"How should we describe the devastation brought about on the lives of the enslaved? How should we describe plantation slavery as an institutionalized and transgenerational structure of dominance? Irreparable Evil, by David Scott, is an intellectual engagement with the insufficiently acknowledged legacy of plantation slavery in the New World. He argues that while slavery involved unimaginable practices of violence, its destructive powers include that of an inherited form of life. The perniciousness of slavery was its legacy as an inheritance of future generations. Scott's locational focus is the Anglophone Caribbean with an emphasis on Jamaica. Written as a series of interconnected essays, Scott consider what he means by moral and reparatory history and the related concepts of incomparable evil and incommensurable evil. He explores the problems of fictional conceptions of slavery's evil and concludes with an interrogation of whether or not the evil of slavery is ever truly reparable"--
This is a philosophical work that develops a general theory of ontological objects and object-relations. It does this by examining concepts as acquired dispositions, and then focuses on perhaps the most important of these: the concept of learning. This concept is important because everything that we know and do in the world is predicated on a prior act of learning.
A concept can have many meanings and can be used in a number of different ways, and this creates difficulty when considering the nature of objects and the relationships between them. To enable this, David Scott answers a series of questions about concepts in general and the concept of learning in particular. Some of these questions are: What is learning? What different meanings can be given to the notion of learning? How does the concept of learning relate to other concepts, such as innatism, development and progression?
The book offers a counter-argument to empiricist conceptions of learning, to the propagation of simple messages about learning, knowledge, curriculum and assessment, and to the denial that values are central to understanding how we live. It argues that values permeate everything: our descriptions of the world, the attempts we make at creating better futures and our relations with other people.
Praise for On Learning
'Provides a nuanced and layered understanding of the complex concept and practice of learning to students and researchers.' Educational Review
"Governments were created long ago when civilizations began. But in modern times, governments have become more complex. Society is organized by governments. There are local, state, and national governments. They are different around the world. But they all work to protect and serve their citizens"--
In recent decades, gender equality goals have been adopted widely in global policymaking, creating a demand for specialized knowledge and evidence to support the design and implementation of gender equality policies. Bridging feminist scholarship on gender expertise and practice–theoretical literature on knowledge production, this article examines a knowledge production initiative of the World Bank, the Gender Innovation Laboratories (GILs). While research has examined the position of gender experts and the content of gender expertise in global governance, it has overlooked how knowledge about gender is produced. In this paper, we use a practice–theoretical approach—assemblage thinking—to study the practical work mobilized in the GILs to produce, maintain, and disseminate knowledge about gender inequality. Drawing on interviews with lab researchers, documents, and online materials, and focusing on the epistemic practice of impact evaluations, our analysis demonstrates the work invested in assembling them, such as forging alignments with and securing support among stakeholders, activating repertoires of expertise, and translating results into material objects. These practices produce gender inequality as a governance object, which is amenable to technical policy interventions, which facilitates certain forms of action to address it. Yet, they simultaneously silence more political solutions to gender inequalities.
Most published bodies of work relating to curriculum theory focus exclusively, or almost exclusively, on the contributions of men. This is not representative of influences on educational practices as a whole, and it is certainly not representative of educational theory generally, as women have played a significant role in framing the theory and practice of education in the past. Their contribution is at least equal to that of men, even though it may not immediately appear as visible on library shelves or lecture lists. This book addresses this egregious deficit by asking readers to engage in an intellectual conversation about the nature of women's curriculum theory, as well as its impact on society and thought in general. It does this by examining the work of twelve women curriculum theorists: Maxine Greene, Susan Haack, Julia Kristeva, Martha Nussbaum, Nel Noddings, Jane Roland Martin, Marie Battiste, Dorothea Beale, Susan Isaacs, Maria Montessori, Mary Warnock and Lucy Diggs Slowe. It thus brings attention, through a semantic rendition of the world, those seminal relationships that exist between the three meta-concepts that are addressed in the work: feminism, learning and curriculum. It will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in curriculum, and the philosophy and sociology of education
Introduction -- chapter 1: steven box: a 'realist of a larger reality'(david scott and joe sim) -- part 1: corporate crime -- chapter 2: corporate crime, regulation and the stat (steve tombs) -- chapter 3. From corporate corruption to rentiership: extending box's power, crime and mystification (steven bittle and jon frauley) -- chapter 4. Power, crime and deadly deception (david whyte) -- chapter 5. Climate change, planetary collapse and the 'mystification' of environmental crime (reece walters) -- chapter 6. Fighting for 'justice for all' in an era of deepening exploitation and ecological crisis (elizabeth bradshaw and paul leighton) -- part 2: power, state crime and social harm -- chapter 7. The neoliberal state: then and now (samantha fletcher and will mcgowan) -- chapter 8. The austerity state, 'social junk' and the mystification of violence (chris grover) -- chapter 9. Steven box and police crime: understanding and challenging police violence and corruption (will jackson) -- chapter 10. 'the first narrative that is put out': the mystification of police institutional violence (Lisa white and patrick williams) -- chapter 11. Immigration control, mystification and the carceral continuum (jon burnett) -- chapter 12. Criminal law categories as ideological constructs: the case of human trafficking (shahrzad fouladvand and tony ward) -- part 3: power, gender and sexual violence -- chapter 13. Power, sexual violence and mystification (kym atkinson and helen monk) -- chapter 14. 'rape kills the soul': the use of sexual violence by state and non-state actors in war and conflict (brenda fitzpatrick) -- chapter 15. Gender, powerlessness and criminalisation (kathryn chadwick and becky clarke) -- chapter 16. Mystification, violence and women's homelessness (vickie cooper and dan mcculloch) -- part 4: demystifying social harm -- chapter 17. Standing on the shoulders of a criminological giant: steven box and the question of counter-colonial criminology (biko agozino) -- chapter 18. The policing of youthful 'social dynamite' within neo-liberal capitalism: continuities, discontinuities and alternatives (jodie hodgson) -- chapter 19. Demystifying injustice: joint enterprise law and miscarriages of justice (janet cunliffe and gloria morrison) -- chapter 20: punishment in 'this hard land': conceptualising the prison in power, crime and mystification (joe sim) -- chapter 21. Demystifying murder: open university pedagogy, social murder, and the legacy of steven box (deborah h. Drake and david scott).
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 Ontogenesis and the Concepts of Individuation -- 2 The Individuation of Perceptive Unities and Signification -- 3 Individuation and Affectivity -- 4 Problematic of Ontogenesis and Psychic Individuation -- 5 The Individual and the Social, the Individuation of the Group -- 6 The Collective as Condition of Signification -- 7 An Ethics of Ontogenesis and a Non-human Humanism -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Name Index
Abstract I argue that, in his effort to overcome causation as an obstacle to agency or free will, Raymond Tallis' self-described "Humean" re-working of David Hume's analysis of causation falters on historicotextual and conceptual grounds.
As an organisational form, the project poses a challenge today for the possibility of articulating feminist politics, understood as feminist visions and ambitions. With a focus on women's organisations working in international development aid, we examine how the project format and its managerial attributes shape the possibility of articulating feminist politics. Mobilising assemblage thinking on a material consisting mainly of interviews with project workers in women's organisations, we show that these organisations engage in assembly work to fit their activism with the project format, such as translating feminist ambitions into bureaucratic procedures and notions of temporality, activating repertoires of expertise, and adopting marketised approaches to development. We conclude that the project format depoliticises feminist politics, although it does not make the articulation of feminist ambitions impossible. Assemblage thinking is suggested as a suitable framework for feminist research when investigating how contemporary governing arrangements influence the articulation of feminist politics.
As an organisational form, the project poses a challenge today for the possibility of articulating feminist politics, understood as feminist visions and ambitions. With a focus on women's organisations working in international development aid, we examine how the project format and its managerial attributes shape the possibility of articulating feminist politics. Mobilising assemblage thinking on a material consisting mainly of interviews with project workers in women's organisations, we show that these organisations engage in assembly work to fit their activism with the project format, such as translating feminist ambitions into bureaucratic procedures and notions of temporality, activating repertoires of expertise, and adopting marketised approaches to development. We conclude that the project format depoliticises feminist politics, although it does not make the articulation of feminist ambitions impossible. Assemblage thinking is suggested as a suitable framework for feminist research when investigating how contemporary governing arrangements influence the articulation of feminist politics.
Frontmatter -- Contents -- 1 Introduction: The Anthropological Skepticism of Talal Asad -- 2 Secularization Revisited: A Reply to Talal Asad -- 3 What Is an ''Authorizing Discourse"? -- 4 Fasting for Bin Laden: The Politics of Secularization in Contemporary India -- 5 Europe: A Minor Tradition -- 6 Secularism and the Argument from Nature -- 7 On General and Divine Economy: Talal Asad's Genealogy of the Secular and Emmanuel Levinas's Critique of Capitalism, Colonialism, and Money -- 8 The Tragic Sensibility ofTalal Asad -- 9 Redemption, Secularization, and Politics -- 10 Subjects and Agents in the History of Imperialism and Resistance -- 11 Responses -- Appendix: The Trouble ofThinking: An Interview with Tala! Asad -- Notes -- Tala! Asad: A Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index
This is a philosophical work that develops a general theory of ontological objects and object-relations. It does this by examining concepts as acquired dispositions, and then focuses on perhaps the most important of these: the concept of learning. This concept is important because everything that we know and do in the world is predicated on a prior act of learning. A concept can have many meanings and can be used in a number of different ways, and this creates difficulty when considering the nature of objects and the relationships between them. To enable this, David Scott answers a series of questions about concepts in general and the concept of learning in particular. Some of these questions are: What is learning? What different meanings can be given to the notion of learning? How does the concept of learning relate to other concepts, such as innatism, development and progression? The book offers a counter-argument to empiricist conceptions of learning, to the propagation of simple messages about learning, knowledge, curriculum and assessment, and to the denial that values are central to understanding how we live. It argues that values permeate everything: our descriptions of the world, the attempts we make at creating better futures and our relations with other people.
The rolling out of governing arrangements related to marketization and managerialization has characterized contemporary societies over the last decades, signaling a radical change in how governance is organized. A particular form of governing that has been given impetus during this transformation is the project. In an era of "projectification", politics is transformed into measurable and controllable activities that should be implemented during limited periods of time. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the project as an organizational form shapes Swedish development aid and makes it governable. By mobilizing the concept of assemblage, this thesis investigates how the project is constructed in order to govern development aid efforts and how it attains stability in contexts of tension. By studying how state funders, civil society organizations, and private consultants organize development aid through the project, the thesis shows that multiple components need to be assembled in order to form and sustain it. Thus, the work of brokers with the capacity to align the interests of different stakeholders, the mobilization of standardized work practices, the use of scientific approaches to control and evaluation, the construction of markets for project financing, and the mobilization of a particular form of project time are pivotal for the construction of the project. The assembling of these components transforms the project into a depoliticized form of governing in which marketization, expertise, and administrative procedures displace political and transformational ambitions. This depoliticization hampers the politicization of the colonial notions of rationality, logic, and linearity upon which the project rests. The thesis concludes that discourses of marketization, managerialization, and standardization constitute raw material from which an advanced neoliberal-modern project can be constructed. This form of governing arrangement requires attention and critique. ; The project enjoys a prominent position as a mode of governing in contemporary society. In a political landscape in which marketization and management principles exert great influence, the project has found fertile ground to thrive in, as it offers both flexibility and control. This thesis explores how the project is used to organize Swedish development aid and the political implications for transformational work. Exploring how civil society organizations, state funders, and consultants organize development work through the project, the thesis illustrates the importance of assembling a wide array of components, ranging from consensus-building among stakeholders to the mobilization of artifacts, standards, expertise, and markets. The drawing together of these components displays a high level of organizational capacity, as they stabilize the project into a depoliticized form of governing in which administration and expertise displace politics. Furthermore, depoliticization hampers the possibility to politicize the colonial notions of rationality, logic, and linearity upon which the project rests. The project, thus, reproduces power relations that are specific for modernity and neoliberal modes of governing, thereby warranting a critical approach to its use.