Search results for "Political Science"

China in Pakistan and the wider region: A cautious but effective leader?

2018

This article assesses China–Pakistan-Afghanistan relations in the period 2014–2018 and asks whether China has exercised distinct pressure on Pakistan to be a more constructive partner for Afghanistan. A central argument is that even as China has failed to alter Pakistan’s policies significantly in the short term it is still continuing to successfully build power and trust in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as with their neighbours to the north and west. This bodes well for China’s exercise of regional leadership in a long-term perspective.

2018

Representative, legislative and deliberative assemblies are commonly called parliaments. The three types of assemblies share many procedures and practices, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union include...

Facing a Toxic Object

2021

AbstractOver the past decades, industrial societies have produced a range of substances whose effects humans increasingly identify as toxic—a prominent example is radioactive waste and the question of its disposal. This fabricated “object of modernity” not only calls for the knowledge of the natural sciences, it also affects society at large in its immense challenge of figuring out how to dispose of this material and altogether “detoxify” society from its hazardous activity. The contribution develops a heuristic perspective on toxic objects, exemplified by analyzing documents with a focus on how different societal actors in Germany problematize high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in the cont…

Practices of Writing in Ethnographic Work

2020

Although the practice of writing is key to the production of ethnographic knowledge, the topic remains understudied. Using material from our own ethnographic research in the fields of air travel and cultural heritage as data, we develop a reflexive account of ethnographic writing. We examine in detail the practices of jotting down observations, writing field notes, analytic annotating, ordering and rearranging, and drafting and revising papers. The article takes a praxeological stance, conceptualizing writing as a practice that is simultaneously cognitive, embodied, and material. Our analysis finds that writing influences and shapes all stages of ethnographic work, from orienting perception…

Schelling, esotericism and the meaning of life

2019

Abstract F.W.J. Schelling argues in his middle period work Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom that will should be understood as the most fundamental constitutive element of reality. Though it is often downplayed in recent scholarship, Schelling derived his most central ideas for this work more or less directly from the theosophy of Jacob Boehme. I will argue that far from peripheral and antiquated curiosity, Schelling´s esoteric influences constitute the very foundation of his middle period thought. Schelling´s affinity to esotericism enabled him to develop a form of pantheism, which is not tied to the familiar problematic aspects of traditional Christian and post-Chri…

Racism and transnationality

2017

Commentary: ethnography, critique and the state. Some thoughts on “fiscal anthropological insights into the heart of contemporary statehood”1

2018

This commentary explores the assets and liabilities of anthropology for the study of core functions of statehood (such as taxation) that increasingly become a matter of transnational negotiation an...

Expecting justice: struggling with the indeterminate between ideals and practices

2018

This commentary contextualizes Jacobs’ study as a contribution to a body of anthropological research concerned with theorizing the state, and more importantly concerned with closing the analytical ...

Contesting Cultural Heritage: Decolonizing the Tropenmuseum as an Intervention in the Dutch/European Memory Complex

2019

AbstractThe chapter discusses how (post-)immigrant activism in the Netherlands currently impacts Dutch and European cultural heritage and their cultural archive and memory complex. The discussion focuses on the Tropenmuseum and the way postcolonial (post)immigrants carried out interventions there, resulting in new ways of visually and textually representing the colonial past. Though the end result is not a final ideal decolonized situation, it did evince de-essentializing processes in which intersectional perspectives are taken up. The interventions coincide with other national and international protests and processes, making it part of a project or movement that produces decolonial counter…

Comparing Notions on European Cultural Heritage in EU Policy Discourse and Scholarly Discussion

2016

Cultural heritage is an idea and a concept repeatedly brought up in current EU policy discourse. In recent years the European Commission has launched several initiatives which aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The idea is also often referred to in scholarly discussion. There has been vivid discussion in academia about the possibility of a European cultural heritage and what it could be grounded upon. What is a European cultural heritage? How has it been explicated and defined in recent EU policy discourse and scholarly discussion? Through qualitative content analysis of diverse EU policy documents and selected scholarly publications, the article clarifies the mu…