Suchergebnisse

Sintomatologia e politica razziale in AustraliaRiassunto: Jindabyne (una pellicola girata da Ray Lawrence nel 2006) si apre con l'uccisione di una giovane donna aborigena; tuttavia il punto su cui questa pellicola effettivamente si concentra è il modo in cui la gente reagisce a questo delitto. Per questo motivo, questo film ci dice molte interessanti verità sui rapporti interrazziali nell'Australia di oggi. La mia proposta è quella di leggere Jindabyne come un'utile allegoria nazionale (nel senso dato a questo lemma da Jameson); il film è una mappa o una cartografia che ritrae i luoghi comuni politici e culturali nella fase storica attuale. Al fondo della mia ipotesi sta il fatto che non possa essere solo una coincidenza il fatto che Jindabyne dia un tale spazio al problema dell'apologia culturale in questa particolare congiuntura della storia australiana. Anche se questo aspetto del film ha avuto poco risalto in alcune delle recensioni che ne hanno accompagnato l'uscita, mi colpisce il carattere sintomatico della tempistica: si tratta di un tema che, come una volta Deleuze ebbe a dire a proposito della differenza, era già nell'aria. Prodotto solo due anni prima dell'apologia nazionale ufficiale del primo ministro australiano Kevin Rudd agli indigeni d'Australia il 13 febbraio 2008, Jindabyne risponde a un complesso insieme di problemi culturali che erano all'ordine del giorno della politica nazionale dal 1995, quando fu reso noto Bringing Them Home, il rapporto della Commissione sulle Pari Opportunità e sui Diritti Umani relativo all'inchiesta di carattere nazionale vertente sulla cosiddetta "Generazione Rubata".Parole chiave: Razza; Politica australiana; Diritti degli indigeni; Allegoria nazionale; Gilles Deleuze e Felix Guattari. Abstract: Jindabyne (a movie directed by Ray Lawrence, 2006) begins with the murder of a young aboriginal woman, but its real focus is the way people respond to this murder. In doing so, it tells several interesting truths about race relations in Australia today. I want to suggest that Jindabyne can usefully be read as a national allegory (in Jameson's sense of the word). It maps or diagrams the cultural and political tropes of the present moment in history. My basic hypothesis is that it cannot be a coincidence that Jindabyne should give such prominence to the cultural problematic of the apology at this particular juncture in Australia's history. Although this aspect of the film is scarcely mentioned in any of the reviews that accompanied the film's premier, it strikes me that the timing is symptomatic: it is a topic that as Deleuze once said about difference was very much in the air. Produced only two years before the official national apology the Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd made to the Indigenous peoples of Australia on February 13, 2008, Jindabyne responds to a complex assemblage of cultural problematics that have been on the national political agenda ever since the release in 1995 of Bringing Them Home, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's report on its national inquiry into the so-called "Stolen Generation".Keywords: Race; Australian Politics; Indigenous Rights; National Allegory; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

This research theorizes an ongoing, global, grand trend of geopolitical disintegration, in the Post-Cold War, and increasingly in post-1989 time. The proposed paradigm may be useful to analyze redistribution of internal power within every state, from developed old Western powers, to new developed powers as China and India, well beyond the dissolved former real-socialist countries and the so-called failing states. The focus is on not empirical description of each local request of more autonomy, self-government, or even independence, but on the reached limits of the centuries-long and planet-wide integration process, from which the modern states and contemporary world have arisen, and that has now left room to a time of disintegration. This insight draws on a wide range of positions and contributions from International Relations theorists, along with other political scientists and scholars of geopolitics, anthropologists and sociologists, political geographers and economists, historians of colonialism and nationalism, experts of secession, critics of globalization and postmodern intellectuals, federalists and anarchists. * The first of the three parts of this study, is dedicated to an historical insight about the geopolitical integration process that had westernized and globalized the entire world. War, the state and expansionism, were not an inevitable destiny. Instead, a very small group of modern states, in competition and imitation amongst themselves, started a particularly steady conquering march on the planet. Their power expanded in intensity and extension for centuries and, with and because of the Industrial Revolution, culminated in totalitarian states and in total wars. * * The second part treats the social and national movements that have led to the end, in 1989, of the bipolar paramountcy of the two industrial superpowers, United States and Soviet Union. Along with the dissolution of blocs and states, a steady decreasing of states wars, crimes and violences, is registered and explained in the study. A slippery use of the word and concept of nationalism, particularly in post-1989 geopolitical crises, is frontally attacked in this part, drawing from early works of Ernest Gellner and Tom Nairn. Under the umbrella term of nationalism, integrationist projects and their victims, colonizers and colonized, oppressors and resistants, are likely to be confused. An early intuition of Karl Deutsch about the social awareness and mobilization of people in post-totalitarian, post-industrial and post-colonial societies, is here crossed with the work about coercion, capital, inclusion and consent of Charles Tilly. Masses, once enslaved in industrialized obedience, have evolved in networks of active citizens – and netizens – able, in a less violent international system, to claim for more personal liberties but also, as communities, for social, economical, and geopolitical change. A theoretical conjecture is also presented in this second part: in the Post-Cold War, no old or new powers will be able to keep enough concentration of power, in order to compete for world domination. We have entered a permissive state of disintegration. Redistribution of power from center to peripheries, empowerment of federal units, multiplication of small states, may occur, from now on, because there is nobody and nothing capable of preventing it. From this geopolitical point of view, the 1989 is at the very beginning. While sharing certain premises of a well-known thoughtful article by Alexander Wendt, on the inevitability of a world state (2003), this work reaches a different conclusion. * * * In the third and last part, the scope and the nature of the break in the sameness of international life is explored, with normative purposes. History is not repeating, and integration prejudices along with integrationist projects should be overcome. Every state may substantially devolve powers to its internal authorities, or even breakup, and many new smaller states, or self-governing units within states, might come out. In this increasing number of polities, an overwhelming number of citizens may go well beyond electoral democracy and have direct access to power. They may coalesce around what Brian Ferguson defined an «identerest» complex: constructed identities and tangible interests, inextricably intertwined. Citizens and netizens demanding power on their own territories and disintegration of their states, are required to take care of citizenry's duties, not only citizenship's rights. A model of responsible, moderate, pragmatic, «princely citizenry», echoing Machiavelli and Gramsci, is here proposed. -|- Acquisitions of this study are bluntly offered as a contribution to political action in a time of geopolitical change, in which it would be important to rely on expertise, but also on compassion, and on a real interest in the historical and geographical, spiritual and material pathways that each local, concrete human community is pursuing. Western-led state-building hubris, for instance, should be put aside in Afghanistan and many other corners of the world, it is recommend by this study. In favor of bottom-up cantonization, for example, an ancient Swiss wisdom which would deserve more consideration in a changing world. While burdened by the contradictions of modernity and menaced by recurrent economical and ecological crises, local princely citizenries, demanding sovereignty in their place of dwelling, are probably the main and the best possible challengers to the status quo. Concentrating on their territory and population, they may change their everyday reality, overcoming political corruption, bureaucratic impotence, economical inequality, ecological destruction. It may reveal be easier to scale down, rather than tear down, the pyramids of oppression. Leopold Kohr, Ivan Illich and don Lorenzo Milani's prophecies of justice and peace in geopolitical smallness, may become inspiring visions, in a time of disintegration.

Stability is defined as an international system with the same distribution of power for a long period of time. World order is defined as a governance anchored to the promotion of four steady values (the units of measurement) in each arena of international relations: democracy (political), market (economic), peace (military), national self-determination leading to single-nation states (cultural). Multipolar and bipolar systems were stable, but disordered, as values promoted by the main powers were not steady. Change periods were/ are unstable: from 1915 to 1945 and after 1989. In the 1990s there was an attempt to consolidate both order and stability, through the concert of powers; as pluri-national states prevailed after 1989, it was only a 'near order'. Since 2001, there has been neither stability (both unipolarism and multipolarism failed), nor order, as the promotion of those values has been weakened by the West (especially by Obama and Trump) because of the objections of Islamic fundamentalist groups (and in part by China, Russia, Venezuela). A "disordered stability" and the return to the conservative diplomacies of 'real-politik' (with the West promoting 'lesser evil' authoritarian regimes and waging wars to fight Islamic fundamentalism) has not re-emerged yet. The Usa are not a great power anymore, as both Obama and Trump were/are shy and uncertain in foreign policy. An "unstable order" would be anchored to the promotion of single-nation (only Shiite or only Sunni, Palestinian, Kurd) states. ; La stabilità di un sistema internazionale è collegata alla stessa distribuzione del potere per un lungo periodo di tempo. L'ordine mondiale può essere definito come quella forma di governance che viene ancorata alla promozione di alcuni valori costanti (le unità di misura) in ogni arena delle relazioni internazionali: democrazia (politica), mercato (economica), pace (militare) e auto-determinazione nazionale che porta a stati mono-nazionali (culturale). I sistemi multipolari e bipolari sono stati stabili, ma disordinati, perché i valori promossi dalle maggiori potenze non erano costanti. I periodi di cambiamento sono di solito instabili: dal 1915 al 1945 e dopo l'89. Negli anni '90 c'è stato un tentativo di consolidare sia l'ordine che la stabilità, attraverso il concerto delle potenze, ma siccome gli stati pluri-nazionali hanno prevalso, c'è stato solo un ordine "zoppo". Dopo il 2001, non c'è stata né stabilità perché sia l'unipolarismo che il multipolarismo sono falliti, né ordine, perché l'Occidente (soprattutto con Obama e Trump) ha indebolito la promozione di quei tre valori di fronte alle obiezioni dei gruppi islamici fondamentalisti, e (in parte) di Cina, Russia, Venezuela. Non è ancora riemersa una "stabilità disordinata" e il ritorno alle diplomazie conservatrici della real-politik, con l'Occidente che promuove regimi autoritari considerati "mali minori" e che scatena guerre per combattere i fondamentalisti islamici. Gli Usa non sono più una grande potenza, a causa della politica estera timida e incerta di Obama e Trump. Un "ordine instabile" sarebbe collegato alla promozione di stati mono-nazionali: uno palestinese, uno curdo, ed entità con cittadini solo sciiti o solo sunniti.

Democracy promotion – or democracy assistance – has always represented a fil rouge in U.S. foreign policy. At least since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has used such issue in its global and regional agenda. Despite during the Cold War the quest for national and international security in a bipolar world system restricted the role of democracy promotion as an autonomous feature in US foreign policy, since the '90s the promotion of democracy has been growing steadily. In fact, democracy promotion became a distinguishing feature in both the "Clinton doctrine" and George W. Bush's foreign policy after the 9\11 attacks. Although, under Obama, US democracy promotion has experienced a consistent re-orientation, it has not disappeared from the US global agenda. This article aims to show the evolution of US democracy promotion, in particular from the Cold War bipolar world to the multipolar system of the 21th century: from both a theoretical and practical perspective, democracy promotion has gone through different phases and evolutions but it is still vividly alive within US foreign policy.

Rock'n'Roll is a text by Tom Stoppard, staged in 2006 under the direction of Trevor Nunn on the 50th anniversary of the Royal Court Theater in London. This work poses to readers and spectators the problem of the representability of the Cold War beyond a bipolar opposition between world powers and cultural models, in the context of a process recognizable above all at the edges of the systems, in those liminal spaces that often feed the identity of the nation states themselves. In 1968 Jan, a Cambridge student, decides to return to Prague, his hometown recently invaded by Russian tanks. The space-time dimension of the show is the most evident sign of a dramaturgy aimed at questioning the retrospective and individual memory of that story, where rock culture, in its political dimension, acts as a bonding agent. ; Rock'n'Roll è un testo di Tom Stoppard, rappresentato nel 2006 per la regia di Trevor Nunn in occasione del cinquantesimo anniversario del Royal Court Theatre di Londra. Quest'opera pone a lettori e spettatori il problema della rappresentabilità della Guerra Fredda al di là di un'opposizione bipolare tra potenze mondiali e modelli culturali, nel contesto di un processo riconoscibile soprattutto ai margini dei sistemi, in quegli spazi liminali che spesso alimentano le identità degli stessi stati nazionali. È il 1968 quando Jan, studente a Cambridge, decide di tornare nella sua città d'origine, Praga, da poco invasa dai carrarmati russi. La dimensione spaziotemporale dello spettacolo è il segno più evidente di una drammaturgia tesa a interrogare la memoria retrospettiva e individuale di quella storia, in cui è la cultura rock, nella sua dimensione politica, a funzionare da collante comune.

The intention of this study based on analysis of the series of European Value Study (1990, 1999, 2009 and 2018) is to investigate, using a comparative, diachronic approach, the relationship between modernization and the gender gap in religiosity in Italy. In line with the theoretical perspective which valorizes the role of culture in explaining this relationship, our hypothesis is that the most modernized areas demonstrate a more contained gender gap. We expect that differences of religiosity between men and women are more contained in the country's north-central zones - characterized by higher levels of modernization - compared with the south. Furthermore, since the distance between the levels of modernization in the two areas has not increased noticeably over the last three decades, we could be forgiven for expecting that the difference between them in the religious field would not reveal important changes. To our surprise, the findings of the analyses offer but limited support to our hypothesis.