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Political Theory

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Selected Works

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Articles 1 - 30 of 270

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Benjamin Mazar, Biblical Israel: State And People, Philip R. Davies, In Search Of ‘Ancient Israel’, John Van Seters, Prologue To History: The Yahwist As Historian In Genesis, Steven W. Holloway Jun 2018

Benjamin Mazar, Biblical Israel: State And People, Philip R. Davies, In Search Of ‘Ancient Israel’, John Van Seters, Prologue To History: The Yahwist As Historian In Genesis, Steven W. Holloway

Steven W Holloway

No abstract provided.

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Pulse - A Consultation, Barry J. Mauer Jan 2018

Pulse - A Consultation, Barry J. Mauer

Barry Mauer

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen’s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will …

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Sexual Violence In The Field Of Vision, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2017

Sexual Violence In The Field Of Vision, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

Meditating on a single photograph from a recent Human Rights Watch report concerning police violence in Northern British Columbia, Canada, this paper pursues two lines of questions about the visual politics of human rights. One concerns how our ways of seeing—our modes of attending to the vulnerability and integrity of particular persons—can itself be understood as a form of human rights practice. The other aims to widen space in contemporary political theory for thinking about how sexual violence functions as a central technology of sovereignty and how we might make this phenomenon more perceptible. The paper explores the ways photographs …

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The Woman Who Walks Through Photographs, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2017

The Woman Who Walks Through Photographs, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

This paper explores Michal Heiman's creative strategy to imaginatively enter the space of asylum. Her recent project, RETURN: ASYLUM (THE DRESS, 1855-2018), offers a new way to extend solidarity to people who have been subjugated by the institution. She actively enlists the public's help in developing further strategies for connecting with those individuals who have been bereft of legal rights to property, family, or public hearing. This article explores Heiman's crucial political intervention, which blends creative visual practice with object relations theory.

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Recognition Within The Limits Of Reason: Remarks On Pippin’S Hegel’S Practical Philosophy, David Ingram Sep 2017

Recognition Within The Limits Of Reason: Remarks On Pippin’S Hegel’S Practical Philosophy, David Ingram

David Ingram

Since the publication of Charles Taylor’s Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition in 1989,[1] the concept of recognition has re-emerged as a central if not dominant category of moral and political philosophy. [1] C. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25-73.

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The Public Sphere As Site Of Emancipation And Enlightenment: A Discourse Theoretic Critique Of Digital Communication, David Ingram, Asaf Bar-Tura Sep 2017

The Public Sphere As Site Of Emancipation And Enlightenment: A Discourse Theoretic Critique Of Digital Communication, David Ingram, Asaf Bar-Tura

David Ingram

Habermas claims that an inclusive public sphere is the only deliberative forum for generating public opinion that satisfies the epistemic and normative conditions underlying legitimate decision-making. He adds that digital technologies and other mass media need not undermine – but can extend – rational deliberation when properly instituted. This paper draws from social epistemology and technology studies to demonstrate the epistemic and normative limitations of this extension. We argue that current online communication structures fall short of satisfying the required epistemic and normative conditions. Furthermore, the extent to which Internet-based communications contribute to legitimate democratic opinion and will formation depends …

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Sexuality In The Time Of War, Or, How Rape Became A Crime Against Humanity, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2016

Sexuality In The Time Of War, Or, How Rape Became A Crime Against Humanity, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

Working closely with women's testimonies from the genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, this chapter aims to widen space in contemporary human rights discourse for discussion about sexuality--and in particular about the ways sexual violence functions as one of the forces of sovereign power. There is an intimate and largely non-visible strategy that sovereign power has at its disposal to cleave a subject from their capacity to live a human life, namely, by attacking the individual’s sense of sovereignty over her own body. 

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Surfing The Revolutionary Wave 2010-12: A Social Theory Of Agency, Resistance, And Orders Of Dissent In Contemporary Social Movements, Athina Karatzogianni, Michael Schandorf Dec 2016

Surfing The Revolutionary Wave 2010-12: A Social Theory Of Agency, Resistance, And Orders Of Dissent In Contemporary Social Movements, Athina Karatzogianni, Michael Schandorf

Athina Karatzogianni

The theorisation and understanding of contemporary social movements, socio-technological phenomena, and the intersection of the two are limited by an incommensurability between the conceptualisations of individual agency and the disciplining powers of social structures. We introduce a theory of sociotechnological agency that bridges the individual and the social through a reconceptualization of the conventional notion of intentionality. Drawing from recent theories of affect and embodiment, posthuman-influenced materialisms and realisms, postmodern critical theory, and critiques of network theory, we introduce a model for understanding sociopolitical action and dissent that accounts for individual human agency as a nexus of overlapping and often …

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The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill Jul 2016

The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Beginning with a chance encounter in a Barber's shop whilst travelling, the author ruminates on history, and the proposition that each and everyone of us is an historian, and that in a sense we are all time travellers. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is invoked, and the role of radical historians from below discussed before the author returns to his Barber shop encounter, and to Brecht. The title of the piece references Brecht's poem A Worker Reads History (1936).

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The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & The Network-Centric Condition Dec 2015

The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & The Network-Centric Condition

Dan Mellamphy

No abstract provided.

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What Drives Contemporary Eu-China Strategic Engagement?, Natalia Wyzycka, Reza Hasmath Dec 2015

What Drives Contemporary Eu-China Strategic Engagement?, Natalia Wyzycka, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

This study examines the determinants of the European Union’s strategic engagement with China, with reference to three competing analytical approaches: institutional, social, and agency/stakeholder. The article examines the utility of each claim and outlines complementary variables amongst the three approaches, with the aid of recent evidence looking at the E.U.’s arms embargo on China, E.U.-China engagement in Africa, and the E.U.’s longstanding dispute on granting China market economy status. The findings can reduce the misunderstandings and uncertainties embedded in European Union-China interactions by demystifying the factors and variables that drive their relationship.

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Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2015

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The story behind the move toward marijuana’s legality is a story of disruptive forces to the incumbent legal and physical landscape. It affects incumbent markets, incumbent places, the incumbent regulatory structure, and the legal system in general which must mediate the battles involving the push for relaxation of illegality and adaptation to accepting new marijuana-related land uses, against efforts toward entrenchment, resilience, and resistance to that disruption.

This Article is entirely agnostic on the issue of whether we should or should not decriminalize, legalize, or otherwise increase legal tolerance for marijuana or any other drugs. Nonetheless, we must grapple with …

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Evocative Objects: A Sexual Violence Primer, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2015

Evocative Objects: A Sexual Violence Primer, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

This commentary on Nina Berman’s series, “Object Lessons,” examines the photographer’s strategy of photographing trial evidence from cases of sexual slavery and human trafficking as a study in object relations.

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Against Totalitarianism: Agamben, Foucault, And The Politics Of Critique, C. Heike Schotten Nov 2015

Against Totalitarianism: Agamben, Foucault, And The Politics Of Critique, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

Despite appearances, Agamben’s engagement with Foucault in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life is not an extension of Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics but ra-ther a disciplining of Foucault for failing to take Nazism seriously. This moralizing rebuke is the result of methodological divergences between the two thinkers that, I argue, have fun-damental political consequences. Re-reading Foucault’s most explicitly political work of the mid-1970s, I show that Foucault’s commitment to genealogy is aligned with his commitment to “insurrection”—not simply archival or historical, but practical and political insurrection—even as his non-moralizing understanding of critique makes space for the resistances he hopes …

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The Genealogy, Ideology, And Future Of Isil And Its Derivatives, Ahmed E. Souaiaia Nov 2015

The Genealogy, Ideology, And Future Of Isil And Its Derivatives, Ahmed E. Souaiaia

Ahmed E SOUAIAIA

The organization known today simply as the “Islamic State,” or by its Arabic acronym, Daesh (English, ISIL), has historical and ideological roots that go beyond the territories it now controls. These deep roots give Daesh confidence that it will succeed in dominating the world, but give others reasons to believe that it will fail in controlling even a single nation. Mixing puritan religious and political discourses, ISIL managed to dominate all other armed opposition groups in conflict zones (Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya) and has inspired individuals in many other countries (Egypt, Pakistan, France, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia) to …

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Why Urbanists Need Religion, Joshua D. Ambrosius Oct 2015

Why Urbanists Need Religion, Joshua D. Ambrosius

Joshua D. Ambrosius

This essay summarizes a conference paper presented at the October 2008 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. The paper was reviewed by several leading scholars.

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Religion, Politics, And Polity Replication: Religious Differences In Preferences For Institutional Design, Joshua D. Ambrosius Oct 2015

Religion, Politics, And Polity Replication: Religious Differences In Preferences For Institutional Design, Joshua D. Ambrosius

Joshua D. Ambrosius

This article presents a theory of polity replication in which religious congregants prefer institutions in other realms of society, including the state, to be structured like their church. Polities, or systems of church governance and administration, generally take one of three forms: episcopal (hierarchical/centralized), presbyterian (collegial/regional), or congregational (autonomous/decentralized). When asked to cast a vote to shape institutions in a centralizing or decentralizing manner, voters are influenced by organizational values shaped by their respective religious traditions‘ polity structures. Past social scientific scholarship has neglected to explicitly connect religious affiliation, defined by polity, with members‘ stances on institutional design. However, previous …

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Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Toward A Radical Integral Humanism: Macintyre’S Continuing Marxism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that we must read Alasdair MacIntyre’s mature work through a Marxist lens. I begin by discussing his argument that we must choose which God to worship on principles of justice, which, it turns out, are ones given to us by God. I contend that this argument entails that we must see Mac- Intyre’s early Marxist commitments as given to him by God, and, therefore, that he has never abandoned them in his turn to Thomistic-Aristotelianism. I examine his reading of Marx, with its emphasis on the concept of alienation as a Christian concept, and explain how this reading …

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Eucharist And Dragon Fighting As Resistance: Against Commodity Fetishism And Scientism, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Eucharist And Dragon Fighting As Resistance: Against Commodity Fetishism And Scientism, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

This paper examines two practices – the Roman Catholic Practice of Eucharist and the game Dungeons and Dragons – to show how social critique can be mounted from within a practice. It begins by relating Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of tradition to his earlier analysis of ideology and to the notion of ideology in general. The paper then tackles two dominant forms of ideology – Commodity Fetishism and Scientism – and shows how both Eucharist and Dungeons and Dragons promote critical thinking to resist those ideologies. In the process, it denies the Althusserian-Foucauldian analysis of ideology as mere materiality and defends …

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Rights, Individualism, Community: Aristotle And The Communitarian-Liberalism Debate, Jeffery Nicholas Jul 2015

Rights, Individualism, Community: Aristotle And The Communitarian-Liberalism Debate, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

I argue that Aristotle could not be a fore-runner to liberalism, because his view of humanity is that human beings are constituted by a community and achieve self-fulfillment only as so constituted. Thus, Aristotle endorses a unique position that defends the freedom and self-development of the individual within the parameters of a social order.

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The Decline In Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, 1930-2000, Michelle C. Pautz Apr 2015

The Decline In Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, 1930-2000, Michelle C. Pautz

Michelle Pautz

Since the beginnings of the motion picture industry, with the one small Edison studio in New Jersey in the early 1900s, America has fallen in love with films. One could argue and debate the reasons, employing everything from sociology to psychology to economics; but one thing is certain: This love affair has changed over the years. This change is perhaps most evident in the decline in the percentage of the United States population that goes to the cinema weekly. One interesting aspect of cinema attendance is that during the Great Depression, which swept the United States in the 1930s, a …

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Greatness Thrust Upon Them - Class Biases In American Law, Robert E. Rodes Jr. Mar 2015

Greatness Thrust Upon Them - Class Biases In American Law, Robert E. Rodes Jr.

Robert Rodes

No abstract provided.

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Homonationalist Futurism: "Terrorism" And (Other) Queer Resistance To Empire, C. Heike Schotten Feb 2015

Homonationalist Futurism: "Terrorism" And (Other) Queer Resistance To Empire, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

This article argues that queer theory is useful for political theory in thinking about US empire and theorizing modes of resistance to it. In particular, it is argued that the work of Lee Edelman and Jasbir Puar can be appropriated for political theory and, when combined together into a single political project, help illuminate the temporal and sexual contours of US empire, providing crucial resources for theorizing “terrorism” and understanding it as an act of political resistance.

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The Myth Of The White Minority, Andrew Pierce Dec 2014

The Myth Of The White Minority, Andrew Pierce

Andrew J. Pierce

In recent years, and especially in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection, projections that whites will soon become a minority have proliferated. In this essay, I will argue that such predictions are misleading at best, as they rest on questionable philosophical presuppositions, including the presupposition that racial concepts like ‘whiteness’ are static and unchanging rather than fluid and continually being reconstructed. If I am right about these fundamental inaccuracies, one must wonder why the myth of the white minority persists. I will argue that by re-envisioning whites as a minority culture struggling against a hostile dominant group, and by promoting …

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G. A. Cohen Why Socialism? Című Könyvéről (On G. A. Cohen’S Why Socialism?), Attila Tanyi Dec 2014

G. A. Cohen Why Socialism? Című Könyvéről (On G. A. Cohen’S Why Socialism?), Attila Tanyi

Attila Tanyi

This is a short introduction to Cohen's book and argument.

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Myths About The State Of Nature And The Reality Of Stateless Societies, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall Dec 2014

Myths About The State Of Nature And The Reality Of Stateless Societies, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This article is a spin-off of my book project (with Grant McCall), "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This article makes the following points. Most justifications of government using social contact theory (contractarianism) require a claim we call, “the Hobbesian hypothesis,” which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it. The Hobbesian hypothesis is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from the smallest-scale human societies provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject …

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The Face Of Our Wartime, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2014

The Face Of Our Wartime, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

This paper considers a turn toward portraiture amongst contemporary photojournalists who have covered the War on Terror. A series of wartime faces is examined in order to consider the way prolonged conflict flattens our visual landscape.

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Inventing Human Dignity, Sharon Sliwinski Dec 2014

Inventing Human Dignity, Sharon Sliwinski

Sharon Sliwinski

Are human beings endowed with an inviolable dignity? Or is dignity something that is lost and won? One of the most significant assertions made in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the statement that every individual possesses an inalienable dignity simply by virtue of belonging to the “human family.” This chapter aims to make a modest contribution to the emerging scholarship on the history and meaning of dignity as it pertains to universal human rights. My goal is to trace how this particular quality came to be affixed to the human …

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Digital Prometheus: Wikileaks, The State-Network Dichotomy And The Antinomies Of Academic Reason, Athina Karatzogianni, Andy Robinson Dec 2014

Digital Prometheus: Wikileaks, The State-Network Dichotomy And The Antinomies Of Academic Reason, Athina Karatzogianni, Andy Robinson

Athina Karatzogianni

This article focuses on the academic reinscription of the WikiLeaks affair, focusing on the different receptions received within different literatures and fields. The WikiLeaks affair – with or without its hypothesised connections to the Anonymous collective and the Arab Spring – has had massive ruptural effects on aspects of the global political system. A small, movement-based website has inflicted a tremendous informational defeat on the world's last superpower, revealing the possible emergence of a global networked counter-power able to mount effective resistance against the world-system, possibly even the emergence of the state-network conflict as the new great-power bipolarity after the …

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Antigone And Democratic Theory, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro Sep 2014

Antigone And Democratic Theory, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro

Andrés Fabián Henao-Castro

No abstract provided.

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