Enduring liminality: voting rights and Tibetan exiles in India
TL;DR: In this paper, the location and production of liminality with regard to voting rights of the Tibetan exile community in India is examined. Liminality is related here to the legal and bureaucratic ''inbetweenness''.
Abstract: This paper examines the location and production of liminality with regard to voting rights of Tibetan exile community in India. Liminality is related here to the legal and bureaucratic ‘inbetweenne...
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TL;DR: Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals as discussed by the authors is a polemic against the extension of Darwinian premises to the important study of man, and it is a controversy which aims at undermining and disrupting evolutionary naturalism from within.
Abstract: humanities well but also had a solid knowledge of the natural sciences (see Nietzsche and Science, ed. Gregory Moore and Thomas Brobjer, 2004). Johnson rightly insists, against John Richardson’s Nietzsche’s New Darwinism (2004), that Nietzsche’s critique is not based on Darwinism as biological science but rather that it is directed against the philosophical fundaments of Darwin’s ideas (4, 10). Johnson convincingly argues that Nietzsche’s philosophy in his final years was premised on “a fundamental anti-Darwinism” (203). The Darwinian world-view does away with the Christian god as creator of meaning and value. This, for instance, enabled the early Nietzsche in the second of his Untimely Meditations to contend with David Strauss. Whilst the early Nietzsche philosophizes with Darwin, the mature Nietzsche philosophizes against Darwin. Johnson suggests that Nietzsche’s late philosophy can only be understood if his negative criticisms of Darwin are taken into account: he characterizes the mature Nietzsche’s relationship with Darwin as a “creative antagonism,” since Nietzsche regards Darwin as an equal opponent against the resistance of whom his own philosophy can be improved and refined. Johnson acknowledges that apart from Darwin there are in Nietzsche other “significant and productive rivalries—such as with Wagner, Schopenhauer, Plato, Pascal, Spinoza, and Kant” (14). According to Johnson’s reading, the Genealogy of Morals is a controversy which aims at undermining and disrupting evolutionary naturalism from within. He writes that “from within Darwinism, Nietzsche could locate the weak points, the inconsistencies, the metaphysical remnants of the Christian ideal, and his theory of active will meant that he could win for himself a position from which to attack the ascetic ideal” (205, 7). For Nietzsche, Darwinism is an instance of the life-negating ascetic ideal. Therefore, an important project of the Genealogy of Morals is to strengthen lifeaffirming Dionysiac culture against the predominance of nihilism brought about by nineteenth-century natural science. Johnson maintains that the arguments of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals function as a polemic (7), stating that it is “a single and sustained polemic against the extension of Darwinian premises to the important study of man” (172). In my view, Johnson correctly claims that in Nietzsche Darwin’s own ideas are primarily under scrutiny and not social-Darwinist ones (4). Nietzsche thinks that they are modern “plebeian” ideas. He accuses Darwin that in his version of naturalism residues of Christian metaphysics and morality are still present and show up in such dichotomous notions as egoism and altruism and also in his use of imagery and metaphors (194–95, 48–50). He also identifies idealist leftovers in Darwin’s materialist theory. Nietzsche is concerned to demonstrate that there are ways to think about nature that deviate in important respects from Darwin’s approach. Nietzschean philosophers create values for science (and for culture as a whole). This means Nietzsche is not identifying science with philosophy. Johnson rightly says that in Nietzsche on Morality (2002), Brian Leiter is incorrect to assume a continuity of science and philosophy in Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals is not a “straightforward articulation of the biologist-naturalist preoccupations of the age,” but rather it is “polemical, culturally contingent, anti-Darwinian” (214). Johnson’s book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the role of Darwinism in Nietzsche’s thought and future work in this area will have to engage with it.
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01 Dec 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, Singh and Roy argue that changes in the nature of electoral contests and domination of political regimes have made the task of preserving electoral integrity and assuring its deliberative content a challenging one.
Abstract: As the constitutional body that conducts elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has emerged as a trusted institution within the shared space of democracy in India. This process has, however, been a fraught one because of contestation over the ECI’s constitutional responsibility and the power of Parliament to make laws to govern electoral matters. This comprehensive monograph discusses the history of the ECI through a study of the measures it has adopted to ensure certainty of procedures in order to maintain the democratic uncertainty of electoral outcome. In this context, innovations such as the Model Code of Conduct have enhanced the rule-making powers of the ECI. Going beyond the ECI’s design and performance framework, Singh and Roy argue that changes in the nature of electoral contests and domination of political regimes have made the task of preserving electoral integrity and assuring its deliberative content a challenging one.
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TL;DR: This article identified four main strands of the migrant enfranchisement literature since 2010 and outline its main (debated) concepts, and identified missing links among the strands, such as a tendency for scholars to study the electoral rights of foreign residents (immigrants) separate from nationals abroad (emigrants).
Abstract: ABSTRACT We identify four main strands of the migrant enfranchisement literature since 2010 and outline its main (debated) concepts. We pinpoint missing links among the strands, such as a tendency for scholars to study the electoral rights of foreign residents (immigrants) separate from nationals abroad (emigrants). Other missing links lie with actors and processes along the migrant enfranchisement legal path, with more studies focused on enacting or implementing rights versus fewer on why rights stagnate or fail to pass. Another missing link is geographic, favouring South–North over South-South enfranchisement. Despite an overall acceptance of transnational belonging and multi-territorial political participation, research agendas remain disparate across migration studies, political science, sociology, international relations, and other social sciences and humanities. Missing links are missed opportunities to merge disciplinary findings and find (causal) mechanisms to explain migrant enfranchisement. When analysing the four strands, we suggest researchers apply an immigrant-emigrant lens to include origin and residence countries and rights of both emigrants and immigrants. Each article in this Special Issue nuances one of the strands, combines them, or applies the immigrant-emigrant lens. The issue expands the geographic coverage of current studies and offers innovative comparative analyses of Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
6 citations
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TL;DR: The authors identify four main strands of the migrant enfranchisement literature since 2010 and outline its main (debated) concepts, and identify missing links among the strands, such as a tendency for scholars to study the electoral rights of foreign residents (immigrants) separate from nationals abroad (emigrants).
Abstract: We identify four main strands of the migrant enfranchisement literature since 2010 and outline its main (debated) concepts. We pinpoint missing links among the strands, such as a tendency for scholars to study the electoral rights of foreign residents (immigrants) separate from nationals abroad (emigrants). Other missing links lie with actors and processes along the migrant enfranchisement legal path, with more studies focused on enacting or implementing rights versus fewer on why rights stagnate or fail to pass. Another missing link is geographic, favouring South–North over South-South enfranchisement. Despite an overall acceptance of transnational belonging and multi-territorial political participation, research agendas remain disparate across migration studies, political science, sociology, international relations, and other social sciences and humanities. Missing links are missed opportunities to merge disciplinary findings and find (causal) mechanisms to explain migrant enfranchisement. When analysing the four strands, we suggest researchers apply an immigrant-emigrant lens to include origin and residence countries and rights of both emigrants and immigrants. Each article in this Special Issue nuances one of the strands, combines them, or applies the immigrant-emigrant lens. The issue expands the geographic coverage of current studies and offers innovative comparative analyses of Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
6 citations
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TL;DR: Dharamshala is home to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile and its small-town journalism landscape is unique due to specific forms of community journalism practice adopted by Indian and Tibetan journalist as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Dharamshala is home to the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Its small-town journalism landscape is unique due to specific forms of community journalism practice adopted by Indian and Tibetan journalist...
4 citations
Cites background from "Enduring liminality: voting rights ..."
...For instance, Gupta (2019) notes how the Indian government’s directive to allow Tibetans born in India during a specific period to cast vote put them in a liminal space of being a voter but not a citizen....
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01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: The broad outline of the census along with the latest Statewise break up of SC/ST/OBC and minority communities as per the census and the percentage of these communities to the total population in each State is proposed.
Abstract: (b) if so, the broad outline of the census along with the latest Statewise break up of SC/ST/OBC and minority communities as per the census and the percentage of these communities to the total population in each State;
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TL;DR: The concept of liminality was first introduced by van Gennep and Turner as discussed by the authors, who explored the rites of passage of the subject through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state.
Abstract: The concept of liminality favours a broad interpretation, lending itself easily to disciplinary contexts outside of the original framework of cultural anthropology. Developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner by exploring the rites of passage, liminality points to in-between situations and conditions where established structures are dislocated, hierarchies reversed, and traditional settings of authority possibly endangered. The liminal state is a central phase in all social and cultural transitions as it marks the passage of the subject through ‘a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’. It is thus a realm of great ambiguity, since the ‘liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial’. Yet, as a threshold situation, liminality is also a vital moment of creativity, a potential platform for renewing the societal make-up.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that liminality has the potential to enrich scholarship in critical geopolitics by offering a nuanced approach to the geographies and ambivalence of political subjectivity.
Abstract: This paper argues that the lens of liminality has the potential to enrich scholarship in critical geopolitics by offering a nuanced approach to the geographies and ambivalence of political subjectivity. In the context of a perceived proliferation of ‘new’ actors the paper turns critical attention to what happens at the threshold between the categories of state and non-state, official and unofficial diplomacy. It asks what such a perspective on diplomacy might mean for understandings of who is, and who should be, a legitimate actor in international politics by turning to the notion of liminality as developed in cultural anthropology. This is a concept that surprisingly has been overlooked in political geography and this paper asks how geographers might engage more productively with it, particularly in light of emergent critical international relations research on liminality as a paradigm for understanding stability and change in institutionalised orders. Empirically, the paper focuses on the articulation of liminal political subjectivities and spatialities through the lens of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), a coalition of almost 50 stateless nations, indigenous communities and national minorities that currently are denied a place at international diplomatic forums. Drawing on this case study, the paper examines three areas of geopolitical enquiry that the notion of liminality opens up. First is the spatiality of diplomacy in terms of the out-of-placeness of liminal actors and the construction of transformative spaces of quasi-official diplomacy. Second are particular qualities of political subjectivity, including the blurring of boundaries between diplomacy and activism, and the notion of geopolitical shapeshifters. Finally, attention turns to the notion of communitas to draw out the politics of belonging, recognition and legitimacy. The paper concludes by suggesting that the idea of ambivalence that underpins liminality is a useful provocation to take creativity and aspiration seriously in geopolitics.
77 citations