Radical Perspective Research Articles

ایران و جنبش عدم خشونت در آستانه قرن حاضر

One of the developments coinciding with the turn of the century in Iran that has shaped the society’s political culture and revolutionary discourse is the shift towards a non-violent method of political struggle, which is clearly seen in the mode of thought and behavior of post-revolutionary generations. This shift has also been accompanied by a change of orientation from state to society, as well as increased attention to women and gender, which has been evident in the protest movements in the last two decades. In addition, the prevalence of non-violence as a political philosophy among political activists and civil rights advocates has disburdened the revolutionary left of the past tradition of violent struggle, thus contesting the equation between radicalism and violence advanced by conservative circles. This turn towards non-violence is indicative of a new political realism wherein change, unlike during the 1979 Islamic revolution, is neither identity-oriented nor ideological, but demand-driven. From this perspective, the shift to non-violence is related to a new discourse for dealing with systematic repression that seeks changes in legal, cultural, socio-economic, and gender terms on a national scale. This discourse aims at uniting diverse groups of people against the institution of velayat-e faqih through a conceptual appeal to human honor. Historical parallels may be seen in the way that the idea of a House of Justice (Edalat Khaneh) functioned during the Constitutional era as a central and unifying concept across diverse groups. This paper asseses how, at the threshold of a new century, Iran might achieve historical political change through non-violence, especially with reference to excluded and marginalized groups. This prospect is discussed with particular reference to Mohandas Gandhi and Judith Butler and especially engages strategic and philosophical views of non-violence from secular and radical perspectives.

Thrombocytopaenia in antiphospholipid syndrome: a free radical perspective.

Thrombosis associated with thrombocytopaenia is an apparent paradox that is present across a wide spectrum of disorders. While thrombocytopaenia has been a controversial clinical classification criterion for APS, as initial reports failed to demonstrate a relation between low platelet count with other clinical or laboratory manifestations of the syndrome, recent data highlight the association between mild-moderate thrombocytopaenia and the risk of thrombosis. Although aPL antibodies may induce platelet activation in vitro, additional stimuli may contribute to their activation in vivo, among which are reactive oxygen and nitrogen species and lipid peroxidation products, which are elevated in patients with APS; an excess of the same stimuli may induce megakaryocyte and platelet apoptosis that leads to decreased platelet production and increased destruction, resulting ultimately in thrombocytopaenia. Herein we provide a novel plausible framework involving free radicals that could add to the understanding of the thrombocytopaenia-thrombosis paradox in APS.

Hospitality and Amnesty: Aravind Adiga’s Narrative of Legal Liminality

Amnesty continues several of the social justice themes of precarity and subalternity (at times, a violent subaltern agency) of Aravind Adiga’s fiction, and its literary narrative centres again on criminal acts and the moral dilemma the protagonist faces over whether to report a murder and expose his illegality to do “the right thing.” Offering a postcolonial reading of Amnesty supported by concepts from migration, citizenship, and human rights studies, this essay discusses the novel’s representation of the inhospitable conditions experienced by migrants victimized by the precarity of their status, whether discursively categorized as illegal, irregular, undocumented, unauthorized, or unlawful; by the consequent exploitations and abuse without recourse to justice; and by the suspension of their human rights. The theme of illegality is approached in Adiga’s narrative from a more radical perspective of liminality – the state of “legal liminality” in which irregular migrants find themselves when longing to belong in the host country, or at least be legalized, while gripped and besieged by myriad daily fears and anxieties that their legal status will be discovered, compounded by a resolute refusal to leave the host country. Adiga forces this theoretical question of legal liminality to an extreme by presenting a protagonist who, as an irregular migrant, has committed the political crime of illegally overstaying in the host country. The central question of amnesty is raised when the protagonist faces the dilemma of stepping up to civic responsibilities without having been conceded participatory rights.

Soldiers as Citizens: Popular Politics and the Nineteenth Century British Military

Soldiers as Citizens: Popular Politics and the Nineteenth Century British Military

Dismantling the Western Canon in Media Studies

Abstract Although there have been extensive discussions on decolonizing the field of media and communication(s), not much attention has been paid to the way that curricula reproduce colonialism, imperialism, and racism in the classroom. In this article, I draw on my experiences as an African graduate student in an American classroom to highlight the ways that systemic racism is replicated, reproduced and frames pedagogy. I argue that although many communication(s) scholars purport to theorize from a radical perspective, these politics are not represented in their pedagogy which means that students from marginalized communities are often erased in discussions on theory, research methods and even pedagogy. Not only are the epistemological experiences and realities of marginalized students erased, but the canon is further legitimized leading to the training of scholars and teachers who go on to (in)advertently uphold racism, White supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism in their research, teaching and service.

Rekhiyo Jugajug Aage: A Reading of Caste and Gender in the Aaradhivani of Kachchh

This article attempts to read and analyse the aaradhivani of Kachchh in terms of caste and gender. The first section explores the genre and looks into the narrative style of Rekhiyo Jugajug Aage Aarth, a performance text that is deeply tied to Dalit spirituality in Kachchh. The second section looks at this narrative ethnographically, and it further studies its historical development and circulation in different media: oral, written and digital. It intends to understand the functionality of the performance. It will examine the question of authorship as it emerges through the circulation of such texts. In the third section, with the close reading of the text, I will examine the problematized ideas of caste and gender. Chamars or Shudras are at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. I argue that this Dalit narrative challenges this social structure and older ideas though radical perspectives so as to subvert caste hierarchy by means of narrating the great deeds of Meghwar (Dalit) sants. It also seeks to study the transactionality of caste and region across a pan-Indian imaginary.

Foucault’s Concept of History and New Historicism: Points of Convergence

This paper attempts to explore the impact of Michael Foucault's theoretical understanding of history on New Historicism, a literary school that developed in North America in the later part of the twentieth century. While Foucault is known throughout academia for his extraordinarily wide range of interests, this paper aims only to focus on his radical perspective on history and to show how that perspective is linked in vital way to the development of new historicist strategies, highly innovative in themselves, that seriously challenge, if not redefine, the traditional humanist interpretation of literature. Attempt therefore has been made in this paper to examine how Foucault’s 'epistemic break' and 'archeological' model of history as a 'discontinuity' remain as important points of reference for the new historicist interpretation of textuality, authorship, theatre and culture at large. While discussing new historicism, this paper largely draws upon the opinions of Greenblatt and Montrose, two pioneering theorists of this school.

Alternative pedagogiche e costruzione di spazi per lo sviluppo di un pensiero critico sull’educazione: la collana editoriale «Il Puntoemme» nell’Italia degli anni Settanta

The essay aims at highlighting the rise of a critical thought on education within the Italian framework, during the Seventies, for the cultural enterprise carried on by a revolutionary book collection in educational studies named «Il Puntoemme». The book collection started in 1971 and survived till 1985, having its best time in the middle of the Seventies. The book series conveyed a plurality of different voices coming from the radical cultures aligned in that revolutionary period. A survey on the main topics characterizing the cultural address showed by the publications appeared under the emblem «Il Puntoemme» looks very interesting to get the critical spirit animating the editorial enterprise. It supported the development of a lot of educational issues coming from the area of the contemporary «counter-cultures»: the need for a not-authoritative education, the commitment for new morals corresponding to the sexual emancipation, the reveal of the ideological elements framing the traditional beliefs in social education, the disclose of the hidden curriculum at school, the encouragement of the cooperative methods as matching the essence of the democratic conduct, and so on. In so far, the radical perspectives supported by «Il Puntoemme» collection clearly showed its rooting into an antagonistic character typical of the Seventies, often inspiring the assumption of radical solutions, like the demand for a complete dismantling of the educational settings or the more proper deinstitutionalization of education.

Insights into the structures of coals and chars from a bond and radical perspective using Raman spectroscopy

Deconvoluting method is crucial for Raman spectra of coals or chars because the obtained parameters are used to correlate with various reaction behaviors. In this work, Raman spectra of 15 coals and 45 chars prepared under 300, 600, and 900 °C, were deconvoluted into nine sub-curves. Using cross-polar/magic angle spinning 13C solid-state NMR spectra (CP/MAS 13C NMR) and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) spectra, the validities of traditional functions AD/AG and A(Gr+Vl+Vr)/AD were evaluated, and new function AD/A(S+A1+A2) correlated with defects was constructed. The physical meaning of some sub-curves was determined by analyzing the comparison between the Raman and other spectra. The deconvoluting method can be adopted to other hydrocarbons and new functions reflect other structural characteristics can be constructed using similar method.

Power dynamics in organisations and the role of information systems

Power dynamics in organisations and the role of information systems

Wrap-up

Wrap-up

‘Slavery Dies Hard’: A Radical Perspective on the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica

ABSTRACT After playing a leading role in opposing Jamaica's largely white plantocracy and the island's English governor, both as a journalist and a politician, mixed-race Jamaican Robert A. Johnson (1825–1899) migrated to New York in July 1865, where he joined the editorial staff of the New York Tribune. A few months later, news reached New York of an outbreak in Morant Bay and the violent government suppression that followed. Johnson covered these events from New York, with deep personal knowledge of Jamaica and an ability to read against the grain of the newspaper accounts arriving by steamship. This article recovers Johnson's body of writing on Jamaica published in the Nation, the Evening Post, the New York Tribune, and Hours at Home in 1865–1866 and locates it within a public debate then taking place about what lessons should be drawn from Jamaica for race relations in America. Pointing to the legal mechanisms of planter power, Johnson warned his readers, ‘the whole of this bloody affair … shows also how unsafe it is to intrust the keeping of negro rights to the hands of men bred in the school of slavery or inheriting its traditions.’

Communities, Heritage and Planning: Towards a Co-Evolutionary Heritage Approach

ABSTRACT Community engagement is becoming a key part of heritage management processes. Community-heritage engagement, however, also means that heritage management processes become more dynamic and versatile, as participation and community engagement is often complex, multifaceted, open-ended and unpredictable. This paper introduces a third, more radical perspective on community-heritage engagement, which we coin ‘a co-evolutionary heritage approach’. We argue that a co-evolutionary heritage approach is alive to the adaptability, flexibility and complexity that comes with the diversity of heritage valuation by communities.

Introduction: Critical Criminology for the 21st Century

Introduction: Critical Criminology for the 21st Century

Political Science Pedagogy: A Critical, Radical, and Utopian Perspective. By William W. Sokoloff. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 172p. $89.99 cloth.

Political Science Pedagogy: A Critical, Radical, and Utopian Perspective. By William W. Sokoloff. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 172p. $89.99 cloth.

An Apostle Too Radical for the Radical Perspective on Paul

An Apostle Too Radical for the Radical Perspective on Paul

Fashion in Cuba as Revolt, and the Horror of the Nonproductive

This paper will show how fashion practice in contemporary Cuba plays out as revolt in the face of two productive axes: the mythological machine of the Cuban Revolution, and that of capitalist accumulation. After establishing how the revolt is formulated within historical materialism, pointing out the need for its demythologization, the shared ontological foundations of the capitalist and the socialist models in their horror of the nonproductive are established, in order to show how this ethos is articulated with the revolt, a figure which guides our approach insofar as it differs from dissent. Once the framework is outlined showing how the Cuban State’s sartorial socialization mechanisms contributed to the making of the symbolic-mythological machinery, the groundwork is laid for the socio-historical elements that enable the emergence of a new subjectivity traversed by the representational-specular intersectionalities which are key to our analysis. From the radical perspective of uselessness, waste and potlatch, this essay will then go on to situate the Cuban fashion praxis as destructive revolt that subverts and breaks with the historicist narrative of both capitalism and the Cuban Revolution. In order to illustrate this argument, the paper examines specific examples from among contemporary Cuba’s fashion practitioners in 2019.

The Climate Crisis, Renewable Energy, and the Changing Landscape of Global Energy Politics

Abstract This essay reviews three recent books on the changing landscape of global energy politics in the era of climate change. Key questions that the authors investigate include: how will the renewable energy transition reshape the global balance of power? How will political-economic interdependencies and geopolitical alignments shift? Will contemporary petro-states adapt or collapse? And what new patterns of peace and conflict may emerge in a decarbonized world order? The authors provide different perspectives on the likely speed of the energy transition and its geopolitical implications. However, they occlude deeper questions about the depth of the transformations needed to prevent climate catastrophe—particularly in the nature of capitalism and military power—and the potential for more radical perspectives on energy futures. In contrast, I will argue that we should advance a critical research agenda on the global energy transition that accounts for the possibility of more far-reaching transformations in the political-economic, military, and ideological bases of world politics and highlights diverse movements fighting for their realization. These possible transformations include (1) transitions to post-growth political economies; (2) a radical shrinkage of emissions-intensive military–industrial complexes; and (3) decolonizing ideologies of “progress.” If struggles for alternative energy futures beyond the hegemony of economic growth and Western-style modernization are at the forefront of radical politics today, then these struggles deserve greater attention from critical IR scholars.

Against social work values: their origins, nature and problems

‘Social work values’ are a feature of contemporary English social work and social work education that, over time, have become so established that they are now accepted with little questioning. This lack of reflection about social work values is probed, beginning with a historical excavation to reveal the background to their emergence from the social democratic welfare state, via critical and radical perspectives, and the process that led to their official embrace. After completing the historical excavation, the enduring influence of their historical origins is noted, their nature is interrogated and the problems they pose are explored.

Rustad för morgondagen?


 During the last couple of decades, the state of the Swedish welfare society has deteriorated. Political decisions concerning the labour market, housing and education have significantly increased precarious conditions for many people. Income inequality and economic difficulties have increased. Changes in the welfare system make it harder to receive adequate support, while the repressive elements have also increased. We argue that critical and radical perspectives in social work can help reverse this negative development. What students learn in their social work education will affect their ways of understanding social problems, their practice, and their ability to work for change. We therefore regard social work education as an important arena for social change. But what is the state of such perspectives at our Swedish universities? This article examines the presence of critical and radical perspectives in the Swedish social work curriculum and attempts to answer the question ”How well equipped are future social workers to work in a critical and radical way?” The study shows that a critical perspective is common in the social work curriculum of some universities, but that critical and radical perspectives in general are absent. We argue that this