The persecution of German Romanies: the case of Osnabrück, 1933–46

Studies of racial persecution in Germany, particularly during the Nazi period, now appear on almost a daily basis, so that every victimized minority has received attention. Antisemitism remains the main focus of research but the Romanies have now begun to attract scholars. While historians have studied Jews in virtually every location and over short time periods, they have tended to examine the situation of the Romanies at the national level using a longer time frame, recognizing the continuities of racial persecution that link the Nazi years with the rest of the twentieth century. Panayi brings out these longer-term patterns by focusing on the case of Osnabrück. He begins with an account of the historiography of Romanies at both the local and national level, and contrasts this with the general attention that German history of the first half of the twentieth century, especially the Third Reich, has received. The narrative then moves on to use the limited information available on the Osnabrück Romanies to carry out a detailed examination of the realities of their everyday life and the attitudes of the authorities towards them in the town between 1933 and 1946. Panayi’s study falls into the German social history approach of Alltagsgeschichte, which uses the specific to draw out the realities of the general national picture.     

Rancière,religion and the political

In the past few decades, the ‘return of the religious’ has been a recurrent theme in popular and academic discourse. From debates regarding the permissibility of religious dress and symbols in the public sphere, to questions of the integration of Muslim immigrants, concerns about the rise of the Christian Right in American politics and the role of Islam in the uprisings of the Arab Spring, a great deal of attention has been accorded to the presence of religion and religious subjects in the public sphere. Such has been the importance attached to accounting for, categorizing and contending with this phenomenon that it has attracted the attention of many of the major figures in contemporary social and political thought. However, the ideas of Jacques Rancière, one of the foremost figures in contemporary political philosophy, are noticeably absent in these discussions. In this article, I take up the task of investigating how Rancière's political philosophy can be brought to bear on debates surrounding the relationship between citizenship, religion and the political. I argue that his reconceptualization of politics, democracy and political subjectivity makes apparent the limitations, and even futility of current debates between advocates of secular universalism and those of religious pluralism, and, through assisting in the critical analysis of the public presence of religion, provide an opening for the potential emergence of alternative forms of community and political subjectivity.     

Participation beyond citizenship: migrants' associations in Italy and Spain

Danese analyses the reasons for the weakness of migrants' associations in Italy and Spain in comparison to the importance and power of other organizations operating in the field of immigration, such as trade unions, church-based or secular bodies. A method inspired by the basic concept of political opportunity structure, taking into account the contextual factors that shape collective organization, is proposed as the best one for looking at the specific situation in the new immigration countries of Southern Europe. Danese argues that the engagement of a complex field of actors in the representation of migrants' interests in Italy and Spain should not be considered occasional or temporary but historically rooted and a contributing factor to the development of a kind of separation-inclusion of migrants.     

论文明的内涵及其特性

本揭示了明的内涵,并对明内容的普遍性与特殊性、明形态的多样性与互补性、明价值的正向性与共享性、明发展的连续性与阶段性、明关系的开放性与兼容性作了系统阐述。正确把握这些特性,是科学认识人类明发展规律的客观要求,也是加强社会主义明建设的基本前提。     

“In My Eyes,Each Photograph was a Masterpiece”. Construction of children's photos in a family album on kibbutz in Israel

This article explores the process of the creation of photographs on kibbutz through a case study of one nuclear family living on kibbutz in Israel. It examines the process of construction of photographs in the private family album of the nuclear family in relation to the public forms of documentation on kibbutz. The article explores to what extent the photographs enabled the family to express their individuality in kibbutz society, which was self-governed by a socialist, egalitarian ideology. It examines the influences of the childhood photographs of the mother, who joined the kibbutz as an adult, on the construction of images of motherhood in her private kibbutz photo album. It investigates the way in which the construction of private photographs in one family album contested dominant mythologies on kibbutz at that time.     

The Swiss business elite (1980–2000): how the changing composition of the elite explains the decline of the Swiss company network

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the decline of the Swiss corporate network between 1980 and 2000. We address the theoretical and methodological challenge of this transformation by the use of a combination of network analysis and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Based on a sample of top managers of the 110 largest Swiss companies in 1980 and 2000 we show that, beyond an adjustment to structural pressure, an explanation of the decline of the network has to include the strategies of the fractions of the business elites. We reveal that three factors contribute crucially to the decline of the Swiss corporate network: the managerialization of industrial leaders, the marginalization of law degree holders and the influx of hardly connected foreign managers.     

Bodies in abolition: broken hearts and open wounds

This paper explores some of connections between bodies and slavery in the antislavery discourses of the late eighteenth and the early twenty-first centuries. It focuses on representations of violence and cruelty, and on the discourses of blood, sweat and tears in the eighteenth century to interrogate the bases of the humanitarianism discourses and what it meant to ‘compassionate’ the suffering of others. It argues that the connections between slavery, the body and citizenship lie in the socialization of sentience, the ‘complicated stings’ of social death and the idea of having a secure property in the person. Some of these connections were broken by the de-historicizing move towards focusing on the vulnerability of the slave and the power of the consumer. Using the slave sugar boycotts of 1791–1792 as a particular example, the paper argues that these more complicated stories are ‘leached out’ by discourses that treat slaves only as bodies, moralize consumption and rely on a neat split between public and private at the expense of a layered understanding of citizenship and empire, and of inequality, subordination, marginalization and social conflict. The article then traces some of the ways in which this emphasis on moralized consumption and disposable bodies resurfaces in current antislavery campaigns in the twenty-first century in the rhetoric of ethical consumption, risking the same ‘leaching out’ of political analysis, hollowing out our understanding of the link between slavery and citizenship.     

The hero at the bar of eternity: the Bakhtin Circle's juridical theory of the novel

The work of the Bakhtin Circle has juridical foundations that derive from neo-Kantian philosophy. The work of Hermann Cohen, Max Scheler and Georg Simmel are of special importance. An examination of this intellectual tradition leads to an examination of some of the works of Voloshinov, Bakhtin, Pumpianskii and Kagan, highlighting the centrality of the juridical person and the structures of judgement in the now famous and influential Bakhtinian theory of the novel. Bakhtinian theory also has implications for social theory more widely, as recent work has shown. An analysis of the juridical foundations of the theory is important for understanding the nature of the theory and assessing its usefulness for contemporary theory.     

Re-Stating the problem of regulation and re-regulating the local state

In recent years a substantial body of literature has grown up around the application of the theorectical insights of regulation theory to the evolution of patterns of local governance and the structures of the local state (Geddes 1988: Goodwin, Duncan and Halford 1993; Painter 1991: Peck and Tickell 1992: Stocker 1989 inter alia). These new patterns of local governance are characteristically seen to be associated with the replacement of the formallly accountable, democracitcally elected structures of local government with a plethora of unaccountable and non-elected agencies involving public-private sector ‘part-nership’, Within this literature the emergence of new patterns of local governance is accounted for in terms of a response to the crisis of Fordism. In this article it is argued that regulation theory's principal analytical strength lies in its analysis of the internal contradictions and dynamics of modes of regulation, but that it has thus far failed to develop an adequate explanation of the transition between modes. As a consequence, existing accounts of the emergence of new modes of local governance couched in terms of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism (or after-Fjordism) have tended to fail to reveal the complex mechanisms and processes linking global economic dynamics and the transformation of the structures of the national and local state. By interrogating the concept of ‘crisis’ in regulation theory and by considering the processing of the failures of Foprdism through the state at national and local level as a condition of any response to crisis, it is hoped to begin to develop a theory of the transition between modes of regulation. Such a theory, as it is hoped to demonstrate, might provide the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the complex process and mechanism resulting in the transformation of political and economic structures at the local level.     

Republicanism Domesticated? All‐Ireland Politics in an Age of Austerity

This paper examines some of the key factors working in favour of mutual insulation between the two political jurisdictions in Ireland, factors that contribute to the ‘copper‐fastening’ of partition and that constitute a major obstacle to any Irish Republican project focused on the ending of partition. It outlines the powerful structural forces working for the naturalisation of Northern Ireland as a political unit. It argues that some of these factors are almost entirely independent of political unionism and in certain respects work to copperfasten partition despite the efforts of unionism. It goes on to outline a number of key elements that work against the mutual insulation of the jurisdictions and the domestication of Irish Republican and nationalist politics in a Northern Ireland context, factors that continue to pull the North back into an all‐Ireland context despite all of the powerful structural factors working to mutually insulate the politics of the two jurisdictions.     

Ethnic and religious variations in the reporting of racist victimization in Britain: 2000 and 2008/2009

The role of victimization in the generation of ethnic inequalities is increasingly acknowledged yet its impact on the lives of people with different religious affiliations remains underexplored. This is despite evidence of the importance of religion for forms of group identification and social mobilization. An exploration of the particular impact of religion as a focus for experiences of victimization may be particularly pertinent given the increasingly negative treatment of Muslim people since the riots in Britain of 2001, the terrorist incidents of 2001, 2004 and 2005 and the political and military responses to them. Cross-sectional analyses of data collected in 2000 and 2008/2009 explore whether there is evidence that the ethnic/religious patterning of reports of different forms of victimization have varied over time, after adjusting for the impact of age, gender, migration and socioeconomic differences between the groups. In 2000 Muslim people with different ethnic backgrounds were less likely, but by 2008/2009 were more likely, to report experiences of victimization than Caribbean Christians. However, the ethnic/religious patterning of perceptions of Britain as a ‘racist society’ were more consistent over time. This may suggest that, despite their increased exposure to victimization over the period, Muslim people in the United Kingdom have yet to experience the racialization characteristic of the treatment of Caribbean Christians, which requires a more prolonged exposure to racist negative attitudes. But this may be only a matter of time. The persistent expectation of poor treatment described by Caribbean Christians is testament to the difficulties of addressing these negative perceptions once racialized identities are embedded. Immediate action must be taken to prevent this occurring among other ethnic/religious minorities.     

If You’re a Critical Theorist,How Come You Work for a University?

How can we deal with the apparent contradiction between the normative ideals of critical theory and the practice of the current university system? To answer this question, I consult three classical criticisms of the university system: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French educator Joseph Jacotot formulated a pedagogical critique of the disciplinary effects of the educational system; at the beginning of the twentieth century, German historian Franz Rosenzweig articulated an ethical critique of the hegemonic educational system’s distance from life; and at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, British feminist Sara Ahmed proposed a political critique of the oppressing functions of academic institutions. Taken together, these critiques can serve as an orientation for critical intellectual practice even within the academic system. Finally, I try to describe the relation between critical theory and the university thus evolving by utilising Stefano Harney’s and Fred Moten’s concept of the “undercommons”.     

Sensory speculations:Visual discourse and the vision of visuality

It is now commonplace within the discipline of art history and visual culture to speak to theories of vision and visuality. Recent questions concerning the subject of vision, sexed positionalities and discourses of viewing are indebted to theories of visuality, which now occupy a privileged place within the study of visual culture. Theories of visuality have revealed both the terms of cultural visibilities and significantly the how of what we see. And yet despite this engagement of the opacity and duplicity of the visual, recent work into visuality has been plagued by a re‐occurring myopia regarding the corporeal This oversight within the visibilites of visual discourse is the unchallenged idea of a ‘human vision’ within the social constructivist project. In this article I assess how this universal operates as the matter for theories of visuality and of the ramifications of this for the project of the critique of vision.     

The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth's Social Philosophy. Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

This paper analyses the model of interaction at the heart of Axel Honneth's social philosophy. It argues that inter action in his mature ethics of recognition has been reduced to intercourse between human persons and that the role of nature is now missing from it. The ethics of recognition takes into account neither the material dimensions of individual and social action, nor the normative meaning of non-human persons and natural environments. The loss of nature in the mature ethics of recognition is made visible through a comparison with Honneth's initial formulation of his project. As an anthropology of intersubjectivity combining the teaching of the German philosophical anthropologists and G.H. Mead, his first model sought to ground social theory in the natural preconditions of human action. The last part of the article argues that a return to Mead's theory of practical intersubjectivity informed by Merleau-Ponty's germane theory of intercorporeity provides essential conceptual tools to enable the integration of the natural and the material within the theory of recognition.     

主体复杂性论略

主体复杂性问题是当代社会实践和复杂性探索的前沿问题,文章考察了主体复杂性问题更加突出的根据,揭示了主体结构与功能的复杂性,阐明了全面提高主体综合素质是一个复杂的过程。     

Framing PIGS: patterns of racism and neocolonialism in the Euro crisis

Van Vossole's article explores the racist framing of the peripheral member states of the European Union, the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland (and/or Italy), Greece and Spain). It demonstrates a strong connection between the processes of racialization and depoliticization, as well as the return of colonial dynamics in the Eurozone. Side-stepping political economy and history, the culturalization of politics perfectly complements the ‘post-political’ neoliberal hegemony. Political and media discourses reproduce it in both populist and corporate interests. The culturalization of politics reduces the differences between centre and periphery to certain ‘cultural characteristics and habits’, as reflected in stereotypes of laziness, non-productivity, corruption, wasteful spending and lying. These make it possible to blame the PIGS for the current crisis, legitimizing drastic austerity measures and a loss of sovereignty. The loss of sovereignty shows remarkable similarities with what Kwame Nkrumah defined as neocolonialism: the continuation of colonial power relations through processes of economic dependence, conditional aid and cultural hegemony. While this problematic only resurfaced during the recent Euro crisis, Van Vossole discusses how today's racist discourses and neocolonial politics have their roots in the past, particularly in anti-Irish and anti-Mediterranean racism and in the (semi-)colonial position of the PIGS in the British and Ottoman empires. Besides structural violence against the periphery, a major consequence of this racialization is that it jeopardizes any possibility of further democratic political integration on the basis of a common European identity.     

Semiotics and performing arts: contemporary issues

ABSTRACT

Contemporary experiences highlight a crisis in representation which reveals itself through profound changes in the processes and instances at work in the postmodern/post-dramatic performance. As well at the level of production as at the one of reception, important transformations have occurred regarding action, feeling, perception of the stage, fragmentation, crisis of the body mediation, and crisis of the invariant supports of the performance. The consequences of those innovative processes are numerous: they influence the theoretical approaches, and among others the semiotic perspectives. Three types of questions about the relationship between semiotics and nowadays theatrical practices should be explored: First, the place of externality. By reconsidering the issue of the origin of meaning, as general semiotics does, the semiotics of performing arts opens the way for externalizing theories (embodiment, the study of bios/life, and theories of corporeity). Second, the issue of the researcher and in particular his or her exteriority regarding the object. This question points the demand of scientific rigor which characterizes recent research on the performing arts. A paradox which is virtually a dual injunction: the more ephemeral the object, the more imperious the need for scholarship. Although particularly relevant with regard to contemporary concerns centred on the subjectivity of the utterance (presence, effect of presence, intermediality, body–machine relations, etc.), does semiotics still have a universalizing vocation? How can one reproduce the experience of subjectivity?