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Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci

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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) as discussed by the authors is a project that aims to defend the commons in the context of a growing transnational commoning movement, and is based on the metaphor of "beating the bounds".
Abstract: In response to ongoing plant genetic enclosures, the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is creating a ‘protected commons’ for seed. It is a project, I argue, that reflects characteristics of a growing transnational commoning movement. From the Zapatistas to seed wars, such movements draw attention to commons not simply as a resource, but as a dynamic and evolving social activity: commoning. In the US, OSSI includes 38 plant breeders, 48 seed companies and 377 crop varieties. Yet challenges remain for OSSI to gain wider legitimacy for ‘freed seed’, to build trust in a moral pledge, and to establish fair guidelines for which people and which seed can participate in making the commons. Using the metaphor of ‘beating the bounds’ – a feudal practice of contesting enclosures – I ask how OSSI defends the commons in intersecting arenas. The first way is legal, as OSSI negotiates a move from contract law toward moral economy law. Next is epistemic, as an informal breeder network revitalizes farmer knowledge, while...

52 citations


Cites background from "Selections from the prison notebook..."

  • ...…identity that gives her lessons purchase toward demonstrating that ‘everyone is a philosopher, and that it is not a question of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s life, but of renovating and making “critical” an already existing activity’ (Gramsci 1971/2010, 331)....

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  • ...Rather, he recognized that ‘all men are intellectuals’, potentially, but not all are intellectuals by social function (Gramsci 1971/2010, 9)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: There is a passage in David Lodge's 1988 novel nice work in which the heroine, a marxist-feminist critic who teaches English literature, looks out the window of an airplane and sees the division of labor as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: There is a passage in David Lodge's 1988 Novel nice work in which the heroine, a marxist-feminist critic who teaches English literature, looks out the window of an airplane and sees the division of labor. Factories, shops, offices, schools, beginning the working day. People crammed into rush-hour buses and trains, or sitting at the wheels of their cars in traffic jams, or washing up breakfast things in the kitchens of pebble-dashed semis. All inhabiting their own little worlds, oblivious of how they fitted into the total picture. The housewife, switching on her electric kettle to make another cup of tea, gave no thought to the immense complex of operations that made that simple action possible: the building and maintenance of the power station that produced the electricity, the mining of coal or pumping of oil to fuel the generators, the laying of miles of cable to carry the current to her house, the digging and smelting and milling of ore or bauxite into sheets of steel or aluminum, the cutting and pressing and welding of the metal into the kettle's shell, spout and handle, the assembling of these parts with scores of other components—coils, screws, nuts, bolts, washers, rivets, wires, springs, rubber insulation, plastic trimmings; then the packaging of the kettle, the advertising of the kettle, the marketing of the kettle, to wholesale and retail outlets, the transportation of the kettle to warehouses and shops, the calculation of its price, and the distribution of its added value between all the myriad people and agencies concerned in its production and circulation. The housewife gave no thought to all this as she switched on her kettle.

51 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a Gramscian analysis of contradictory consciousness is used to understand the trope of indolence, which is both a performative speech act and a reference to patterns of labor and time allocation.
Abstract: Tibetans in Lhasa negotiate development, as a hegemonic project, through idioms animated by situated practices and historically sedimented memories. Two related idioms through which development is experienced are a pervasive trope of Tibetan indolence and one that describes Tibetans as being spoiled. A Gramscian analysis of contradictory consciousness is critical to understanding the trope of indolence, which is both a performative speech act and a reference to patterns of labor and time allocation. The trope is informed by contemporary state development discourse and national value-codings of “quality” under economic reform, as well as culturally, historically, and religiously constituted notions of proper work. These idioms tie together ambivalence about multiple aspects of life as transformed by development, including underemployment, urbanization, and chemically intensive agriculture. Though culturally specific, these idioms of development are not “merely cultural.” Instead, they are shaped b...

51 citations

01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the contradictions and contestations that characterise debates about the relationship between paid work and women's empowerment, and suggest that the capacity of women to organize around their needs, interests and rights is most likely to result in public recognition of their rights as workers, as women and as citizens.
Abstract: This paper explores the contradictions and contestations that characterise debates about the relationship between paid work and women’s empowerment. It suggests that this absence of consensus appears to reflect differences of context. It reflects other factors as well. It reflects changes in the social meaning of work over time. It reflects differences in the way that empowerment is conceptualised: the emphasis given to the personal and the political, to individual and collective action, and to agency versus structure in processes of change. Finally, contestations reflect the nature of the work in question, since varying terms and conditions of work hold out varying potentials for transformative change in women’s lives. Evidence suggests that shifts in the balance of power within individual women’s lives do not necessarily translate into shifts in underlying structures of constraint. The paper suggests that it is the capacity of women to organise around their needs, interests and rights that is most likely to result in public recognition of their rights as workers, as women and as citizens.

51 citations


Cites background from "Selections from the prison notebook..."

  • ...Or it may reflect the power of hegemonic ideas (Gramsci 1971) and habitus (Bourdieu 1977)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 2005-Antipode
TL;DR: In this article, the authors offer an exploration of problem drug use in the urban environment, connecting with broader concerns about the progress and contradictions of city redevelopment and change, and conclude with some considerations about the place and meaning of Problem Drug Use in the city based on theoretical and empirical discussion.
Abstract: This paper offers an exploration of problem drug use in the urban environment, connecting with broader concerns about the progress and contradictions of city redevelopment and change. The paper concludes with some considerations about the place and meaning of problem drug use in the city based on the foregoing theoretical and empirical discussion.

51 citations