Permanent State Of Crisis Research Articles

There’s nothing more permanent than temporary solutions: the solar panel transition and everyday coping in Lebanon’s multi-dimensional crisis since 2020

What happens when a country, a population, or at least a segment thereof, navigates in a permanent state of crisis that becomes normalised into their everyday? Engaging with this question, this article analyses the evolution of Lebanon’s post-civil war electricity sector, with a particular focus on the on-going electricity crisis since 2020. We challenge perceptions of the temporary nature of crisis within much of the crisis literature and argue that processes of ‘everyday informality’ in the Lebanese context are structured by citizens’ assessment of effective service provision. This provides impetus for the contemplation of alternative forms of governance, often unfolding as coping mechanisms against adversities, that bypass and supplant state regulations in the energy sector in order to sustain the energy needs of individuals, households and businesses, manifesting informality in spite of the state.

‘Just One Day of Unstructured Autonomous Time’: Samuel A. Moore Supporting Editorial Labour for Ethical Publishing within the University

Universities have traditionally supported the distribution of critical and cultural theory through departmental and centre publishing (e.g. Working Papers in Cultural Studies) and the establishment of university presses. However, over recent decades publishing has been increasingly outsourced to commercial providers, buttressed by volunteer academic labour extracted for profit by the publishing industry. At the same time, faced with ongoing casualisation and ever-increasing workloads, the labour required for academic publishing is severely undervalued by the university and in a permanent state of crisis. In this article we put forward a radical proposal for universities to provide scholars dedicated time to support publishing as part of their academic service work. We intervene strongly into discourses that approach the publishing labour crisis by arguing for calculative solutions in the form of payment or credit. Instead, this article explores reorienting the labour underpinning academic publishing within the university itself by positioning it as an integral part of scholarly research and what it means to be a researcher. We make this argument through an in-depth engagement with debates on academic citizenship on the value of service work and discourses on academic labour derived from within critical university studies. We further support our argument by drawing on discussions on labour and open access (OA) publishing, referencing various alternative models currently being developed that, based on scholar-led, library-led and ‘new’ university press publishing, are experimenting with innovative ways to value and perform labour relations as part of community-controlled collective organisations. As universities are increasingly financially and infrastructurally supporting such initiatives, particularly with recourse to library budgets, we explore how this in many ways has left labour issues for publishing as a service performed as part of an academic’s workload unaltered. We therefore argue for the urgent need to reconfigure how universities view the labour behind academic publishing, to support more ethical engagements and relations with publishing, bring knowledge production back under the control of academic communities, and to support greater academic autonomy within universities.

WHEN THE MEANS BECOMES THE END. SOME NON-OPPORTUNISTIC THOUGHTS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSITIES

Political and social changes following the collapse of communism in the last quarter of the 20th century and the globalization that progressed in the early 21st century led to the need of rebuilding academic institutions. This has also initiated discussions about the condition of the University. In this article, the author, taking Fr. Jacek Woroniecki's article Pupil or book (first printing 1918) as a starting point, shows that the university is in a state of permanent crisis. Its source is alienation, i.e. a situation in which what is only a means becomes an end through the activities of people and institutions, "art for art's sake." Just as in the days of Fr. Woroniecki's activity writing scientific books became an end in itself, the shortest and surest way to achieve a professorship, so in our modern times the tools of the so-called parameterization of scientific achievements have become alienated. Reading Fr. Woroniecki's article inevitably leads to the conclusion that alienation creates pathologies in social life. However, in each era it manifests itself in a different way.

Satisfaction of rural and urban high school students with the functioning of the general secondary education system

The modern system of Russian general education is in a state of permanent crisis. The thing is that during the transition from the Soviet educational system to modern educational standards, all the fundamental foundations of the educational process were changed, while the new standards did not receive due verification. As a result, modern educational standards and programs are regularly adjusted, shifting the vector of study from one direction of school subjects to another. In this case, the most vulnerable element in the educational system is the subject of the educational process – schoolchildren, especially high school students – persons studying from 9th to 11th grade. The existence of a crisis in the education system is confirmed by a wide range of educational services on the market, ranging from private tutors to online schools for preparing for the Unified State Exam. At first glance, there is nothing surprising in the fact that a high school student goes to classes with a tutor or studies at an online school – this will allow him to successfully pass the main state or unified state exam and enroll in a particular educational institution on a budget. But at the same time, this means the fact that the knowledge that is given to the student at school does not satisfy the educational needs of the student, namely the key request regarding the successful passing of the state exam.

Funkcje polityczne parlamentu w Republice Austriackiej

The republican Austrian parliamentarianism has been in a state of permanent crisis since the day it was brought to existence by the Constitution of 1920. Generally speaking, this was due to the fact that the model of liberal parliamentarianism, set up by the constitution, has never corresponded to the requirements and aspirations of the political parties which in 1919 and 1945 stood behind all endeavours after reviving the Austrian state.In the last thirty years the period between 1945—664 witnessed the decline of the functions of the National Council (Nationalrat), whereas in 1966—76 the situation improved to the benefit of the latter. Nevertheless due mention should be made that the revival of the parliamentarianism, after a transfer had been made in Austria into one-party system, brought about the emergence of a new model of parliamentarianism, where authority rested with the government, the party and pressure groups. Consequently the parliament could not remain insensitive to this transformation. The latter resulted in present political functions and the form of constitutional functions, which were the outcome of the changing political situation in the country. Thus the division into three bodies of authority was retained (this, however, did not protect against the overgrowth of the latter), and the reform of the parliament was carried out. When its position in the political system was being established, there was oscilating between „modernizing” on the one hand and limitation of its constitutional powers on the other. The modernizing stood for a new role that the Council was endowed with — i.e. to articulate the interests of the party and pressure groups rather than the nation. With the assistance of the former two the Ausrian parliament became one of the most significant stabilizers of the existing system of political forces. It has transformed from a resolving and supervising organ into an institution which, within a determined political framework, is to safeguard the inviolability of the capitalist system. Thus determined positionnof the Council has already, become permanent within the political system and no changes should be expected in this respect. This is guaranteed by constantly increasing tasks of the state relating to socio-economic issues, as well as by the class-interests of the ruling forces.

Architectural design and ontological crisis

The state of permanent crisis has become almost a norm for contemporary humanity. However, one cannot deny that for modernist tendencies in art, literature and culture in general, crisis is the most comfortable state: it raises the stakes for innovation, allows radicalism, and demands strong methods and strong personalities. The trend, alas, is not limited to modernism as a period. Architecture, prone to expressive ‘beautiful gestures’ and aimed at acute emotional impact, even today fosters the spread of ontological crisis, while cluttering the mental sphere.

A construção de ameaças e inimigos nos discursos presidenciais dos EUA (1993-2013)

ABSTRACT The construction of threats and enemies is a constant in international politics, and presidential rhetoric plays an important role in this process. In this article, we show how recent US presidential speeches articulate narratives and representations of threats and enemies. We will focus on the State of the Union addresses given by Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-2013), thus encompassing 20 years of US foreign policy agenda. To do so, we will use two discourse analysis techniques. The first will highlights processes of linking and differentiation inherent to identities while the second, from the field of narratology, is employed to identify the narrative grammar that underpins the roles performed in narratives. We will show that rather than fixed, stable categories, threats and enemies are constantly in flux, being constructed against a permanent state of crisis.

THE STATE AND PROBLEMS OF THE MODERN PALESTINIAN POLITICAL REGIME

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to understand the state and problems of the political regime of the Palestinian National Authority. The Palestinian regime has recently been in a state of permanent crisis. The reasons for this crisis are the lack of State sovereignty, unresolved political, socio-economic problems of the Palestinian society, as well as the fragmentation of political forces, the lack of consensus among the local elite on the most important issues. The article examines the problems of Palestinian statehood, identifies the reasons preventing the creation of a sovereign state. The emphasis is placed on intra-Palestinian problems, for this reason, the foreign policy aspects of the problem are less affected in this article. Based on various approaches, the article analyzes the positions of the actors of the Palestinian political regime, identifies contradictions inherent in the Palestinian political process. The authors consider the current situation as unfavorable for the constructive scenario of the development of events. The split of the country into two enclaves, the confrontation of the two main forces - Fatah and Hamas, the difficult socio-economic situation of the Palestinians, the fragmentation of Palestinian society complicate the task of overcoming the crisis and achieving the main goal of the Palestinian people - the creation of their own state. The methodological basis of the article is the theoretical developments of Arab, Russian and foreign researchers. The work uses general philosophical and socio-humanitarian methods. The empirical data used in the work are taken from open sources.

От «Русского Манчестера» к «Красному Вердену»: Царицын и Гражданская война в России (1917–1920 гг.) (по материалам периодической печати)

Introduction. The history of Tsaritsyn as a frontier is a unique example of urbanization, the struggle for which was both ideological and strategic. Since the Russian Revolution of 1917, the city has been under pressure from the ideological systems of the “fiery revolutionaries” of 1917, the Bolsheviks and their opponents in 1917–1920. Methods. Using the accumulated historiographical material, based on the material of the local periodical press, practically not put into circulation, an attempt is made to reconstruct the life of Tsaritsyn in 1917–1920. Analysis. The analysis revealed a number of important problems. The central problem of the city was the food issue, which reached a crisis stage under the influence of public criticism of the government’s actions to introduce food appropriation (1916) and was not resolved until the end of the war. The crisis, aggravated by revolutionary actions, introduced the public into (2) a spiritual crisis, which manifested itself in the unwillingness of people to participate in the activities of self-government. Fuel, crime, epidemiological and budgetary problems led to the breakdown of the urban economy and the lack of combat capability of the military. The capture of the city by the Whites in 1919 only worsened the urban economy. The public was in crisis and quickly panicked at reports of the threat of a fall in volunteer power. The return of the city to the leadership of the Red Army and the creation of an independent province with its center in Tsaritsyn led to the gradual restoration of the city on the basis of an industrial base established in the 19th century. Results. Research into the history of Tsaritsyn during the transition years has shown that radical transformations and the inconsistent policy of successive regimes led to the deformation of urban structures, bringing them into a state of permanent crisis. Only the end of hostilities and the establishment of a stable state course of development can provide the potential for the functioning of the city within the state.

Feeding the Urban Leviathan

Mexico City, a crowded and sprawling metropolis of 22 million residents, is not only one of the world’s most populated urban settlements but also one of the most vulnerable. Overburdened by a centuries-long series of compounding crises, Mexico City has always lived on the verge of an imminent and irreversible collapse. Water scarcity, floods, earthquakes, pollution, violence, traffic, overpopulation, and health issues have all taken their toll on a city that has, nonetheless and against all odds, managed to survive. When the first wave of COVID-19 hit in early 2020, Mexico City faced a hitherto overlooked threat: food insecurity. One of the communities hardest hit by the pandemic was the central wholesale market, Central de Abasto, which controls 80 percent of the food bought, sold, and consumed throughout the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico. This article takes a close look at the political, economic, and ideological causes and effects of Mexico City’s over-centralized model of food supply and distribution and how it has added to its state of permanent crisis.

Modern financial and economic crises and the stability of the financial and banking system of Ukraine

Factors, problems and risks are analyzed and systematized, in particular, technical-technological and innovation backwardness, peculiarities of economic cycles in economic systems of countries at different stages of development, as well as due to increasing competitiveness of some of them in the globalized world. crisis. It is shown that the situation worsens when the world economy grows, and against its background, imbalances in the global financial system are growing and speculative capital is spreading. It is revealed that the first global crisis of 2008–2010 was provoked by the uncontrolled spread of mortgage loans in the US real estate markets and the transfer of these processes to other countries, resulting in "financial bubbles", a market crash and a chain reaction involving others. markets. Emphasis is placed on the fact that when Ukraine's economy was in a state of permanent crisis, the domestic banking system withstood all domestic economic, financial, currency and other changes, as well as external turbulence, which provoked the strengthening of negative trends. It is established that the second financial and economic crisis of 2014–2016 is largely due to internal problems: much lower technological structure (third-fourth compared to fifth-sixth in economically developed countries), significant lag of Ukrainian industry in terms of innovation from industry EU countries, a high level of depreciation of fixed assets, much higher resource intensity and lower productivity, unrealistic in a few years to carry out innovative modernization of machine-building industries for the production of means of production. An acute threat has been revealed that the unlimited increase in speculative capital has exacerbated structural imbalances between the real and financial sectors. The main negative consequences of the crisis for the financial and banking system are systematized: they include more than three devaluations of the hryvnia, liquidation of more than a hundred banks and privatization of the largest of them, Privatbank, closure of several thousand banking branches and large–scale unemployment. It is confirmed that the third financial and economic crisis of 2020–2021 has a natural origin – it was caused by the pandemic COVID-19 caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV, and its consequences. It is established that the corona crisis has provoked various negative effects on the work of industry and social services, has caused significant damage to all countries and the vast majority of the world's population. It is shown that Ukraine proved to be more resilient to these troubles and the pre-crisis revival began in the second quarter of this year. It is substantiated that the implementation of macroprudential policy measures aimed at preventing the accumulation and implementation of systemic risks in the financial sector will help increase the stability of the financial and banking system, properly perform its main functions – financial intermediation and payments – and crisis management. It is shown that timely and effective implementation of macroprudential instruments will increase the stability of the national economy and reduce GDP volatility. Key words: financial and economic crisis, stability of the financial and banking system, economic cycle, market turbulence, inflation, capital movements, financial markets.

The Reification of the Clinical Diagnosis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) as an Immune and Oxidative Stress Disorder: Construction of a Data-driven Nomothethic Network and Exposure of ME/CFS Subgroups

The approach towards myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) remains in a permanent state of crisis with fierce competition between the psychosocial school, which attributes ME/CFS to the perception of effort, and the medical approach (Maes and Twisk, BMC Med, 2010, 8, 35). The aim of this paper is to review how to construct a nomothetic model of ME/CFS using Partial Least Squares (PLS) path analysis and ensembling causome (bacterial translocation as assessed with IgM/IgA responses to LPS), protectome (lowered coenzyme Q10), adverse outcome pathways (AOP) including increased lysozyme, CD38+ T cell activation, cell-mediated immune activation (CMI), and IgM responses to oxidative specific epitopes and NO-adducts (IgM OSENO).Using PLS, we trained, tested and validated this knowledge- and data-driven causal ME/CFS model, which showed adequate convergence, construct and replicability validity.This bottom- up explicit data model of ME/CFS objectivates the descriptive narratives of the ME/CFS phenome, using causome-protectome-AOP data, whereby the abstract concept ME/CFS is translated into pathways, thereby securing the reification of the ME/CFS phenome. We found that 31.6% of the variance in the physiosomatic symptom dimension of ME/CFS was explained by the cumulative effects of CMI and CD38+ activation, IgM OSENO, IgA LPS, lysozyme (all positive) and coenzyme Q10 (inversely). Cluster analysis performed on the PLS-generated latent vector scores of all feature sets exposed three distinct immune groups of ME/CFS, namely one with increased lysozyme, one with increased CMI + CD38 activation + depressive symptoms, and another with increased bacterial translocation + autoimmune responses to OSENO.

How to construct neuroscience-informed psychiatric classification? Towards nomothetic networks psychiatry.

Psychiatry remains in a permanent state of crisis, which fragmented psychiatry from the field of medicine. The crisis in psychiatry is evidenced by the many different competing approaches to psychiatric illness including psychodynamic, biological, molecular, pan-omics, precision, cognitive and phenomenological psychiatry, folk psychology, mind-brain dualism, descriptive psychopathology, and postpsychiatry. The current “gold standard” Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders/International Classification of Diseases taxonomies of mood disorders and schizophrenia are unreliable and preclude to employ a deductive reasoning approach. Therefore, it is not surprising that mood disorders and schizophrenia research was unable to revise the conventional classifications and did not provide more adequate therapeutic approaches. The aim of this paper is to explain the new nomothetic network psychiatry (NNP) approach, which uses machine learning methods to build data-driven causal models of mental illness by assembling risk-resilience, adverse outcome pathways (AOP), cognitome, brainome, staging, symptomatome, and phenomenome latent scores in a causal model. The latter may be trained, tested and validated with Partial Least Squares analysis. This approach not only allows to compute pathway-phenotypes or biosignatures, but also to construct reliable and replicable nomothetic networks, which are, therefore, generalizable as disease models. After integrating the validated feature vectors into a well-fitting nomothetic network, clustering analysis may be applied on the latent variable scores of the R/R, AOP, cognitome, brainome, and phenome latent vectors. This pattern recognition method may expose new (transdiagnostic) classes of patients which if cross-validated in independent samples may constitute new (transdiagnostic) nosological categories.

Activities of the ORT-OZE Committees: from the history of Jewish transnational philanthropy in 1920s – 1940s

The article examines activities of two large Jewish philanthropic organizations – the Union of Societies of Handicraft and Agricultural Work among Jews (ORT Union) and the Union of Societies for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish (OZE Union), that actively cooperated in the period between the First and Second World Wars. The main goal of cooperation between these organizations was to provide urgently needed assistance to the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, which was in a state of permanent crisis and therefore sought to emigrate to the more prosperous countries of Western Europe and to the United States. The author analyzes of previously unpublished archival sources and limited editions of the 1920s – 1930s shows how the ORT-OZE transnational network, which included the local branches, regional public committees, financial corporations, vocational and medical institutions, was able to function successfully, to mobilize all available resources for its constructive work and to conduct a number of social and educational programs directed toward rehabilitation of the Jewish emigrants, despite the difficult political situation in the world. The institutional ideologies of ORT and OZE played an important role in the success of these activities, due to which it was possible to overcome the mistrust between emancipated and religious Jews, between Westjuden and Ostjuden.

The State as the Incarnation of Capitalist Crisis

Marx’s method in Capital and some of his formulations in the Grundrisse serve for a reconstructing of the true logic of the constitution of the capitalist state. What is the human essence of the state and why does this essence assume this particular form? Contrary to communist society that Marx defines as a society based on the free association of free individualities, the state is the objective/external means of compulsive association of the doubly “free” sellers of labour-power and the owners of the means of production—the negative and positive personifications of capital as a social relation—and thus the form of existence of the state of unfreedom. Rather than being an expression of social equilibrium, the state is the incarnation of the permanent state of crisis of capitalist society; the state is the prerequisite and the consequence of the necessity and the political form of objectification of continuous constitution of the separation of immediate producers from the means of production.

Subverting the Ethics of Crime Fiction in Dževad Karahasan’s Noćno vijeće (The Night Council)

This article explores the crisis of modernity using the example of Dževad Karahasan’s novel Nocno vijece (The Night Council), a work of literature thematising war crimes committed in the name of nationalism during the 1990s in Yugoslavia. By comparing the specific compositional features of this novel with the general formal and ideological tendencies of crime fiction as such, our analysis establishes that the ethical foundations of contemporary civilisation along with the modern notion of justice as mirrored by the genre of the detective novel are, in the case of Nocno vijece (The Night Council), treated as questionable. Belonging to the line of critique that observes modernity as a state of permanent crisis, this novel betrays the standard conventions of the criminalist genre, thereby contesting the modern era’s prevalent idea of justice by reflecting on the complexity of ethical order in human society.

The US American Self-criticism. Stories of Anger and Bewilderment


 
 
 
 Criticism to the system is a core place in the US American culture.The self-criticism gets its roots in the permanent restlessness of the American People, in their fears, in their dissatisfaction, and even in their insane self-destructive behabiour. Many episodes in the American history have worked out from attitudes of paranoia, disgust or anger towards communities or the public administration. The natural rhythm of society in the United States is far from acceptance and calm. On the contrary, the US history is defined by restlessnees and doubious sentiments. Thus, one might think that the American dream is fundamentally a state of permanent crisis in which people, unable to deal with their present vital conditions, transmute these conditions into havoc and creation. In the pages of this article, a breaf tour into the historical and cultural trend of discouragement is offered. It also pays attention to the American ability to self-analyze its own historical experiences. The fictionated stories, that come from the imagination but also from people’s voices and memories, convey a sense of dissatisfaction and of struggle to improve the American way of behaving. Those citizens, especially uncomfortable with themselves or with the administration, may not be aware that they are precisely those who constitute the best US image abroad. In the ostentation of a self- criticism, of a subversive thought, these Americans, opposed to the official positions,feature the virtue of the relentless self-purge.Therefore,looking at past and present times, this paper is composed by six related arguments that rely on both historical events and fictionated stories, with the titles of: “Under the paranoid style”; “The angry nation”, “Hate: Public Limited Company”, “Images of anger”, “Guilty, ashamed and redeemed”, and “The legacy of disenchantment”.
 
 
 

Inseguranças, incertezas e o desalento pós-moderno: o estado de crise nos últimos textos de Zygmunt Bauman

A realidade social contemporânea é marcadamente associada a circunstâncias que geram um “permanente estado de crise”. Zygmunt Bauman se destacou pela atenção dedicada à compreensão do status de crise na modernidade líquida. O presente ensaio lança luz sobre duas de suas últimas obras, a saber, Estado de Crise e Estranhos à nossa porta. Os argumentos e ideias destacados à discussão representam possibilidades a abordagens interdisciplinares que interpelem a condição humana e as práticas sociais hodiernas. Neste sentido, a perda do poder de agência do Estado, a difusão dos riscos e vulnerabilidades decorrentes, assim como as condutas de estranhamento e desconfiança à alteridade, são questões debatidas à luz de outras obras do autor e em diálogo com contribuições recentes da teoria social. A reflexão aponta o caráter indissolúvel da crise na pós-modernidade como fonte de tensão que articula incertezas, inseguranças e vulnerabilidades, asseverando o individualismo e a hostilidade em determinados contextos, sendo a autocrítica social um caminho viável para se evitar esses problemas.

Twenty-Five Years after Sa-I-Gu: Multiracial Politics in Times of Crisis

We chose to frame this conversation in terms of crisis: not only the state of permanent crisis created by racial capitalism and settler colonialism but also specific flashpoints like Sa-I-Gu [the Korean term for the April 1992 uprising in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating]. We want to look at the conditions surrounding these flashpoints and the responses to them that then shaped race consciousness and politics subsequently. Today we have no shortage of crisis, no shortage of flashpoints. And yet there is hope. Perhaps more than at any other time in my lifetime, there are opportunities to shift mass culture, at the very least to popularize and normalize a slightly more critical consciousness. So now I want to turn to my friends here to talk about crisis and multiracial politics. We’ll start with Sa-I-Gu and work forward to this moment and also to future possibilities.

Industrializing the Arab world: a speculative case study

Some of the challenges facing Arab countries could be solved if their economies were industrialized. They have made much progress in some fields, but have failed so far to industrialize. While this is obviously a complicated issue, there are, at the same time, many countries that have been very successful in doing so. Speculating about such complex issues is nothing new. A reader of Western literature is daily confronted with speculative articles on the rise or fall of American power. A number of writers appear to be concerned that China will soon displace the United States as the number 1 superpower. (For a review of three books by Edward Luce on this subject, see Financial Times February 2, 2014.) Some thoughtful writers propose various possibilities on some countries’ readiness to assume roles that may lead to a new political world order. Other writers frequently speculate on China possibly lacking sufficient creativity to displace the United States from its privileged position. There are no simple answers to such complex issues. Concern for the rise and fall of nations is of constant interest in Western literature, but by contrast concern in the Arab world is limited in scope and depth to the ultimate development of their own region. What is surprising in the Arab world is that despite the prevailing conditions the Arabs enjoy through their enormous assets, they seem oblivious to the rich possibilities that these resources provide. Arab countries are confronted with expanding populations, education, emigration and unemployment. It seems that unless they adopt a more serious interest in the challenges they face, they will be unable to escape from a state of permanent crisis. The purpose of this article is to speculate on the feasibility of utilizing the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) railway system – estimated at approximately US$200 billion – as a tool for achieving industrialization. The railway system will be 1940 km long and include all GCC countries.