Why it Never Really was About Authenticity

Critics of the concept fail to note that staged authenticity is not authenticity but its opposite or negation. This error is illustrated referencing Ed Bruner’s reading of The Tourist in his recent book Culture on Tour.

Thinking and Doing Prevention: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Youth Crime and Suicide Prevention Discourses

In this article, we have traced some of the dominant cultural narratives shaping current understandings of youth crime and suicide. We have aimed to show some of the ways that our received understandings of what the problem is and what should be done about it are social constructions that privilege a certain kind of scientific explanation. By starting from the premise that narrow, highly regulated approaches to studying these complex problems are bound to be inadequate we have argued that alternative ways of thinking, studying and doing prevention need to be considered. A number of theoretical frameworks, including constructionist, critical, and postmodern paradigms, have been identified as having a useful contribution to make. We conclude by recommending ways of thinking and doing prevention that capitalize on young people's wisdom, recognize more collaborative approaches to knowledge-making and community building, and enable multiple forms of critical engagement and resistance as well as engendering practices of hope and solidarity.     

终日行而未曾行--浅谈夏目漱石的《点头录》和军国主义批判

《点头录》显示,夏目漱石的思想与禅宗有着密不可分的关系,同时又受到了心理学的强烈影响。在这部作品中,夏目漱石用禅宗的历史观对军国主义、民族主义和国家主义进行了批判。     

Marx’s critical political economy, ‘Marxist economics’ and actually occurring revolutions against capitalism

Abstract

Most revolutions against capitalism have occurred in ‘backward’ and Third World societies, and they have divided and disarrayed Marxisms in the West. One key reason, this paper argues, is intellectual. When, long ago, Marxists surrendered to the bourgeois challenge to Marx – neoclassical economics – developing, in place of Marx’s critical political economy, a ‘Marxist economics’, they lost touch with Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production. That analysis could illuminate how capitalism’s contradictions drive its imperialist expansionism and how and why resistance to it must, equally necessarily, take national forms. As a result, major currents of Marxism in the West either have paid attention to imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance but without Marx’s analysis of capitalism as contradictory value production or have insisted that their (mistaken) conception of Marx’s analysis implies that capitalism has no necessary connection with imperialism. Neither tradition can actually develop Marxism to comprehend the actual historical record of revolutions since Marx’s time. Neither can inform new mobilisations against capitalism, whether in or outside its homelands. It is high time we return to Marx’s analysis of capitalism as value production and develop it.     

The limit-experience and self-deradicalisation: the example of radical Salafi youth in Tunisia

This article gives an example of self-deradicalisation from Tunisia. It addresses the potential of radicalised individuals to de-radicalise themselves from within the Salafi doctrine with no external interventions, in comparison with the state’s religious rehabilitation approaches to tackling radicalism which not only fail but are also counterproductive. Deradicalisation could, of course, involve a more comprehensive rejection of Salafi ideology. This article suggests that an effective type of deradicalisation that is more likely to make the desired change possible is one in which there is a gradual modification of some attitudes and behaviours without abandoning the whole underpinning Salafi ideology. Referring to the personal narratives of 28 individual Tunisian Salafis, the article identifies phases of radicalisation and deradicalisation as the individual voluntarily moves from embracing radical ideology to a more critical understanding and practice reflecting on personal and interpersonal experiences of being radicalised. The research shows that the process of self-deradicalisation is reflective of Salafi youth experience of engagement with radicalism and is more likely to happen in societies that allow political expression and individual freedom that invoke individuals’ critical thinking.     

Antipodean Enlightenment

Abstract

In his monumental collection Culture, Science, Society: The Constitution of Cultural Modernity, György Markus lays down the conceptual framework for the theorisation of modern high culture across the cultural spheres and articulates an account of cultural pragmatics or cultural relations – author, text and public – in the domains of science, arts and the humanities. He explores in great detail the conceptual keystones in the evolution of the cultural self-understanding of modernity from the enlightenment until today. Markus’s work resonates with a deep understanding of the historico-cultural terrain being covered and the conceptual issues at play.     

大卫·哈维空间视域中的资本批判及其启示

在资本主义城市问题突显的现实背景以及城市地理学和马克思主义双重理论背景下,大卫·哈维试图将马克思主义理论引入空间分析,形成了空间视域的资本批判理论。尽管哈维对马克思主义缺乏空间维度这一说法颇有欠缺,但他从资本积累的维度阐述了城市物质景观变迁和阶级关系再生产的新特征。哈维将资本批判引入空间理论的成果继承了马克思主义分析方法,丰富了马克思主义的内容,并为城市空间理论提供了新思路,同时也为中国解决城市问题提供了一种启示。     

艺术还是商品？——关于影视批评标准特殊性的考察

电影既是一种文化事业,也是一项文化产业,在影视批评中除了要坚持艺术标准外,商业标准也不可忽视,但商业标准不等于票房价值,而是指导演是否具有观众意识.至于影视文本的商业性的获得,一方面在于迎合观众的口味,另一方面则在于文化语境的培育、维护与引导.     

Political Bases for the Dissolution of a Public Corporation: A Nigérian Case

All social theory emphasises that institutions universally play a crucial role in organising the ways in which people live together. At the same time the concept is vaguely defined and used in different ways. Inspired by the pragmatic sociology of critique, we emphasise how institutions enable people and things to hold together and provide important references for action in settings with limited predictability for everyday life. We first analyse how the concept of institutions has been used in scholarship on land tenure in Sudan. We then suggest, using a case study, that increased attention to the different ways in which actors validate or challenge institutions helps to examine the precariousness of institutional orders in the Sudans. This can move Sudan Studies beyond some of the limitations of previous scholarship, such as a tendency towards interpretations that reiterate institutions as timeless, discrete and immutable units such as “traditional” or “modern”.     

对马克思唯物史观解释框架的再认识——兼论文化的源泉和基础地位

长期以来,马克思唯物史观的公式化解释框架表述为:生产力→生产关系(经济基础)→政治上层建筑→思想文化上层建筑的线性决定和反作用关系。其中,文化只是被决定者。这种生产力决定论其实是传统哲学(传统唯物主义和传统唯心主义)制造抽象理论元基点的形而上学理论方式。按照马克思终结传统形而上学、确立社会历史实践本体论的哲学变革理路,可以把唯物史观的解释框架理解为……生产力→生产关系(经济基础)→政治上层建筑→思想文化上层建筑→生产力……的循环。其中,文化又构成了生产力、经济和政治的源泉和基础。我们需要确立社会历史实践整体观,在中国的经济体制改革取得成功后,确立推进社会主义文化大发展大繁荣的文化自觉,为进一步的生产力提升、经济发展、政治建设和社会进步,充实文化上的源泉和基础。