Georgii Mirskii and Soviet Theories of Authoritarian Modernization

This article examines Soviet thinking about authoritarian modernization through the life and thought of Georgii Mirskii, a noted expert on Arab politics. Mirskii was a regular adviser and speechwriter for the Soviet Central Committee, and was also followed by the KGB for his criticism of Stalin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mirskii looked to the example of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to develop a theory of military-led modernization. This article examines how Mirskii's faith in the ability of Third World militaries to function as modernizing forces changed over time. The course of military politics in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, when military coups proliferated, bringing to power violent and self-interested regimes, disabused Mirskii of any faith in military modernization. Examining Mirskii's thought not only sheds light on the ideas that motivated Khrushchev-era Soviet foreign and development policy, it also provides an illuminating comparison for better-studied theories of authoritarian modernization in the United States.     

The enlightened city

Postsecularity, or the nature of the reflexive questioning or destabilization of the secular, remains a highly contested and problematic notion across the social sciences and humanities. Most perspectives share profound disappointment in the institutions of liberal democracy, requiring us to rethink the grounds for ethical and political action in post-political, -democratic, and -truth times. I argue with reference to select illustrative cases that one possible value of postsecularity rests in the notion of the enlightened city that emanates from three broad lines of inquiry: (1) new geographies of religion and postsecularity with implications for decolonial urban theory and the commons; (2) Frankfurt School-inspired messianic critical theory, reflexive secularization, and decolonial urban postsecularity; and (3) reflexive humanization, perceived “impossibility” of wholeness, and critical discourse on the Anthropocene. Rather than repeat the all-too-familiar dangers of Enlightenment rationalism, this approach stresses an immanent transcendent overlapping of ethical and political imperatives beyond the classical separation of life and politics, “planetary urbanization” and zone of indistinction providing the canvas from which postsecular processes unfold, and new subject formation that reconciles radical differences towards a higher unity and confronts injustices in more inclusive and humane ways.     

Mapping reflexive communities: visualizing the geographies of emotion

Whereas ‘simple modernity’ was characterized by objective space, the grid of the map, and a removal of all subjective symbols or signs, ‘reflexive modernity’ is characterized by a re‐subjectivization of space. Within this space ‘reflexive communities’ emerge to make sense of emotions and experiences, reflecting particular ways of behaving, thinking and being. As geographers one task facing us now is to visualize and map the spaces of reflexive modernization. This paper presents a means of visualizing the text of emotions uncovered in the research encounter—a way of ‘mapping’ reflexive communities—and shows how we can articulate, negotiate and represent, complex emotional landscapes. The ‘maps’—which draw on spatial metaphors that permeate everyday emotions—such as ‘distancing’ ourselves, ‘engaging’, ‘joining’, ‘feeling detached’, ‘embracing’—were developed initially through analysis of in‐depth interviews with long‐term sufferers of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Although the key focus of the paper is the experience of long‐term illness, the method of visualizing emotional geographies of everyday life could be applied in any number of fields. As such, it adds to the search across the social sciences for understanding the reflexive nature of contemporary space.     

Affluence,Poverty and the Idea of a Post-Scarcity Society

The ‘end of nature’ and the attenuation of tradition, associated with accelerated modernization on a global scale, increase the need for conscious reflection on many aspects of life formerly considered to be givens. Thus in developed and developing countries alike, new questions of personal choice and ethics form the basis for a kind of life politics which is different from — and supplements, but does not replace — the longer-established practice of emancipatory politics, concerned above all with issues of social justice. This essay invites us to consider how life politics can generate new strategies to reduce inequality and alleviate poverty.     

Reform in Turkey: Liberalization as government and critique (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Turkey is in the midst of a wide‐ranging reform of historic proportions, the most profound reorganization and restructuring of institutions and practices since the foundation of the Republic in 1923. These reforms, inspired and guided by the country's EU integration, are multifaceted but can be summarized as liberalization of economy, politics and society. While capitalist penetration and privatization are obvious features of the reform, its techniques, kinds of knowledge and objects, as well as its reflexive aspects – the ways in which it studies itself unfolding – have not been sufficiently conceptualized.     

拓展思路,深入进行区域现代化研究--"中国东南社会变迁与现代化国际学术研讨会"综述

在福建武夷山举行的中国东南地区社会变迁与现代化国际学术研讨会,集中讨论了东南地区经济、社会的现代化变迁问题,涉及政治、经济、化各个领域,包括城市、乡村、宗教、台湾、人物等诸多方面。研究内容层面宽,时间跨度大,是本次会议的特点,尤其是与会学以解放思想,理论创新的姿态对有关问题用新的方法进行探讨和阐述,使会议始终呈现非常活跃的学术气氛。     

Foucault's and Arendt's "insider view" of biopolitics: a critique of Agamben

This article revisits Arendt's and Foucault's converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben's influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt's and Foucault's own ideas we will see that the major point of convergence in their thinking is their insistence upon understanding biological thinking from the inside, in terms of its positivity. Agamben's assessment of modern politics is closer to Arendt's than it is to Foucault's and this marks a fascinating point of disagreement between Arendt and Foucault. Whereas Arendt sees the normalizing force of modern society as being in total opposition to individuality, Foucault posits totalization and individuation as processes of normation, which casts a light upon the relative import they place upon politics and ethics.     

西方集群和集群政策的研究及其对中国的借鉴意义

自上个世纪90年代末以来,国内学者和政策决策者对集群的集群政策表现出日益浓厚的兴趣。由于现行的集群理论源自西方工业化国家,作为发展中的中国能否和如何吸收运用这些西方理论和研究经验成为讨论的焦点之一。本文的目的是通过探讨西方集群研究和集群政策的理论基础,以期能带给中国的相关研究一些有益的启示。本文首先对波特和经合组织两学派的集群概念的起源、发展和着重点进行了回顾。然后分析了集群起源和发展的条件、生命周期、发展机制、空间维度、类型等西方集群研究的要素,阐述了西方工业国家的集群政策概念及相关评判。相对于发达国家丰富的关于技术创新区域的研究而言,针对发展中国家创新系统和集群的理论性及经验性研究则要少得多。所以发展中国家的集群研究及集群政策需要更合适自身实际情况的理论。最后笔者以集群理论和中国实际情况为例,通过问题的分析、理论的分析和理论的调整三步骤说明新理论发展的可能途径。     

Whose politics and which science: beyond the colonial in liberal political theory

ABSTRACT

This article examines liberal political theory’s limits and possibilities in relation to indigenous self-determination. It shows that while the liberal tradition has provided theoretical rationale to the colonial project it is also equipped to rationalise a politics of substantive indigenous inclusion. The article introduces the recourses that exist within liberal theory for non-colonial interpretations of citizenship, democracy and sovereignty. It shows how these concepts may be interpreted to contribute to a liberal theory of indigeneity as a theory emphasising independent indigenous authority on the one hand and culturally contextualised and substantive participation in the politics of the state on the other.     

Anthropology in the UK: Never Mind the Biographies,Here's the Reflexive Symbols

Focusing on the concept of the intellectual biography, I explore the relational and symbolic importance of life histories for the reflexive history of anthropology. Legacies of questioning disciplinary self-awareness exist for fieldwork, data analysis, writing up, and academic social networks. The intellectual biography, as a newly developing self-conscious genre, is becoming central to the way in which the discipline writes its own history. This article situates five recent biographies of “British” anthropologists into a theoretical, methodological, and intellectual landscape that encompasses the international development of a century of social anthropology in the United Kingdom.     

On Ambivalence and (Anti-)Normativity (or,Theology as a Way of Life?)

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.     

Writing the world: disciplinary history and beyond

In order to grasp some of the key intellectual developments and trends that shaped the global politics of twentieth century and continue to shape our own world—neo-classical economics, modernization theory, deterrence theory, the democratic peace, among others—it is necessary to explore the history of the human sciences. It is important, in other words, to examine the role of the modern research university in producing and diffusing ideas about the self, society, the economy and world order. International Relations (IR), and political science more generally, played a significant role in this story. In recent years we have seen a growth of interest in the history of IR, though it is still an underdeveloped area of research. Among other things, scholars have shown that many of the foundational myths of the discipline—the views that inform textbook understandings of the past and present—are deeply flawed. This article first surveys this recent work, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, and then proceeds to offer some thoughts on future directions for research. It identifies a range of questions and topics that have yet to be adequately addressed, and draws on the latest methodological work in intellectual history, highlighting some new interpretative approaches that can enrich scholarship in this area.     

Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography from Post-Namierite to the Post-Habermasian

This article attributes the relative lack of attention to the 'public sphere' in Geoffrey Holmes's work to the pervasive influence of Lewis Namier and the Namierite conception of political history. Holmes's British Politics can be understood as a product of what might be called the revisionist's dilemma. Because the main thrust of the argument of this work was to challenge the Namierite interpretation of the structure of politics in Anne's reign, Holmes could not fail but to replicate the structures of the original Namierite paradigm. Nevertheless, Holmes's demolition of the Namierite view of Augustan politics also opened up new possibilities for further research; it ultimately widened our understanding of the 'political' and it prepared the ground for the remarkable interdisciplinary dialogue between literary historians, intellectual historians, and political historians. The article concludes with a discussion of how Holmes's successors began to build on his work in ways that can help explain why the Habermasian public sphere paradigm emerged to the foreground of current scholarship in a field where it had been ignored for three decades. Historians are now beginning to build a detailed post-Habermasian understanding of the ways in which the public sphere affected the structures of politics in later Stuart Britain. Work along these lines may well finally help explain the transformation of British politics from an age of Stuart revolutions to the age of Hanoverian oligarchy.     

Modernization, welfare and 'third way' politics: limits to theorizing in 'thirds'?

The current period of welfare reform in British politics is taking place within a discourse of modernization described in terms of a 'third way'. The ideas which constitute this discourse resonate with recent developments within human geography, namely a movement to theorizing 'in-between' spaces, a turn to culture and to issues of globalization. This paper suggests that welfare reform is a restructuring project which allows the nature of thinking and acting 'in thirds' to be questioned. It problematizes the 'third way' approach to cultural modernization and economic globalization as a de-politicized discourse, and argues for the cultural politics and political economics which underpin welfare reform to be foregrounded. As a form of political discourse analysis, it points to the developing need for a welfare geography that is attuned to the languages and practices through which dominant systems of social and economic distribution are constituted.     

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT WHAT YOU BELIEVE: DISCUSSING SOCIAL THEORY IN SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY

Taken together, the papers published in this volume demonstrate that Southeastern archaeologists are theoretically eclectic, are borrowers and users of theory, are reflexive and collaborative, and are modest and unaggressive when discussing their theoretical inclinations. This paper clarifies the positive and negative outcomes of these characteristics and suggests ways to encourage the benefits while discouraging the drawbacks. I advocate being careful when combining theoretical paradigms, using technology to continue year-round informal communication, being more generous with stakeholder relationships and the methods used to build them, and giving ourselves more credit for the interesting theory building that we do.     

Gender and the Australian Parliament: Putting the Political Scientist into the Picture

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research.     

论贾谊的帝王之术

先秦诸子的道德之论,也就是帝王之术,同归于执本秉要,清虚自守。贾谊进一步阐明了这个观点,认为“道”是人君取得成功的最高政治法则,并且认为“道”的内容就是“善”。而贾谊道德论的实质是以“有为”为“无为”。为适应汉王朝大一统的政治需要,贾谊提出以“有为”的方法治理国家,实现老子提出的天下有道时无为而无不为的理想政治状态。     

Dilemmas of Development Discourse: The Crisis of Developmentalism and the Comparative Method

ABSTRACT Developmentalism, or the theory of linear progress, has taken several forms — evolutionism, modernization theory, development thinking — which correlate with different epochs of western hegemony. The comparative method serves as its underpinnings in theoretically incorporating non-western societies into the developmental paradigm. Developmentalism is universalist and ahistorical, teleological and ethnocentric. A discourse of power, it is presented and taken as a recipe for social change. The present crisis of developmentalism is both a crisis of development in the south and a crisis of modernism in the west. In the west, developmentalism is being challenged by new social movements and, in theoretical terms, by postmodernism; in the south, alternative development strategies test the limits of the developmental paradigm. Non-western concepts of modernization have also been developed. This discussion concludes with two queries, one concerning the passage from the bi-polar world of the Cold War to polycentrism, and one with respect to the deconstruction of the west as a prerequisite to the deconstruction of development. If ‘development’ itself has become a problem, and has sowed the seeds of discontent and ethnic conflict, a corrective to development can only come from other worldviews, other visions.     

霸权,文化政治和葛兰西的地理思想

20世纪90年代以来,以英语为主的地理学术界出现了所谓的新文化地理学,着重关注基于社会差异的文化政治或文化战争。葛兰西的霸权理论对于分析文化政治作出了很重要的贡献。葛兰西认为,霸权是一种关于权力平衡的概念,这种平衡包含了武力压制和意见一致。也就是说,霸权不能仅仅来源于恐怖统治和武力镇压大众,尤其是受压迫的团体,同时也得依靠被统治者的认可和来自心底的拥护。葛兰西强调地方的重要性,探讨了城市和乡村不同类型的生活方式,以及建成环境的设计和布置如何塑造共识、流行文化,以及日常生活。葛兰西的理论能够揭示中国过去三十年快速的社会空间转型。将这种转型放在更广泛的时间和空间尺度下来思考,人文地理学就可能做出独特的知识贡献。     

空间、权力与领域:领域的政治地理研究综述与展望

随着空间的社会转向,权力-空间研究已成为西方人文地理学的重要议题,国内也陆续出现了空间政治的相关讨论。本文通过梳理中西方人文地理学领域研究的相关成果,力图建立以领域为基础的权力-空间分析框架,并将其运用于当下中国的空间政治问题解读。领域是权力赋值于空间的产物,是解读现实世界权力-空间关系的重要视角,也是当代政治地理学区别于其他分支学科的主要概念。地理学对领域概念的运用从生态视角到社会视角、从国家尺度到多维尺度,体现了领域研究的日渐深入与系统化。本文在综合既有研究成果的基础上,提出领域化、去领域化和再领域化的权力-空间分析框架,并期冀其成为进一步相关实证研究的指引。