Political Foundations Research Articles

On choosing sides: ethical anthropology and inter-indigenous conflict in Alto Beni, Bolivia

ABSTRACT Ethnographic fieldwork necessarily involves making choices about which communities to work with, sympathize with, and support. This article explores the moral or ethical frameworks through which anthropologists make those choices. While in some cases the moral, ethical, and political grounds on which to make those decisions may be clear, in many they are not. I focus on the Alto Beni region of Bolivia, in which two groups that could reasonably be described as indigenous are engaged in a conflict over access to land. Both positions could be framed in terms of a reparation for historical injustice against indigenous people, though each framing depends on a different conception of indigeneity. The ambiguity produced in this context exposes the subjective nature of the process by which anthropologists choose the communities with whom they work. I conclude by suggesting that anthropologists make these choices based on emotional, affective, or aesthetic grounds.

Fake news et libelles diffamatoires : Discours contre les fausses nouvelles, instrumentalisation des écritures de l’actualité et poétiques burlesques dans la première modernité (1559-1661)

La satire libre en s’affranchissant de la stricte référence horatio-juvénalienne et en se structurant autour d’un moi poétique, distant, critique voire indigné face à un monde en devenir joue, durant la première modernité, un rôle important dans l’émergence d’une écriture de l’actualité qui conduit au cours du XVIIe siècle à l’apparition de la presse périodique. Pour réfléchir aux rapports entre les supports de l’information dans la première modernité et les écritures satiriques ou militantes, l’expression de fake news d’abord ressentie comme incongrue peut être particulièrement utile, car elle a l’intérêt, alors que nous sommes a priori peu sensibles à leur proximité et à leurs liaisons, de rapprocher des pratiques contemporaines aussi différentes que « l’article de presse erroné », « la publication orientée », « l’appeau à clics » et « le pastiche humoristique ». Avec le rapprochement de ces phénomènes jugés hétéroclites, il devient envisageable de penser de manière coordonnée trois aspects lisibles dans les phénomènes d’échange et d’hybridation entre les occasionnels et les libelles durant la première modernité. Comme les fake news qui désignent souvent l’information adverse sous les coups de clavier énervés des faiseurs numériques de tout aussi fausses nouvelles, le libelle est toujours pris dans un réseau de libelles dont le moteur d’expansion est l’indignation face aux impostures ennemies. Il imite les écritures médiatiques en se nourrissant de la rumeur et donne lieu à des démystifications qui sont aussi souvent des critiques des codes nouveaux de l’actualité telle qu’elle se donne à lire dans les occasionnels ; par bien des aspects, cette critique participe, en les travaillant, à la fixation de ces codes. Cette satire de l’actualité orientée ou militante prend des formes qui peuvent s’abstraire des enjeux partisans ; il est parfois difficile, comme aujourd’hui avec certains sites Internet ou comptes de réseaux sociaux satiriques, de faire la part entre des écritures engagées inventives et des jeux d’esprit plus libres. Plus profondément, l’esthétique « satyrique », grotesque (pour l’ensemble de cette première modernité) ou encore burlesque (pour la fin de cette période) pourrait engager un exercice plus global de l’incrédulité contre les fondements religieux et politiques de la société d’Ancien Régime. Par sa dimension métaréflexive, par sa grande diversité liée aux nombreuses hybridations avec les écritures de l’actualité, par ses oscillations entre un rire partisan et les jeux libres de l’esprit en fonction du goût du public et des intérêts des acteurs économiques de l’édition, le libelle diffamatoire offre décidément une figure changeante bien proche des réalités labiles auxquelles renvoie l’idée de fake news ; et en retour, il invite à ne pas rejeter hâtivement aujourd’hui tel ou tel aspect de cette nébuleuse, sans doute plus homogène dans ses jeux d’attraction qu’il n’y paraît.

Ressentiment: A Complex Emotion or an Emotional Mechanism of Psychic Defences?

<em>Ressentiment </em>is central for understanding the psychological foundations of reactionary politics, right-wing populism, Islamic fundamentalism, and radicalism. In this article we theorise <em>ressentiment </em>as an emotional mechanism which, reinforcing a morally superior sense of victimhood, expedites two parallel transvaluation processes: What was once desired or valued, yet unattainable, is reassessed as something undesirable and rotten, and one’s own self from being inferior, a loser, is reassessed as being noble and superior. We establish negative emotions of envy, shame, and inefficacious anger as the main triggers of <em>ressentiment</em>, with their associated feelings of inferiority and impotence, which target the vulnerable self. We identify the outcomes of <em>ressentiment </em>as other-directed negative emotions of resentment, indignation, and hatred, reinforced and validated by social sharing. We map the psychological structure of <em>ressentiment </em>in four stages, each employing idiosyncratic defences that depend on the ego-strength of the individual to deliver the transvaluation of the self and its values, and finally detail how social sharing consolidates the outcome emotions, values, and identities in <em>ressentiment</em> through shallow twinship bonds with like-minded peers. Our interdisciplinary theoretical account integrates classic philosophical scholarship of <em>ressentiment</em> and its contemporary proponents in philosophy and sociology, which highlight envy as the prime driver of <em>ressentiment</em>; it also considers the sociological approaches that focus on the repression and transmutation of shame and its social consequences, as well as the psychoanalytic scholarship on psychic defences and political psychology models on the emotionality of decision-making. We conclude the article by elaborating the political implications of <em>ressentiment</em> as the emotional mechanism of grievance politics.

Conscription, rural populations and the dynamics of war and revolution in Ireland (1914–18)

AbstractDrawing on secret witness reports from Intelligence Officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and diplomatic correspondence from France’s representatives to Dublin and London, this article seeks to complement recent historiography and qualify our understanding of the period 1914–18 by engaging fully with the issue of compulsory military service from the outbreak of the conflict. It contemplates how fears of conscription contributed to the radicalisation of rural communities and demonstrates that opposition to conscription formed a solid political foundation for Sinn Féin. Britain’s determination to implement conscription to Ireland frightened civilian populations, gave rise to nationwide discontent, and attracted towards Sinn Féin populations likely to be drafted into the British Army. That study seeks to be a re-examination of the dynamics between the Irish revolution and the conscription scares and maintains that fears of compulsory service in Ireland significantly contributed to the victory of Sinn Féin candidates during the four electoral contests in 1917.

Futile or Farsighted? Domestic Politics, Leader Replacement, and the Nature of Lopsided Conflicts

ABSTRACT In an important subset of armed conflicts, there is a large disparity between the belligerents’ capabilities. Although the outcomes of such wars cannot be predicted with absolute certainty, the chances that a weak state will triumph are often so low that private information is not a satisfying explanation for conflict. Under which circumstances, then, does the disadvantaged side give in rather than attempting to fight? And what explains variation in effort levels by strong states? I present a model of an environment in which a strong state faces political pressure to replace the losing government following a costly war. I show that there is a non-monotonic relationship between the effort the winning state devotes to the war and the probability that the losing state surrenders – when war effort is low, the weaker state fights because it has a decent chance of winning; when it is high, the weak state fights because it recognizes that it will be replaced upon surrender. Further results are derived to explain the domestic political foundations of variation in strong states’ investments in lopsided conflicts. The results help rationalize a number of historical instances of lopsided conflict.

Decline of the post-war, modern concept of democracy? On the change in the anthropological foundations of European politics

ABSTRACT Beginning with the sources of the dispute over the meaning of the modern democratic ideal, this article shows two opposing, anthropological positions (constrained and unconstrained anthropology) present in the European political tradition, founding two differing content-wise, yet similar understandings of democracy. Against this intellectual background, the author discusses the thesis that with the negation of the objective nature of moral norms and the sanctioning of so-called morality policies, the modern, post-World War II model of democracy founded on constrained anthropology is heading towards its decline.

Memories of the Maya: National Histories, Cultural Identities, and Academic Orthodoxy

John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood’s travel accounts celebrating ancient Maya sculpture and architecture set the stage for the emphasis of the Maya as the pinnacle of cultural development in Mexico and Central America and for the appropriation of Maya prehistory as the foundation of modern national histories and identities. In the twentieth century, these discourses intensified into two interconnected hegemonic narratives – one in syntheses of precolumbian history by North American archaeologists and the other in national histories produced in Central America – that privileged the Maya as a source of history, legitimacy, and identity. This paper explores these narratives as they occur in Honduras through three distinct but interrelated lenses: academic discourse on Honduran archaeology; the conceptualization and development of a Honduran national identity; and the engagement of descendant groups with this constructed heritage. Considered together, these perspectives illuminate the complex cultural and political foundation(s) of memory. DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2021.8

The Politics of Memory and the Refashioning of Communism for Young People: The Illustrated Guide to Romanian Communism

This paper analyzes the contents of a pocket-sized booklet entitled Ghidul ilustrat al comunismului românesc (The Illustrated Guide to Romanian Communism), which was published to counter growing nostalgia for the communist era that is popular among Romania’s young people. Influenced by family members and the media, the postmemory of Romanian communism among the country’s youth tends to focus on the positive aspects of the communist period and ignore the crimes of the postwar regime. The guide provides a selective reading of the history of Romanian communism and identifies repression as its main feature. The critical visual analysis of the images in the guide identifies the various forms that repression took during communist rule. It targeted not only individuals but also entire social groups, who faced imprisonment on political grounds. At the same time, the repression took quotidian form as the regime extended its control over people’s private lives and even their habits of consumption. DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2021.10

The 30-th Anniversary of Visegrad Group: Achievements and Prospects

The author analyzes the fundamental points which contributed to the strength of the political foundation of the Visegrad Group. Among the most significant factors, the author identifies a critical attitude towards reality, the ability to search for intra-regional/international compromises, and the lack of bureaucracy. In general, this can be described as a clear understanding of V4 position and tasks in Europe. The group's objectives in understanding their possibilities have evolved over three decades and finally have evolved from a "return to Europe" to the possibility of transferring its experience and providing assistance to the neighboring States of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. Without denying the contradictions that exist in the group, there are no critical prerequisites for the realization of long-standing prophecies about the imminent and unavoidable breakup of the group. Contradictions and a critical approach, as well as overcoming these circumstances, often serve as the driving force of the group. So far, despite criticism of some retired politicians, the group looks united and interested in its further common development.

Concept of British Commonwealth in Activities of Round Table Group at Beginning of ХХ Century

Some aspects of the complex intellectual discussion that accompanied the transformation of the British colonial system at the beginning of the 20th century are considered. Based on the analysis of published works, a generalized description of the conceptual views of the members of the “Round Table” group regarding the formation of the political and legal foundations of the British Commonwealth, as well as the development of close cooperation between Great Britain and self-governing dominions is given. At the same time, special attention is paid to the study of the practical significance of the ideas of A. Milner, L. Curtis and other intellectuals who were part of the group of intellectuals for transforming the forms and methods of managing the vast domains of the British crown. This transformation was due to a complex of factors of a socio-economic, political, moral and psychological nature, which Great Britain was forced to face in the first decades of the 20th century. It is noted that the changes that took place in the governing system of the largest colonial empire in history, among other things, contributed to the subsequent formation of mechanisms of international influence, which at the beginning of the 21st century were called “soft power”. It is shown that, on the other hand, in their theoretical constructions A. Milner and his followers strove to preserve the continuity of the ideology of imperialism, which gained popularity in the British establishment in the late Victorian period.

The Autonomy of Science as a Civilian Casualty of Economic Warfare: Inadvertent Censorship of Science Resulting from Unilateral Economic Sanctions.

Unilateral coercive international political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions are regular events of international relations and international law within the landscape of foreign affairs. However, while they may be prescribed by international law, or national legal systems, for peace and security reasons they have also been imposed for political grounds by powerful States such as the United States. The US sanctions are now targeting science, academic and university domains. When applied in this way, these sanctions violate international law, principles of human rights, ethics, the autonomy of scientific institutions, and the norm of universalism in science. All of which protect and promote scientific freedom of expression. It is vital that international and domestic law be correctly applied to uphold proper ethical standards and scientific independence in order to protect the work and the freedom of scholarship. In this way, law is the solution, rather than the problem.

The shaping power of anti-liberal ideas

ABSTRACT This special issue sheds light on the shift from consensus over democracy and liberal values to increased dissensus. With a focus on Central and Eastern Europe, it explores the nature and the origins of anti-liberal ideas and their diffusion beyond the EU. While anti-liberal ideas are not new per se, this special issue shows how in recent years they have re-emerged, being invoked by a wide range of political and social actors who seek to translate them into policy solutions and by the same token to change the foundations of national polities, policies and politics.

The “Good Citizen” as a “Respectable Worker:” State, Unemployment, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom and Italy, 1930 to 1950

This article approaches “good citizenship(s)” in its historical connection with the status of “worker.” It scrutinizes how and to what extent the perception of the “good citizen” changed from the Great Depression to the foundations of the post‐war welfare state. It compares unemployment policies in the United Kingdom and Italy from the 1930s to the early 1950s, to grasp how these schemes reflected the shifting features of “good citizenship(s).” The article emphasizes policy legacies that reshaped citizenship and the attached social rights after 1945. These continuities rest in the link between the full participation to the political community and “work” as a distinguishing trait of the “good citizen” deserving social benefits. Apparently diluted by the post‐war “Marshallian consensus,” these deep‐seated understandings resurfaced with contemporary workfare systems. The connection between “good citizenship” and “work” lends itself to further transdisciplinary studies on the theoretical and political foundations of today's welfare systems.Related Articles in this Special IssueBarrault‐Stella, Lorenzo, and Thomas Douniès. 2021. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Citizenship as a Tool of Government in Europe.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).Ewert, Benjamin. 2021. “Citizenship as a Form of Anticipatory Obedience? Implications of Preventive Health Policy in Germany.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).Haapajärvi, Linda. 2021. “On the Importance of Playing House: Belonging‐Work and the Making of Relational Citizens in Finnish Immigrant Integration Policies.” Politics & Policy 49 (4).

Resisting disaster chronopolitics: Favelas and forced displacement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This article employs the notion of chronopolitics (Klinke 2013 [1]) to explore the place of disaster events within urban politics. A chronopolitics of disaster focuses on both governmental manipulation of the post-disaster space and the use of memory in resisting longstanding patterns of urban spatial segregation and forced removal: the creation and embodiment of alternative narratives of time and space to those mobilized by hegemonic actors. We draw here on the aftermath of calamitous landslides in favelas in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, during which 67 people died. In the wake of this traumatic event, the state moved quickly to close down political openings produced by the tragedy (Edkins 2006 [2]), focussing public attention on ‘future risk’ in order to put in place a rapid “recall” to favela displacement; a constant in Rio's politics since the early twentieth century. While changes in urban land formalisation and rights since the 1980s positioned forced displacement as an exception, we argue here that the much newer reductive vision of favelas as ‘at-risk’ places enables a return to the sovereign right to displace them. By working within a “time out of joint” (Zebrowski 2013: 213 [3]), the municipality established a dominant narration of city history that reinforces favelas as the principle problem facing urban politics, making displacement inevitable. The disaster event, then, elevates the politics of emergency response to a category of exceptionality in the post-dictatorship period, and lays the foundation for a renewed favela politics: a chronopolitics of disaster. The paper inductively expands the concept of chronopolitics, a politics of time, to analyse how calamitous events are used to normalise the exceptional, and how trauma and memory challenge narratives inspired by modern aspirations of a Rio without favelas.

SPLANETARY URBANIZATION

AbstractIn this article I draw on ideas associated with minor theory to address the politics of knowledge that permeate the discourse and aspirations of planetary urbanization, and think through what is at stake in some of its broader claims. Existing critiques challenge the evacuation of agency, subjectivity and forms of difference in the planetary ambitions of the theory and call out its inattentiveness to lived experience. Here, I seek to further these critiques by addressing lived experience not as some ‘real’ against which all things are measured, but to find the political grounds where social actors are made and act on the shifting conditions of their lives. I excavate some of the social relations flattened or ignored in planetary urbanization's key propositions by drawing on three texts that allow us to imagine the planetary without foreclosure: a map from Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly‐Schapiro's Nonstop Metropolis; the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute as an almost forgotten alternative, and an example of urban research and practice that is at once intimate and global; and artist Zoe Leonard's pieces ‘Analogue’ and ‘You See I Am Here After All’. By drawing out some connections to and among these works in time and space, I reframe the planetary with reference to countertopography to reveal and spark consciousness of the makings, undoings, contingencies and possibilities of contemporary urbanization—global and intimate, planetary but lived.

ФУҚАРОЛИК ЖАМИЯТИ ВА УНИНГ ТАРКИБИЙ ИНСТИТУТЛАРИ МАВЗУСИНИ ЎҚИТИШДАГИ ИННОВАЦИЯЛАР ВА ИЛҒОР ХОРИЖИЙ ТАЖРИБАЛАР

The article examines in detail the economic, political, spiritual and moral foundations of civil society as an extremely complex and multifaceted social phenomenon. The article also discusses a free democratic law that puts everyone's interests at the forefront, respects legal traditions and laws, respects universal human values, guarantees human rights and freedoms, establishes effective mechanisms of public control over public authorities and deepens human relations based on deep spiritual and spiritual values. Cultural values, innovations and best foreign experience in teaching the subject of civil society and its constituent institutions as a society are analyzed in detail

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE SECOND REPUBLIC: LESSONS AND ALTERNATIVES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

This study examines the socio-economic and political foundations of Nigeria’s foreign policy during the Second Republic and their lessons in charting a new path in the 21st Century. It explores how neo-colonialism, within the context of an international capitalist economy, intensified class antagonism, socio-economic and political contradictions, which impinged negatively on the foreign policy initiatives and postures of Nigeria between 1979 and 1983. Drawing insights from the Marxist political economy approach, this fresh study departs from the common orientation of economic determinism by focusing on the complex interplay between the political, economic and social subsystems through the historical materialist approach to which little attention has hitherto been paid. The study made use of primary data through the conduct of interviews and also relied on secondary sources. The study found that the distorted and peripheral role of dependent neo-colonial Nigeria in the world capitalist economy, its sole reliance on oil and the neglect of agriculture generated socio-political and economic crises that constrained it from pursuing viable foreign policy goals during the period under study. The paper concluded that the pursuit of bold and impactful foreign policy goals by Nigeria depends on its ability to reactivate the non-oil sector of its economy, particularly the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Kelsen und seine Demokratieschrift im Exil

Abstract Kelsen and his Book “Essence and Value of Democracy” in Exile. Two recently found letters and an unpublished small introduction into a planned translation of his book on democracy shed some light on Kelsen’s conception of cultural and political foundations of democracy. His description of the democratic citizen as antagonistic to absolute values rises philosophical as well as political doubts. The status of values under philosophical, moral and legal perspectives calls for a thorough discussion.

Aesthetic Dimension of Social Contract: Criticism and Development of Franklin Ankersmit’s Approach to the Political

The aim of the article is to clarify the ontological foundations of the political representation within Franklin Ankersmit’s theory in the context of the modern discussion about the crisis of the liberal-democratic project and the political per se. Taking an almost unique position in this discussion, Ankersmit insists on the presence of the political in the contemporary institutions of democratic representation, resorting to the tools of the theory of aesthetics to justify his viewpoint. The authors recognize Ankersmit’s approach as a promising direction of the reflection on possible ways out of the political crisis, but at the same time they draw attention to its inherent flaws arising from the insufficient conceptual elaboration of its political and ontological foundations. Ankersmit does not clarify how representational relationships arise and what mechanisms are responsible for maintaining the connection between the representative and the represented. Based on the aesthetic theory of Martin Heidegger, as well as the interpretations of the social contract by Carl Schmitt, Paul Ricœur and Alexan der Filippov, the authors suggest that the theory of social contract can be used as an ontological basis for Ankersmit’s concept, and show how the aesthetic approach to the political can be harmonized with this theory and why Ankersmit’s criticism of this theory is substantively inaccurate. The authors’ arguments demonstrate that the theory of social contract can be articulated in the categories of an aesthetic approach to the political and become its ontological foundation, thereby resolving certain concerns about the origin and functioning of the relations of representation in the society

Mahatma Gandhi’s Contribution to Education

On economic, political and military grounds, India was of first rate importance to the British and education was the instrument by which they sought to maintain and strengthen their domination by experimenting with a unique model of educating an elite through a foreign language. However, contrary to the popular belief, English education was not forced on the Indians. Rich Indian citizens had actively come forward in setting up the system as the only way to modernize their society. So much time was spent in mastering English language by the Indian School boys that the main purpose of education was missed. The premium on rate learning and examinations was so high, that the growth of inquisitiveness and an experimental bent of mind, so necessary for economic development, were not cultivated. But more important was an invisible and quite change in attitudes and values of viewing education as a social welfare activity for girls and an investment for boys. As an outcome, the system concentrated on a centralized and uniform higher education