Main Proponents Research Articles

Understanding Authoritarian Resilience and Countering Autocracy Promotion in Asia

Understanding Authoritarian Resilience and Countering Autocracy Promotion in Asia John Lee (bio) keywords Authoritarianism, Democracy, China, Southeast Asia [End Page 99] executive summary This article examines some of the reasons for authoritarian resilience and democratic erosion in Asia and assesses options for countering autocracy promotion to create more realistic conditions for democratization in the future. main argument Proponents of modernization theory postulate that rapid economic growth in Asia will lead to the emergence of independent and politically active middle classes agitating for democracy in the region. Although Asia continues to enjoy rapid economic advances, democratization has stalled, and in some instances, has gone backward. The reality is that many regional countries take a deeply embedded instrumentalist or pragmatic view of democracy and remain unconvinced about the inherent virtues of universal suffrage. At a time when democracy is on the defensive, China has emerged as a regional and global leader in promoting the apparent virtues of authoritarian approaches and the supposed weaknesses of democracy. This increases the importance and urgency of countering China’s anti-democratic narrative so as to create more fertile ground for democratization to take root in Asia. policy implications • Proponents of democracy must abandon the complacent view that democracy will be the inevitable destination for rapidly growing economies in Asia and accept the reality that China is leading an authoritarian offensive in making the case that one-party rule is a better model for many countries in the region. • Democracies need to enter this debate and contest over ideas and adapt their message to the regional audience. If established democracies seek to create more fertile ground for democratization, they need to better counter Chinese narratives. • Rather than simply promoting the virtues of universal suffrage (which might not in and of itself lead to superior results in some countries), democracies need to focus on building practical institutions that increase accountability, transparency, and protections for the rights of individuals and entities in countries undergoing political transitions. [End Page 100] Almost 50 years ago, Seymour Martin Lipset put forward the argument that citizens who are affluent and educated are more likely to reject the appeal of demagogues and, by extension, dictatorships.1 This was an early expression of what became better known as modernization theory, which focuses on the rise of a middle class and its role in agitating for and entrenching democracy in that respective polity. When the Tiananmen Square protests (which were in fact countrywide protests occurring simultaneously in hundreds of cities) erupted in China in 1989, followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, hopes were high that Samuel Huntington’s “third wave of democratization” could endure and advance in Asia.2 The “third wave” references the democratic transitions that occurred in at least 30 countries from 1974 to 1990. Japan provided the lead, even though the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had been in government since its founding in 1955 and did not lose power until 2009. In South Korea and Taiwan, economic reforms and growing prosperity paved the way for the rise of democracy. Thailand has stumbled in and out of democracy since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. Although far from perfect, democratic processes were entrenched in Malaysia and Singapore. In Indonesia, by contrast, the transition to democracy did not begin until after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Asia appeared to be the ideal region for the key tenets of modernization theory. The so-called East Asian model continues to do its work, and the ingredients are seemingly all there: economic reforms that create an increasingly large and more powerful entrepreneurial and property-owning class, growing prosperity leading to a rising middle class, and the emergence of educated and socially conscious elites with broad knowledge and first-hand experience of the outside world.3 Using the World Bank definition of the middle class as those with per capita incomes in real terms between $10 and $100 per person per day in 2005 purchasing power parity terms, 1.36 billion people, or 46% of the global middle class, lived in Asia in 2015. This is expected to rise to over 2.23...

The overkill model and its impact on environmental research.

Research on human‐environment interactions that informs ecological practices and guides conservation and restoration has become increasingly interdisciplinary over the last few decades. Fueled in part by the debate over defining a start date for the Anthropocene, historical disciplines like archeology, paleontology, geology, and history are playing an important role in understanding long‐term anthropogenic impacts on the planet. Pleistocene overkill, the notion that humans overhunted megafauna near the end of the Pleistocene in the Americas, Australia, and beyond, is used as prime example of the impact that humans can have on the planet. However, the importance of the overkill model for explaining human–environment interactions and anthropogenic impacts appears to differ across disciplines. There is still considerable debate, particularly within archeology, about the extent to which people may have been the cause of these extinctions. To evaluate how different disciplines interpret and use the overkill model, we conducted a citation analysis of selected works of the main proponent of the overkill model, Paul Martin. We examined the ideas and arguments for which Martin's overkill publications were cited and how they differed between archeologists and ecologists. Archeologists cite overkill as one in a combination of causal mechanisms for the extinctions. In contrast, ecologists are more likely to accept that humans caused the extinctions. Aspects of the overkill argument are also treated as established ecological processes. For some ecologists, overkill provides an analog for modern‐day human impacts and supports the argument that humans have “always” been somewhat selfish overconsumers. The Pleistocene rewilding and de‐extinction movements are built upon these perspectives. The use of overkill in ecological publications suggests that despite increasing interdisciplinarity, communication with disciplines outside of ecology is not always reciprocal or even.

Genocentryzm versus teoria systemów rozwojowych. Dwa konkurencyjne sposoby rozumienia informacji w biologii współczesnej

There are (at least) two opposing concepts of biological information, or bioinformation,discussed in the modern philosophy of biology: genocentric (genebased)and holistic. As a main proponent of the former I consider British evolutionistJohn Maynard Smith and his teleosemantic theory of bioinformation.The latter was proposed by American philosopher Susan Oyama in the form ofso-called Developmental Systems Theory (DST).In Maynard Smith proposal bioinformation is strictly gene-based and anynon-genetic element of a living organism cannot be considered as a vehicle ofinformational content. Such information is transmitted from parents to offspringinside the germ cells and every time serves as a blueprint for buildingthe whole organisms. DST claims the opposite: bioinformation cannot bereduced to genetic elements only and is scattered throughout the whole livingsystem. What is more, biological information is not simply transmittedbetween generations but every time rebuilt from available developmental resources:bioinformation has not only it is phylogeny, but it is ontogeny as well.The aim of this paper is twofold. First: to present the foundations of both aforementionedtheories to the reader and second: to discuss the different objectionsraised against them.

Thomas Aquinas and Antonio de Córdoba on self-defence: saving yourself as a private end

ABSTRACTRevisionists about Aquinas’ teaching on private self-defence take the standard reading to hold that Aquinas applies a version of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) according to which the intentional killing of a wrongful attacker by a private person is morally prohibited while the non-intentional but foreseeable killing of the attacker is permitted. Revisionists dispute this reading and argue that Aquinas permits the intentional killing of wrongful attackers. I argue that revisionists mischaracterize the standard reading of Aquinas. I consider one of its main proponents, Antonio de Córdoba (1485–1579). When Córdoba condemned the intentional killing of wrongful attackers by private persons, he was not applying DDE. Rather, he was arguing that when you decide to kill an attacker you treat the attacker as a resource for the private end of saving your life. Killing a member of your community is a form of irrevocable social exclusion. This decision ought to be left to the public authorities. The disagreement between the authors defending the standard view and their critics was not about DDE but rather about the moral limits that membership in a community sets on the pursuit of private ends, including the private end of staying alive.

The Study of Ethics as Moral Education

Using the main proponents of contemporary moral philosophical positions, this article examines the fruitfulness of teaching ethnics to children and youth. The major question is whether such study might lead to practical consequences - and indeed if this is a necessary consideration for the study of ethics. The teaching of rational moral decision- making involves problems of rules of justification and guidance as well as the establishment of principles which would illustrate the relationship between theory and practice.

The Changing Landscape of 19th Century Courts

The Changing Landscape of 19th Century Courts Nancy S. Marder (bio) Amalia D. Kessler. Inventing American Exceptionalism: The Origins of American Adversarial Legal Culture, 1800–1877. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 449 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. Amalia Kessler's task in Inventing American Exceptionalism, which she performs exceedingly well, is to challenge the idea that adversarialism was always a feature of American courts. She does this by tracing the development of our court system between 1800–1877 and showing that there were different models of courts and procedures throughout this period. She describes the rise and fall of courts that even many proceduralists are unlikely to have extensive knowledge of, including equity courts, conciliation courts, and the Freedmen's Bureau courts. In uncovering this fascinating history, Kessler explains the role that lawyers played in helping courts of law (also known as common-law courts) gain in popularity, as well as lawyers' contribution to the demise of equity courts. Not only does Kessler show that courts were more varied than students of the American court system might expect, but also that lay participants played a role in each of these types of courts. In our own day, professional judges preside over courtroom proceedings; however, in the period that Kessler examines, lay participants also performed judicial functions in equity courts, conciliation courts, and Freedmen's Bureau courts. Kessler's study of these various courts reveals that the demarcation between professional judge and lay participant, which is so pronounced in our own time, was far less clear in various types of courts in the nineteenth century. Kessler begins her exploration with equity courts, which she describes as "quasi-inquisitorial" rather than adversarial in nature (p. 5). These courts, also known as chancery courts, were headed by a chancellor and marked by proceedings that were reduced to writing and conducted in secret and were adversarial only to the extent that the parties initiated them. Witnesses answered questions, which were written down by an examiner and the testimony was not revealed until there was a decision. Witnesses were examined only once (on the theory that otherwise they might be tempted to alter their [End Page 433] testimony). The documentary evidence was submitted to the chancellor, who was supposed to decide the case based on his "powerful moral intuition" or "refined moral sensibility" and to "pursue the outcome that was procedurally just" (p. 38, 53). The equity judge was viewed, at least according to two main proponents of equity courts, Chancellor of New York Court of Chancery James Kent and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, as "a kind of Romantic hero" (p. 43). Initially, lawyers had little role to play in these courts, which served primarily the elite, but lawyers transformed their role over time. Kessler focuses on the way in which lawyers incrementally created a role for themselves in chancery court, and in doing so, helped to transform chancery court so that its proceedings became oral and adversarial rather than written and quasi-inquisitorial. She uses the New York Chancery as her focal point. Equity courts were under pressure from a growing population, an increase in commercial activity, and greater democratization. Meanwhile, chancery staff remained minimal: there were examiners, who were full-time court officials and wrote down witnesses' testimony; masters, who helped resolve disputed facts; commissioners, who were lay people whose task was to examine witnesses and who were hired on an ad hoc basis and were paid by the parties to perform their task, and the chancellor, who decided the case on the documentary evidence prepared by examiners, commissioners, and masters and who could ensure specific relief. Instead of increasing the chancery staff to grapple with changes in society, chancery court began to embrace the oral and adversarial procedures lawyers urged. As masters moved from written interrogatories to oral testimony because it was quicker (a move that was eventually upheld by Chancellor Kent), it opened the door to lawyers performing this function. Over time, lawyers were able to assume responsibility for questioning witnesses orally and for shaping the questioning to the benefit of their client. Procedural power shifted from masters and examiners to lawyers, and...

Economic nationalism in the history of international economics

This paper examines the sources of economic nationalism by a closer examination of the theory and policy of international trade, originating in the 19th century. We compare and contrast the views of British classical writers, the main proponents of trade liberalism, with the writings of Friedrich List, the main proponent of economic nationalism. The focus is on the distributional implications of trade, and the treatment of the benefits that a poor country may derive from trading with a rich country in 19th century economic thought. We also review the current literature on economic nationalism, and find that alternative perspectives emerge from differing views on the benefits and drawbacks of globalisation. We argue that List's approach remains relevant to understanding contemporary economic nationalism because it highlights a historical context in which the adverse distributional implications of foreign trade are likely to provoke nationalist sentiment.

Material Value-Ethics

Josef Seifert and John F. Crosby are the two main proponents of applied material value-ethics. Both reject all forms of suicide and abortion. Seifert also explicitly rejects euthanasia, torture, destructive stem-cell research, genetic enhancement, in vitro fertilization, and contraception. Crosby explicitly rejects spousal in vitro fertilization and spousal contraception. In this essay I examine whether their case should be regarded as convincing. Against Seifert, and possibly also against Crosby, I show why it definitely should not.

Explaining International Change: The Need for Greater Plurality in the Discipline of International Relations

AbstractIn the third decade of the twenty-first century, the world is witnessing rapid changes in every field, and this refers not only to the accelerated pace of technological developments, social changes, economic booms and crashes, etc. but also to a major transformation in the international system from the post-1945 liberal international structure under the hegemonic stability provided by the United States to one that is marked with a larger number of major actors who do not necessarily subscribe to the tenets of free markets and electoral democracy. In this rapidly transforming world, efforts made by the scholarly inquiry of international relations fail to keep up with the speed of the empirical change. This paper asserts that the main reason of this shortcoming of the IR as a discipline is its lack of pluralism, meaning that mainstream IR theories continue to reflect Western viewpoints and interests while at the same time ignoring alternative, non-Western theories to large extent. This paper's argument is that such alternative IR theories and approaches have to emerge and reinforce the Western-centric mainstream so that the discipline can be in a better position to explain international change, as a multi-actor process cannot be adequately explained through the lens of one single actor. The potential offered by Chinese IR theory making is discussed within this context on the grounds that as China is one of the main proponents of change at the international level, Chinese perspectives produced through Chinese geocultural reference points are needed not to replace but to complement Western narratives in order to explain the change at the global level.

A critique of phrenology in Moby-Dick.

Phrenology has a fascinating, although controversial, place in the history of localizationism of brain and mental functions. The 2 main proponents of phrenology were 2 German-speaking doctors, Joseph Gall (1758-1828) and Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832). According to their theory, a careful examination of skull morphology could disclose personality characters. Phrenology was initially restricted to medical circles and then diffused outside scientific societies, reaching nonscientific audiences in Europe and North America. Phrenology deeply penetrated popular culture in the 19th century and its tenets can be observed in British and American literature. Here we analyze the presence of phrenologic concepts in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville (1819-1891), one of the most prominent American writers. In his masterpiece, he demonstrates that he was familiarized with Gall and Spurzheim's writings, but referred to their theory as "semi-science" and "a passing fable." Of note, Melville's fine irony against phrenology is present in his attempt to perform a phrenologic and physiognomic examination of The Whale. Thus, Moby-Dick illustrates the diffusion of phrenology in Western culture, but may also reflect Melville's skepticism and criticism toward its main precepts.

How do people conceptualise the reuse of medicines? An interview study.

ObjectivesTo capture people's beliefs about medicines reuse and to map the determinants of intentions to reuse medicines in the future.MethodsParticipants were recruited through an advert placed in the university's community newsletter reaching 15 000 households. Adults wishing to participate were interviewed using convenience sampling, with recruitment continuing until data saturation. Participants were interviewed face‐to‐face by two researchers using a semi‐structured interview schedule based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Interview transcripts were analysed by thematic analysis, with the themes classified according to the TPB. The University's research ethics committee approval was obtained.Key findingsNineteen participants were interviewed. The potential economic and environmental benefits of medicines reuse were juxtaposed with stability and safety worries. Participants trusted pharmacists to quality‐assure returned medicines, but wondered if they had the time and storage space to dedicate to medicines reuse. Environmentalists were seen as the main proponents of medicines reuse with drug manufacturers, some taxpayers and parents seen as the main opponents. The physical characteristics of reused medicines, and quality assurance and logistics of reuse processes were seen to enable/obstruct engagement in medicines reuse. A working definition of medicines reuse as a behaviour was developed.ConclusionsPeople could potentially agree to reuse medicines if their concerns are addressed and the process is well defined and managed. This is a qualitative study with a small number of participants meaning the results may not be generalisable. The themes generated will enable a structured questionnaire to be developed for quantifying broader views.

“Comrade Mzala”: Memory Construction and Legacy Preservation

ABSTRACTAdopting the broad inter-disciplinary concept of “memory” and its construction in a public sphere, I examine some of the ways in which memories of Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo, known as “Comrade Mzala” in liberation struggle circles, have been constructed and kept alive since his passing. A leading activist of the ANC, MK and the SACP, Mzala succumbed to an illness in a London hospital on February 22, 1991. A number of commemorative events and other activities, including grass-roots and branch-level initiatives, media releases, memorial lectures, colloquia and speeches and tributary statements, are analysed. Their tone, emotion, style and implicit objectives are explored. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous recognition of Mzala's liberation struggle credentials and intellectual prowess, there is no homogeneity in the manner he is remembered and celebrated; nor is there agreement in the reading of Mzala in a post-apartheid South Africa and its associated political and socio- economic context. Moreover, whilst it is predominantly organisations and individuals within the Tripartite Alliance who have been the main proponents of remembering, honouring and memorialising Mzala, there are others, outside of the Alliance and even antagonistic, who find inspiration in his radical world outlook, work and persona; and often use their memory of Mzala to critique the current political and economic conjuncture.

Evolving story: trepanation and self-trepanation to enhance brain function.

Trepanation has been performed by people interested in enhancing mental power and well-being since the early 1960s. The pioneers and main proponents of the procedure are described here. The phenomenon appeared in Europe after a Dutch former medical student published a psychoactive drug-friendly scroll suggesting trepanation as a form of permanently increasing cerebral blood volume and function. He trepanned himself in 1965. Three of his friends became enthusiasts. They also submitted themselves to the procedure and published films and books describing their experiences. Two of them coauthored papers, in collaboration with Russian researchers, and created institutions to promote discussion on trepanation. One of these institutions organized trips to Central and South America to get the operation done. Dozens of people nowadays look for trepanation as a method of spiritualization and increasing well-being and mental power. The phenomenon has an uncertain future, however, as the main proponents and supporters are aging.

Are we persons or animals? Exposing an anthropocentric bias and suggesting a hybrid view

Summary One of the many philosophical fields of relevance to frequently discussed themes in bioethics is that of personal identity. The main question of the personal identity debate concerns our persistence conditions and asks: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for you and me to persist through time? What kinds of changes and events can beings such as us survive? The answer to these questions has bearing on several themes in bioethics, such as the moral status of a human foetus and the moral legitimacy of advance directives and living wills. In the philosophical debate, there are two main alternative answers to these questions. According to the Psychological View, we – human beings – are essentially persons and as such, we persist by our psychology. The opposing view – Animalism – rejects both claims of the Psychological View and asserts instead that we are essentially animals and that our persistence conditions are biological rather than psychological. 1 In this paper, I expose what I believe to be an anthropocentric bias in the arguments of the two main proponents of each view – Lynn Rudder Baker and Eric Olson. Lynn Rudder Baker, I argue, vastly underestimates the mental capacities of non-human animals and attaches too much importance to the supposedly unique ability of humans to have a first-person perspective. Eric Olson, on the other hand, avoids this kind of outright anthropocentrism, but still exhibits some anthropocentric bias by neglecting the possibility that “animal” fails as a suitable substance concept and natural kind. Having exposed this anthropocentric bias in their respective arguments, I propose a hybrid view of personal identity. This is a view that accepts the claim that we are animals, as well as the claim that we persist by our psychology. Even if we accept Lynn Rudder Baker's constitution view, I suggest that we reject her assumption that only humans have the necessary mental capabilities needed to persist by their psychology. According to the suggested hybrid view, we are animals in the sense that we are constituted by one and although this claim falls just short of the claim that we are identical to an animal (which is the main claim of the Animalist), this worry is mitigated because there is no reason to believe that this relationship (between person and animal) and the fact that we persist by our psychology is something that separates us from other animals. According to the hybrid view I propose, we are animals in the very same sense of the term that (some, but not all) other species are.

First Principles Calculations of Transition Metal Binary Alloys: Phase Stability and Surface Effects

The phase stability and surface effects on binary transition metal nano-alloy systems were investigated using density functional theory-based first principles calculations. In this study, we evaluated the cohesive and alloying energies of six binary metal alloy bulk systems that sample each type of alloys according to miscibility, i.e., Au-Ag and Pd-Ag for the solid solution-type alloys (SS), Pd-Ir and Pd-Rh for the high-temperature solid solution-type alloys (HTSS), and Au-Ir and Ag-Rh for the phase-separation (PS)-type alloys. Our results and analysis show consistency with experimental observations on the type of materials in the bulk phase. Varying the lattice parameter was also shown to have an effect on the stability of the bulk mixed alloy system. It was observed, particularly for the PS- and HTSS-type materials, that mixing gains energy from the increasing lattice constant. We furthermore evaluated the surface effects, which is an important factor to consider for nanoparticle-sized alloys, through analysis of the (001) and (111) surface facets. We found that the stability of the surface depends on the optimization of atomic positions and segregation of atoms near/at the surface, particularly for the HTSS and the PS types of metal alloys. Furthermore, the increase in energy for mixing atoms at the interface of the atomic boundaries of PS- and HTSS-type materials is low enough to overcome by the gain in energy through entropy. These, therefore, are the main proponents for the possibility of mixing alloys near the surface.

Reconciling Hayek’s and Keynes’ Views of Recessions

Recessions often happen after periods of rapid accumulation of houses, consumer durables and business capital. This observation has led some economists, most notably Friedrich Hayek, to conclude that recessions often reflect periods of needed liquidation resulting from past over-investment. According to the main proponents of this view, government spending or any other form of aggregate demand policy should not be used to mitigate such a liquidation process, as doing so would simply result in a needed adjustment being postponed. In contrast, ever since the work of Keynes, many economists have viewed recessions as periods of deficient demand that should be countered by activist fiscal policy. In this paper we reexamine the liquidation perspective of recessions in a setup where prices are flexible but where not all trades are coordinated by centralized markets. The model illustrates why liquidations likely cause recessions characterized by deficient aggregate demand and accordingly suggests that Keynes’ and Hayek’s views of recessions may be closely linked. In our framework, interventions aimed at stimulating aggregate demand face a trade-off whereby current stimulus postpones the adjustment process and therefore prolongs the recessions, but where some stimulative policies may nevertheless remain desirable.

FICTION IN REVIEW

1 5 4 Y F I C T I O N I N R E V I E W M A R T A F I G L E R O W I C Z ‘‘It was the first day of my humiliation.’’ When Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016) begins, its protagonist-narrator brims with hurt and shame. She has inflicted pain on, and been brutally rejected by, someone she loved. To make things worse, their miscommunications are out in public for everyone to see. What will happen now, she asks herself, as she hesitantly checks her email. In place of an answer, the server yields a hateful, anonymous note that she instantly recognizes as coming from another estranged intimate. ‘‘The body of the message,’’ she tells us, ‘‘was a single sentence: Now everyone knows who you really are.’’ In essays and interviews, Smith derives her writing from a strand of high modernism whose main proponent was E. M. Forster . It is the modernism of what Forster called ‘‘muddled’’ lives: of Zelda rather than F. Scott Fitzgerald, of Catherine Mansfield and Charlotte Perkins Gilman rather than Ernest Hemingway or D. H. Lawrence. With these earlier writers, Smith shares an aesthetic and a√ective intensity that the literary critic James Wood has S w i n g T i m e , by Zadie Smith (Penguin, 464 pp., $27) 1 5 5 R ungenerously described as hysteria. She also continues these marginal modernists’ critique of a√ectively contained, manicured art as inaccurate for the messy ways human relationships actually work. Smith is an artist of the meltdown. She pursues epiphanies that come not after a long walk by the ocean but after catching a glimpse of oneself in the eyes of others as one is crying in public: ‘‘This being Manhattan, nobody paused to watch what must have looked like a staged reenactment: a weeping woman, sat on a step, under that Lazarus plaque, huddled by boxes, far from home.’’ The interpersonal dramas from which these embarrassing epiphanies issue tend to be what the Marxist literary critic Franco Moretti calls middle-class crimes: betrayals of mutual intimacies and agreements that the law does not directly proscribe, but that are not thereby any less devastating to those a√ected by them. Her protagonists reel from the relationships they lose during such crises but also from their own confusing incapacity to articulate these relationships’ exact terms or measure the degree of guilt and resentment they ought to feel about their dissolution. Such ine√able bonds, clarified to their bearers only in moments of abandon or disappointment, have long been the subject of Smith’s writing. She explores them through the unexpectedly deep friendships and shaky marriages of White Teeth’s Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal (2000); through Alex-Li Tandem’s earnest, selfless obsessions with stardom in The Autograph Man (2002); through the heady intellectual and a√ective exchanges of On Beauty (2005) and the more sordid marital betrayals of NW (2012). She also names them as her personal and aesthetic obsessions in the essays collected in Changing My Mind (2010). Like Smith’s earlier novels, Swing Time depicts fluctuating, long-term bonds for which her characters cannot find appropriate names or rules. It also explores how these confusions are multiplied by incompatibilities or liminalities of race, gender, and class. Compared to these earlier novels, however, Swing Time is much darker and more polemical. It is animated by a fascination with the blurring of a√ective and social categories, as well as by a sharp indictment – which White Teeth or even On Beauty still curtailed, or blunted with humor – of more individualized notions of selfcontrol and self-fulfillment. Swing Time is told from the perspective of an unnamed thirty- 1 5 6 F I G L E R O W I C Z Y something female narrator who grows up in a working-class neighborhood of London with her white father and Jamaican mother. Her best friend until young adulthood is another biracial girl named Tracey, who is raised by a single mom and occasionally visited by an absentee dad. Both girls attend dance classes as children, and...

Disarticulating Indianité: Re-imagining the Motherland in Ernest Moutoussamy's Chacha et Sosso

WRITING INDIANITE INDIANITE or Indianness, a term first introduced during the early 1970s by the Martinican researcher, Gilbert Francis Ponaman, is a cultural project that seeks to valorize the East Indian diaspora who came as indentured laborers to the French West Indies during the post-slavery era. The inception of this concept stems principally from the lack of attention accorded to the Francophone Indo-Caribbeans in critical discourses, despite the fact that they comprise approximately 15% and 3% of the Guadeloupean and Martinican populations, respectively, and have contributed to the mosaic of material and immaterial cultures of these islands. This theoretical disengagement seemingly harks back to the initial arrival of the East Indian indentured laborers, who came as a cheap source of labor to work on the sugarcane plantations. These laborers arrived into a society where a hierarchized social fabric had already been established: the white planter class occupied the upper echelon, below which were the middle classes, and the former African slaves positioned at the bottom. The East Indians were then placed, by default, at the bottom of these social class rankings, and were further marginalized because of their religious and cultural practices, which were quite different from those practiced and cultivated on the islands at the time. This culture of marginalization was further perpetuated since the East Indians represented an obstacle to the former African slaves' effort to bargain with French plantation owners because the indentured laborers were willing to accept lower wages. Their social isolation bled into their non-recognition in literary and critical discourses, which the concept of Indianite seeks to amend. Preliminary thoughts on what would eventually be conceptualized as Indianite made their debut in the journal, Soleil indien, launched in March 1974 by Ponaman, which aimed to give a voice to the often-sidelined East Indian presence in Martinique, in particular, and in the French Caribbean, in general. One of the earliest definitions of Indianite comes from Laurent Farrugia in his Les Indiens de Guadeloupe et de Martinique (1975). Farrugia considers Indianite as an inaugural concept essential to the creation of East Indian subjectivity in the French West indies: L'Indianite n'est pas une fin en soi. Pas plus que negritude n'etait une fin en soi. Mais il est necessaire que s'ouvre une ere d'Indianite, comme il etait necessaire que s'accomplissent des temps de negritude. Pour n'etre qu'une etape historique, l'Indianite n'en est pas moins une etape absolument indispensable. Au-dela? au-dela, il y a l'antillanite, concept ouvert, englobant a fois negritude, l'Indianite et l'europeanite ... (160) Similar to Farrugia's insights, Jack corzani's definition locates Indianite in relation to Negritude. Corzani defines it as a movement that tends to valorize la culture indienne (originaire de l'Inde) aux Antilles sur le modele de negritude et parfois en reaction contre cette derniere (1436). Analogous to the concept of Negritude advanced from the 1930s by Aime Cesaire, Leopald Sedar Senghor, and Leon Gontran Damas to promote the affirmation of a collective black identity that resisted French colonial systems of thought based on racial prejudices, Indianite is a necessary step forward to recognize the contributions of the East Indian diasporic community in the French Antilles, and to spark cross-cultural dialogues amongst the plural ethnicities in the French Caribbean. But it is Ernest Moutoussamy, an Indo-Guadeloupean writer and politician, aspiring, like Ponaman, to put the Francophone Indo-Caribbeans on the map, who became the main defender and proponent of this concept. He develops his thoughts on Indianite in his critical work La Guadeloupe et son Indianite, published in 1987, and explains that Indianite is an articulation of East Indian cultural patrimony that must be acknowledged as an integral part of the racial and cultural diversity at work in the French Antilles. …

Contractarian Libertarianism of Jan Narveson. Is It Still Libertarianism?

This chapter aims at presenting and scrutinizing a contractarian approach to libertarianism, which has been proposed by a Canadian philosopher, Jan Narveson, known as the main proponent of so-called contractarian libertarianism. The chapter begins with the short introduction followed by “Assumptions,” discussing Narveson’s understanding of morality, his critique of Rawlsian methodology and his view on natural law and natural rights. Afterwards, “Social contract: justification, procedure, motives” presents such elements in the philosophy of Narveson as advantages of contractarianism, levels of the social contract and its status, as well as motives of parties being subject to the social contract. The third part, entitled “Critics vs. Narveson” touches on a critical discussion of the subject by other theorists (Tibor R. Machan, John T. Sanders, Leo Groarke). The last section, “Is the Contractarianism of Narveson Libertarianism?” presents the thesis that Narveson’s contractarianism is not a justified basis of libertarianism. Albeit he comes to conclusions agreeable to libertarianism, his philosophy is better labeled as laissez-faire.

¿Es el liberalismo clásico el origen del libertarismo?

In this paper I compare John Locke’s and Murray N. Rothbard’s theories of property. The main aim of that comparison is to show that Locke’s theory of property, which seems to be crucial for contemporary libertarians, cannot be the foundation for the libertarian theory. The corollary is that Locke’s theory, resp. classical liberalism, cannot be – as many, including M. N. Rothbard, the main proponent of libertarianism, claim – the source of libertarianism in a strict sense.