Discussions of ‘cultural appropriation’ in popular culture suffer from an inherited politics of authenticity and ownership originating in a liberal legal–ethical framework. Here, I use Raymond Williams’s and Stuart Hall’s cultural theory to pinpoint the place at which cultural-appropriation discourse goes wrong – an essentialist and anti- historical notion of colonial encounters. We can overcome these limits through Marxist cultural and historical analysis. Outrage about colonial violence which most often roots appropriation discourse is better understood within the context of an (...) account of the transition to capitalism beginning with the Low Countries and their eastern colonies. Furthermore, the Marxist idea of the cosmopolitan cultures of both capital and labour offers a productive path for the history of culture rooted in the same colonial encounter. (shrink)

This article starts from the observation that research on conspiracy theories is currently thriving, but that it is also fragmented. In particular there is an increasing divide between disciplines...

Because the notions of "anthropomorphism" and "sentimentality" often are used pejoratively to dismiss research in human-animal studies, there is much to be gained from ongoing and detailed analysis of the changing "structures of feeling" that shape representations and treatments of nonhuman animals. Literary criticism contributes to this project when it pays due attention to differences in historical and cultural contexts. As an example of this approach, a reading of the humanization of cetaceans in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick - and more broadly (...) in nineteenth-century whaling discourse - demonstrates how radically human feelings for nonhuman species are affected by shifting material and ideological conditions. (shrink)

This article provides a sociological explanation for urban “greening,” the normative practice of using everyday signifiers of nature to fix problems with urbanism. Although greening is commonly understood as a reaction against the pathologies of the industrial metropolis, such explanations cannot account for greening’s recurrence across varied social and historical contexts. Through a study of greening in Germany’s Ruhr region, a polycentric urban region that has repeatedly greened in the absence of a traditional city, I argue that greening is made (...) possible by a social imaginary of nature as an indirect or moral good, which I call urbanized nature, that is an outcome of, and subsequently becomes a variable in, urbanization. I draw on processual accounts of urbanization and the sociology of morality to explain urbanized nature’s emergence in the Ruhr at the beginning of the twentieth century, and its use to fulfill two competing visions of urban democracy in the postwar period. I find that rather than an ideological reaction against cities, greening is an aspirational practice that can be mobilized by a range of actors in a variety of places and times. By showing how a new social imaginary made new forms of moral action possible and how those ideals were then materialized in urban space, this article draws attention to the role of cultural imaginaries in urban change and to the material consequences of moral beliefs. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with an aspect of Deleuze and Guattari's thought which has not been duly analyzed: systematicity. More specifically, it deals with their conception of the system in three co-authored major works: What is Philosophy?, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These works are of renewed interest because they tease out, each in its own way, a particular type of system. Regardless of whether it has a philosophical import, a botanical reference, a social dimension, or a libidinal investment, the (...) system that Deleuze and Guattari advocate is allegedly a hyper-dynamic system that resists closure. Thus, in an interview with Didier Eribon, Deleuze points out that philosophy is 'an open system' and then, referring to A Thousand Plateaus, he further observes that what he and Guattari 'call a rhizome is also one example of an open system'. The purpose of this essay is not merely to explore how the system in the works of these two prominent poststructuralists is conceived, how it is structured, and how it works, but also to show how it is only superficially open. Paying a special attention to Deleuze and Guattari's exegesis on capitalism, I argue that the proposed system is cynical and ultimately untenable. Key Words: capitalism • Gilles Deleuze • Félix Guattari • open system • philosophy • total system. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 5, August 2019, Page 553-562.

This article examines the dynamics that have turned a recent Marian apparition on the window of a bank in Clearwater, Florida, from a local into a global phenomenon. Drawing from theories of globalization, we show how the apparition exemplifies what sociologist Roland Robertson refers to as the mutually implicative `universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism'. Among the factors analyzed are global pilgrimage, transnational migration, mediascapes and the Vatican's New Evangelization initiative. On the basis of this case study, the (...) article argues for the need to go beyond secularization theory - the dominant modernist approach to religion and social change - and to adopt a flexible, polymethodological framework that takes into account the complex, and often contradictory, relations between the local and the global and the mediating roles religion plays. (shrink)

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better understood as (...) a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alternative to the dominant forms of political modernity. (shrink)

Following aluminum as part of a material culture of speed and lightness, this article examines how assemblages of energy and metals connect built environments, ways of life, and ideologies of acceleration. Aluminum can be theorized as a circulatory matrix that forms an energy culture. Through a discussion of speed and social justice, the history of aluminium-based socioecologies reveals how the materiality of energy forms assemblages of objects, infrastructures, and practices. The article then traces the aluminum industry’s involvement in the production (...) and distribution of energy itself both at the national scale of power grids and in the emergence of transnational transfers of energy, such as hydropowered smelters in Iceland. Finally, this analysis of deeply embedded energy cultures calls for a transnational approach to the accelerated socioecologies of aluminum production and consumption; and for energy transition theories to pay closer attention to the figured worlds and figuring work of the military-industrial complex. (shrink)

This article examines historical transformations of Japanese collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by utilizing a theoretical framework that combines a model of reiterated problem solving and a theory of cultural trauma. I illustrate how the event of the nuclear fallout in March 1954 allowed actors to consolidate previously fragmented commemorative practices into a master frame to define the postwar Japanese identity in terms of transnational commemoration of "Hiroshima." I also show that nationalization of trauma of "Hiroshima" involved (...) a shift from pity to sympathy in structures of feeling about the event. This historical study suggests that a reiterated problem-solving approach can be efficacious in analyzing how construction of national memory of a traumatic event connects with the recurrent reworking of national identity, on the one hand, and how a theory of cultural trauma can be helpful in exploring a synthesis of psychological and sociological approaches to commemoration of a traumatic event, on the other. (shrink)

Criminal labeling is an important process in the typical modern hegemony, serving not only to name and marginalize selected criminals but also to underscore and rationalize the hegemony’s norms. In the contemporary United States, such labeling is especially harsh and reductive. It predictably involves the established criminal justice institutions—police departments, criminal courts, and prisons—and also a wide range of community spokesmen, political figures, and the mass media. Yet despite the hegemony’s apparent determination to criminally label individual men and women and (...) also entire social groups and classes, many popular songs identify and sympathize with the people who have been labeled. Indeed, the criminals themselves are often the most winning voices in those songs’ lyrics. A consideration of three singer/songwriters and three popular songs from different genres reveals how these voices humanize the criminal, thereby problematizing the hegemony’s tendency to label criminals and to reify and then condemn crime. Overall, the selected voices from American popular music illustrate the role the popular arts might play in challenging the hegemony. (shrink)

The article begins with a sociologically triumphalist critique of philosophical aesthetics, grounded in the work of Ernest Gellner and Emile Durkheim. It proceeds to note the practical failure of this kind of sociology to become institutionalized within the wider discipline. It explores a number of possible explanations for this failure, but finally suggests that a normalized sociology of art requires a normalized conception of art itself, such as that tentatively advanced by Pierre Bourdieu and Franco Moretti. The article also has (...) an autobiographical subtext. (shrink)

Scholars have recently argued that one of the more urgent tasks for environmentalists is to understand how space is discursively produced. This paper is thus a genealogical, as well as a discourse analytic, account of consideration of how a landscape ‘emerges into history’ through the medium of discourse. This paper analyzes the discourse of an environmental dispute over the Oak Ridges Moraine, a glacial landscape in southern Ontario. I consider a range of different ways the debate was framed, as well (...) as which of those strategies were most likely to be taken up and widely circulated. The paper considers how certain effective strategies for arguing on behalf of environmental issues function both as challenge to, but also ratification of, certain aspects of industrial capitalism. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I show that in its original setting Boyle's New Experiments was not only rhetorical but also ideological. By employing a Lacanian theory of the subject, I show that this text not only disguised various “real contradictions“ in the fabric of Restoration society but also acted as a site for certain textual practices that played a role in the constitution of a new form of subjectivity for scientists. I also address the philosophical question of whether the ideological (...) and rhetorical nature of scientific texts impugns the status of their theoretical claims as paradigms of knowledge and rational belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article problematizes the neoliberal reconfiguration of labour rights in Lithuania, a newer European Union member state, in which the impacts of the global economic and financial crisis were particularly severe and where radical austerity measures were subsequently imposed. Now, after six years, in an attempt to resolve the exhaustion of previous austerity-based solutions for economic recovery, a new Labour Code is being introduced which will further weaken labour protections and labour rights. This article analyses conflicting positions in current debates (...) over Labour Code reform. It attempts to map the mobilization of strategic discursive resources in an unfolding dialogical ‘moral’ politics of Labour Code reform in the current conjuncture of ‘post-crisis’. Theoretically, this article draws upon the seminal work of the early Soviet Marxist scholar V. N. Voloshinov in proposing a dialogical method which foregrounds the interconnections of language, class and ideology. (shrink)

This article responds to Lash and Thoburn's articles in this volume by arguing for the value of Gramsci's strategic concept of hegemony today. It places post-hegemony theories as replicating one particular reading of Gramsci as a theorist of ideology and politics only, a reading that was deepened by certain appropriations of post-structuralist theory in the 1980s. It argues that the Prison Notebooks contain a richer legacy of concepts and historical methods, many of which are applicable to today's global reach of (...) power and communication. In particular, Gramsci was concerned with the relations between Fordist innovation and changes in state, civil society, intellectual formations and ways of living. He was especially interested in popular 'common sense', which, in his view, was the starting point of political work and could be the product of a renovative political activism. His ideas remain relevant to understanding recent transitions, especially since 11 September 2001, and the reach and limits of global neo-liberal hegemonies today, including the role of neo-liberal intellectuals and of a deepened individualism in everyday life. They also offer resources for counter-hegemonic strategies. Although Lash and Thoburn grasp a crucial coagulation of power today, their superseding of hegemony is based on an impoverished reading of the history of Gramscianism in cultural studies, and on a collapse of key complexities and local differences which is typical of some versions of social theory. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I define and refine Habermas’s notion of systematically distorted communication by means of focused, structured comparison among three of its instances. Next, I show that its critique is possible within the confines of his theory by recourse to (...) a minimalist concept of rationality and a version of the truth that avoids the unwelcome metaphysical baggage of truth with a capital T. For critique to be complete, however, it must be supplemented by the full range of rhetorical proofs. Even so, there are limits to the power of critique. In the end, only social and political action can alter oppressive institutional arrangements. (shrink)

This article makes the controversial argument that Bourdieu’s theory of practice offers both a model of transformation and social reproduction. However, it also claims that his account of cultural production is marred by two blind-spots. First, it contends that Bourdieu has neglected key forms of material support, notably, that offered, post-war, from the ‘left hand of the state’. The subsequent New Wave of 1950s and 1960s British drama had authors who possessed neither economic capital nor certified cultural capital. Secondly, it (...) interrogates Bourdieu’s conclusion that popular culture can never be source of canonized art. Adopting the view that Bourdieu focused too exclusively on legitimate culture, it seeks to contrast his theories on this point with the approach developed by Raymond Williams. The last section sketches a Bourdieusian analysis of Bourdieu. It reads his writings in the light of the different origins of the British and French fields of cultural studies. (shrink)

Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of social-reproduction (...) feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights thedialecticalrelationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole. (shrink)

This paper examines how British war veterans fold together war time and post war experiences in practices of remembering and reconciliation. We examine these practices as networks of association between British ex-servicemen (veterans) and the people, places and circumstances associated with their experiences as prisoners in Japan during WW2. We focus on the experience of World War 2 British ex-servicemen (veterans) who were prisoners of war in Far East. During their period of captivity they worked to build Thai-Burma Railway before (...) transfer to a copper mine in Japan. Some 50 years later they participated in a "reconciliation trip" to Japan. We discuss two related issues. First, how and in what ways are the post war lives and war time experiences of these veterans gathered up in the emergent collectivity of such practices? In other words in what ways do these practices emerge and sustain themselves as a process of collection and dispersion of circulating reference in networks of association between people places and things. Second, we examine how accounts of redemption (claims to the consequences of experience as being other than you would expect them to be) create the basis for emergent forms of agency and settlement in expanding networks of remembering and reconciliation. (shrink)

This dissertation responds to a recent zeitgeist and climate of controversy surrounding issues of "virtuality" and "simulation" Such terms are treated as problematic and essentially contested when framed in reference to notions of a fixed observable "reality" rather than considered in terms of socially constructed facts, relationships and identities. The concept of the "virtual stage" advanced in this thesis, refers to the current historical moment in communications technology development as well as to the dramaturgical perspective which informs the theoretical approach (...) and argument. (shrink)

The Depression Era collective started as several photographers and video artists joined forces in March of 2011 to create an archive of photographic images about the Greek economic crisis, amidst the social and political upheaval provoked by ongoing austerity impositions of the EU on the Greek economy. In this essay, I examine selected images from Depression Era, including images from Marinos Tsagkarakis’s series Non-Places of Transition, Yannis Hadjiaslanis’s series After Dark, Pavlos Fisakis’s series Nea Elvetia, and Georges Salameh’s series Spleen. (...) Bringing together Marxist philosophical approaches to aesthetics, via Walter Benjamin and Jean Luc-Nancy, I argue that these photographers’ work is a performative undoing of capitalist understandings of linear time that capture and foster desires for alternative radical temporalities, for non-capitalist senses of time. I discuss how these works disrupt linear notions of time as progress, and as measure of productivity and economic growth, which are intrinsic to modernity, and the creation of financial debt. Against capitalist linear temporality, these Depression Era photographs enable a performative encounter, a realm of visual experimentation in which the spectator is invited to feel time differently, to imagine different alternative temporalities that emerge from the collapse of capitalism. (shrink)