Search results for "POLITICS"

Observations on Arendt, Kant and the Autonomy of Political Judgement

1998

The Politics of Good and Evil

2005

Espacio, tiempo y educación

2015

This paper analyzes the role played by the student movement in the restitution of democracy in Spain. Taking as a starting point the situation of university under the Franco dictatorship, and how (and why) students were dealt with, the major features that set the student movement apart from other kinds of activism in that time are described and linked to the unique effects that it had on the status quo, with a special stress on its ability to generate the kind of cultural change required for overcoming the atmosphere of resignation and consent that helped to keep the government in power. The way in which culture, personal issues, and politics got intertwined is shown as a key trait of stude…

Don't Fence Me In: Barricade Sociality and Political Struggles in Mexico and Latvia

2019

AbstractIn 1991, barricades in the streets of Rīga, Latvia, shielded important landmarks from Soviet military units looking to prevent the dissolution of the USSR; in 2006, barricades in the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico, defended members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca from paramilitary incursions. We employ these two cases to compare the historically specific public socialities and politics formed through spatial and material practices in moments of crisis and in their aftermath. We show how the barricades continue to animate social and political formations and imaginaries, providing a sense of both past solidarity and future possibilities against which the present, including…

<i>The Ideological Framework of the French Nouvelle Droite and the Contemporary Finnish Far Right</i>

2015

This article deals with the xenophobic discourse of contemporary Finnish anti-immigrationists, namely the anti-immigration faction of the Perussuomalaiset party and its 'metapolitical' background organisation - Suomen Sisu. It focuses on two main themes - differentialism and anti-egalitarianism - as they have been conceptualised by the French Nouvelle Droite (ND) and the European New Right. Because these themes have been used to serve a variety of anti-immigration movements and parties within Europe, the article examines whether the selective reception of differentialism and anti-egalitarianism have a part to play in the xenophobic discourse within Finnish politics as well. The Finnish anti…

The Politification and Politicisation of the EU

2016

Publication date: March 1, 2016 In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beginning linked to politicisation, but in an unusual way. To capture its uniqueness we introduce the concepts of politisation as a precondition of politicisation and of politification as a depoliticised modality of politicisation. Politicisation is then not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive…

The Influence of Cultural Competence on the Interpretations of Territorial Identities in European Capitals of Culture

2014

Abstract The EU’s cultural initiative ‘the European Capital of Culture’ (ECOC) includes high identity political aims. It requires the designated cities to introduce and foster local, regional, and European cultural identities. In addition, the cities have used the designation as an opportunity to promote national cultural identity. Audiences of the ECOC events recognize and interpret different kinds of representations of territorial cultural identities from what the cities have to offer in culture. However, the contents of these interpretations vary drastically in the ECOCs. The article discusses whether the competence of interpreting the representations of territorial cultural identities i…

STATE BUILDING, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, AND THE MAKING OF A FRONTIER REGIME IN NORTHEASTERN ETHIOPIA, c. 1944–75

2016

AbstractCombining a set of grey literature and primary sources, this article analyses the rise and fall of the sultanate of Awsa, northeastern Ethiopia, between 1944 and 1975. Ali Mirah exploited the typical repertoires of a frontier regime to consolidate a semi-independent Muslim chiefdom at the fringes of the Christian empire of Ethiopia. Foreign investors in commercial agriculture provided the sultanate and its counterparts within the Ethiopian state with tangible and intangible resources that shaped the quest for statecraft in the Lower Awash Valley.

The Line: committing and commemorating ‘the crime without a name’

2018

This article analyses Gina Shmukler’s verbatim play The Line (2012) and argues for another look at the testimonies captured from witnesses, survivors and perpetrators of the violence targeting foreign and perceived as foreign persons in South Africa that escalated in 2008 and in 2015. It is a narrative analysis of the play that uses Gregory H. Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide model and the United Nations Convention on Genocide to investigate the theatrical representation of the violence. This account argues that the events that are captured in the play and that inspired it should be reconsidered as acts of genocide. In the absence of an official acknowledgement of the events as genocide, pe…

Forbidden and sublime forest landscapes: narrated experiences of Latvian national partisan women after World War II

2015

At the beginning of the Cold War, tens of thousands of Baltic people headed for the forests. It was the largest and longest such experience of human and forest interaction in the history of the three Baltic countries. The forest was turned into a political concept and had abruptly become a doubly sensitive zone: to the authorities it was a space of revolt subject to their control; to the locals, the forests were transformed into sites of both resistance and shelter when life was endangered. Based on recorded life story interviews, this article examines how women experienced the changes in their native landscapes after World War II in the occupied Baltic states, and what it meant for them to…