Suchergebnisse

This article addresses the construction of Latin American imaginaries of modernization in relation to the technical developments that have arisen by the beginning of the 20th century. It also studies the way in which the glorification of technology produced a strong impact on the avant-garde in the visual arts and literature. After analyzing the attraction of European avant-gardes movements towards Technique, this essay argues that in our region several works of art questioned the uncritical exaltation of the machine. Instead, they proposed local artistic languages based on the notions of utopia and invention. The article concludes by stating that the glorification of technology, utopia and invention are concepts that not only enable to articulate different poetic, political and techno-scientific conceptions that have gradually appeared on the local scene, but they also contribute to build bridges between the artworks of the first avant-gardes and the emergencies of contemporary art. ; El presente artículo analiza la construcción de los imaginarios de modernización latinoamericanos configurados en torno a los desarrollos técnicos advenidos a principios del siglo XX, así como el modo en que cierta glorificación tecnológica impactó en las artes visuales y la literatura de vanguardia. Luego de rastrear la atracción ejercida por la técnica en algunos movimientos de vanguardia europeos, el trabajo sostiene que, en nuestra región, diversas obras cuestionaron la exaltación acrítica de la máquina y propusieron, en cambio, lenguajes vernáculos basados en las nociones de utopía e invención. El artículo concluye que glorificación técnica, utopía e invención son conceptos que no solo permiten articular las diferentes concepciones poéticas, políticas y tecno-científicas que poco a poco fueron gestándose en la escena local, sino que también posibilitan tender puentes entre las obras de las primeras vanguardias y las emergencias del arte contemporáneo.

Since the eruption of the Greek crisis in 2010 it has been almost impossible for the Greek state authorities to initiate any infrastructural project without significant local and wider resistance. In this paper we seek to answer how infrastructures became novel arenas of political conflict in Greece. We suggest that crucial for understanding this process is the dynamic relationship between infrastructures and popular political imaginaries. During the recent 'golden' period of infrastructural development in the country (mid-1990s to mid-2000s) there was a mutually constitutive relationship between popular imaginations of progress and the materiality of infrastructures, which attempted to underplay the disjunctive modernization processes within which that development took place. Later though, this parallel relationship between the two was contested as the infrastructural imaginary, which was transformed by the everyday discourses and practices created around infrastructure projects, blurred the expectations and imagination ascribed to the 'glorious' period of national success and modernization. In combination with the infrastructural gap of the crisis, the narrative dimension started taking over the materiality of infrastructures allowing it to take on a life of its own. Understanding the mechanisms of this relationship between imaginary and infrastructural materiality is key to comprehending the Greek economic crisis without a crisis essentialism that attributes every process into the crisis per se.

This article explores some of the ways in which ideas about and attempts to construct a European identity and sense of belonging inscribe an imaginary of Europe that is exclusionary and elitist. It suggests that the symbolic figure of 'the immigrant woman' is a container category that simultaneously signifies the non-European and tests and destabilizes claims to Europe's essential characteristics. It also argues that traces of this imaginary of Europe can be found in feminist scholarship on global care chains and that the spatial category of 'the domestic' is the invisible seam that ties this scholarship to the hegemonic imaginary of Europe.

Chapter 1: Introduction, by Lori Beaman and Timothy Stacey -- Chapter 2: Theoretical and methodological background to understandings of (non)religion, by Peter Beyer -- Chapter 3: How New is the Study of Nonreligion? Theological Contributions to the Emergent Reflection on Nonreligion in Social Sciences, by Solange Lefebvre -- Chapter 4: Going, Going, Gone? Canadian Churches and the Rise of Non-Religion, by Brian Clarke -- Chapter 5: The mobilization of religious and nonreligious imaginaries in Argentine sexual politics, by Hugo H. Rabbia and Juan Marco Vaggione -- Chapter 6: Cultural Creatives: Embodiment of A Trans-Modern Vision, by Julia Itel -- Chapter 7: Reweaving spheres: towards an ultimate meaning of practice, by Timothy Stacey -- Chapter 8: Not radical, not preaching, but reaching out to others: Nonreligious expressions of identity and relationality through food, by Anna Sofia Salonen -- Chapter 9: 'World-repairing' and 'non-religious' in law: antithetical notions or new mindsets?, by Dia Dabby -- Chapter 10: Collaboration Across Difference: New Diversities and the Challenges of our Times, by Lori Beaman -- Chapter 11: Afterword: Towards an Understanding of Being Human, by Douglas Ezzy. .

Background. Theory of Modernization is the most important innovation in Social Sciences in the late 50 years. But in spite of numerous versions of this theory all of them lack showing technology of the process. Thus it's extremely urgent to demonstrate links between different spheres of society and stages of the modernization process. Materials and methods. The research was based upon the logic of the historical process and statistics. Knowledge about the dynamics of the Industrial Revolution was substantiated by the understanding of the moving forces of modernization. Results. It is claimed that mechanization was followed the Communication Revolution, the Finance and Banking Revolution. Social and geographic mobility was intensified. Simultaneously modernization of the state mechanism led to strengthening of the political life, formation of the civil society and modernization of the law. Creation of the Legal State based upon strict observance of the law was a final step in the whole process. Conclusions. Discovering of the modernization mechanism is the key element in the modernization theory. In future it will permit to formulate the peculiarities (or models) of the modernization based upon some of its common features.

This article offers a reading of the ideas expressed in Walter Solón Romero Gonzales' mural, the 'History of Bolivian Petroleum' from 1956, and juxtaposes these ideas to the current public discourse that emerges from speeches of high officials and from policy documents of President Evo Morales' government. The objective is to investigate the understanding of the role natural resources vis-à-vis development in Bolivia at these two points in time and show the striking resonance between ideas depicted in the mural more than half a century ago and ideas expressed in contemporary official discourses. These ideas concern the foundational elements of a development model that envisions a central role for natural resources, and especially hydrocarbons, in the development of the country. The elements of this model, that include a prominent role of the state in the extraction of natural resources, expansive social policies, strategies to diversify the economy, neatly overlap with the central tenets of the neoextractivist model. It transpires that the novelty of neoextractivism can be fundamentally questioned. This model also provides the rationale justifying the promotion of extractive activities 'at all costs' in Bolivia and beyond. However, history has shown that it produces fantasies of development rather than actual development.

Call for Papers for Conference in Eichstätt, Germany on February 8-10, 2024. Deadline: August 31, 2023

.

Over the past decade there has been a remarkable expansion in the use of 'imaginaries' as a guiding concept in and beyond political theory. But the proliferation of this term has gone largely unchecked by critical investigations into its deployment. To correct this I address the work of Charles Taylor, Michael Warner and Chiara Bottici, each of whom has written influential texts on imaginaries and the sites of imaginaries. Interestingly, their reliance on imaginaries does not compel them to do away with older modes of thinking such as ideology critique and dialectical thought. Yet what remains of these enduring modes has been sanitized, their radical commitments scarcely pursued. I proceed by conducting an immanent critique of each author's work, revealing troublesome pre-critical and instrumentalist features that lead to political phenomena being misrepresented or going unidentified entirely. In addition I elaborate modes of dialectical thought and ideology critique that avoid these difficulties and produce the types of critical insights absent from these texts.