Political Significance Research Articles

The Bourdieusian Unconscious: The Scientific and Political Significance of the Sociological Treatment of a Psychoanalytic Concept

ABSTRACTFrom the very beginning of Pierre Bourdieu's oeuvre, but with increasing intensity, one can find expressions that are either explicitly taken from psychoanalysis, or at least have a psychoanalytic meaning. This paper aims to contribute to the existing discourse on Bourdieu's relation to psychoanalysis by examining the meaning of Bourdieu's most frequently used term, unconscious, which is also a key one in psychoanalysis, in Bourdieu's writings. In a brief introduction, I outline Bourdieu's relationship to psychoanalysis based on the literature and Bourdieu's texts, and argue that although Bourdieu's relationship with psychoanalysis remained controversial over the years, there is a growing integrative tendency, with psychoanalysis playing an increasingly important—even if sometimes hidden—role in his texts. In the main body of the paper, I argue that this tendency does not fully cover Bourdieu's approach to the unconscious, and that although his approach to the unconscious is not independent of the tendency discussed in the previous section, a dichotomy can be observed from the beginning to the end of the oeuvre, namely the parallel use of the unconscious in the sociological and psychoanalytic sense, and the lack of clarity regarding the relationship between the two. Finally, in the last section, I point out that socioanalysis, as an emancipatory project, should have clarified its position on the unconscious, because it marks the limits of the actors' potential for self‐reflexivity, which can also shape political strategies.

Reconsidering Martin Heidegger on the modern university

AbstractMartin Heidegger's 1933 Freiburg University Rector's Address is normally considered in terms of the horrors of its association with National Socialism. This study re‐frames the debate about the Address by situating it in the context of the tradition of philosophical reflection upon the political and historical significance of the modern research university. I highlight aspects of the Address that signified continuity with distinctively liberal presuppositions embedded in foundational ideas of the Humboldtian university. I conclude with reflections on how Heidegger's Address sheds light on the issues of university governance and academic freedom as the contemporary neoliberal university confronts its own challenges.

Freedom of Association under the Treaties of the United Nations: A Right of Intrinsic or Instrumental Value?

Abstract Although enshrined within various international instruments of the United Nations, the right to freedom of association is principally developed under the rubric of Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This article seeks to trace the contours of this right with regard to the jurisprudence and commentary of the institutions of the UN. Part ii examines the protections afforded, restrictions permitted, and positive obligations imposed by article 22. Part ii analyses the interaction between article 22 and other rights guaranteed by the iccpr. Part iii seeks to assess the rationale underpinning the protection of the right to freedom of association as protected by the UN treaties. The research finds that the Human Rights Committee has disproportionately framed Article 22 in terms of its political and systemic significance, and have neglected to develop a philosophical basis for the right deriving from its inherent value to the human person.

Transformations and transitions: The social and political life of the dead

Death is often considered the end of the story, and indeed the end of politics. The papers in this special issue demonstrate however that this is far from the case. They probe the transformations and transitions of the dead across varying cultural and social contexts, and time periods, and reckon with how human remains are repurposed, mobilized, represented, and integrated into larger narratives, including evidentiary, memorial, political, and emotional. They also understand the dead as complex and lively actors in the various ways they provoke the living and impact the way we think about larger political, cultural, and ethical questions. Collectively, the papers raise critical questions about how we understand the social, cultural, communal, religious, and political significance of human remains and of what remains in the aftermath of violence.

Creating a Poetics of Allusion in Two Early French Translations by Seamus Heaney

Early in his career, Seamus Heaney translated two French poems, an unpublished Renaissance ‘spiritual sonnet’ and a nineteenth-century narrative poem in rhyming quatrains that appeared in North. The translations invite attention to his methods in creating the sonorities and prayerful themes of a Renaissance sonnet, and the linguistic and political significance of a poetics of allusion in his translation of Baudelaire’s ‘Le Squelette Laboureur’. Heaney’s use of an allusive technique in translating Gabrielle de Coignard’s ‘Sonnet Spirituel’ (‘Prayer’) and his politically charged English version of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Le Squelette Laboureur’ (‘The Digging Skeleton’) lay the foundation and supply the encouragement for his later work in translating Sweeney Astray, Beowulf, Pascoli’s The Last Walk, and Aeneid Book VI. These French translations demonstrate his skill and inventiveness with diction and syntax. They reveal his use of Northern Irish locutions on two occasions: portraying the private prayer of a soul in extremis and showing the sufferings endured by physically weakened and exploited labourers.

Through a southern prism: translating Stuart Hall into Spanish

ABSTRACT Translation is an intellectual endeavour that requires engagement with authors and conceptual frameworks from different times and worlds. It is not a neutral or simple task of converting linguistic codes but a situated, partial, and interested process that goes beyond mere intellectual activity. In translating Stuart Hall into Spanish for a Latin American audience, specific challenges and interests arise, as detailed in this article. Three main challenges are discussed: preserving the contextuality and complexity of Hall's writings, resisting the temptation to simplify or academicize his work, and ensuring that translations facilitate meaningful cross-cultural exchanges. The article underscores the importance of understanding Hall's work as an intellectual and political project, deeply rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts, and argues for an approach to translation that remains faithful to these dimensions while making his ideas accessible and relevant to contemporary Latin American readers. Finally, the paper reflects on the political significance of translation, highlighting how ideas can transcend boundaries and enrich local debates. Hall's concepts, such as articulation, context, and conjuncture, are presented as valuable tools for understanding and intervening in the social and political realities of Latin America today. The article concludes by emphasizing the ongoing relevance of Hall's intellectual and political contributions and the need for translations that honour his legacy while engaging with the specific challenges and opportunities of our present moment.

A Sea of Households: Ordering Violence and Mobility in the 
Inter-Imperial Caribbean

Abstract Historians have paid more attention to the inner life of households than to their legal and political significance in early European overseas empires. This article analyses the legal role of households in the seventeenth century Caribbean, with an emphasis on Jamaica and Suriname. It argues that households were key to organising maritime violence and composing regional order. Imperial agents in the Caribbean—soldiers, sojourners, servants, and officials—drew selectively from European political and legal discourses about dominium to define households as essential to the constitution of colonial communities and governance. In imperial and colonial legal imagination, households were necessary for the constitution of political communities and their presence fortified arguments for interpolitical violence, especially maritime raiding. Affirming the rights of household heads to hold and command captives, imperial policies to foment household formation and regulate conflicts within households underpinned a regional regime of raiding, captive taking, and enslavement. The regional regime centred on legalities of violence. Demand for coerced labour in early plantation households fuelled a 
circum-Caribbean economy of captive taking and plunder, while settlers invoked the defence of households to authorise privateering and local warfare. As the primary legal framework for absorbing and commanding coerced labour, households became the object of inter-imperial competition and a vehicle for constructing enslavement as an institution. Contests over the rights of settlers to relocate to competing colonies at times pitted expansive understandings of the dominium of household heads—the exercise of private power over household subordinates—against the public authorities they nominally sustained. Such conflicts worked to reinforce the centrality of households to the expansion of plantation slavery. The politics of households made them an unstable underpinning for colonial governance and a site of resistance to the emerging plantocracy. Officials in Jamaica struggled to manage the volatile relation between raiding and planter household formation. In Suriname, Indigenous and African captives struggled to escape and subvert forms of slavery and coercion imposed under cover of household dominium. Examining the significance of households in colonial thought illuminates important and often overlooked continuities in the legal politics of nascent Caribbean colonies and the rise of a regional slave regime. Viewed from the colonial household, legal change across the Caribbean did not follow discrete stages of conquest, privateering, and plantation slavery. Instead, it evolved in relation to shifting accommodations between public and private claims to authority and legitimate violence. Authorising warfare and converting captives into property, households formed a legal fulcrum for balancing interdependent networks of raiding, slaving, and planting in emergent slave societies. This constellation of private rights and public authority, organised around captive taking ventures and slave-holding households, spanned the seventeenth-century Caribbean and produced an inter-imperial legal regime in which the rights of slave owners came to occupy the very centre of visions of regional order.

Emergency politics from the inside: EU staff and the building of a task force during the Greek crisis

ABSTRACT This article examines the establishment of a task force inside the European Commission at the height of the Greek crisis, known as the ‘task force for Greece’. By adopting a perspective centred on the professionals employed in this ad hoc body, I investigate its symbolic and political significance within the broader framework of European emergency governance. Through a detailed analysis of the ethos and profiles of its personnel, the article argues that the task force represented a shift in crisis management, representing both a gesture of support and a counterbalance to the costs of austerity. The findings are grounded in extensive sociological fieldwork, including interviews, sociographic data and the analysis of documents, offering a comprehensive understanding of how EU staff shaped the task force’s mandate and operations under conditions of limited material resources and considerable political pressure. This research contributes to the study of crises and of European bureaucracy by elucidating the dynamic relationship between emergency politics and bureaucratic practices within the European Union.

Cooperativism as pedagogy: Conversation with Gustavo Machado a lecturer and researcher from Facultad de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad de la República

This conversation with Gustavo Machado discusses the role of cooperativism as a pedagogical process in Uruguay. Machado emphasizes how cooperatives serve as models for housing production and transformative social learning processes, embedding collective action and mutual aid into daily life. He distinguishes between housing, habitat, and inhabitation, advocating for a broader understanding of living that transcends physical structures and integrates social, cultural, and communal dimensions. Our conversation delves into the political significance of cooperatives in the face of neoliberalism, positioning them as alternatives to market-based housing models. Machado discusses the challenges cooperatives face, such as state regulation and the need for flexibility in adapting to changing life circumstances. He also reflects on his personal experiences growing up in a cooperative during Uruguay's dictatorship, which shaped his political and professional views. The article highlights the intersection of cooperativism with broader social movements, such as gender equality and mental health, and the importance of international dialogue in expanding cooperative housing models across Latin America.

Virtual cleaning of sooty mural hyperspectral images using the LIME model and improved dark channel prior

Murals, as important carriers of cultural heritage and historical records, showcase artistic, aesthetic, social, and political significance. In ancient times, religious activities such as burning incense and candles in temples led to many murals being polluted by soot, causing them to darken, lose details, and, in severe cases, completely blacken. As a result, the development of efficient virtual cleaning methods has become a key strategy for addressing this issue. In this study, we use synthetic true colour and false colour images in different bands of the hyperspectral spectrum, and use a guided filter fusion technique to fuse these two images into a new image of the sooty mural. Through analyzing the histograms and colour distribution scatterplots of the synthetic sooty mural images, we observed significant similarities to low-luminance images. To enhance the synthesized murals, we applied the LIME model. In addition, comparisons of the histograms and colour distribution scatterplots of the enhanced sooty mural images with those of haze images revealed notable similarities. Therefore, we applied the dark channel prior algorithm to remove soot from the mural images. Considering that soot particles are larger than haze particles, we introduced guided filtering to refine the transmission map and created a nonlinear transformation function to enhance its details. In terms of both visual perception and quantitative analysis, the proposed method significantly outperforms previous methods in the virtual cleaning of sooty murals. This technology can not only restore the colours and details of murals but also provide new clues for subsequent mural studies, allowing people to once again appreciate the true beauty of the murals.

Concrete Times

Our existence has become so entangled with concrete that it would be difficult to imagine life without it, though we probably should. Anthropologists recognize the part that concrete plays in mediating social relations and in shaping political subjectivities. Thinking about concrete anthropologically involves moving across multiple scales—from large infrastructure projects to modest housebuilding projects. This review asks what we might gain from a focus on this ubiquitous material. I propose that attending ethnographically to how concrete mediates social experiences across scales brings to the fore building as an activity of political, economic, social, and ecological significance. Concrete offers a lens through which to apprehend social formations and transformations as well as to examine how built forms mediate and leverage power, how space is used and claimed, and how futures are imagined and pasts remembered. I conclude with a critical reflection on the ecological implications of these concrete times.

Effective justice as a law-based state feature

The article considers the concept of law-based state as a basis for justice effectiveness analysis. The necessity of researching the concept of a law-based state prior to covering the judicial system as a characteristic of a law-based state is methodologically justified. It is emphasized that for the development of Ukrainian legal science it is extremely important to investigate how exactly the effectiveness of justice is related to the extent to which Ukraine corresponds to the ideals of the law-based state, especially in the conditions of modern transformations. It is noted that a law-based state is based on the rule of law, the separation of powers, human rights and freedoms protection, and the independence of the judiciary. The theoretical and practical aspects of a law-based state functioning are considered, in particular the role of constitutionalism and legal mechanisms of control. The article emphasizes the importance of justice as a central element of a law-based state, which ensures the protection of citizens’ rights and control over the actions of state authorities. It was noted that in the context of a law-based state formation the effectiveness of justice acts as an indicator allowing to assess how successfully the ideals of the rule of law and the protection of human rights are implemented. The main criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of justice are determined, namely the independence of judges, access to justice, and fairness of decisions. The connections between effective justice and the principles of the rule of law and its role in a democratic society are covered. It is indicated that in the conditions of reforming the judicial system in Ukraine, the issue of maintaining a balance between the independence of courts and their accountability to society has not only domestic political significance, but also directly affects the international image of Ukraine and the process of European integration. It is summarized that effective justice is one of the most important indicators of a law-based state development. It ensures the protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, contributes to the stability of society and the development of democracy. In order to achieve effective justice, it is necessary to constantly work on the legislation improving, qualifications of judges extension, and judiciary independence ensuring.

Articulating the ‘How’ of Social Return on Investment: Foregrounding the Plural and Pluralizing Character of Its ‘Moments of Judgment’

ABSTRACTSocial accounting practices attribute value to an organization's activities beyond traditional economic conceptions of success. In assessing the merit of such practices, we argue that it is helpful to extend our analytical focus beyond questions of what is evaluated and who evaluates to how valuations are performed. Social accounting literature has already explored a crucial aspect of the “how question,” emphasizing the need to widen stakeholder input and engage in agonistic democratic deliberation beyond applying technical expertise. We extend these insights by drawing attention to an important dimension of the how question that remains underexplored, namely, where such deliberation can or should be applied and explaining why this matters. In doing so, we disclose the complexity and messiness of social accounting processes, as well as their normative and political significance. We deploy political discourse theory to highlight the virtues of focusing on where value is constructed along the social accounting chain, illustrating our contribution with examples drawn from our experience conducting a Social Return on Investment (SROI) for a not‐for‐profit organization. We present and unpack key decision‐junctures in the SROI process, demonstrating the plural and pluralizing character of these “moments of judgment” by showing how contestability and normativity enter the valuation process, aspects that are often obfuscated by an over‐reliance on, and the rhetoric of, the technical aspects of quantification and monetization. By foregrounding the contingency and subjectivity embedded in valuation practices, we argue there is a need to navigate agonistically, deliberatively, and pragmatically their plural and complex character.

Exploration of Historical Sites of Art and Culture Exchange on the Silk Road of Pre-Qin and Han Dynasties

Abstract The pre-Qin and Han Silk Road opened up the Central Plains Dynasty to the Eurasian- African continent, not only having extraordinary political, economic and cultural exchanges complementary strategic significance, but also becoming an irreplaceable important window and way for the Central Plains Dynasty to gain cognitive knowledge of the broader world. In particular, the exploration of the artistic and cultural relics and historical background of the Silk Road is a deep excavation and collation of historical materials of exchanges between the East and the West, especially between China and the nationalities in the Western regions in the fields of traditional politics, commerce, economy, art and culture. This depth of excavation and collation of historical materials, so as to clarify the origin of the Silk Road under different historical conditions and the background of its political, economic, art, and cultural significance in forming the civilisation of the countries along the route. This mutual understanding among various nationalities inevitably promotes the shared development of Eastern and Western civilizations. Therefore, the topic discussed in this paper is a retrospective and complementary approach to the Silk Road as a distant civilisation. This exploration is also another purposeful search for the roots of this road, which was known as the “Journey of Adventure” and “Journey of Intercommunication” from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the two Han Dynasties. Accordingly, this paper promotes the discussion from three aspects: the long historical context of the Silk Road, the channel of multi-ethnic art exchange constituted by Silk Road, and the exchange and dissemination of handicraft culture on the Silk Road, excavating these three rich historical materials is more in order to reveal the historical values of the Silk Road.

Aristotle's Theory and Nepali Politics

This paper encompasses the concept of aristocracy and its significance in current Nepalese politics. How the popular Nepalese politicians and their respective political parties have failed to execute the principles of political science that teaches the process of governance in a polity. This article is based on the secondary data collected from both print and electronic versions. The research has been grounded on critical and analytical approach to look into the political figures who control and affect Nepalese politics. Most of the items of information in this paper have been anecdotal and they hold significance in the contemporary Nepalese politics.

Political Expression in Non-mainstream Metaphorical Music:Exploring the Metaphorical Musical Works of Hong Kong, China-based Artist Wong Yiu Ming

The intensification of authoritarian ideology and censorship in China has made it increasingly challenging to communicate politically sensitive messages through cultural products (Ye and Zhao, 2023). To navigate these constraints, it is crucial to examine the strategic use of political metaphors in music. This dissertation explores the political metaphors embedded in the musical oeuvre of Wong Yiu-Ming (Anthony Wong), a prominent artist from Hong Kong, China. Through a comprehensive analysis of imagery and textual content, this study investigates how these metaphors facilitate the expression of political orientations and assesses the impact of Wong's identity and actions on his audience. The findings suggest that non-mainstream music holds a distinct political significance compared to mainstream music. Metaphorical representations in non-mainstream music effectively challenge state power by circumventing censorship, leveraging the global industrial network, enabling political expression, and aligning with the artist's multifaceted identity.

The Principle of Total Evidence: Justification and Political Significance

AbstractThe principle of total evidence says that one should conditionalize one’s degrees of belief on one’s total evidence. In the first part, I propose a justification of this principle in terms of its epistemic optimality. The justification is based on a proof of I. J. Good and embedded into a new account of epistemology based on optimality-justifications. In the second part, I discuss an apparent conflict between the principle of total evidence and the political demands of anti-discrimination. These demands require, for example, that information about the sex of the applicant for a job should not be included in the relevant evidence. I argue that if one assesses the applicant’s qualification in terms of those properties that are directly causally relevant for the job performance, then properties that are merely indirectly relevant, such as sex, race, or age, are screened off, i.e., become irrelevant. So, the apparent conflict disappears.

12-14세기 부르고뉴 공들의 공간 정치: 부르고뉴의 길과 시장

With the height of the Middle Ages, Burgundy, including Dijon and Chalon, experienced a vibrant urban economy. The Dukes of Burgundy rediscovered the political and economic significance of ‘roads’ and ‘paths’ Particularly, Burgundy’s geographical location necessitated constant spatial politics involving the Kings of France, the Holy Roman Emperors, and the Pope. The Burgundian domain, expanding through routes such as the salt road, the Mediterranean coastal road, and the Great St. Bernard Pass connecting Champagne and Italy, faced new changes. This paper also focuses on the political strategies of the Dukes of Burgundy in expanding their authority through ‘spaces’ such as roads, rivers, markets, and fairs, which enabled the expansion of Burgundian lordship from the 12th to the 14th centuries. It highlights how the Dukes extended their power within the economic space of ‘via(roads)’, where markets, fairs, merchants, and currency moved, including the communes of Dijon and Chalon. The routes connecting Dijon, Chalon, and the Saône River were spaces that solidified the political standing of the Burgundian domain. Finally, the fairs and money of Burgundy were not only attractive sources of revenue for the Dukes of Burgundy but also indicators of their authority.

FUQAROLAR VATANPARVARLIGI -FUQAROLIK JAMIYATI INSTITUTLARI SHAKLLANISHIDA MUHIM OMIL

This article analyzes the historical and political significance of the formation of civil society institutions and the decisive role of citizens in this process.

Санкции – странный феномен

The history of international economic sanctions is simultaneously old and relatively young. The first sanctions recorded in written history were applied in ancient times, but the newly introduced punitive economic measures received legal status only after the First World War. At first, sanctions were not given much political significance and there were not many of them. The situation changed radically after the Second World War and especially after the collapse of the USSR. The rapid increase in sanction activity over the past two decades is a manifestation of the desire of the United States and its satellites to protect their position as a world hegemon. The punitive economic apparatus, the most powerful in the United States, is set up for sanction activity and generates restrictions and prohibitions as the main products of its activity. To paraphrase the philosopher Rene Descartes, the western sanctions government officer use to say: “I authorize, therefore I exist”. International economic sanctions are losing their original function as a means of preventing military conflicts and are turning into an economic weapon. But, paradoxically, attempts to interpret them as an instrument of economic policy are not valid, if only due to the fact that working with the categories of “efficiency”, widely used in economic science, is impossible in the case of sanctions. Instead of “efficiency”, the term “effectiveness” should be used, but measuring the latter, unlike “efficiency”, is impossible; therefore, the phenomenon of sanctions, as such, largely goes beyond the scope of economic science. The nature of modern sanctions is perverse. Their use not only entails economic degradation and destruction of the institutional structure of society in the target countries, but also causes damage to the sending countries. Most modern sanctions are illegitimate and have no moral justification. Sanctions and their systematic application are nothing more than a geopolitical weapon used to undermine the sovereignty of independent states. This article shows the historical evolution of the sanctions mechanism, its degeneration and transformation into a stable institutional entity.