The Tragedy of Politics: Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

Abstract

In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare uses the story of the two lovers to dramatize the tragedy of politics. The excessive love of self that characterizes the two serves as a metaphor for the larger story of Rome's descent into tyranny. Unless love of country, that is, love of one's fellow-citizens, tempers self-love, a state loses its capacity to sustain even that degree of freedom that belongs to kingly rule. But Shakespeare also depicts the love of Antony and Cleopatra for each other as something noble; there is something worthy of our love that is higher than freedom. The tragedy of politics lies in the opposition of these two loves.     

Environmentalists,Rubber Tappers and Empowerment: The Politics and Economics of Extractive Reserves

Extractive reserves are important initiatives in tropical forest zones which seek to integrate conservation of natural resources with development and human welfare objectives. Increasingly in such initiatives empowerment of local communities is seen as both a means of achieving this integration and as an end in itself. This article presents a theoretically informed analysis of the interactions between rubber tappers and environmental organizations in the establishment and implementation of extractive reserves in Rond? nia, Brazil. It distinguishes two dimensions of empowerment — political and economic — and examines how the alliances between organizations have impacted differentially on the two dimensions. The analysis suggests that these alliances have so far been more successful in enabling political rather than economic empowerment. Advances in political empowerment are shown, in the short‐term at least, not to have resulted in improvements in livelihood conditions of poor forest dwellers.     

旅游企业授权管理措施与员工心理受权关系实证研究

作者采用实证研究法对广东省7家宾馆、32家旅行社进行问卷调查,着重探讨企业授权管理措施对员工心理受权的影响,这些措施包括信息分享、组织支持、员工参与管理决策以及组织公平性、管理人员信任和尊重员工等。数据分析结果表明：员工感知的工作意义、工作能力、影响力和自主决策权是同一个二阶因子“心理受权”的4个子因子。心理受权的4个组成成分存在相互影响。信息分享、员工参与管理决策、组织公平性、管理人员信任和尊重员工是影响员工心理受权的重要因素;心理受权的4个组成成分对员工工作满意感、员工工作积极性和员工对管理人员的信任感有不同的影响。     

Communal Discourses,Marriage, and the Politics of Gendered Social Boundaries among South Asian Immigrants in Tanzania

Focusing on communal discourses among South Asian groups in Tanzania, the author highlights the manner in which discourses around religion, caste and race shape gendered patterns of migration and marriage and the everyday politics of social boundaries in an immigrant community. The article demonstrates how discursive processes operating at the community level mediate between the household and the broader political economic processes. It also illustrates that although discourses, boundaries and social relations are easily modified in response to changing circumstances, new narratives and ideologies frequently emerge to ensure that the predominant balance of power in a community is not disturbed significantly.     

The Double Life of Development: Empowerment,USAID and the Maoist Uprising in Nepal

The geographies of developmental empowerment and subaltern rebellion have unexpectedly overlapped and expanded rapidly in recent years, especially in peasant societies in the global South. By examining the relationship between the long history of development programmes and the emergence of the Maoist revolution in Nepal in the 1990s, this article demonstrates how developmental ideas, particularly the notion of empowerment, can be articulated politically. The author argues that development has a double life in which development subjectivities are reproduced through the simultaneous processes of enrolment and othering, generating the conditions of subordination for development's own reproduction. Development can generate the possibility of rebellion by creating negative consciousness of the process of othering. This article contributes to the growing literature on rebellion and development by showing how development, while striving for hegemony, continuously produces fissures in geographically specific ways that can become portals for the emergence of rebellious possibilities.     

Danto, History, and The Tragedy of Human Existence

Philosophy of history is the Cinderella of contemporary philosophy. Philosophers rarely believe that the issues dealt with by philosophers of history are matters of any great theoretical interest or urgency. In their view philosophy of history rarely goes beyond the question of how results that have already been achieved elsewhere can or should be applied to the domain of historical writing. Moreover, contemporary philosophers of history have done desperately little to dispel the low opinion that their colleagues have of them. In this essay I argue that Arthur Danto is the exception confirming the rule, for Danto's philosophy of representation may help us understand how texts relate to what they are about. The main shortcoming of (twentieth‐century) philosophy of language undoubtedly is that it never bothered to investigate the philosophical mysteries of the text. The writing of history is a philosophical goldmine and we must praise Danto for having reminded us of this.     

Agency, Discourses of Power and Collective Representations: Socrates

Conference reviewed:
Socrates Intensive Programme 2003, University Of Vienna, 26 August–4 September 2003     

The Federal Budget: Policy,Process, and Politics

Fiorina, Morris. Divided Government. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Pp. xi, 138. $13.00 Paperback.

Jacobson, Gary C. The Electoral Origins of Divided Government: Competition' in U.S. House Elections, 1946-1988. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Pp. xvi, 152. $15.95.

Mayhew, David R. Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-1990. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 228. $25.00 Hardback.     

The Politics of Suffering: Progress,Modernity and the Adolescent Crisis

A concern for progress is central to the public agendas of modern societies. Political actors compete with one another mainly with regard to their respective claims to bring about a better future, particularly in the economic and technological spheres. The focus on progress has, however, deeper roots which date back to the aspirations of the Enlightenment. Around that time, the belief arose that systematic improvements are made possible by the structural features of modern society and culture, improvements that will gradually release humanity from much of the suffering characterising its historical past. This article argues the persistence of a culture of progress, rather than easing suffering, in fact enhances and mobilises it for the pursuit of superficial forms of gain. It is also claimed the attempt by Habermas' critical theory to develop a broader and more satisfactory conception of progress fails to address this problem. The article suggests an alternative and more fundamental critique of progressive ideas is required. It reflects upon these abstract theoretical questions in connection with the concrete example of the 'adolescent crisis' and the role ideas of progress play within it.     

Internationalization in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area: Images,Discourses and Metaphors

This paper investigates promotional images in the Metropolitan Area of Helsinki, focusing on the projection, outside national boundaries, of specific “ideas” concerning the cities of Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa. After introducing the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, presenting its geographical features, urban dynamics, actual problems and actors involved in image-building, the focus of this research will be a comparison between the images proposed in promotional materials and policy documents by the various territorial units, looking at their differences, overlaps, synergies and clashes. In fact, as will be discussed, even if the images proposed by the cities consist of the same thematic fields (technology, nature, culture, etc.), they contain slightly different implicit messages, targets, representations of the cities, values, strategic orientations and approaches.     

The Whereabouts of Power: Politics, Government and Space

Abstract In a world where it has become almost commonplace to talk about power as centralised or distributed, concentrated or diffuse, deterritorialized or dispersed even, it is all too easy to miss the diverse geographies of power that put us in place. The binary talk that forces us to choose between a centred or a decentred view of power, or to shuffle between them in an effort to blur clearly demarcated scales, leaves little room to move beyond defined distances and settled proximities in relation to the exercise of power. In this paper, a more spatially‐curious dialogue of power is opened up which foregrounds associational as well as instrumental forms of power which can make a difference to how we act politically.     

Scientific Discourse and Local Discourses: The Case of African Archaeology

To the extent that knowledge is the product of a complex construction of Nature-Culture facts more or less perpetuated, the challenge, for archaeology as science discovering and explaining the pasts for developees, is to learn how to manage: (1) its scientific “facts” more or less stabilized or hardened in function of precise, reproducible, universal “buildings of facts,” these facts being combined in networks and allied to specific societal facts, according to a dichotomy between Nature and Culture positioned as incommunicable poles of the world, and (2) traditional, ordinary, daily “facts,” local, contextual“facts” encountered during our activities, publications, lectures, and exchanges with everybody. These facts link approximately or unconsciously Nature and Culture, two poles we moderns have created and separated ontologically. How to produce a legitimate cooperation between these two conflicting discourses during the applications and the improvement of the processes which form, even in the case of archaeology, what is currently termed “development.”Pour l’archéologie en tant que science découvrant et expliquant les passés des peuples en voie de développement, le savoir étant le produit, selon les cultures, de fabrications complexes de faits de Nature-Culture plus ou moins pérennisés, le défi consiste à apprendre à gérer ensemble: (1) ses “faits” scientifiques, plus ou moins stabilisés ou durcis selon des “mises en fait” précises, répétables, universelles, ces faits étant établis en réseau et alliés à tel ou tel secteur de la société en question selon une dichotomie établissant la Nature et la Culture comme pôles incommunicants du monde; et (2) les “faits” de savoirs traditionnels, ordinaires, quotidiens, faits locaux, contextuels rencontrés durant nos activités, publications, cours et échanges avec tout le monde. Ces faits lient approximativement ou inconsciemment la Nature et la Culture, ces deux pôles que nous, modernes, avons créés et ontologiquement séparés. Comment légitimement, même en Archéologie, faire collaborer ces deux discours, en conflit lors des applications et améliorations des processus relevant de qu’on appelle couramment le Développement?