Political Relevance Research Articles

Jornais e lutas políticas na Revolução de Abril

Os jornais foram atores de grande relevância político-social ao longo da revolução portuguesa (1974-1975). Por um lado, envolvendo-se nas lutas políticas e principais acontecimentos de então; por outro, sendo alvo de múltiplas e variadas tentativas de controlo de diversas forças. Num período em que a própria imprensa atravessou um processo de profundas transformações, este artigo procura analisá-las e contextualiza-las, refletindo sobre as principais tendências do jornalismo da época.

Shaw and Legacy: Introduction

Shaw and Legacy: Introduction

Virile Resistance and Servile Collaboration

The article aims to expose and contest the gendered representation of betrayal in resistance movements. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Simone de Beauvoir’s critique of masculinist myths of femininity inThe Second Sex, combined with contemporary feminist scholarship on the oppressive constructions of female subjectivity in debates on war and violence. I trace how the hegemonic visions of virile resistance tend to subsume the grey zones of women’s resistance activity under two reductive myths of femininity – the self-sacrificial mother and the seductivefemme fatale– while obscuring the complexities of betrayal arising from women’s embodied vulnerabilities. I demonstrate the political relevance of this theoretical exploration on the example of two representative French Resistance novels, Joseph Kessel’sArmy of Shadowsand Roger Vailland’sPlaying with Fire.

“Banal Apocalypse”

This interview is based on a series of email exchanges in November 2019 between Taiwanese writer and scholar Ta-wei Chi and Korean American scholar Jane Chi Hyun Park about Chi’s queer speculative novella, The Membranes. The first section provides a summary of the novella, which was recently translated into English by Ari Heinrich. The second section paints a picture in broad brush strokes of the contexts in which Chi wrote The Membranes — taking into consideration key cross-cultural influences and critical reception in Taiwan in the 1990s. It also examines the cultural and political relevance of Chi’s creative predictions about the future within the present historical moment. Finally, it explores afterlives for the novella in the form of sequels and possible cinematic adaptations.

Science for Competition among Powers: Geographical Knowledge, Colonial-Diplomatic Networks, and the Scramble for Africa*.

Historical studies on the relationship between science and diplomacy tend to focus on events since World War II and on initiatives for the maintenance of peace or to achieve cooperation over contentious matters. This article presents the case of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823-1907), a Portuguese zoologist who had formal diplomatic responsibilities in a context of competition for the colonization of Africa in the nineteenth century. He used his knowledge in African geography to implement colonial and diplomatic strategies that aimed at outcompeting rival powers. The development of a network of actors with scientific, colonial, and diplomatic expertise was crucial for the negotiations that involved the partition of the Congo basin, which resulted in victories for Portugal that surpassed the country's marginal political relevance at the international level and had long-lasting consequences.

PANDANGAN POLITIK JARINGAN ISLAM LIBERAL DI INDONESIA

This article aims to look at the political views of the Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) in Indonesia. As a community that wants to carry out reforms with the spirit of modernization and rationality in religion, seeing it in political and democratic contestation in Indonesia is interesting. So this article questions two things; how does Jaringan Islam Liberal view the relevance of religion and politics? and how does Jaringan Islam Liberal view the implementation of democracy? The method used in this paper is a literature study that seeks to collect data from journal articles, books, and other related reading materials. This article shows that the Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) rejects forms of political Islam that try to formally fight for the superiority of Islamic value systems and symbols in the political sphere. They also reject the idea of an Islamic state and the formalization of shari'ah, and sees democracy as a value that must be implemented in a country. This is because it is in accordance with the basic rights that must be owned by individuals, which are known as human rights.

Cherokee Political Thought and the Development of Tribal Citizenship

AbstractCitizenship, a fundamental political idea, exists in many forms in the United States. In this study, I apply the analytical strategies of American political development to examine the evolution of Cherokee constitutional citizenship law since 1827. The lack of political development studies on Cherokee governance presents a unique opportunity to identify foundational and second-story ideas underpinning Cherokee political thought. I contribute to the ongoing discussion of indigenous political development by creating a new theoretical framework for interpreting and analyzing durable shifts in Cherokee citizenship law. As America expands and diversifies, alternate, nonliberal views of citizenship increase in political relevance. Understanding why certain laws exist and where they came from is crucial for cultivating political engagement, engaging in productive discourse, and creating humanizing policies.

A Gini approach to spatial CO2 emissions.

Combining global gridded population and fossil fuel based CO2 emission data at 1 km scale, we investigate the spatial origin of CO2 emissions in relation to the population distribution within countries. We depict the correlations between these two datasets by a quasi-Lorenz curve which enables us to discern the individual contributions of densely and sparsely populated regions to the national CO2 emissions. We observe pronounced country-specific characteristics and quantify them using an indicator resembling the Gini-index. As demonstrated by a robustness test, the Gini-index for each country arise from a compound distribution between the population and emissions which differs among countries. Relating these indices with the degree of socio-economic development measured by per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at purchase power parity, we find a strong negative correlation between the two quantities with a Pearson correlation coefficient of -0.71. More specifically, this implies that in developing countries locations with large population tend to emit relatively more CO2, and in developed countries the opposite tends to be the case. Based on the relation to urban scaling, we discuss the implications for CO2 emissions from cities. Our results show that general statements with regard to the (in)efficiency of large cities should be avoided as it is subject to the socio-economic development of respective countries. Concerning the political relevance, our results suggest a differentiated spatial prioritization in deploying climate change mitigation measures in cities for developed and developing countries.

The Nordic Council of Ministers: Aspirations for More Political Relevance

Due to changing circumstances and new challenges, the Nordic Council of Ministers underwent an incremental process of change and some modest transformation since the 1990s. However, there has never been a major overhaul of structures and contents owing to considerable inertia. The most recent modernisation process, aiming at more political relevance and flexibility, has been ambitious but whether it has been a success remains unclear thus far. Weaknesses and limits in cooperation in the Nordic Council of Ministers are obvious, i.e., no majority voting or ‘opting-out’ system, a lack in supra-national structures and policies and no common immigration, foreign, security and EU policies. Nonetheless, the organisation has at least some relevance and meaning for the Nordic countries and the potential to promote and facilitate cooperation in policy areas in which common interests exist, such as environment, climate, research and social affairs. Therefore, rather than constituting a common political order of its own, Nordic cooperation, as it is conducted within the Nordic Council of Ministers, is best characterized by differentiated integration, promoting full integration only to a limited extent but respecting integration to different extents and speeds by fostering cooperation and coordination of certain policies where possible and desired.

Our Town, by Ellen McDougall

Our Town, by Ellen McDougall

When Scholarship Matters: Theory-Building and Theory Effects in the EU Polity Context

I welcome Jan Komarek’s project to engage in a history of “European Constitutional Imaginaries” as seen through EU law landmark theories and most prominent authors. Some malicious minds would think of it as yet another avatar of the “scholastic bias” that structurally incites us scholars to transform our professional anxieties (what is my/our scholarship worth for?) into full-fledged research question (do ideas matter?)... Others could see it as a vain exercise in nostalgia, as EU law researchers return to a golden age, that of the late 1980s, in which EU law was indeed able to frame professional identities and capture political imaginaries way beyond the academic circles. I would rather take it as part of the “critical turn” that has come along the sense of desoeuvrement so pervasive among EU lawyers ever since the constitutional project failed to gather popular support. A detour to the history of the discipline can indeed be a powerful methodological device to strengthen our reflexive gaze and, maybe, start again rolling up the immense boulder of theoretically connecting Europe, the European Union and the Law. I would argue however that the success of such endeavor is conditioned by our capacity to provide a renewed analytical framework able to compare past theoretical undertakings not only from an “internal” point of view (in terms of legal ideas) but also from an “external” point of view (in terms of social and political relevance) and -most importantly- account for the tensions and contradictions between the two. I take the very notions of “utopia”, “imaginaries” and “ideology” introduced by the project IMAGINE, that all refer to the capacity of legal ideas to capture political expectations and strategies, as strong incentives to move in that direction. In this paper, I suggest to examine theories of European law along two (partly conflicting) dimensions -their scientific robustness and their social relevance- and apply this simple conceptual toolbox to three historical constellations of European law theory.

Facebook as “third space”: Triggers of political talk in news about nonpublic affairs

ABSTRACT This paper builds on recent work on “third spaces” to analyze political talk in comments on news about nonpublic affairs. It draws on content and discourse analyses of comments on news published by a leading Costa Rican media organization on Facebook. The article develops five categories of issues that triggered political talk (institutionality, identity, political inclinations, factual aspects, and criticism of the media) and examines the discursive strategies through which these comments became political. This allowed to broaden understanding of the political relevance of discussions about nonpublic affairs on social media.

A Philosopher Reigneth Not

Editors’ In this article, Chen addresses the political relevance of political philosophy, cautioning against direct application of philosophy in real politics. Rather than bring about good politics, a philosopher-king leads to terrible cultural life, for in such a political setting philosophy cannot but turn into ideology. A better way to understand such relevance is to think from the middle ground. The prosperity of cultural life is where the work of the politician and the work of the philosopher overlap and where philosophy can be realistically expected to contribute.

Образование как фактор формирования национальной идентичности в полиэтнических регионах Боснии и Герцеговины

The evolution of relations between the state and society is a problem that has both scientific and historical and political relevance. The latter increases during the period of socio-cultural and socio-economic transformations. The territory of the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the XXI century remains one of the most complex ethnopolitical constructs of the Balkan Peninsula. The global European space is faced in this region with fundamental differences in religious, ethnic and political views on the design of state entities. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, this process is complicated by the very specifics of the country's development: society is divided according to the ethnic, linguistic and religious affiliation of the people living in the country, and political and cultural relations between the main administrative parts are extremely weak.

The oceans as new regions: emerging narratives and the Bay of Bengal

ABSTRACT Traditionally geo-political spatial imaginations have been restricted to the continental expanse with the understanding that oceans formed the shared commons. However, he delimitation of oceanic spaces as ‘natural regions’ is therefore increasingly becoming as significant today to strategic discourse as continental spaces and subject to similar terminological transformations. This article argues that the emergence of a common narrative built around historical interactions along sea lanes, the re-conceptualization of ocean spaces and the increasing recognition of the significance of ‘Blue Economy’ calls for a critical understanding of ocean spaces. In the twenty-first century this has become a structural component of international politics expanding into a wider array of policy fields in a way that was seldom evident even in the last decade of the previous century, when the mapping of oceans assumed critical political relevance. In this background, this article examines the emergence of the Bay of Bengal as a ‘new’ region with associated regional organizations.

Genre Decorum as Precondition of Renaissance Genre-Bending

ABSTRACT Early modern arguments by Giason Denores, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and others for genre integrity and against genre mixing are worth examining on their own terms. For one thing, the claim for genre integrity was often accompanied by a fierce belief in the political relevance of dramatic genres to which we today would be very sympathetic. Moreover, many early modern approaches to mixed genres, such as Battista Guarini’s argument for tragicomedy on the basis of both his play Il pastor fido and a series of theoretical treatises he wrote against his antagonist Giason Denores, actually depended upon the principle of genre integrity. Early modern tragicomedy, as articulated by Guarini and as practised by Shakespeare in his late plays, was designed not to contrast unstably comedic and tragedic effects and perspectives, unlike Beckett’s modern tragicomedy Waiting for Godot, for example, but to fashion its own, aesthetically unified form under the aegis of mixture.

Wird Öffentlichkeit gemacht und, wenn ja, wie? Öffentlichkeit und ihre „Herstellung“ bei Jürgen Habermas, Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge und Hannah Arendt

Abstract The practical interest driving many 20th-century theories of the public sphere led Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge to focus upon the various practices that bring about, and keep alive, a public sphere. Looking for common ground between their accounts, this article argues that all of them rely upon the concept of “Herstellung” (fabrication/work), as distinguished from action or deliberation, for a critical analysis of these practices. While there are significant differences in the ways they deploy the concept, its theoretical function is similar in that it sheds light upon the institutional, organizational, and medial conditions for public agency to arise. The concept thus enables reflection upon the political relevance of practices such as writing books, making films, studying the past, and commemorating the dead, as well as upon the infrastructures and publics that are constitutive for them.

(Social) Identity Theory in an Era of Identity Politics: Theory and Practice

As a social psychology meta-theory, social identity theory (SIT) continues to evolve and expand in terms of areas of applicability and issues. Revisiting SIT can help IB scholars go beyond applying it to just in-group/out-group behaviour. SIT can also be used to explain collective action, emotion and social change in the face of uncertainty. Managers can use it to address increasing relevance of identity politics, uncertainty and divisiveness. The article overviews the current use of SIT by IB scholars, identifies potential areas of application and provides theoretical and managerial recommendations for the use of SIT.

The consequences of liberal modernity: Explaining and resisting neoliberalism through Alasdair MacIntyre

Neoliberalism, in various ways, is radically new. It is nevertheless constructed from the conditions of liberal modernity, the inadequacies of which are crucial to neoliberal success. Liberalism in practice restricts moral agency through an impoverished, structurally-reinforced conception of practical reasoning, as Alasdair MacIntyre argues, and this is important to understanding neoliberal durability. This article argues that a bureaucratic culture that fails to evaluate or critically question the ends it pursues is both symptomatic of liberal inadequacies and a key factor in neoliberal success. Beyond its purely explanatory power, there is a political relevance to MacIntyre’s Aristotelian-inspired politics of local community. It is from those practices and communal movements that embody alternative conceptions of the good, that those interested in resisting neoliberalism can learn how it becomes possible to successfully challenge aspects of the contemporary social order.

Nicolas Berdyaev – The philosophical and political relevance of a spiritual autobiography

Nicolas Berdyaev’s spiritual autobiography was, unfortunately, the least well-known of his publications. Therefore, we will try to shed light on it, emphasising its philosophical and political value. We will describe the manner in which the author speaks in order to deepen our understanding of it. We will also consider the genesis of some of his works, noting the influence his spiritual experiences had on them. We will emphasise some of the main political aspects his spiritual autobiography contains, showing its usefulness in areas like political theology. Therefore, we will present the interdisciplinary value of this autobiography, together with its potential for building bridges between spirituality and different areas of science (theology, psychology, philosophy, politics, history, philology and possibly sociology) in an analysis dedicated to providing a holistic understanding of his work. We will observe how his spiritual experiences informed his way of thinking, allowing him to critique topics like modernity, a system based on freedom, love and human dignity and a profound understanding of eschatology as the accomplishment of the world and its mission.Contribution: The research investigates Berdyaev’s memorial work showing why it can be considered a spiritual autobiography and it emphasises also its relevance for the philosophical area.