Sexuality,identity and dissidence: new scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa

In this review essay, I consider three recent monographs on sexuality and sexual cultures in Africa. Each of these three books grapple with the “problem orientation” of scholarship on African sexuality, in which sexuality is conceptualised primarily with reference to AIDS, homophobia and violence. The authors move beyond this problem orientation through a common concern investigating the poles of “modernity” vs “tradition”, “global” vs “local” and “authentic” vs “imported” as these concepts are deployed by activists, policymakers, and ordinary people talking about sex. All three authors also engage the question of how and why social changes happen, treating sexual identities and practices as dynamic, emergent phenomena.     

Primitiveness and the flight from modernity: sociology and the avant-garde in inter-war France

This paper examines the links between the French school of sociology and anthropology and the surrealist avant-garde in inter-war Paris by unearthing their common reliance on a cross-cultural critique of European modernity. Accordingly, the paper focuses on how both currents – and notably the Collège de sociologie – used representations of a mythical ‘primitive’ condition to produce an outside of modern society and an alternative socio-cultural universe from which Europe's pathologies could be diagnosed. This self-critique through a comparative lens aimed to radically situate, relativize and decentre the phenomena of rationalization, disenchantment and anomie characterizing modernity, which could be shown to be neither natural, eternal, universal nor inevitable, but rather the socio-historical products of developments in a particular culture during a specific period of its history.     

Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean society in transtion

According to conventional economic indicators, since late 1997 history has been reversed for South Koreans since late 1997. Their current financial crisis, which would have led to a moratorium without the emergency bail-out packae from teh International Monetary Fund, seems to require not only economic austerity for business firms and citizen but also a total devaluation of their developmental ‘micacle’ in the latter half of the twentieth century. South Koreans' dilemma, if evaluated from a broad historical and theoretical perspective on their compresed modernity, is that the vary mechanisms which made their explosive economic growth possible tend to create various hazardous consequences in social, political, cultural as well as economic life. Patriarchal political authoritarianism chaebol's despotic and monopolistic business practice, abuse and exclusion of labour, neglect of basic welfare rights, ubiquitous physical dangers, and ideological self-nagation are particularly serious examples of such hazards of the uniquely South Korean modernity.     

后现代精神与后现代思想家的风骨——从敢于向霸权说“不”的格里芬谈起

后现代是对现代性的反思和超越。而现代性的一个典型态度是唯我独尊,是“霸道”。因此,向霸道,霸权说“不”就成为后现代精神的精髓,成为一切后现代思想家的共同特征。本文通过世界著名建设性后现代思想家大卫•格里芬对美帝国的抵抗和批判,揭示了建设性后现代思想家的理论取向和道德风骨: 他们不仅勇敢地抵抗形形色色的霸权, 为弱小仗义执言,而且致力于人类的平等和人与自然的共同福祉, 关爱一切生命。主张“尊重他者,倾听他人”。它并非一味解构,而是致力于为我们这个时代寻找“可能的精神家园”。     

现代性：中国法治化的生成支点

中国的法治化建设是在复杂的境遇与多种压力下进行的浩大的社会系统工程。其中,后现代思潮是我们必须正视的一种理论。后现代理论本质上是后工业社会的产物,因而有其特定的生成环境。对中国法治建设而言,最缺乏的是现代性,而不是后现代,而且应当警觉中国前现代法律化与西方后现代法学思潮的畸形杂交对中国法治化的消极影响。现代性应当是中国法治化必须记取的基本前提和必须围绕的一个中心。     

Paradise Lost...: The Meaning of Modernity and the Antinomy of the Law

This essay argues for the centrality of the study of paradoxes of particularity and universality in the interface between law and politics in modernity. Particularly, in order to understand the process of constitution of a political collective and the role of supernumerary elements that re-enter a constituted legal-political system. After introducing the question of paradoxes or antinomies in the relation between law and politics in modernity, the essay engages with current understandings of exceptionalism and the possibility of a leftist or ‘real’ suspension of the law. In order to do so, this essay makes full use of certain theoretical tools developed in anthropological accounts of political and legal processes, and current French-oriented and Latin American political philosophy.     

“Industrial Defence Against the Whole World”: Deakinite New Protection as Narrative of Global Modernity

As it evolved towards the New Protection program from 1906, Deakinite protectionism manifested as a historicised narrative of modernity: an attempt to impose a rationale of nation-building over the heterogeneous and unstable impact of new economic relations and technologies, and the tense dynamics of competition between nations. History was invoked by actors fashioning the nation-building task in post Federation Australia as they claimed to make decisive breaks with past practice, reflected in innovative government strategies and social reforms. The anxieties and opportunities stimulated by global industrial modernity defined New Protection policy, evident in the formation of political narrative and parliamentary legislation, and government intervention in the conduct of business enterprise and industrial relations. The objectives and contradictions of New Protection were clarified in the political narratives and policy interventions constructed to secure the future of the Sunshine Harvester enterprise and its workforce.     

新媒体视阈中西方政党的现代性症候及其纠错

以新媒体为特征的信息传播的发展,导致人们的政治组织行为发生了革命性的变革.人们借助网络平台,基于共同的利益诉求结成各种网络共同体,反对集权性的、等级性的科层体制,追求个人自治、分权、开放与流动的政治生活方式.这类新型政治参与主体的出现,使得西方政党在处理阶级关系、左翼与右翼政治观以及意识形态方面,表现出明显的现代性症候与不适;为了生存与发展,西方政党针对自身存在的问题,展开了现代性纠错,提出“中性化”的新政治观,倡导基层民主政治,积极推行民主政治制度的生态延伸,反对等级、线形的结构性权力,积极利用媒体提升政党形象.     

公共行政学的起源、演进与现代性困惑——基于制度经济学的解释

公共行政学发生的内在动力源于寻求制度理性,以规避资源有限与人类欲望无限悖论下＂合成的谬误＂,寻求理性与美国进步时代的外在压力促使了公共行政学的发生,寻求秩序的理性贯穿于公共行政的整个历史进程。将技术理性与公共行政的结合视为建构美好未来的途径致使人们遭遇了现代性的困境,如何探求宏大的科学理性是未来公共行政学研究的方向。     

时尚背后的信仰

运用现代主义时尚理论、后现代主义时尚理论及相关社会学理论,对时尚以及其与现代社会的关系进行多视角解读,进而阐明＂神圣信仰＂的纯粹性在现代消费社会中逐渐消弭的根源。