In: Reid , J & Chandler , D 2018 , ' "Being in Being" : Contesting the Ontopolitics of Indigeneity ' , The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms , vol. 23 , no. 3 , pp. 251-268 . https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2017.1420284
This article critiques the shift towards valorizing indigeneity in western thought and contemporary practice. This shift in approach to indigenous ways of knowing and being, historically derided under conditions of colonialism, is a reflection of the "ontological turn" in anthropology. Rather than seeing indigenous peoples as having an inferior or different understanding of the world to a modernist one, the ontological turn suggests that their importance lies in the fact that they constitute different worlds and "world" in a performatively different way. The radical promise this view holds is that a different world already exists in potentia, the access to which is a question of ontology—of being differently: 'being in being' rather than thinking, acting and world-making as if we were transcendent or "possessive" modern subjects. We argue that the ontopolitical arguments for the superiority of indigenous ways of being should not be seen as radical or emancipatory resistances to modernist or colonial epistemological and ontological legacies but rather as a new form of neoliberal governmentality, cynically manipulating critical, postcolonial and ecological sensibilities for its own ends. Thus, rather than "provincializing" dominant western hegemonic practices, such discourses of indigeneity extend them, instituting new forms of governing through calls for adaptation and resilience.
One of the common themes in feminist research over the past decade has been the claim that reason is "gendered": more specifically, that reason is "male" or "masculine." Although feminists have differed in their interpretations of this claim and the grounds they offer for it, the general conclusion has been that feminist theory should steer clear of investments in reason and rationality, at least as traditionally conceived. For example, we should avoid an epistemology that privileges reason or the standpoint of reason; we should avoid theories of the self that take rationality to be a defining trait; and we should avoid endorsing moral and political ideals that glorify reason and the reasonable "person" (read: Man).
Exploring both debates about misrecognition and explorations of encounters, this paper focuses upon the experiences of ethnic and religious minority young people who are mistaken for being Muslim in Scotland. We explore experiences of encountering misrecognition, including young people's understandings of, and responses to, such encounters. Recognising how racism and religious discrimination operate to marginalise people – and how people manage and respond to this – is crucial in the struggle for social justice. Our focus is upon young people from a diversity of ethnic and religious minority groups who are growing up in urban, suburban and rural Scotland, 382 of whom participated in 45 focus groups and 224 interviews. We found that young Sikhs, Hindus and other South Asian young people as well as Black and Caribbean young people were regularly mistaken for being Muslim. These encounters tended to take place at school, in taxis, at the airport and in public spaces. Our analysis points to a dynamic set of interconnected issues shaping young people's experiences of misrecognition across a range of mediatised, geopoliticised and educational spaces. Geopolitical events and their representation in the media, the homogenisation of the South 'Asian' community and the lack of visibility offered to non-Muslim ethnic and religious minority groups all worked to construct our participants as 'Muslims'. Young people demonstrated agency and creativity in handling and responding to these encounters including: using humour; clarifying their religious affiliation; social withdrawal and ignoring the situation. Redressing misrecognition requires institutional change in order to ensure parity of participation in society.
International Women's Day acknowledges and celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Check it Out! will showcase some wonderful and diverse experiences of being female, and we want you to help us celebrate and share in the conversation.
This article critiques the shift towards valorizing indigeneity in western thought and contemporary practice. This shift in approach to indigenous ways of knowing and being, historically derided under conditions of colonialism, is a reflection of the 'ontological turn' in anthropology. Rather than indigenous peoples simply having an inferior or different understanding of the world to a modernist one, the 'ontological turn' suggests their importance is that they constitute different worlds, and that they 'world' in a performatively different way. The radical promise is that a different world already exists in potentia and that access to this alternative world is a question of ontology - of being differently: being in being rather than thinking, acting and 'worlding' as if we were transcendent or 'possessive' subjects. We argue that ontopolitical arguments for the superiority of indigenous ways of being should not be seen as radical or emancipatory resistances to modernist or colonial epistemological and ontological legacies but instead as a new form of neoliberal governmentality, cynically manipulating critical, postcolonial and ecological sensibilities for its own ends. Rather than 'provincialising' dominant western hegemonic practices, discourses of 'indigeneity' are functioning to extend them, instituting new forms of governing through calls for adaptation and resilience.
The question of Being in axio-teleological sense is of profound significance for the history culture and politics of nations, in fact, for the rise and fall of the civilizations. Heidegger brings out that man as well as nations in their greatest movement and traditions are linked to being. Their falling out of being was the most powerful and the most central cause of their decline . In fact, all philosophical questions about Being are interminability, interlinked with the meaning or goals involved in Being. The present paper will bring out the different questions and different meanings of being .
Trafficking in human beings, also known as slavery in modern times, is a serious crime as well as a violation of fundamental human rights and dignity. The purpose of trafficking is to exploit vulnerable persons for the sole purpose of profit. Every state is affected in some form or form of trafficking in human beings. The term "modern form of slavery" can also be found in the literature and practice of some countries; a term used to raise awareness of what trafficking may look like to people who are uninformed. There are still many myths about trafficking one of them is that trafficking only happens internationally and that the international element of the trafficking offense is qualifying. In fact, although many cases of trafficking in human beings involve an international element, where the victim is taken from one state to another and exploited there, trafficking also occurs within the territory of the same state and is known as "internal trafficking". Trafficking in human beings is a serious crime and above all a violation of dignity and fundamental human rights. Considering it as such, the awareness as well as the attention of the state and the whole society towards the prevention and uncompromising fight against trafficking in human beings has recently increased; hitting on the phenomenon, identifying cases, investigating, prosecuting and bringing to justice all perpetrators of the crime of trafficking in human beings. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Eliminate and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, 2000, known as the Palermo Protocol, Article 3 states that: Trafficking in human beings means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, accommodation or support of persons, through threats or by use of force or various forms of coercion, kidnapping, lying, abuse of power or powerlessness, giving or receiving money or benefits, with the intent to gain the consent of any person who has control to any other person, for the needs of exploitation. A number of international documents and ...
My aim in this paper is to give an account of such a polysemic term as well-being by hand of three broad and different approaches, which will highlight the scope that the conceptual frame has to define this concept. On the one hand, I will provide a general map of some ethical approaches stemming from the philosophy of mind and the analytical address of emotions, which emphasize the subjective features of well-being, insofar as they shed light over the ties of well-being with the historicity of desire. This fact allows to affirm that the term well-being did not become an issue of social and political interest in all epochs, as it depends on an epochal configuration of subjectivity, which from the XXth century onwards claims that public institutions meet the demands aiming at achieving material satisfaction and at removing every form of exploitation and oppression. On the other hand, I will focus on the standpoint adopted by Martha C. Nussbaum, who urges that democratic societies with a liberal bottom ought to adopt emotions easing to tighten up the civil body. Thus, she argues for making of general well-being a substantive demand of practical rationality. Finally, I will focus on an overlapping approach to the analysis of Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser, who despite their discrepancies about the predominance of recognition or redistribution share the belief that, even if well-being holds strong bounds with subjectivity, to materialize well-being requires that states avow in their policy-making a decided will to remove hunger, poverty, precarity, contempt and the different features of social oppression. Without combining all these dimensions, it will be very difficult to outline a sustainable theory about well-being, conscious of the formal and material dimensions intertwined in the tasks furthering to spread well-being in different societies, all of them framed within a neoliberal culture. ; La valoración de un término intrínsecamente polisémico como es el de bienestar que aquí se propone pretende evidenciar de la mano de tres enfoques suficientemente amplios y dispares la importancia que los presupuestos conceptuales adoptados poseen para la definición del término analizado. Por un lado, presentaré un mapa de los abordajes éticos y cercanos a la filosofía de la mente y a desarrollos analíticos de las emociones que dan cuenta de la dimensión subjetiva imprescindible del bienestar, al visibilizar su conexión con la historicidad del deseo. Esto mismo permite afirmar asimismo que el término bienestar no se vuelve cuestión de interés social y político en cualesquiera épocas, sino que acompaña a una configuración epocal de la subjetividad, que a partir del siglo XX exige la satisfacción con medios públicos de demandas que giran en torno a la consecución universal de una tranquilidad material que facilite la emancipación con respecto a toda forma de explotación y opresión. Por otro lado, me ocuparé de presentar la perspectiva de Martha C. Nussbaum, que aconseja que las sociedades democráticas de fondo liberal adopten ciertas emociones para mejorar la cohesión del cuerpo civil y hacer de la reivindicación de bienestar general una exigencia sustantiva de la racionalidad práctica. Finalmente, me desplazaré a la mirada cruzada de Axel Honneth y Nancy Fraser, pues pone de manifiesto –a pesar de sus discrepancias internas acerca de la prioridad del eje del reconocimiento o de la redistribución– que, a pesar de la intensa vinculación que el bienestar mantiene con la subjetividad de los individuos, su materialización depende palmariamente de la incorporación por parte de los Estados de agendas públicas conscientes de la necesidad de combatir el hambre, la pobreza, la precariedad, el desprecio y las diferentes dimensiones de la opresión social. Sin un enfoque combinado de todas estas dimensiones difícilmente podría configurarse una teoría sostenible acerca del bienestar, consciente de la bipolaridad formal y material de las tareas a las que debe hacer frente con vistas a su materialización social progresiva y efectiva en sociedades diversas, pero igualmente enmarcadas en un marco cultural neoliberal.
This thesis examines the potential ethics and politics of the cosmopolitan subject in a posthuman world in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. Cosmopolitanism refers to the idea that all human beings live in a global community and are citizens of the world. Although cosmopolitanism initially emerged as a humanist idea with its ethics and politics lying only within the realm of the human, the novel moves beyond this anthropocentric approach due to its setting in the Anthropocene. I assert that Tale showcases a posthuman turn in the literary narrative by depicting environmental agency in the processes of literary production and circulation within the novel. With this posthuman turn, there is also a posthuman shift in the epistemological framework of the novel as it refers to the cosmopolitan subject as a "time being," including both the human and the nonhuman within it. However, I contend that this temporal mode of cosmopolitanism diminishes the ethics and politics of the cosmopolitan subject due to the ontological challenges to reality that come up with the distortion of literary time. Instead, I suggest that Tale turns toward literary and environmental affect to grapple with the dilemma of posthuman cosmopolitanism and to materialize the cosmopolitan connection, while also maintaining an affective ethics and politics that transcends the human figure.
Lifestyle-induced diseases are becoming a burden on healthcare, actualizing the discussion on health responsibilities. Using data from the National Association for Heart and Lung Diseases (LHL)'s 2015 Health Survey (N = 2689), this study examined the public's attitudes towards personal and social health responsibility in a Norwegian population. The questionnaires covered self-reported health and lifestyle, attitudes towards personal responsibility and the authorities' responsibility for promoting health, resource-prioritisation and socio-demographic characteristics. Block-wise multiple linear regression assessed the association between attitudes towards health responsibilities and individual lifestyle, political orientation and health condition. We found a moderate support for social responsibility across political views. Respondents reporting unhealthier eating habits, smokers and physically inactive were less supportive of health promotion policies (including information, health incentives, prevention and regulations). The idea that individuals are responsible for taking care of their health was widely accepted as an abstract ideal. Yet, only a third of the respondents agreed with introducing higher co-payments for treatment of 'self-inflicted' conditions and levels of support were patterned by health-related behaviour and left-right political orientation. Our study suggests that a significant support for social responsibility does not exclude a strong support for personal health responsibility. However, conditional access to healthcare based on personal lifestyle is still controversial.
Lifestyle-induced diseases are becoming a burden on healthcare, actualizing the discussion on health responsibilities. Using data from the National Association for Heart and Lung Diseases (LHL)'s 2015 Health Survey (N = 2689), this study examined the public's attitudes towards personal and social health responsibility in a Norwegian population. The questionnaires covered self-reported health and lifestyle, attitudes towards personal responsibility and the authorities' responsibility for promoting health, resource-prioritisation and socio-demographic characteristics. Block-wise multiple linear regression assessed the association between attitudes towards health responsibilities and individual lifestyle, political orientation and health condition. We found a moderate support for social responsibility across political views. Respondents reporting unhealthier eating habits, smokers and physically inactive were less supportive of health promotion policies (including information, health incentives, prevention and regulations). The idea that individuals are responsible for taking care of their health was widely accepted as an abstract ideal. Yet, only a third of the respondents agreed with introducing higher co-payments for treatment of 'self-inflicted' conditions and levels of support were patterned by health-related behaviour and left-right political orientation. Our study suggests that a significant support for social responsibility does not exclude a strong support for personal health responsibility. However, conditional access to healthcare based on personal lifestyle is still controversial.
Taking into account the relevance subjective well-being has acquired in international research and political agendas in the last decade, this dissertation explores people's judgements and feelings as an essential part of our understanding of well-being in Chile. Subjective well-being is understood as the perception that people have of their own lives and the context in which they are living. That perception includes life satisfaction evaluations, positive and negative feelings and assessments about their social environment. This thesis argues that a broader assessment of well-being in Chile should include subjective well-being analyses, examining people's living conditions beyond the classical macroeconomic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and National Household Incomes. Several studies covering subjective well-being in Chile have demonstrated that Chilean people experience higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness, but they have neglected to explore a wider notion of subjective well-being. In contrast with international evidence focused on psychological subjective well-being and the interactions between people's perceptions and views on their societies, national research still understands subjective well-being as a sum of pleasurable emotions and feelings taking place at an individual level exclusively. Tackling those limitations, this dissertation contributes with a multidimensional subjective well-being analysis underpinned by the Positive Psychology and the Capability Approach and supported by three empirical studies. The first study examines subjective well-being in Chile accounting for the classical hedonic aspect including life satisfaction and happiness, but also involving a eudaimonic component measured by people's freedom of choice and having meaningful lives and purposes. The second study explores how Chileans' subjective well-being might be affected by their perceptions towards their society, accounting for their level of confidence in national political institutions and generalised trust. Finally, the third empirical chapter examines how well-being is impacted by three sets of capabilities related to material living conditions and promoted by Chilean social policy as key aspects for achieving Chileans' well-being. In turn, the results supported that subjective well-being is well reflected by the hedonic dimension, but also by a wider psychological well-being close to human flourishing. People's perceptions towards their social environment showed a higher effect on subjective well-being. Societal matters and social policies might positively or negatively influence people's evaluations and feelings; therefore, the notion of subjective well-being as an individual state should be reviewed, recognising that contextual aspects make a difference. Finally, some core aspects of social policy in Chile such as having access to healthcare, shelter, income and work were revealed to be crucial to achieving well-being, but are not enough for meaningful lives. Moreover, the findings also suggest that those aspects do not have the same relevance for all Chileans, indeed, according to specific demographic and socioeconomic attributes; there are some more relevant than others, supporting evidence for a more focalised national social policy in the future.
This introduction outlines the key thematic motivations of issue 15 of the journal titled Moved: On Atmospheres and Affects. It explores the transition from what Michel Foucault referred to as disciplinary societies to a consolidating political regime Gille Deleuze as named Socities of Control. The introduction outlines via an historical consideration starting with Samuel Butler the significance of an affective politics associated with control society
Clausewitz's concept of material warfare is a reaction to the trend of reducing the art of war to the application of self-evident rules of engagement. By putting tactical outcomes in the perspective of strategic decision-making, the battlefield becomes the place where the trend to the extremes plays out. Based on his concept of material warfare, immateriality will be presented not as an abstraction of material circumstances but rather as the tendency to escalation that is inherent to every combat. Some conclusive remarks will be dedicated to the relation between military history and interpretations of military genius, in order to support the claim that materiality and immateriality are semantic concepts that express a state of equilibrium between evidence and decision.
