Showing papers presented at "Spectra in 2016"
14 Apr 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that it is both possible and worthwhile to defend the commons as one of many strategies for moving beyond capitalism and distinguish between transformational and non-transformational variants of the commons.
Abstract: The Commons is celebrated for its role in linking anti-capitalist struggles across the world, as demonstrated by the myriad local and regional attempts to reclaim shared access and decision-making over collective resources, spaces, and knowledge. However, despite its success as a rallying point for diverse initiatives, the Commons faces critique from within the anti-capitalist Left. First, there is evidence that Commons initiatives are vulnerable to cooptation by capitalism's pervasive political forms and do not impede its continued expansion. Second, there is doubt as to whether the radical political principles and practices embraced by Commons movements, including open-endedness, pluriversality, and prefigurative politics are sufficient for spurring system change. Despite the soundness of these critiques, this paper argues that it is both possible and worthwhile to defend the Commons as one of many strategies for moving beyond capitalism. Doing so necessitates distinguishing between transformational and non-transformational variants of the Commons. The paper will delineate and contrast two ideal-typical variants of Commons approaches, thereby responding to critiques and emphasizing the Commons' potential. The first variant, a "politics of the commons," includes initiatives that bring people together to build collective forms for sharing resources, spaces, and knowledge, in response to situational threats to survival or well-being. This non-transformational variant faces temporal and geographical limitations and is vulnerable to cooptation because it does not confront structural, long- term, and systemic causes of enclosure and expropriation. In contrast, in the second variant, "commoning the political," what is held in common is the anti-capitalist political processes itself. This second approach goes beyond traditional state-based, Euro-centric, or universalistic Leftist models to allow for a pluriversal and long-term transformation by combining radical political processes with antagonistic strategies for confronting capitalist domination.
13 citations
14 Apr 2016
TL;DR: A review of the edited volume of the volume Fiscal Austerity and innovation in local governance in Europe as discussed by the authors provides a rich content of diverse articles, which enable further examination of the subject.
Abstract: In 2007, when the consequences of the financial breakdown where barely visible, no one could foresee the consequences of those economic turmoils for the European Union (EU). Even today the full effects of the crisis remain unclear and comprehensive analysis are hardly feasible. Specific empirical research on a smaller scale such as regional studies are hence extremely important. The political scientists Carlos Nunes Silva and Jan Bucek have edited the volume Fiscal Austerity and innovation in local Governance in Europe in order to provide such an empiric compilation. This article provides a review of the edited volume. After sketching the foundations of European regional politics and discussing the central aspects of Europe's regional agenda, the book's content is critically revised and discussed. The disciplinary array of the volume's articles ranges from urban studies, policy analysis and regional studies to jurisprudential articles. While a critical revision is at the core of the review, the content of each chapter is only briefly presented. The value of the reviewed volume lies in its rich, topical and informing content, but the lack of analytic sharpness of the framing chapters made a critical discussion of the volume necessary. While the editors of the volume suggest that the crisis has deeply impacted European politics and somehow transformed its core values, they are not concerned enough about the quality of this transformation. The emergence of anti-libertarian, socially regressive and politically narrowing policy agendas remain notes in the margin. While those weaknesses may create a wrong impression about the effects of the European crisis, a critical revision of the volume fosters new insights on the subject matter and elucidates new starting-points for further research. From this perspective the volume provides a rich content of diverse articles, which enable further examination of the subject. This article provides the reader with several approaches towards regional policies in the EU.
4 citations
14 Apr 2016
TL;DR: Pornography's massive growth online in the last 25 years, and the emergence of technologies such as broadband, webcams and smartphones, has led to fundamental changes in the ways people encounter, consume, and relate to online pornography.
Abstract: Pornography's massive growth online in the last 25 years, and the emergence of technologies such as broadband, webcams and smartphones, has led to fundamental changes in the ways people encounter, consume, and relate to online porn. Pornography has undoubtedly infiltrated the Western mainstream; it is now woven into the fabric of ordinary life and everyday online multitasking. The ways porn is accessed and consumed continue to evolve, keeping pace with broader changes in Web use. While there is much work being done in contemporary porn studies which examines these changes, there is an aspect of porn's evolution online that has for the most part been neglected: the ways it is linked to globalization and the spread of ideas across nations and borders. Processes of globalization, the Internet, and developing media technologies have facilitated global access to pornography. Pornography now moves across geographic space, transcends national borders and links global communities – spreading narratives, norms, and social texts across global contexts. Despite these changes, contemporary porn studies has, for the most part, remained insulated from the theoretical work coking out of transnational studies. Conversely, transnational theory—as well as the theoretical positions developing out of transnational theory, such as translocal and transcultural theory—has all but ignored pornography as one of the flows of information that increasingly moves between and connects global spaces, and that has specific impacts on relations of intimacy, sexuality and desire. This paper explores how, when taken together, each of these approaches has the potential to broaden the scope of the other, and potentially answer some important questions around the ways globalization is impacting sexualities.
1 citations
3 Dec 2016
TL;DR: In this article, a trajectory analysis of the people now known as Somali Bantu is presented, starting with their forced migration to Somalia and various factors shaping their status in the country, and the analysis continues through the period of displacement, flight, and human warehousing in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps of Kenya.
Abstract: This essay is a trajectory analysis of the people now known as Somali Bantu. Beginning with their settlement of the southern Jubba Valley and on through to their third country resettlement in the United States on P2 refugee status, the people now known as Somali Bantu have been continually transformed by engagements with multiple and often disparate cultures, traditions, languages, and histories. According to Stuart Hall, groups such as the Somali Bantu “bear upon them the traces of the particular cultures, traditions, languages and histories by which they were shaped. The difference is that they are not and will never be unified in the old sense because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures, belonging at one and the same time to several ‘homes.’” (1990, 310) In this essay, I demonstrate the discursive nature of group identity and interrogate the connections between the history of oppression, the sustainability of culture, and the performance of identity in diaspora. I combine first-hand accounts of forced migration with a summary of the documented history of the people now known as Somali Bantu, beginning with their forced migration to Somalia and the various factors shaping their status in the country. The analysis continues through the period of displacement, flight, and human warehousing in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps of Kenya and includes an examination of how bureaucratic labeling as refugees, and the public rhetoric of mainstream media further shaped the story of the Somali Bantu. Each of these moments through the refugee trajectory are foundational to the self-representations that would emerge in diaspora.
1 citations
14 Apr 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that restorative justice depends on shared values and processes inherent to civil society, associational democracy, and deliberative democracy, which are the three major principles of collaborative governance.
Abstract: Restorative justice challenges the values and processes of many modern retributive criminal justice systems, i.e. mechanisms of governance, through the promotion of values and processes that seek to promote collaboration of socio-political actors. While a series of ethical arguments and understandings serve as a strong basis for the promotion of restorative justice, the practice also argues for addressing the institutions and systems of governance that respond to instances of conflict and crime. This paper argues for an understanding of restorative justice as a practice of collaborative governance. Specifically, restorative justice depends upon three major principles of collaborative governance: civil society, deliberative democracy, and associational democracy. In this project, I review the foundations of restorative justice, and categorize process based and value based conceptions of restorative justice. Specifically, this argument focuses on micro- and macro-level process conceptions of restorative justice. By reviewing the frameworks of civil society, associational democracy, and deliberative democracy – I place restorative justice within the framework of collaborative governance. Ultimately, I argue restorative justice depends on shared values and processes inherent to civil society, associational democracy, and deliberative democracy.
1 citations
3 Dec 2016
TL;DR: The authors wrote that North-South relations were pessimistically characterized by a tone of humanitarian crisis over how to respond to the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in history, and that the United States was pessimistic about the response to the outbreak.
Abstract: As I wrote this book introduction, North—South relations were pessimistically characterized by a tone of humanitarian crisis over how to respond to the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in history...