Rethinking diasporicity: embodiment,emotion, and the displaced origin

Abstract

This paper explores how Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology can be used to articulate an account of the lived experience of diasporicity that contrasts sharply with the abstract formulations of post-structuralism and post-colonialism. Becoming displaced from an originary time and space is the characteristic of being human. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy provides the outline of a universal diasporic experience. The question that arises is how this ontological diasporicity relates to the field of discourse, the optics of racialized power relations and the lived experience of the black diaspora. The work of Franz Fanon is introduced in order to explore how the fundamental black diasporic moods of melancholia and nostalgia can be thematized in such a way that both pre-discursive and discursive elements can be incorporated.     

Re-enacting “Cossack roots:” embodiment of memory,history, and tradition among young people in southern Russia

This article draws upon ethnographic research which was conducted among young Cossacks (members of officially registered and informal Cossack clubs) in southern Russia. It presents young people’s participation in the Cossack “nativism” as a physical and material mode of socialization into the mnemonic community. The research puts forward an argument that such corporal and sensorial experiences is effective in recruiting some young members to the Cossack movement. At the same time, the performative character of neo-Cossack identity destabilizes contemporary Cossacks’ claims of authenticity related to the status of the legitimate heirs of historical Cossackdom. At the more general level of discussion this paper juxtaposes bodily activities, social memory, and revivalist discourses.     

Education for Modernisation? The Impact of Higher Education Member Development Programmes on Councillors’ Perception and Performance of their Roles

The recent ‘modernisation’ process in local government has brought about the most significant, and certainly the most explicit, changes in councillor roles for decades. At the same time – partly as a result of this and partly for other reasons – there has been a significant growth in the provision of training for councillors, and in particular, training – or, rather, education – programmes provided by higher education institutions (HEIs). These accredited programmes, leading to standard, nationally recognised academic qualifications at a range of levels, first appeared in the early 2000s, and have been steadily growing since. The entry of supposedly disinterested institutions and academics and the introduction of accreditation into the field of member development raise a number of questions around potential conflicts of interest between councillors, officers and the academy, councillor motivation and selection processes. Of particular interest is the question of what HEIs and the courses they are providing are doing, deliberately or otherwise, to shape, reinforce or challenge the new (and old) roles explicitly and implicitly being introduced and promoted through the modernisation reforms. This article utilises interviews with councillors, local authority officers, academics and representatives of national bodies representing or with an interest in local government to examine how councillors’ roles and the way that they perform them are perceived by all involved, and whether these are altered by participation in a higher education programme of study.     

Challenging the European Union: the rising powers and the USA in the Doha Round

In this article, the challenges posed to the European Union's (EU) role in trade policy and its implications for development policy during the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda, also known as the Doha round, are highlighted. The authors argue that transformed power relations have created a situation characterized by role uncertainty, for the emerging powers but also for the EU. Priorities among multiple possible roles – in the existing trade regime, in relation to the global South and in the ongoing negotiations – become subject to redefinition. For the EU, heavily wedded to a multilateralist and reformist mission because of its own history, this process is particularly difficult. The EU's traditional role conceptions as a leader and a benign partner to developing countries have been challenged and partly replaced by a more realist approach.     

‘Greatpowerness’ as the key element of Russian self-consciousness under erosion

The article analyzes changes in attitudes to and interpretations of Russian ‘greatpowerness’ (velikoderzhavnost') between the years of 2000 and 2014, that is to say during President Putin's period of rule. The concept of Russia as the great power was changing during this time in two respects: first, there was an increasing reticence of self-assessments; second, we observe prioritization of protecting the country's own, mostly regional, interests as opposed to expansion which would be characteristic of a great power. Moreover, this period clearly demonstrates contradictions and dangers, engendered in the process of losing self-perception as that of the great power. The readiness of Russian political elite to part bit by bit with the status of the great power and to go to the status of a regional power is combined (as the events around Ukraine have shown) with unwillingness to sustain the new status of the country with the help of the capabilities of a soft power. Lack of these, as well as of the skills in their use, and finally, a desire to raise the rating of trust in the government with the help of “a small victorious war” have formed the basis for the aggressive upsurge towards Ukraine. In the absence of serious hard and soft capabilities, the splashes of aggressiveness in Russian foreign policy and of anti-Western sentiments in domestic political life are unlikely to have any lasting effect. They are able, however, to generate extremely negative long-term consequences for the country.     

The Structure of Government Intervention in African Agriculture

This article examines the determinants of various rates of agricultural subsidies (output, input, exchange rate distortions, and aggregate) using commodity-level data from eight African countries in the 1980s. Econometric results indicate that structural adjustment policies were more effective in reforming exchange rate distortions than in liberalising commodity markets. Output policies are determined within the national context while input subsidies are more responsive to commodity-specific conditions. Further-more, agricultural subsidies were strongly influenced by the degree of urbanisation and by the number of people per unit of arable land in a manner consistent with cheap food policy strategies.     

Putin as a flexible politician. Does he imitate Stalin?

The article is about Putin's ‘Jewish anomaly’. Against all expectations, Putin during his tenure as president of the Russian Federation showed in various ways his concern about the life of Jews in his country.     

A literary approach to Afro-Sino relations: Ufrieda Ho’s Paper Sons and Daughters: Growing Up Chinese in South Africa and Ken N. Kamoche’s Black Ghosts

The Afro-Sino engagement supports the study of international relations beyond the framework of a West-centric narrative. Ken Kamoche’s fictionalisation of African immigrants in China, and Ufrieda Ho’s narration of the vicissitudes of Chinese communities in South Africa, contemplate the consequence of the Africa–Asia engagement on the human condition. While the attendant political apparatuses in the African continent and China laud the mutual benefits of engagement, Kamoche and Ho, by focusing on issues of transmigration, displacement and belonging, identity-formation, and so forth expose the acute Sinocentrism and Afrocentrism that impede the seamless establishment of migrant communities in both geopolitical spaces. The principal objectives of this essay involve a close reading of Kamoche and Ho’s novels to focus on the non-state participants of the Afro-Sino relations, and to discuss the emerging transnational, migrant literature that is at once African and Chinese. Ultimately, this essay suggests the formulation of a literary subgenre to embrace the Afro-Sino literary imagination.     

An Assessment of a Drastically Changed Federal Workplace in the United States

Abstract

Written by four experienced government employees, this article discusses many alarming changes that have been forced on the Federal government workplace over the past 20 years. The article identifies actions by elected and appointed officials that have greatly changed and weakened a workplace that was a model for America. Several attributes of the Federal workplace of the past and of the present are compared and contrasted.