Universal Claims Research Articles

Conversational silence, reconsidered

AbstractIn ‘Conversational Pressure. Normativity in Speech Exchanges’ (2020), Sanford Goldberg discusses the significance of conversational silence, arguing that, absent certain defeating conditions, we have a general entitlement to assume that somebody who remains silent in a conversation doesn't reject what was said. Call this ‘No‐Silent‐Rejection’ (NSR). I reconsider Goldberg's account of conversational silence by arguing that silence cannot be explained via a universal claim like NSR: I show that there are at least some examples where, absent defeating conditions, silence doesn't communicate assent—argue that my account of silent conversational implicature can meet and better capture the complexity of silences.

Contesting the universal claims of Western feminism: Black feminism and reproductive rights in France and the Overseas Departments (1960s–1980s)

This article sheds new light on the history of French feminism during the crucial period between the 1960s and 1980s, and it does by so opening up the range of actors as well as the geography and chronology considered. More specifically, it reconsiders the battles for reproductive rights: the liberalisation of contraception in 1967 and of abortion in 1975. Focusing on the perspective of those sitting on the margins of reproductive citizenship and of the standard narratives of the feminist movement – immigrant women and their organisations in France, and civil society groups in the Overseas Departments ( Départements d’Outre-Mer, DOMs) – as well as addressing the distinct reproductive regimes in the DOMs, allows for a reconsideration of French post-war pronatalism, and breaks away from what has long been the standard narrative of Western ‘second-wave feminism’, globalising and de-centring its history.

Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Heterogeneity and Preferences for Public Goods and Redistribution in Latin America

One of the most prominent political-economic arguments is that heterogeneity undermines support for public goods and redistribution. Past research, however, has been mostly cross-sectional, used weak measures of heterogeneity, under-studied Latin America, and did not examine the multiple bases of heterogeneity. We assess negative (fractionalization and between-group inequality [BGI]) and positive (compensation) hypotheses with time-varying measures of ethnic, linguistic, and religious heterogeneity. We analyze four different preferences using up to six survey waves with over 200,000 Americas Barometer respondents across 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries. We estimate both fixed-effects models focusing on within-country variation and multilevel models focusing on between-country variation. Regardless of estimation technique, the prevailing pattern is statistical insignificance for both heterogeneity and BGI coefficients. The results largely contradict the fractionalization hypothesis, as only four of the 108 relevant heterogeneity coefficients are significantly negative. There is slightly more support for the BGI hypothesis, and especially ethnic BGI. Still, most BGI coefficients are insignificant and linguistic BGI is significantly positive in most models. The compensation hypothesis receives more support, as almost half of the heterogeneity coefficients are significantly positive. We conclude by cautioning against universal claims that heterogeneity undermines support for public goods and redistribution.

The Evolution of Faith and Ethics in Philosophy History: A Comparative Study of Kierkegaard, Augustine, and Greek Myths

This article explores the evolution of faith and ethics among philosophy history, based on the work of Sren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. It argues that Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac reveals the paradoxical and existential nature of faith, which challenges the rational and universal claims of ethical theories. Furthermore, it compares the story of Abraham and Isaac with the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, who were also asked to sacrifice their children by the gods. The different outcomes of these stories reflect different views of faith, ethics, and divine will would be remarkable. Another Christian philosopher is going to be mentioned, who is Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus. This article explores how both Augustine and Kierkegaard emphasise the role of grace and love in the life of faith, and how they understand faith as a personal and dynamic relationship with God, rather than a static and formal adherence to doctrines or rules. It is suggested that further insights are available by refection upon the question how they both acknowledge the limits and errors of human reason, and the need for humility and repentance in the face of God's mystery and mercy.

Methodological Predecessors of Contextualist Political Realism

In order to gain a better understanding of contemporary political realism, as well as of the theories of two classical political philosophers, this paper argues that the methodological roots of a contextualist model of realism can be found, among others, in the writings of Aristotle and Machiavelli. It is argued that the methodological assumptions of contextualist political realism can be formulated through two main notions: 1) the experiential basis – analysis of politics through reliance on experience from political practice; and 2) contextualism – avoiding universal claims as much as possible, i.e., making claims about politics always within a socio-historical context. Using those lenses, the paper points out the methodological elements of Aristotle’s and Machiavelli’s political theories that are in line with this version of political realism, claiming both of them could be perceived as forerunners to a certain degree.

Entanglement entropy of two disjoint intervals and spin structures in interacting chains in and out of equilibrium

We take the paradigm of interacting spin chains, the Heisenberg spin-12\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\frac{1}{2} $$\\end{document} XXZ model, as a reference system and consider interacting models that are related to it by Jordan-Wigner transformations and restrictions to sub-chains. An example is the fermionic analogue of the gapless XXZ Hamiltonian, which, in a continuum scaling limit, is described by the massless Thirring model. We work out the Rényi-α entropies of disjoint blocks in the ground state and extract the universal scaling functions describing the Rényi-α tripartite information in the limit of infinite lengths. We consider also the von Neumann entropy, but only in the limit of large distance. We show how to use the entropies of spin blocks to unveil the spin structures of the underlying massless Thirring model. Finally, we speculate about the tripartite information after global quenches and conjecture its asymptotic behaviour in the limit of infinite time and small quench. The resulting conjecture for the “residual tripartite information”, which corresponds to the limit in which the intervals’ lengths are infinitely larger than their (large) distance, supports the claim of universality recently made studying noninteracting spin chains. Our mild assumptions imply that the residual tripartite information after a small quench of the anisotropy in the gapless phase of XXZ is equal to − log 2.

Critiques of Development using Foucault’s Discourse and Power Theory

Analyzing the modern development program through Michel Foucault's theory of discourse and power provides insights into its origins and shortcomings. This research aims to critique modern development theory in terms of Foucault’s theory of discourse and power. Development, and modern development theory as well as Escobar’s articles about the implementation of Foucault’s theory were studied. The research found that the discourse surrounding development serves as a means of exerting power and control, often driven by the interests of dominant nations. However, despite ambitious promises, development programs frequently fail to achieve meaningful progress due to the power dynamics and inequalities embedded in the modern development discourse which excludes local discourse. Applying Foucault's framework challenges universal claims and grand narratives, opening avenues for critical analysis and a post-modern understanding of development. This approach prompts a reevaluation of power dynamics, knowledge production, and discursive practices, aiming for context-specific approaches that address the diverse needs of underdeveloped nations.

Universalism and Historicism: A Conflicting Inheritance of the Enlightenment

ABSTRACT Enlightenment thought and its contemporary followers usually support two contradictory principles simultaneously. The first is universality. Truth is universal because it is truth for all. Claims to universality are made in logic and science, but also in areas that are culturally or politically controversial. Recently, universalism has become a key term to express a fundamental critique of identity politics. For much of European history, Christianity provided such a universal truth. But with the decline of its cultural hegemony and the rise of particular nation-states, conflicting truth claims became weapons in violent conflicts, leading Hobbes to argue that dangerous truth claims must be neutralized by robust political power. In the eighteenth century, rationalism became more optimistic, interpreting universalism as cosmopolitanism based on universal reason and progress through history. The second principle is historicism, which is the self-reflexive look at the historical origins of universal claims and theories. Historicism emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to the application of rationalism to history. It challenged the universal claims of the French Revolution, emphasizing instead the unique value of each historical entity. This revealed a fundamental paradox: when universalism becomes self-reflexive, it recognizes that it has non-universal historical origins, thereby undermining itself. After the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) represented a significant effort toward a new universalism. It sought to establish human rights as universal principles for the emerging world order. But history repeated itself: Historicism once again weakened confidence in human rights. The enemies of human rights take advantage of this weakness. We therefore have to live with the paradox that universalism is necessary because humanity shares a single world, but that historical self-reflection is also unavoidable. In other words, the Enlightenment principle of universalism must accept historicism as an integral part of itself.

Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures and Black Power in Berlin by Damani J. Partridge (review)

Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures and Black Power in Berlin by Damani J. Partridge (review)

The Analysıs Of Relatıonshıp Between Crıme and Poverty For The Test Of Culture Of Poverty In Turkey

In the culture of poverty approach, it is argued that the poor form a subculture. Crime is common in this subculture. It is claimed that there is a strong link between poverty and crime. In the culture of poverty approach, it is argued that the poor are considered as potential criminals. It is pointed out that an approach that sees the poor as potential criminals will be biased. It is a basic assumption that the culture of poverty is universal. In other words, the relationship between poverty and crime is expected to be similar in every part of the world. The starting point in the preparation of this study is to test the validity of the universal claim in the culture of poverty approach. The analyzes carried out with the 2019 TURKSTAT data supported that the relationship between poverty and crime in Turkey is very limited, and that it is seen in a few types of crime. However, it was expected that there would be a relationship between crime and poverty in many more types of crime. Therefore, Turkey cannot provide serious evidence for the poverty and crime relationship of the culture of poverty approach. This reinforces that the culture of poverty approach does not have a universal feature.

Introduction to special issue: Feminist manifestos and global constitutionalism

AbstractFeminists and women activists use manifestos to express their frustrations with legal and political systems, expose the harms suffered in their lived experiences under patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, and call for radical political, legal and social change. This special issue on feminist manifestos and global constitutionalism considers the role of feminist manifestos in global constitutionalism. It interrogates the role of feminist manifestos in bringing about legal and political reform, their role as historical texts and sources of global constitutionalization, and their limitations as tools that are potentially both exclusionary and de-political. In their article, Ruth Houghton and Aoife O’Donoghue outline a role for feminist manifestos within feminist approaches to constituent power. Sheri Labenski uncovers from the archives the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom manifesto from 1924 and the outline for a ‘New International Order’. Gina Heathcote and Lucia Kula centre Lusophone African feminist action in Luanda, Angola, to problematize an approach to feminist manifestos that reiterates dominant feminisms, and instead argue for active silence by those more dominant feminist voices. In her conclusion to the special issue, Emily Jones uses posthuman feminism to interrogate and critique the claim of universality in global constitutionalism. Across this special issue, key themes emerge: the potential of inclusion and exclusion, and the role of manifesto as a method in knowledge production.

The African Union’s Silencing the Guns: between stereotyping and owning gender roles

Following the motto “African Solutions for African Problems”, the African Union (AU) fosters its agency as a regional actor on gender policies. The Silencing the Guns campaign represents one example. Here, the AU attempts to link gender, peace and security policies. Taking the AU’s motto into account, this research explores to what degree Silencing the Guns is driven by the understanding of gender roles linked to African Feminisms, and to what degree gender assumptions of other feminist traditions are embedded. With the help of hypervisibility as a concept, stereotypes will be put into the context of Silencing the Guns. To answer the research question, a mixed-methods approach is applied for data collection. The results clearly indicate references to African feminist theories such as Womanism. In particular, these results help introduce a discussion around epistemological power hierarchies in feminist discourse defining what (harmful) gender stereotypes are for whom. Although there is a common understanding among most of the feminist researchers that gender is a social construct influenced by socio-cultural contexts, the socio-cultural context of the Global North seems to be the universal departure point to investigate gender stereotypes. However, leaving out the various socio-cultural contexts in the Global South that shape gender as a social construct distorts the knowledge about how gender stereotypes function in different societies. Consequently, the main output of this research is a call to rethink the universal claim on how gender stereotypes are defined and interpreted and to urgently encounter multiple decolonial approaches of epistemology, methodology and ontology.

Symmetry as an Inter-Cultural Feature Constituting Beauty: Implicit and Explicit Beauty Evaluation of Visual Symmetry in Japan

Symmetry has been recognized as one of the most important visual features to predict aesthetic preferences and was discussed as a potentially universal feature of beauty judgments. Recent studies have challenged such universality claims, by showing that art experts prefer asymmetric stimuli in explicit evaluations, suggesting that artistic training might modify the preference for symmetry. In the present study, we examine whether cultural habituation might also influence beauty judgments in regard to symmetry in abstract visual patterns. Given the traditional preference for asymmetry in Japanese art and design, we tested if Japanese participants ( N = 31) evaluate symmetric abstract visual patterns as more beautiful than asymmetric ones in explicit and implicit (IAT) tasks. We found that Japanese participants clearly evaluated symmetric stimuli as more beautiful than asymmetric ones. We conclude that cultural habituation with asymmetry—in contrast to artistic training—did not cause higher beauty ratings for asymmetry.

Divergent citizenships: Social urbanism and hip hop collectives in Comuna 13 (Medellin - Colombia)

The bombing attacks against the civilian population promoted by the Colombian State in alliance with paramilitary groups (2001–2002) marked the history of the Comuna 13, a popular territory located on the slopes of Medellin. It has faced processes of structural, political and criminal violence for nearly 50 years. Its stigmatization as a space in conflict has justified military incursions as anti-subversive strategies. More recently, urban interventions based on the “social urbanism” model promoted by the municipal government have sought to pacify the population by means of sophisticated infrastructures. This paper aims to analyze the forces and folds of power present in citizen practices. Based on a scalar methodology that articulates ethnographic work with microhistory, the research reveals the configuration of divergent citizenships in hip hop collectives. The paper shows how they have been shaped by factors such as disputes over public spaces as settings of political life, interpellations to images of legitimate citizens, claims of rights anchored to territorial history, experiences of citizenship linked to body and emotions, citizen experiences connected to collective work, and the defense of universal claims based on the experience of young hoppers in different cities around the world. This research opens questions for legal geography to think about the relationship between citizenship and territoriality.

Whither epistemic decolonisation? How to make experiences a source of moral justification

ABSTRACT This paper examines the narrative turn in decolonial theory, specifically regarding the use of experience as sources for normative theories. While narratives of experience can challenge claims of universality, they alone cannot provide broader normative criteria that extend beyond specific experiences, making their use as moral justification ambiguous. Before seeking criteria for moral justification, it is essential to examine the epistemic contribution of experience-based discourse, such as standpoint theories and the Brazilian concept of “lugar de fala” (place of speech). Instead of relying solely on experience, the paper argues for an epistemic critique of the socially shared vocabulary that precedes these experiences. The paper proposes that a more productive approach lies in identifying blind spots in our concept of injustice and examining the vocabulary that shapes our disposition to feel and narrate experiences. This critique challenges the limitations of relying solely on identity for moral justification, emphasising the importance of collective understanding and the need for a broader framework. By expanding this vocabulary, alternative ways of being affected and describing forms of life can be explored.

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

The Modal Future

<i>The Modal Future</i>

Sosyal Demokratların Göçmenlere Yaklaşımı: Türk ve Alman Örnekleri

In this study, the discourses of the CHP and the SPD on Syrian migrants were evaluated. In this study which was carried out for this purpose, firstly, the migration narrative of Turkey and Germany were defined, and then SPD and CHP’s position on this issue were discussed. In this respect, the CHP’s and SPD’s discourses in the media and some of their party documents had been evaluated within path dependency theory. In this context, how the different conjunctures in the two countries affected the universal claims of social democracy and how these two different social democratic parties took positions within the scope of these effects were also evaluated.

Personhood, Masculinity, and Male-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence

Most international violence research that are firmly rooted in the ontology and cultural background of individualism make rash generalisations about violence and human nature by taking the examples of self and gender concepts in Western settings as the only reference point for their claims. Based on the understanding of self in Western cultures, many social psychological studies have over the years blamed interpersonal violence, including intimate partner violence (IPV), on perpetrators’ self-image. For example, while some studies indicate that people with low self-esteem are more likely to turn violent in order to gain esteem, others have theorised that individuals with inflated (high) self-esteem are more susceptible to use violence, particularly when the inflated self is threatened in interpersonal relationships. A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship also traces the aetiology of IPV and the propensity for men to commit violence against women to the internalisation, endorsement and enactment of culturally defined male gender role. Despite the valuable contributions of these studies, there are significant challenges inherent in research that make broad universal claims about self and violence at the expense of culture and context. One of the most important phenomena that seems underexplored, overlooked or neglected in the context of violence research is how culture-specific notions of personhood and masculinity shapes male-perpetrated IPV. In this article, I explore the centrality of context and culture-specificities of personhood and masculinity in understanding male-perpetrated IPV. I discuss how the dialogical relationship between men’s psychological sense of who they are (personhood) and cultural notions of masculinity provides new insights for understanding violence research in context. I argue that, rather than a threat to a person’s dispositional self, the social pain of unfavourable third-party communal evaluations of masculine inadequacy threatens a man’s relational sense of personhood, and consequently provoke the use of violence towards the source of the threat in intimate relationships in Ghana.

Marxist Realism: Kobayashi Takiji and the Politics of Representation

This paper explores the cross-cultural dynamics and contradictions that surface when attempting to apply the universal claims of Marxist literary aesthetics to the particular case of a non-Western national tradition. More specifically, the key work of 1930s proletarian writer, Kobayashi Takiji (“The Factory Ship”) and his mentoring relationship to Marxist critic, Kurahara Korehito, will be analyzed by examining the tensions in trying to remain faithful to the universal, international claims of global Marxism, while also respecting Japanese historical and cultural particulars and conditions. Broadly speaking, the issues that surface in the Kobayashi/Kurahara relationship reflect inherent difficulties in maintaining metanarrative dimension of orthodox Marxism that belies its Western framework regarding world historical movements. The tension between the universal and particular poles of Marxism’s global vs Japanese context also frames parallel tension between the literary/aesthetic realm of art and its political content; remaining true to the former may bracket the assumed-to-be applicable state of the latter. In short, the question of the viability of a particular work of fiction’s realism (namely, its literariness) vs its fidelity to political orthodoxy, often articulated in terms of its form versus content. Finally, this tension between the universal global and particular national culture setting of Marxist literature and Marxist politics also may indicate a tension inherent within the revolutionary ambitions of idealist philosophy, namely Hegelianism. Stated differently, is Marxist philosophy itself a work of art/fiction – the utopic impulse of the classless society and worldwide revolution – at odds with the realities of specific historical and cultural conditions ‘on the ground’?