrids, the author compares several sources and confronts Christian practices with Jewish traditions where animals—in contrast to the Christian interpretation—"did not specifically represent ethnic or other such groups" (45). Most of the chapters (2 until 7) include analyses of prose texts, poems, and tales by Heine and Kafka. Geller ties his selected corpus together by pointing out processes of publication, discourses of social and political developments, discussions about Jewish identity, and attributions by the non-Jewish majority. Geller uses the example of Heine's poems, as well as some of his Travel Pictures that sketched out animal figures, to critically demonstrate both the project of Emancipation and inner-Jewish discussions on the one hand, and German scholars' defamation of Jewish writers and...

Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller

Reviewed by: Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller Ulrike Schneider Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000357 Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, written in 1912 and first published in 1915 in René Schickele's journal Weiße Blätter, was not the only narrative that dealt with animal figures as protagonists. Readers of Kafka's work are familiar with Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk; Jackals and Arabs; and the character Red Peter from A Report to an Academy. In addition to Kafka there were other German Jewish writers—from Heinrich Heine in the nineteenth century to the screenwriter and author Curt Siodmak, who escaped to the United States in 1933—who depicted anthropomorphized animals. Jay Geller interrogates the intentions of these representations in Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. Focusing on the period from 1750 until the 1940s, Geller avoids a simplification of political and ideological questions. He is interested in the "development of such animal figures by Jewish-identified, pre-eminently Germanophone writers during the Era of the Jewish Question in order to inquire … about what may be going on when they are telling animal tales and composing animal poems" (5). On the one hand, he discusses different representations of animal figures and their humanization as a result of social and political developments. On the other hand, he points out the history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism in the German states from the Middle Ages and the association of Jews with animals and animality in Christian and later racist writings. His work discusses well-known and widely explored authors such as Heine and Kafka; specific studies by Sigmund Freud, including The Rat Man and The Wolf Man; prose texts by Gertrud Kolmar, Felix Salten, and Max Brod; and Maus by Art Spiegelman. However, the emphasis is on the mentioned "major" German Jewish authors. Geller's book is composed of an introduction, eight chapters, and an afterword. His notes function partly as a commentary elucidating the historical and social backgrounds of the different periods. Most of these chapters derive from lectures, as becomes noticeable with some repetitions in the analysis of Freud and Heine. The following detailed description of the first chapter should clarify the whole structure of the book. The chapter "'O Beastly Jews': A Brief History of an (Un) Natural History" gives an overview of the identification of Jews with images of nonhuman creatures and how the image of "the Jew" and "the Jew-Animal" had developed over the centuries. The depiction of Christian—and later European, especially German—imagination of Jews and pigs, wolves, dogs, apes, or goats demonstrates the formation of stereotypes, starting with the Christian polemical bestiaries of the Middle Ages. Geller incorporates illustrations that he uses to demonstrate the broad impact of antisemitism in "humorous" postcards, journals, or pamphlets since the nineteenth century. Among these images is the 1899 Museé des Horreurs from France, which caricatured Alfred Dreyfus and the Jews and non-Jews who [End Page 252] supported him. By analyzing the illustrations, Geller emphasizes that it is not only the question "of analogizing or identifying Jews with animals per se, but rather with animals that threaten the human/animal hierarchical opposition that helped sustain the social order" (44). Geller offers a complementary and extended perspective on sources about medieval Jewry. In his discussion of human-animal hybrids, the author compares several sources and confronts Christian practices with Jewish traditions where animals—in contrast to the Christian interpretation—"did not specifically represent ethnic or other such groups" (45). Most of the chapters (2 until 7) include analyses of prose texts, poems, and tales by Heine and Kafka. Geller ties his selected corpus together by pointing out processes of publication, discourses of social and political developments, discussions about Jewish identity, and attributions by the non-Jewish majority. Geller uses the example of Heine's poems, as well as some of his Travel Pictures that sketched out animal figures, to critically demonstrate both the project of Emancipation and inner-Jewish discussions on the one hand, and German scholars' defamation of Jewish writers and...

Jewish Communal History in Geniza Scholarship: Part 1, From Early Beginnings to Goitein’s Magnum Opus

Jewish communal organization has always been a major topic in Jewish historiography, not only because of its importance in the past, but also because of its continuing importance as a model for contemporary Jewish life. This essay traces the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship on Jewish communal life from its beginnings in the early research conducted by the Wissenschaft scholars until Goitein’s works, which mark a distinctive watershed in the study of this theme. Its main arguments are that Jewish communal history was shaped by contemporary political and ideological questions and that it took a long and slow path toward integrating the Cairo Geniza materials as its main base of evidence.

Senfascismens æstetisering af (den hvide) arbejderklasse

Late Fascism’s Aestheticization of the (White) Working Class: Notes for a Communist Art Theory
 The article presents a double take on what I propose to call late fascism in order to distinguish between the inter-war fascist movements and contemporary fascist parties and politicians. Firstly, I follow Walter Benjamin’s analysis of fascism as a question of aestheticization. Fascism is just as much a question of culture and ideology as a question of politics, and we need to map the specific fascist culture that contemporary fascist politicians produce. Secondly, I connect this analysis of fascist culture to an analysis of the specific class composition of late fascism, arguing that late fascism operates through a process of reverse victimization where a privileged white working class comes to see itself as threatened.

Argentine Science Fiction: Between Everyday Politics and Dystopia

This article explores some fundamental political and ideological questions posed by Argentinian sf. Despite its volume, Argentine critics still consider sf a minor, popular, and sometimes not especially serious form. This article discusses how sf contests these assumptions and proposes a new understanding of Argentinian culture, using as examples three recent Argentinian sf novels: Pola Oloixarac's Las constelaciones oscuras [The Dark Constellations], Juan Diego Incardona's Las estrellas federales [Red Poinsettias], and Pablo Plotkin's Un futuro radiante [A Glowing Future]. Read by mainstream and sf readers alike, these dystopian novels occupy an uneasy space in Argentinian culture. They ask fundamental questions about the role of the individual subject who cannot always sustain his or her political and ideological commitments vis-à-vis the community. They express fear about worsening social and economic conditions of an ever-changing present. Written after one of the worst economic crises in Argentinian history, these novels propose not only new forms for approaching the real but also new ways of reading the national ideological landscape.

An introduction to Concepts of Justice in Islam

Conceptual justice is so broad that, at the same time, apparent simplicity is associated with many complications, and thinkers, philosophers, economists, and lawyers ... have more than two thousand years ago still sought to find the right meaning.The concept of justice is understandable and desirable for most human societies, and this utility and importance for Muslims has been doubled. One of the ideological questions and ideals of Islamic thought was the concept of justice, which had a high status in Islamic thought and undeniable role among the Shi'ites as one of the largest Muslim groups. This paper seeks to clarify, at the same time, a comprehensive and thorough explanation of their idealistic approach to justice by examining the most important principles and concepts of justice from the Muslim perspective. On this basis, justice is considered from a number of perspectives, and the approach of the Quran as the main source of Muslims, as well as the approach of Muslim theologians and Muslim jurists.

Amazônia e o poder simbólico das ONGs transnacionais

Este trabalho analisa diferentes aspectos do poder simbólico nos discursivos das ONGs Greenpeace e WWF sobre a Amazônia. Utilizou-se a Análise do Discurso da linha francesa como eixo teórico-metodológico, sendo empregada para examinar o movimento interno dos textos, não-ditos, questões ideológicas, saliências ou apagamentos, reveladores dos posicionamentos dos sujeitos enunciadores. Durante o processo de análise discursiva de cinco textos diferentes, notou-se que os sentidos de Amazônia efetivam-se por meio de diversas formas de poder simbólico. Os resultados da pesquisa apontam que as ONGs Transnacionais Ambientalistas Greenpeace e WWF, utilizando-se de vários recursos discursivos, buscam demonstrar seu poder simbólico e produzir imagens da Amazônia de acordo com as suas perspectivas de mundo e impor a aceitação globalizada dessa imagem como realidade.

‘Ungentlemanly capitalism’: John Hay and Malaya, 1904–1964

ABSTRACT John Hay was one of Britain’s leading colonial capitalists, building his career from the 1900s to the 1960s in Malaya’s plantation industry. He became the leading spokesperson for the British rubber growers, and played a major role in the formulation of international restriction schemes during the 1930s. Hay was a remarkable entrepreneurial talent, consolidating his corporate power through the premiere Malayan agency house, Guthrie & Co. This in itself challenges the notion that Britain’s myriad of ‘free-standing’ companies, which were typical of direct investment in the Empire, represented a relatively weak and unsustainable form of multinational enterprise. But Hay’s dominance of the Malayan plantation sector also questions the notion of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ as the driving force behind the expansion and sustenance of the British imperial system. Hay’s network of colonial corporate influence did not extend into the corridors of ‘gentlemanly capitalist’ power in Whitehall and the City, where he often had frosty relations. Ultimately, it was the financial sector in London that brought about Hay’s forced resignation from Guthrie in 1963. Examining questions of class, ethnicity, personality, ideology and strategy, the article focuses on why Hay did not develop better relations with commercial, financial and official elites, issues that would also engender tensions with the post-colonial political and business leadership of Malaya/Malaysia.

Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War (review)

REVIEWS 579 of his distinguished radical past, and in the 1920s he took an active part in what Eklof and Charushin call the ‘Memory Wars’ — that is the struggle to preserve and promote the contribution to revolution made by men and women who refused to join the Bolshevik Party or endorse its vision and policies. One of the most valuable aspects of these later chapters is the extensive use made by Eklof and Saburova of archival material to reconstruct Charushin’s life and views in his later years. There are inevitably a few shortcomings in A Generation of Revolutionaries. The use of a methodology derived from the (amorphous) genre of Memory Studies is rather ad hoc and undeveloped. Nor are Eklof and Saburova entirely convincing when seeking to define their understanding of ‘generation’ as a chronological, ideological and experiential phenomenon. Yet such weaknesses should not be exaggerated. The scholarly literature on Russian Populism in English has always been somewhat unsatisfactory, often focusing on questions of ideology and tactics, rather than setting the phenomenon in its full historical complexity. A Generation of Revolutionaries will be of value to all historians interested in the longue durée of the Russian Revolution. It deserves to be read widely. Department of History Michael Hughes Lancaster University Stockdale, Melissa Kirschke. Mobilizing the Russian Nation: Patriotism and Citizenship in the First World War. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2016. xvii + 284 pp. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £75.00. The intertwining of the Russian Revolution with the First World War makes analysis of the Russian wartime experience a particularly complex task. Melissa Stockdale’s richly textured book discusses how Russian — and, by extension, Soviet — identity was fashioned by the war, showing how a variety of very different groups were instrumental in creating a patriotic discourse that had an impact even after the war had ended. In the summer of 1914 a rhetoric of ‘sacred union’ was deployed to encourage national unity right across the Russian empire. Stockdale emphasizes that this was based not just on the traditional bond between tsar and people, but that it was intended to develop a much wider conception of national unity, drawing together the empire’s varied national and social groups to develop a discourse that could accommodate Russia’s polarized politics. The government itself SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 580 promoted support for the war by press campaigns and widespread publicity for its war loans, while the Orthodox church marshalled its extensive resources to promote the virtues of service and sacrifice, as well as providing material help for soldiers and their families. Wartime patriotic discourse extended beyond the traditional institutions of state and church, however, as a variety of public and voluntary organizations acted to support the war effort. The tsarist regime was compelled to accept that wider society must play a major role in the war effort and at both national and local level a wide variety of organizations provided assistance for Russia’s armies. Stockdale argues that this helped in developing the concept of citizenship, with the fostering of expectations that work for the war effort would provide the opportunity for real engagement in the ‘national community’ once the war was over. More than 15 million Russians served in the armed forces during the war, and the direct engagement of so many people in the conflict extended its impact into every corner of the empire. Soldiers’ families received state aid, while those disabled in the war would receive pensions and, for soldiers who were killed, the question of memorials quickly came to the fore. The Society for RemembrancewasestablishedinApril1915andrewardingandcommemorating Russia’s soldiers, Stockdale argues, was a central way in which common ground could be established right across the empire. In trying to cement the ‘sacred union’, the regime also tried to identify groups — such as Russia’s German population — that could be used as scapegoats who could be blamed for the shortcomings in the war effort. But this focus on internal betrayal proved to have fatal consequences for the Romanov regime: as Stockdale emphasizes, it was the imperial family that became the eventual target for accusations...

The new privatized market: A question of ideology or pragmatism within the Swedish addiction treatment system?

AbstractGiven its traditions of universal welfarism and social democracy, Sweden had already scored unexpectedly high on New Public Management by the 1980s. Health and welfare services remain primarily tax‐funded, but the production of care is increasingly transferred to a competitive quasi‐market. To what extent can this development be understood in terms of right‐wing governments, and to what extent in terms of other, socioeconomic and pragmatic factors? We examined this question through official statistics on providers of institutional addiction care since 1976, and through the total expenditure and purchases by local‐level municipal social services of interventions for substance users in Sweden in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014. We have analyzed the distribution across public and private providers within the addiction treatment system, and whether national developments and local differences across the 290 municipalities—which bear the major treatment responsibility—can be understood in terms of local‐level political majority, population size, and local wealth. The share of purchased services has remained stable, but the treatment system shows increasing financial turnover and an increasing share of for‐profit providers among producers of purchased care, especially in outpatient treatment. While venture capital enterprises emerged as a new actor, non‐governmental organizations lost out in importance. Bourgeois government correlated with larger shares of purchasing and purchases from for‐profit providers. However, purchasing on a market dominated by for‐profit providers has also become the “new normal”, regardless of ideology, and recent years have shown a reversed effect of left‐wing municipalities purchasing more services than right‐wing governments. Pragmatic reasons also influence local‐level purchasing.

Marx, Materialism and the Brain: Determination in the Last Instance?

It is well acknowledged that there is not one but many Marxes, and one area where this has been most evident is in the question of technological and economic determinism. This article traces some key moments in this debate and attempts to locate their most recent iteration in disagreements over the place of the human brain in both historical agency and value creation in so called ‘cognitive’ or ‘post-Fordist’ capitalism. Of significant interest in the current configuration – or rather composition – of capital is the place of the digitisation of the labour process and its relation to, and integration with, human cognition and volition. Arguments over the attention economy and the power of post-Fordist capitalism to distract and direct is a significant variation of the question of ideology and the latest variation of the base/superstructure debate. This article will unpack the aforesaid issues to offer an articulated perspective in order to make the argument that taking a balanced view of determination will allow us to acknowledge that – drawing on the argument of determination in the last instance – we can hold both of these ‘Marxes’ to be simultaneously valid. Here, a revisiting of Marx’s concept of General Intellect will be undertaken, wherein the productive capacity of living labour is employed in both active agency and the capture of value, in which the plasticity of the living brain becomes the pivot point for both exploitation by, and resistance to, capital.

DIALOGUE OF CULTURE AS A BASIS FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT (ON THE BASIS OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE COSMISM)

In the article the author shows the universal nature of the ideas of cosmicism and analyzes the possibility of their application for solving modern problems of mankind. It was revealed that the set of ideological questions offered by cosmists, their relevance and significance for modern society gives grounds to define this direction as a perspective global ideology capable of giving the leading ideas, to show new ways of solving modern ecological, ethical, axiological problems.

“Even if it didn't happen, it's true”: The fantasy of geopolitics in the “post-truth” era

In times when notions of political facts and objective truth are significantly challenged and undermined, this paper seeks to re-examine “old” questions of ideology by paying attention to economies of knowledge deemed fake and (officially) discredited. Using the “docu-fiction” film “Houston, We Have a Problem!” as a grounding point for examining the topological relationship between reason and fantasy inherent in geopolitics, I explore the contradictions within the film's production and reception, as it offers a powerful and complex account of illusion and reality that form our geopolitical worlds. The paper argues for geopolitics as a fantasy, where the fantasy is conceived as a material process, one placed firmly within the field of social practice and productive of social reality itself. The emotional grip of the fantasy is explored through humor, fun and laughter as forms of emotional purchase of geopolitics. To that end, this paper seeks to expand the field of popular geopolitics by offering a psychoanalytically-informed account of the emotional and affective economies involved in the production of geopolitical ideologies, and proceeds to explore how such fantasies of geopolitics continue to inform our contemporary social reality of “alternative facts” and “post-truth” politics.

Party Brands and the Democratic and Republican National Committees, 1952–1976

Political scientists have traditionally dismissed the Democratic and Republican National Committees as “service providers”—organizations that provide assistance to candidates in the form of campaign funding and expertise but otherwise lack political power. I argue this perspective has missed a crucial role national committees play in American politics, namely that national party organizations publicize their party's policy positions and, in doing so, attempt to create national party brands. These brands are important to party leaders—especially when the party is in the national minority—since they are fundamental to mobilizing voters in elections. In case studies covering the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) in the period 1952–1976, I show that minority party committees prioritize their branding role and invest considerably in their publicity divisions, inaugurate new publicity programs, and create new communication tools to reach out to voting groups. Additionally, I show that in cases where the party is out of the White House, the national committees have considerable leeway in deciding what party image to publicize. Rather than being mere powerless service providers, I show that party committees have played crucial roles in debates concerning questions of ideology and issue positioning in both parties.

Feminism at the margins: the case of the virginity bursaries in South Africa

The practice of virginity testing in southern Africa has caused a conflict between advocates of culture and proponents of universal human rights. Recently, the ‘virginity bursaries’, also known as the ‘maiden bursaries’, caused an outcry from proponents of universal human rights, who declared the criterion (virginity testing) used for bursaries unlawful, discriminatory and unconstitutional. On the other side of the debate, cultural relativists defended the virginity bursaries by outlining moral and pedagogical justifications for virginity testing. The arguments by both sides highlight that it is not easy to resolve the discursive and ideological questions around virginity testing. As a result, drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of contested fields and ‘habitus’, the aim of this philosophical article is to explore the discourses that surround virginity testing – the cornerstone of the virginity bursaries – as a means of illustrating the conflicting positions within gender studies about traditional/cultural practices. Our aim is neither to provide an empirical account of the experience of virginity testing, nor to resolve the debate, but to explore some of the possible approaches to virginity testing and the major philosophical conflicts between human rights and traditionalist approaches.

Is there such a thing as school quality culture?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of “school quality management culture” in relation to the general notion of “school organizational culture” and to review empirical studies that scrutinised the relation between organisational culture and quality management practices in education and business.Design/methodology/approachThe paper builds on an extensive literature review that was conducted as part of a project, which intends to develop an instrument to diagnose schools’ quality management culture in initial vocational education.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that school quality (management) culture exists and differs from school (organisational) culture. A pluralist view of culture and a differentiation perspective are more appropriate to explain the complex relationship between culture and quality practices than unified or integrated approaches. However, they also pose a challenge to empirical studies because they call for longitudinal and multi-method research designs.Research limitations/implicationsThe reciprocal relation between quality practices and school culture asks for a longitudinal and comparative research design. The findings also suggest using multi-perspective and multi-method approaches, and recommend cooperation between different but comparable fields such as education, health or social work.Practical implicationsThis paper offers a literature base and a theoretical model to improve existing data collection tools to support quality management in vocational and other educational institutions.Originality/valueApart from the ideological question on whether “culture” is something an organisation is or an organisation has, the paper examines the question as to whether more “quality”-conducive cultures can be discerned from less conducive ones in schools. Furthermore, it deliberates on whether an organisation’s quality management culture is part of, or different from, an organisation’s overall culture and presents models to guide empirical analyses.

Decifra-me ou eu te devoro! - os fundamentos sócio-econômico-culturais do modo de produção capitalista e suas implicações na história da educação e no trabalho educativo

Este trabalho pretende discutir os fundamentos filosóficos e políticos da educação, a partir da perspectiva materialista dialético-histórica, como visão de mundo, com método de análise e como praxis. Vivemos numa situação histórica paradoxal em relação às condições sócio-econômico-culturais: de um lado, o discurso de que estamos no melhor dos mundos possíveis, de constante progresso técnico-científico e, de outro lado, a realidade de exploração da grande maioria dos seres humanos. Nosso objetivo é o de apresentar uma reflexão no sentido de desafiar os discursos e práticas e sua defesa do estado atual de coisas, que tem como fundamento o liberalismo político e o modo de produção capitalista, especificamente a questão da alienação e da ideologia e suas implicações na educação. Daí partirmos de uma reflexão-ação sobre as circunstâncias concretas, inseparável de uma reflexão-ação sobre as consciências, pois entendemos que a educação é uma atividade de interpretação-compreensão, assim como de intervenção-ação no mundo das relações concretas e contraditórias. Propomos o reconhecimento da atualidade do materialismo dialético-histórico e de sua potencialidade científica, histórica, filosófica e política, como possibilidade de construção do homem omnilateral, capaz de ter consciência do real e de práxis interventiva e transformadora, na superação e abolição de toda forma de educação puramente operacional, técnica, instrumental, exploratória e mercantilista. É preciso pensar uma “educação para além do capital”, que não se submeta ou se adapte aos interesses do capital, do “mercado de trabalho”. Nosso objetivo é discutir a possibilidade e a necessidade objetiva da construção da sociedade e do homem politicamente emancipados