Are artistic engagements evolving, or attracting more attention? The range of artistic protest actions shows how the globalisation of art is also the globalisation of art politics, while artivists ...seek alternative modes of social transformation.
Feelings of injustice and political engagement are often connected, sometimes unquestioningly; the idea being that one generates the other along a sort of continuum. This article examines the links ...that surface between moral feelings - as a specific form of political emotional experience - and engagement, starting with a decentring of current Western democratic contexts and a shift towards coercive or authoritarian contexts, using field research from the Middle East. Clearly, the emotional intensification linked to violent political experiences must be taken into account, but this emotional intensification does not alone establish any necessary continuity between the shock of certain experiences, a feeling of injustice, and engagement. Activist articulations of a feeling of injustice are in fact three-layered: expression of a feeling fed by lived or transmitted experiences, a reference to ideological frameworks that both legitimise their forms of engagement and help give meaning to their situation, and inscription within a general moral argument.
Security is one of the objectives that has become associated with development policies. This article offers a genealogical perspective on this shift, focusing on the introduction of “Security Sector ...Reform” (SSR) into development policy as an apparatus with a two‐fold normative process. The first point of note is the securitization of development policy. This pertains both to the discourse elements of the apparatus—here, the effects of the use of security semantics—and to its political technologies, with an SSR apparatus which can function as a new label for military co‐operation. This has led to new approaches in societies where this has taken place, with threat a key focus. There has also been a process of depoliticization in the wake of technical, standardized approaches. This has sidelined debate on the norms and political choices involved, albeit implicitly. Secondly, one can observe structural ambivalences in the field, chiefly on the issue of the state and the normative contradictions of a policy to strengthen “fragile states” that relies on external intervention in national politics. The case study of Lebanon complements this analysis, highlighting the structural tensions between the various aims of SSR, and how this affects local ownership: both the perception and reception of SSR are marked by power relationships which translate into hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic labelling.
The theories of rational choice have been widely used in analysing suicide bombings. Such a use is here critically examined along three lines. First, the limits of this theoretical framework when ...applied to sacrificial violence are assessed and especially the internal contradictions which appear with the notion of 'symbolic posthumous rewards'. Second, differences emerge in the use of rational choice theory when the focus is upon female suicide bombers. Indeed, deprivation theories come then to the fore, the idea of personal crisis and the impact of patriarchal social relationships. This switch in the analysis, which does not seem based on differences in the data, confirms gender studies which underline the specific difficulty to envisage female political violence. Finally, to go beyond both reductionisms, a compared analysis of suicide attacks in Chechnya, Iraq and Israel/Palestine is proposed. It aims at restituting the context of action and the narratives at work, making a clear distinction between two levels of analysis, the one of the organizations, which can largely be understood in terms of their strategic rationale, and that of the suicide bombers themselves, for whom it seems more heuristic to use the concepts of narratives and horizons of expectation.
Les perspectives sur l’engagement des artistes dans la contestation politique se sont profondément renouvelées. Certes, les débats concernant les liens entre art et politique sont loin d’être ...nouveaux, situés dans un vaste spectre qui va de l’art engagé à « l’art pour l’art », tandis que l’artiste engagé·e représente une figure archétypale depuis la fin du XIXe siècle. Toutefois, les études de la contestation politique ont longtemps traité l’intervention artistique de manière marginale. L’art y apparaît essentiellement dans ses contributions à la mise en forme et à la diffusion de la cause, et la figure de l’artiste engagé·e dans ses rapports aux appareils partisans. Les enjeux autour de la place de l’art dans le politique ont cependant été récemment réévalués en sciences sociales et politiques, à partir de deux axes principalement. En premier lieu, la réflexion sur les esthétiques politiques met en avant que si « tout art n’est pas politique, toute politique est esthétique » (Sartwell, 2010, p. 1). Pour cette approche, qui n’est pas sans évoquer les analyses de Stuart Hall sur les hégémonies (Hall, 1982), le pouvoir des régimes s’incarne aussi dans une esthétique, et la contestation de l’ordre politique implique la production d’esthétiques contestataires remettant en cause idéologies et représentations dominantes, environnements et médias. S’agit-il là d’un « tournant esthétique » en sciences politiques, comme le désignent certains ?Disponible sur : https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-politique-comparee-2023-2-page-5.htm
How does political commitment develop when actors are confronted with authoritarian processes? Under a liberal authoritarian regime, even the creation of democratic institutions may mean ...authoritarian stabilization (contradicting classical transition theories) rather than open an arena for political protest. However, alternative contentious arenas may appear, where resourceful organizations can be partially transformed into a basis for protest with challenging frames of reference. In the Jordanian case, the professional associations (in contravention of corporatism theory) and the Islamist social movement have thus gained oppositional capacity. However, apart from repression, their own economic and social roles, and their integration in the regime frame and limit the kind of political commitment they can lead. Ambivalence arises between challenging and integrated positions and when alternative arenas become so integrated in the regime that they lose their contentious role, radicalization processes appear. Both cases underline the versatility of political arenas and their relational characteristics. These political arenas are also the places where alternative ideologies are produced. At that level, the Islamist movement has a very specific position as a hegemonic ideological producer with no hegemonic power and position. The case thus supports an analytical separation between power position and ideology and confirms the need for less state-centred definition of ideology. Adapted from the source document.
Sentiment d’injustice et engagement militant sont souvent associés, parfois sur le registre de l’évidence, l’un générant l’autre dans une sorte de continuum . Les liens ainsi relevés entre sentiments ...moraux — qui ont leur spécificité parmi les émotions politiques — et engagement sont interrogés ici à partir d’un déplacement et d’un décentrement, des contextes démocratiques occidentaux actuels vers des contextes coercitifs et autoritaires, sur la base d’enquêtes menées au Proche-Orient. La nécessité de prendre en compte l’intensification émotionnelle liée à des expériences politiques violentes apparaît ici, pour autant elle n’établit pas — à elle seule — une évidente continuité entre choc induit par certaines expériences, sentiment d’injustice et engagement. Les énonciations militantes du sentiment d’injustice renvoient en effet à un triple registre : expression d’un ressenti nourri d’expériences vécues ou transmises, référence à des cadrages idéologiques qui tout à la fois légitiment les formes prises par leur engagement et contribuent à mettre en sens leur situation et inscription dans une argumentation morale générale.
Research in Context Larzilliere, Penelope
Science, technology & society (New Delhi, India),
09/2010, Letnik:
15, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Research in Jordan is a university-driven activity, as in Lebanon, historically based on three public universities—Jordan University, Jordan University for Science and Technology and Yarmouk ...University. However, while recent development has seen the steady decline of scientific output at Yarmouk University, the more recently established public Hashemite University has increased its scientific output—particularly through its specialisation in environmental sciences. Even if the national scientific authorities work more through incentives than development plans, an overlap between national priorities and research specialisations can be observed. Indeed engineering, medicine and chemistry are especially important in Jordan, mainly through partnership with the US or, concerning Chemistry, with Germany. Gulf countries are a second important pole which attracts Jordanian professors for teaching, mainly for salary reasons. It is too early to call it brain drain since Jordanian professors only stay for one or two years before going back to Jordan. Moreover, the Jordanian official policy actively promotes the exportation of skilled staff. However, this situation may change if Gulf countries succeed in keeping this foreign staff.
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