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Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci
01 Jan 2015-
TL;DR: The first selection published from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks to be made available in Britain, and was originally published in the early 1970s as discussed by the authors, was the first publication of the Notebooks in the UK.
Abstract: Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935, are the work of one of the most original thinkers in twentieth century Europe. Gramsci has had a profound influence on debates about the relationship between politics and culture. His complex and fruitful approach to questions of ideology, power and change remains crucial for critical theory. This volume was the first selection published from the Notebooks to be made available in Britain, and was originally published in the early 1970s. It contains the most important of Gramsci's notebooks, including the texts of The Modern Prince, and Americanism and Fordism, and extensive notes on the state and civil society, Italian history and the role of intellectuals. 'Far the best informative apparatus available to any foreign language readership of Gramsci.' Perry Anderson, New Left Review 'A model of scholarship' New Statesman
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TL;DR: The authors adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative, e-Choupal, which is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking.
Abstract: This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal government policies that dominate contemporary India. The initiative sounds good, even noble, but becomes mired in divergent discourses and practices that ultimately fail to help the poor whom it targets. This research helps explicate the problems with BOP policy interventions that encourage profit seeking as a way to alleviate poverty.
117 citations
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that the separation of subject from object can be understood only in negative terms, that to say that a field of knowledge depersonalizes is ipso facto to discredit it.
Abstract: If there is anything that exemplifies a certain common style in ethnographically-oriented approaches to culture and society today, and sets them apart from other kinds of social science, it is the habit, irritating to colleagues in some other disciplines, frustrating to students, deemed perverse by potential funders, and bewildering to the public, of responding to explanations with the remark, “We need to complicate the story.” The words “reductionist” and “essentializing” are brandished with scorn. One important perspective is expressed by this remark by Jean and John Comaroff, two influential anthropologists with solid roots in longterm fieldwork, the sobriety of British social anthropology, and the tough-minded realism of the Marxist tradition: ethnography “refuses to put its trust in techniques that give more scientific methods their illusory objectivity: their commitment to standardized, a priori units of analysis, for example, or their reliance on a depersonalizing gaze that separates subject from object” (1992:8). These words, offered almost in passing, take a host of important arguments as settled. One is that it is no longer in much dispute that cultural anthropology is not merely at an “immature” stage, en route to something more akin to natural science. Most significant, perhaps, is the assumption that the separation of subject from object can be understood only in negative terms, that to say that a field of knowledge “depersonalizes” is ipso facto to discredit it. Yet in their own ethnographic and historical work the Comaroffs take their empirical materials very seriously and do not wholly reject the separation of subject from object—how could they? What is at issue, rather, is what kinds of “objects” and “subjects,” and what categories of analysis and comparison, are epistemologically appropriate and ethically legitimate for the study of social actions and self-understandings.
115 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a new approach to understanding social movements in terms of cognitive praxis is outlined and its implications for adult education discussed. But the relevance of social movement theory has hardly been explored.
Abstract: Although adult education has long been associated with social movements, the relevance of social movement theory has hardly been explored. This stems in part from limitations in the sociological theory of social movements. New paradigms are emerging which provide a basis for theorizing adult education in terms of cognitive processes in social movements. These have general implications for our understanding of adult education's role in society. This paper considers the notion that adult education is itself a "movement." The development of social movement theory is traced, and reasons for its limited impact on adult education theory are explored. A new approach to understanding social movements in terms of "cognitive praxis," is outlined and its implications for adult education discussed.
115 citations
TL;DR: The 1990s was the decade of neoliberalism in Brazil as discussed by the authors, during which public enterprises were privatized, import tariffs were slashed, regional free-trade markets were established, and fiscal discipline was prioritized in an attempt to control a massive public debt.
Abstract: The 1990s was the decade of neoliberalism in Brazil. During the successive administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003), public enterprises were privatized, import tariffs were slashed, regional free-trade markets were established, and fiscal discipline was prioritized in an attempt to control a massive public debt. As his first term progressed, however, Cardoso was forced to respond to the insistent popular demand for reform of the country's inequitable land-tenure structure. The issue became increasingly visible in the 1990s because of the strength of a grassroots social movement, the Movement of Landless Workers (MST). In response to the demands for agrarian reform, the government offered its support for an essentially neoliberal, market-based alternative to state-led distribution—an alternative favored by official development organizations throughout the Third World at this time. In this paper, I argue that the support for a market-led agrarian reform privileged the agrarian elit...
115 citations
Cites background from "Selections from the prison notebook..."
...Alternative concepts that offer parallel or similar frameworks might be (this is a necessarily partial listöpartial in the sense of being limited and in the sense of including primarily those terms with which I am most sympathetic): ideology, culture or c̀ultural toolkit' (Swidler, 1986), discourse, lifeworlds (Habermas, 1984), c̀ommon sense' (Gramsci, 1971), or moral economy values (as suggested somewhat derisively by Thompson in his 1993 essay)....
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...…the sense of including primarily those terms with which I am most sympathetic): ideology, culture or c̀ultural toolkit' (Swidler, 1986), discourse, lifeworlds (Habermas, 1984), c̀ommon sense' (Gramsci, 1971), or moral economy values (as suggested somewhat derisively by Thompson in his 1993 essay)....
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TL;DR: Freire et al. as discussed by the authors proposed a theory of transformative leadership for the Democratization of power in education, which they called Transformative Leadership Theory of Transformational Leadership (TED).
Abstract: (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the Democratization of Power: Toward a theory of transformative leadership. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 89-106.
114 citations