John Mathews

Bio: John Mathews is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & General strike. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 402 citations.

Selections from Political Writings, 1910-1920

Abstract: This volume is the first of two containing a selection of Antonio Gramsci's political writings from the time of his initial involvement in Italian politics to his imprisonment by Mussolini in 1926. This selection culminates in the 'Red Years' of 1910-20, and also features texts by Bordiga and Tasca from their debates with Gramsci. It traces Gramsci's development as a revolutionary socialist during the First World War, his thoughts on the Russian Revolution and his involvement in the general strike and factory occupations of 1920. Also included are his reactions to the emerging fascist movement, and contributions to the early stages of the debate about the establishment of the Communist Party of Italy

Mind, Language, and Epistemology: Toward a Language Socialization Paradigm for SLA

Abstract: For some time now second language acquisition (SLA) research has been hampered by unhelpful debates between the “cognitivist” and “sociocultural” camps that have generated more acrimony than useful theory. Recent developments in second generation cognitive science, first language acquisition studies, cognitive anthropology, and human development research, however, have opened the way for a new synthesis. This synthesis involves a reconsideration of mind, language, and epistemology, and a recognition that cognition originates in social interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes: These processes are central rather than incidental to cognitive development. Here I lay out the issues and argue for a language socialization paradigm for SLA that is consistent with and embracive of the new research.

A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change: neo-Gramscian perspectives in International Relations:

Abstract: Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation that deploys many of the insights of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break emerged, in the 1980s, in the...

"How We Know": Kwara'ae Rural Villagers Doing Indigenous Epistemology

Abstract: Around the world today indigenous ethnic groups are asserting the valid- ity of their own ways of knowing and being, in resistance to the intensify- ing hegemony of mainstream epistemology from the metropolitan powers. This assertion is not happening only among third-world scholars familiar with the challenges to Anglo-European cosmology and epistemology fro m p o s t m o d e rnists over the past several decades. It is also happening among rural villagers with little or no schooling or awareness of the debates going on internationally in philosophy and the social sciences. More o v e r, the a s s e rtion is not only about ethnic identity and revitalizing culture. Vi l l a g- ers are also themselves exploring how they construct knowledge: instead of always being the subject of re s e a rch by outsiders, which they often see as exploitation, they are undertaking the re c o rding and writing of their own cultures based on their indigenous epistemologies. Indigenous episte- mology refers to a cultural gro u p 's ways of theorizing knowledge, as we discuss later. The Kwara'ae Genealogy Project is just such an assertion by a group of rural villagers in West Kwara'ae, Malaita, Solomon Islands (map 1). Offi- cially constituted in early 1994 by members of several small villages, the p roject has continued to grow and to involve multiple activities. We exam- ine how project members are doing indigenous epistemology as the basis of their re s e a rch. Not only are they discussing, arguing, and re c o rding cul- t u re, but they are also critiquing and examining in a self-reflexive process their own indigenous strategies for creating knowledge. Indigenous projects like the one examined here offer us Native Pacific Islander scholars a direction for the next stage of decolonization—d e h e g e- m o n i z a t i o n .1 To bring decolonization to the level of dehegemonizat ion means that we Native Pacific Islander scholars need to find our own

Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Inaugurating a new rationality 3. From decolonisation to developmental nation state 4. From permanent sovereignty to investor protection 5. From the rule of international law to the internationalisation of the rule of law 6. Conclusion.