Contested Fronts Archive: Emancipatory urban practices for constructive conflict transformation

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 163-193
Author(s):  
Socrates Stratis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Conflict Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Constructive Conflict ◽  
Hands On ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Venice Biennale

Decolonizing archiving practices is about emancipatory actions rather than databases. It is about conveying a multitude of actions where conflictual narratives exist. The process of democratization of societies in conflict could take place by increasing the degree of access, of the constitution and of interpretation of archives that have to do with collective memory and urban knowledge. In spaces of conflict, however, any kind of public archive, and collective memory are under the control of the dominant political powers. They use them to sustain divisive status quos. ‘Contested Fronts: Commoning Practices for Conflict Transformation’ challenges such control. It is the curatorial project of the Cyprus pavilion, curated by the author, for the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture. It is an open-source archive, part of an agonistic architecture, that assembles international spatial practices, networks and pedagogical programmes. They are complementary to an activist Cypriot project, the ‘Hands-on Famagusta’ project. They all offer methods, inspirations and imaginaries about constructively transforming conflicts by encouraging the emergence of emancipatory commoning practices to support the commons during a potential reunification of the divided island of Cyprus. In the article, I shortly discuss the political dimensions of archive and its use by critical spatial practices. I further on, discuss issues concerning conflict and how its transformation can have constructive or destructive consequences. Additionally, I unpack the three notions constituting the ‘Contested Fronts’ commoning practices, those of countermapping, threshold and controversy. I examine how ‘Contested Fronts’ constitute an open-source archive thanks to its content, to its performativity as well as to its manifestation in the form of exhibition-on-the move.

Political risks of recovering and discovering meanings in the collective memory of a perverse religious organisation

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Eduardo Acuña Aguirre
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
Conversion Event ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
Political Actions ◽  
The Catholic Church

This article refers to the political risks that a group of five parishioners, members of an aristocratic Catholic parish located in Santiago, Chile, had to face when they recovered and discovered unconscious meanings about the hard and persistent psychological and sexual abuse they suffered in that religious organisation. Recovering and discovering meanings, from the collective memory of that parish, was a sort of conversion event in the five parishioners that determined their decision to bring to the surface of Chilean society the knowledge that the parish, led by the priest Fernando Karadima, functioned as a perverse organisation. That determination implied that the five individuals had to struggle against powerful forces in society, including the dominant Catholic Church in Chile and the political influences from the conservative Catholic elite that attempted to ignore the existence of the abuses that were denounced. The result of this article explains how the five parishioners, through their concerted political actions and courage, forced the Catholic Church to recognise, in an ambivalent way, the abuses committed by Karadima. The theoretical basis of this presentation is based on a socioanalytical approach that mainly considers the understanding of perversion in organisations and their consequences in the control of anxieties.

Leisurely Islam

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Deeb ◽  
Mona Harb
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Political Economic

South Beirut has recently become a vibrant leisure destination with a plethora of cafés and restaurants that cater to the young, fashionable, and pious. What effects have these establishments had on the moral norms, spatial practices, and urban experiences of this Lebanese community? From the diverse voices of young Shi'i Muslims searching for places to hang out, to the Hezbollah officials who want this media-savvy generation to be more politically involved, to the religious leaders worried that Lebanese youth are losing their moral compasses, this book provides a sophisticated and original look at leisure in the Lebanese capital. What makes a café morally appropriate? How do people negotiate morality in relation to different places? And under what circumstances might a pious Muslim go to a café that serves alcohol? This book highlights tensions and complexities exacerbated by the presence of multiple religious authorities, a fraught sectarian political context, class mobility, and a generation that takes religion for granted but wants to have fun. The book elucidates the political, economic, religious, and social changes that have taken place since 2000, and examines leisure's influence on Lebanese sociopolitical and urban situations. Asserting that morality and geography cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another, the book offers a colorful new understanding of the most powerful community in Lebanon today.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

The political dimensions of coexistence

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natacha Gagné
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimensions

scholarly journals Look at me, I’m on TV: the political dimensions of reality television participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110369
Author(s):  
Bethany Klein ◽  
Stephen Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Political Dimensions

It has been over 20 years since the reality television genre attracted the attention of fans, critics and scholars. Reality programmes produced high viewing figures, suggesting a strong appetite for the form; critics dismissed the programmes as mindless and the participants as desperate for fame; and scholars assessed the formats, audiences and meanings of reality television, offering a complex, if rarely celebratory, account. While some commentators and scholars made connections between vote-based formats and electoral systems, or between opportunities afforded audiences for the deliberation of social issues and the idealized public sphere, the civic dimension of participation itself has not been explored. In this article, we take a closer look at reality television participants, drawing on press interviews and coverage in order to highlight how participants enact representative performances that might supplement more formal modes of democratic representation.

Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-488
Author(s):  
Monica Eppinger
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Property Regimes

Abstract Major twentieth-century social theories like socialism and liberalism depended on property as an explanatory principle, prefiguring a geopolitical rivalry grounded in differing property regimes. This article examines the Cold War as an under-analyzed context for the idea of “the tragedy of the commons.” In Soviet practice, collectivization was meant to provide the material basis for cultivating particular forms of sociability and an antidote to the ills of private property. Outsiders came to conceptualize it as tragic in both economic and political dimensions. Understanding the commons as a site of tragedy informed Western “answers” to the “problem” of Soviet collective ownership when the Cold War ended. Privatization became a mechanism for defusing old tragedies, central to a post-Cold War project of advancing “market democracy.” Meanwhile, the notion of an “illiberal commons” stands ready for redeployment in future situations conceived as tragically problematic.

Une idée monstrueuse: Bicameralism in the Early French Revolution

1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Marrs
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Political Group ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Assembly Floor ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Constitutional Issue ◽  
The Revolution

In the spring of 1789, the members of the newly formed National Assembly tasked itself with the creation of France’s first Constitution. The Assembly set out to reform their country by incorporating enlightenment ideas and newfound liberties. Creating the constitution was not an easy process and the Assembly floor was home to many fierce debates, divides, and distrust amongst the Three Orders: the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons.  One Constitutional issue was deciding what form the legislature would take. Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, and Clermont-Tonnerre, members of the Committee of the Constitution, who formed a political group known as the ‘Monarchiens,’ proposed a bicameral system that mirrored the two legislative houses of England. Their political opponents fought instead for a single chambered system. When the vote came to the house, bicameralism was defeated in a landslide.  My research aims at discovering the motivations of the deputies; Why did they reject Mounier’s bicameralism? Much of the work done on this question so far, particularly that of Keith Michael Baker, argues that the deputies were faced with a choice between radically different conceptions of the purpose of the revolution. However, the work of Timothy Tackett points to the smaller, more contingent issues at play. My work involves the analysis of the assembly debates and the political publications being written by the deputies. Similar to Tackett, I conclude that the deputies were immediately motivated less by grand revolutionary narratives, but instead based their vote on a deep distrust of the aristocracy and political factionalism.  

Developers, Quality Control and Download Volume in Open Source Software (OSS) Projects

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-66
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Hill ◽  
Pratim Datta ◽  
Candice Vander Weerdt
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Inflection Point ◽  
Returns To Scale ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Curvilinear Relationship ◽  
Segmented Regression ◽  
The Commons

The open-source software (OSS) movement is often analogized as a commons, where products are developed by and consumed in an open community. However, does a larger commons automatically beget success or does the phenomenon fall prey to the tragedy of the commons? This research forwards and empirically investigates the curvilinear relationship between developers and OSS project quality and a project's download volume. Using segmented regression on over 12,000 SourceForge OSS projects, findings suggest an inflection point in the number of contributing developers on download volume – suggesting increasing and diminishing returns to scale from adding developers to OSS projects. Findings support the economic principle of the tragedy of the commons, a concept where an over-allocated (large number) of developers, even in an open-source environment, can lead to resource mismanagement and reduce the benefit of a public good, i.e. the OSS project.

Queer Life? Ecocriticism After the Fire

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Sandilands
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Ecological Thinking ◽  
Lauren Berlant

This article examines the relevance of queer theory and “queer ecological” trajectories to ecocriticism. It analyzes Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s formative thoughts in “Sex in Public” and proposes some “radical aspirations” of queer nature building. It outlines a “queer life” for ecocriticism and provides a reading of Jane Rule’s novel After the Fire, which engages directly with both the ontological and the political dimensions of queer ecological thinking.

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