Showing papers on "The Imaginary published in 2014"

The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience 1

Abstract: The conception of the mirror stage that author introduced at our last congress, thirteen years ago, has since become established in the practice of the French group. However, he thinks it worthwhile to bring it again to your attention, especially today, for the light it sheds on the formation of he was experience it in psychoanalysis. It is an experience that leads us to oppose any philosophy directly issuing from the Cogito. In fact, they were encountering that existential negativity whose reality is so vigorously proclaimed by the contemporary philosophy of being and nothingness. But unfortunately that philosophy grasps negativity only within the limits of a self-sufficiency of consciousness, which, as one of its premises, links to the misrecognition that constitute the ego, the illusion of autonomy to which it entrusts itself. At this junction of nature and culture, examined by modern anthropology, psychoanalysis alone recognizes this knot of imaginary servitude that love must always undo again, or sever.

Frailty, abjection and the ‘othering’ of the fourth age

Abstract: Once exceptional, a long life is now an everyday expectation for many citizens of the prosperous nations. The consequence of this transformation in life expectancy however has led to a set of contradictory responses, representing threats as much as opportunities. Old age is no longer a stable coherent part of the life course; its future is fragmented by the competing narratives of the third age (opportunity) and the fourth age (threat). While there is a tendency to frame this distinction primarily through the lens of socio-demography and/or 'stages of life,' this paper proposes an alternative model. This model argues that later life is now represented through two different, though not unrelated, paradigms. The first frames the third age as a network of cultural fields dominated by rising consumerism and changing social relationships, while the second frames the fourth age as a negatively developed social imaginary of 'real old age.' The central features of this imaginary, we suggest, are frailty, abjection and the 'othering' of the self. This paper elaborates this theorising of the fourth age, briefly outlining each of these three features before considering in more detail the nature of othering and its consequences for those affected by this particular imaginary.

A Metaphysics of Psychopathology

Abstract: In psychiatry, few question the legitimacy of asking whether a given psychiatric disorder is real; similarly, in psychology, scholars debate the reality of such theoretical entities as general intelligence, superegos, and personality traits. And yet in both disciplines, little thought is given to what is meant by the rather abstract philosophical concept of "real." Indeed, certain psychiatric disorders have passed from real to imaginary (as in the case of multiple personality disorder) and from imaginary to real (as in the case of post-traumatic stress disorder). In this book, Peter Zachar considers such terms as "real" and "reality" -- invoked in psychiatry but often obscure and remote from their instances -- as abstract philosophical concepts. He then examines the implications of his approach for psychiatric classification and psychopathology. Proposing what he calls a scientifically inspired pragmatism, Zachar considers such topics as the essentialist bias, diagnostic literalism, and the concepts of natural kind and social construct. Turning explicitly to psychiatric topics, he proposes a new model for the domain of psychiatric disorders, the imperfect community model, which avoids both relativism and essentialism. He uses this model to understand such recent controversies as the attempt to eliminate narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM-5. Returning to such concepts as real, true, and objective, Zachar argues that not only should we use these metaphysical concepts to think philosophically about other concepts, we should think philosophically about them.

Eco-Photography: Picturing the Global Environmental Imaginary in Space and Time

Abstract: Engaging with art historical, visual cultural, and ecocritical analysis, this thesis asks the question: why has the environment-in-crisis become a central focus in contemporary photography? 'Eco-photography' visualizes the global environmental imaginary, both representing and contributing to the planetary awareness of environmental risk. Defining eco-photography as a category of images that participates in critical ecological and environmentalist practices by maintaining the ideal of an earth in 'balance', I reveal the conceptual underpinnings of this body of images as a continually shifting set of social values and relations. In Part I, I frame this category of eco-photography as a communicative genre that reflects and contributes to environmental discourse in public cultural spheres. The photographs I analyse employ realism as a rhetorical and aesthetic approach to envision the environmental imaginary in a direct and naturalizing manner. As such, eco-photography requires careful reading to understand how such images communicate, and especially the rhetorical, visual, and affective strategies that they employ. Part II focuses on the temporal dissonance of eco-photography and the problem of expressing concern for the future using a medium that is bounded in time. I argue that eco-photography is best understood as a mode of temporal slippage that offers valuable insights into environmental concerns as they are evolving. Looking at examples of repeat photography, I analyse the discourse of objectivity and witnessing in eco-photography. Nuclear photography is considered in this section for its impact on our global sense of anxiety for the future. Eco-photography is seen to be a source of hope as it records for the future images of a world at risk. Part III explores the deterritorializing impact of images and considers how the circulation of eco-photography is contributing to a sense of global cultural dislocation through the representation of local and global environmental justice issues. This section asks the question: how can photography help to visualize the complexity of humanity's relationship to the planet? I conclude by considering whether the cosmopolitan notion of a global citizenry of photography can be a positive force for promoting environmental change.

Media and the Imaginary in History: The role of the fantastic in different stages of media change

Abstract: This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, in fact, we find different fantasies; it follows that we need specific approaches to study them. The article discusses fantasies which are specific to three stages in media change: those preceding the actual invention of a medium; those accompanying the earliest period after the introduction of a new medium; and those connected to old media.

The Role of the Social Imaginary in Lifestyle Migration: Employing the Ontology of Practice Theory

Abstract: Academics in recent decades are developing diverse sets of concepts as part of the endeavour to understand, illustrate and systematically account for the interaction of structure and agency in the ongoing production of social life. The concept of the social imaginary, discussed by many of the authors in this volume, is one such concept. It is an attempt to grapple with the creative, individual and ever-changing nature of the imagination, with the socially shaped ways in which a place or lifestyle can be imagined, and with the social outcomes of people acting on their imagination in terms of both their own lives and the shaping of places (and new imaginaries). We have seen in this volume how the social imaginary is of central importance to lifestyle migration — a migration seeped in imaginings and romanticism. But ‘the social imaginary’ is an ambitious concept with an ambitious project, and it has the tendency to become what Billig (2013) has termed a ‘noun phrase’: imprecise jargon that reifies complexes of things, while discounting people and actions. I argue that scholars employing the concept would benefit from thinking through its various elements (and actions) more systematically. It is useful to examine the grand ideas, distant structures, sweeping changes, discourses and significations, that pre-exist given agents, and then to relate these to an examination of the level of the daily practices of agents, their tactics and negotiations, in the context of cultural communities. In turn, the concept of the social imaginary can be employed to understand the shaping of new material and social structures and significations, through the ongoing interaction of structure and agency.

Chatbots of the gods: imaginary abstracts for techno-spirituality research

Abstract: This paper reflects on the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) with techno-spirituality and science fiction (SF). The paper considers science fiction treatments of spirituality, religion and "the numinous" --- a mysterious presence that evokes fascination, awe and sometimes dread --- as stimulus for exploring techno-spiritual design through "imaginary abstracts", a form of design fiction. It presents an imaginary abstract --- a summary of a paper that has not been written about a prototype that does not exist [6] --- to explore possible user reactions to an artificial intelligence system that provides spiritual advice drawn from diverse sacred texts as relevant to the user's question. The paper argues that SF is a valuable resource for creating design fiction and may help HCI build a vocabulary for techno-spiritual experiences.

US Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary

Abstract: Research Highlights and Abstract Globalization and US higher education. Theorizing the global imaginary (Charles Taylor and Manfred Steger). Althusser and the imaginary. Universities and the production of knowledge. I argue that �globalization� is not simply a concept describing the world but rather an imaginary; a mental practice which renders multiple, often competing, social relationships into a meaningful, coherent whole. While some scholars have made similar arguments, none has laid out a theoretically rigorous understanding of the global imaginary. I first draw upon the work of Charles Taylor and Manfred Steger to better understand globalization as an imaginary, but find their work unable to explain how the global imaginary is produced. To ameliorate this deficiency, I turn to the work of Louis Althusser to theorize globalization as socially produced within particular material apparatuses that organize daily practices. I conclude by applying this theory to examine how the apparatus of the US university has transformed from an institution designed to produce a national imaginary to one producing the global imaginary.

Ernesto Laclau: Post-marxism, populism and critique

Abstract: Ernesto Laclau has blazed a unique trail in political theory and philosophy since the early 1970s. In so doing, he has articulated a range of philosophical and theoretical currents into a coherent alternative to mainstream models and practices of conducting social and political science. The editors have focused on work in three key areas: Post-Marxist Political Theory: Discourse, Hegemony, Signification Laclau has developed an original conception of post-Marxist political theory that is grounded on a materialist theory of discourse. The latter is constructed from a range of theoretical and philosophical sources, including poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, linguistic theory and post-analytical philosophy. The centerpiece of this approach is the category of hegemony, which develops Antonio Gramsci’s seminal contribution to Marxist theory, and is in turn connected to a web of related concepts, including articulation, dislocation, the logics of equivalence and difference, political identification, myth and social imaginary. These ideas have informed a number of empirical and theoretical studies associated with the Essex School of Discourse Theory. Analyzing Populism A central concern of Laclau’s writings has been the question of populism, both in Latin America where hebegan his interrogation of the phenomenon (especially the experience of Peronism), and then in his engagement with the "new social movements" and socialist strategy more generally. The concept of populism becomes a general way of exploring the "primacy of politics" in society. Critical Engagements Laclau is first and foremost an engaged intellectual who has consistently sought to theorize contemporary events and reality, and to debate with the leading intellectual figures of the day, with respect to questions of political principle and strategy. His recent debates with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, published in 2011 (London: Verso), exemplify this critical ethos. He continues to elaborate his approach by challenging and articulating related approaches, and by situating his work in connection to the democratic Left.

The cannibal wave: the cultural logic of Spain's temporality of crisis (revolution, biopolitics, hunger and memory)

Abstract: This article analyses how hunger and guillotines, revolution and food, butchers and protests are connected in the Spanish collective imaginary during the current temporality of crisis (2008–2013), with the aim of establishing its cultural grammar. By examining different representations of the crisis by means of gastronomy – including examples of graffiti and slogans, cooking TV shows and horror movies – I will describe the existing tensions between practices of resistance and collective imaginations of violent political change. I will propose that the social circulation of food and food images is a decisive contributing factor in the symbolic landscape of the crisis, shaping divided political economies according to the role of the citizens, the state or the corporations in control and the management of the collective access to nutritional goods. Pig slaughter versus the supermarket of the gods: two political universes offer their opposing poetic poles. On one side we will find (i) the subaltern lo...

Just imaginary: delimiting social inclusion in higher education

Abstract: This paper explores the notion of a ‘just imaginary’ for social inclusion in higher education. It responds to the current strategy of OECD nations to expand higher education and increase graduate numbers, as a way of securing a competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy. The Australian higher education system provides the case for analysis. Three dilemmas for social inclusion policy in this context are identified: questions of sustainability, aspiration and opportunity. The paper argues that while social inclusion policy has ‘first-order’ effects in higher education, a just imaginary is required for more inclusive ‘second-order’ effects to be realized. It concludes that transformation of the current imaginary will require a more robust theorization of relations between social inclusion and higher education, to give new and unifying meaning to existing practices and to generate new ones. Short of this, social inclusion may be little more than just imaginary.

Being the Revolution, or, How to Live in a “More-Than-Capitalist” World Threatened with Extinction

Abstract: Much of J. K. Gibson-Graham's work has been aimed at opening up ideas about what action is, both by broadening what is considered action (under the influence of feminist political imaginaries and strategies), and by refusing the old separation between theory and action. But the coming of the Anthropocene forced Julie and me to think more openly about what is the collective that acts. In this lecture I ask: what might it mean for a politics aimed at bringing other worlds into being to displace humans from the center of action and to see more-than-human elements as part of the collective that acts? The lecture proceeds with sections discussing (1) elements and limits of a feminist imaginary of possibility, (2) the synergies between a politics of building community economies and the political imaginary of actor-network theory, and (3) the materiality of emerging community economy assemblages.

Toward an Anthropology of the Imaginary: Specters of Disability in Vietnam

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the analytical potential that the notion of the imaginary holds for anthropology as a concept that may capture some of the more subdued, yet socially vigorous, moods and sensations that hover where personal experience and socially salient forms of power merge. The ethnographic occasion for my inquiry is the eager uptake of new technologies for selective reproduction in Vietnam; technologies that are actively promoted by the party-state as an element in efforts to enhance “population quality.” Drawing on nearly three years of fieldwork conducted in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, I frame selective reproduction as an issue of power and politics, investigating how people's fantasies, fears, and imaginings blend with the workings of state power in this realm. Attention to imaginary constructions of self and society, I argue, can further anthropological understanding of the ways in which state policies are shaped, implemented, justified, and received.

Making Money: The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism

Abstract: Review of Ole Bjerg, Making Money: The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism, London: Verso, 2014, 256 pp., pb, £19.99, ISBN 9781781682654The recent financial crisis has re-kindled the debate on money and finance. The spectacular success of books like Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber (Graeber 2011), is indicative not only of the public interest on the subject but also of the fact that the study of money and finance have ceased to be the prerogative of economics and of economists. Making Money: The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism is another attempt to shed light on the mystery of money and of financial speculation, this time using a trans-disciplinary methodology that extends beyond the paradigm of mainstream economics, and includes insights from heterodox approaches, continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. The result is a very interesting, and also a very readable book, that is sure to benefit economists and non-economists alike, by raising important questions about our financial system and by speculating on highly provocative statements like 'money does not exist' (Bjerg 2014, pp. 76) or 'an ATM is truly an ideological apparatus' (Bjerg 2014, pp. 124). Ole Bjerg, the author of this book is a management scholar with a broad theoretical background and diverse research interests that span from systems theory and full reserve banking to addiction and gambling. His perspective is not constrained by the methodological assumptions of economics, at the same time as his argumentation manifests a deep understanding of the main questions in finance and of the fundamental theories of money.The starting point of the analysis and the motivation of the main question of the book, comes from the ontological framework developed by Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time(Heidegger 1927/2008), which is employed to argue for the significance of a book of money today. Bjerg argues, following Heidegger, that our constant contact and preoccupation with money has lead to a Seinsvergessenheit; suggesting that we have forgotten the meaning and the conditions of the existence of money and of its value (Bjerg 2014, pp. 8). The book serves as a reminder and a critique of our conventional and sometimes narrow understanding of money and of the financial system. Bjerg refers to the Heideggerian ontological project, replacing the basic question 'What is the meaning of being', with what is the meaning of money, value and price. To that effect the author combines the conclusions with the form of argumentation developed by Heidegger replacing being or Dasein, i.e. Heidegger's basic ontological category, with money and value. The strategy leads to interesting challenges, but the author is neither explicit on his views nor conclusive in his arguments about the basic ontological problem that the book address, namely what is the meaning and the conditions of existence of money and value. He seems to be satisfied by challenging the assumptions of the economic orthodoxy and by raising questions about the nature of money and our relation to it. It is a petty that the author chooses not to engage with the literature on social existence coming from analytic philosophy, especially since the question of money is one of the focal points of the debate (Aydinonat 2008; Papadopoulos 2009; Searle 2010; Tieffenbach 2010; Smit, Buekens and du Plessis 2011).Heideggerian ontological reflection is supplemented by psychoanalytic criticism with a particular emphasis on the work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The author employs the orders of the imaginary, the symbolic and the Real, which were initially developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in the 1950's (Lacan 1956/1977), 'to conceptualize the functioning of financial markets as well as the multiple dimensions involved in the constitution of money' (Bjerg 2014, pp. 16). These orders are psychological categories that are put into place to explain the subjective relation to one's social environment. …

Imaginary Success?—The Contentious Ascendance of Creativity

Abstract: This paper posits that a set of “creative industries” centred around cultural practice have played a key role within a dominant “economic imaginary” in recent years. The success and stability of this role is considered, and a coherent position regarding the nature of creativity is outlined. Examination of the “evidence” gathering projects used to bulwark this position, however, reveals how the data which emerge from such projects may no longer appropriately serve to support the position the creative industries have come to occupy within the dominant imaginary. It is argued that this imaginary persists in providing a coherent framework for understanding and for action, however, regardless of the contradictions it contains. A tangible example of this “imaginary success” is briefly considered within the UK context, via an examination of developments around the staging of the European Capital of Culture programme in Liverpool, England in 2008. In this case, it is also argued that apparent contradictions are s...

We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity

Abstract: Alternative Visionary Modernities. Anindita Banerjee. We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2012. 230 pp. ISBN: 9780819573346. $24.95 pbk.Reviewed by James R. SimmonsWe Modern People is a slim book, but it advances a grand thesis. The author, Anindita Banerjee, a professor of comparative literature at Cornell University, argues that, in late-nineteenth-century Russia, science fiction quickly evolved from a marginal literature to a serious and important contributor to the debates over modernization. Moreover, Banerjee claims that, unlike in the West, where sf was largely an optimistic novelty fiction uncritically popularizing the wonders of science and the emerging technology, early-modern Russian sf was far more significant. This burgeoning body of fantastic literature (nauchnaia fantastika) published between 1894 and 1923 not only contributed to the formation of a unique and complex vision of modernity but was also a major participant in the formation of a distinctive Russian national consciousness.Banerjee questions the dominant scholarly perspectives of both Russian literature and modernity. She argues that the explosion of fantastic fictional texts along with comparable periodicals, manifestos, tracts, and visual culture produced alternate models to Western capitalist modernity long before the October Revolution imposed its distinctively Soviet model of techno-scientific utopia. Following Yevgeny Zamyatin, she asserts that, in the Russian context of "combined and uneven development," sf became more than an inconsequential byproduct of idle speculation or a popular source of entertainment. It performed a radical function as a primary participant in the formation of a national mind that was constructed out of imaginary literary representations of "alternative modernities" liberated from utilitarian Western paradigms of a technologically generated and materialistically directed progress (2-3).The book is organized around what the author calls a geographical genealogy. Rather than reconstructing a literary history of the genre with a linear chronology of authorship, We Modern People traces what she calls the arcs of continuity intended to demonstrate the continuity between this pre-revolutionary visionary literature and the Bolshevik imagination. She details four principal narratives in Russia's path to modernity that form the basis of the four sections of her book. In chapter one, "Conquering Space," she shows how imaginary locales of sf generated radically new ideologies and images of Russia. Chapter two, "Transcending Time," examines how science fictional accounts about autos, railroads, movies, and communications accelerated and compressed time, helping overcome the nation's "backwardness" {66-67). The third chapter, "Generating Power," traces how electricity evolved from a privileged novelty into a source of vitality for utopian speculation. Finally, the last chapter, "Creating the Human," reveals the ways sf became the medium for transcending the secular forces of mechanization and spiritual moral impulses that were reconfiguring humanity in the modern age.According to Banerjee, Russian sf writers used regional geography and technological marvels such as the trans-Siberian railway and electrification as a means to articulate (for urban intellectuals, the growing middle class, and even rural provincials) a uniquely Russian visionary model of development in imaginary spaces like Mars and beyond. The predominant motif, she claims, in numerous futuristic works by authors such as Tolstoy, Sluchevsky, Federov, Tsiolkovsky, and Bogdanov, is an organicist ideal in which humanity is both spiritually and biologically transformed. …

Space and the memories of violence : landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception

Abstract: List of Figures Notes on Contributors Preface Introduction: The Multi-Layered Memories of Space Pamela Colombo and Estela Schindel PART I: SPATIAL INSCRIPTIONS OF ANNIHILATION 1. Violent Erasures and Erasing Violence: Contesting Cambodia's Landscapes of Violence James A. Tyner 2. Polish landscapes of Memory at the Sites of Extermination: The Politics of Framing Zuzanna Dziuban 3. Spaces of Confrontation and Defeat: the Spatial Dispossession of the Revolution in Tucuman, Argentina Pamela Colombo 4. Subterranean Autopsies: Exhumations of Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain Francisco Ferrandiz PART II: THE REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE: SPATIAL STRATEGIES 5. Faces, Voices, and the Shadow of Catastrophe Jay Winter 6. Theatrical Cartography of a Space of Exception Juan Mayorga 7. The Cartographer. Warsaw, 1:400.000 By Juan Mayorga. In its first English translation by Sarah Maitland 8. 'All Limits Were Exceeded Over There': The Chronotope of Terror in Modern Warfare and Testimony Kirsten Mahlke 9. The Concentration Camp and the 'Unhomely Home': The Disappearance of Children in Post-Dicatorship Argentine Theatre Mariana Eva Perez PART III: HAUNTED SPACES, IRRUPTING MEMORIES 10. 'The Whole Country is a Monument': Framing Places of Terror in Postwar Germany Aleida Assmann 11. Haunted Houses, Horror Literature and the Space of Memory in Post-Dictatorship Argentine Literature Silvana Mandolessi 12. Counter-Movement, Space, and Politics: How the Saturday Mothers of Turkey make the Enforced Disappearances Visible Meltem Ah?ska 13. An Orderly Landscape of Remnants: Notes for Reflecting on the Spatiality of the Disappeared Gabriel Gatti 14. A Boundless Grave: Memory and Abjection of the Rio de la Plata Estela Schindel PART IV: SPACES OF EXCEPTION, POWER AND RESISTANCE 15. Spatialities of Exception Pilar Calveiro 16. Imaginary Cities, Violence and Memory: A Literary Mapping Gudrun Rath 17. Occupied Squares and the Urban 'State of Exception': In, Against and Beyond the City of Enclaves Stavros Stavrides 18. 'Memory, that Powerful Political Force': An Interview with David Harvey

Imaginary, decolonization of

Abstract: The idea and the project to decolonize the imaginary has two main sources: the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis, on the one hand, and the anthropological critique of imperialism, on the other. Alongside the ecological critique, these two sources, are the intellectual origins of degrowth. In Castoriadis, the focus is on the imaginary, while among the anthropologists of imperialism the focus is on decolonization. Going back to these two sources illustrates the exact meaning of the term.

Genius, womanhood and the statistical imaginary : 1890s heredity theory in the British social novel

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Lacan, Foucault, and the 'Crisis of the Subject': Revisionist Reflections on Phenomenology and Post-structuralism

Abstract: This article offers a revisionist interpretation of the relationship between phenomenology and post-structuralism through an analysis of the post-structuralists most influential at philosophy’s intersection with the ‘psy’ professions: Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. French structuralists and post-structuralists sharply criticized subjectivity as a domain of study (the ‘primacy of consciousness’) and notions of the ‘autonomous subject,’ arguing instead for the determining role of language and other semiotic systems. I discuss Heidegger’s role as a ‘vanishing mediator,’ an influence on both phenomenology and post-structuralism whose own focus on forms of being (the ontological dimension) undermines this assumed opposition. I discuss the relevance for phenomenology of Foucault’s ‘epistemes’ (in Order of Things ) and of Lacan’s registers of Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real. Finally, I consider ways in which Foucault (in Discipline and Punish ) and Lacan (on ethics and the ‘psychoanalytic act’) seem to accept elements of the traditional notion of the subject, including forms of freedom and responsibility, and the possibility of self-reflection.

Geographical Indications: The Promise, Perils and Politics of Protecting Place-Based Products

Abstract: We begin by explaining what a geographical indication (GI) is, by situating the term historically and explaining the way it differs in important ways from other forms of intellectual property (IP). We then discuss the political and economic conditions under which GIs have attracted new interest from a diverse group of international actors. We suggest that a certain ‘social imaginary’ (Castoriadis 1987, 1997; Gaonkar 2002; Maza 2005; Taylor 2004; Touraine 1981; Wagner 2012; Zavela 1992) of a harmonious community with a naturalized relationship to a territory and its resources is fostered by the use of GIs. Those who are encouraged to develop GIs come to understand this as a strategy of legitimation, both for claiming economic revenues and for asserting cultural identity. These rhetorical forms are neither true, nor necessarily false, we suggest, but the deployment of such strategies may bring benefits in some regions while undermining sustainable development objectives in others. We show how such marketing strategies may have unintended social consequences and could give rise to unexpected social disputes, as well as contests over the proper scale for marking the provenance of goods described in cultural terms. While holding social appeal for framing development aspirations in some regions, this social imaginary obscures important social complexities in contexts where tradition and indigeneity are contested terms through which different social groups attempt to maintain or to assert gains in status, income and opportunity, as the following chapter, focused on South African rooibos, will attest.

Precarious World: Rethinking Global Fiction in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract: Through a reading of Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this essay outlines a theory of critical global fiction: literary works that contest the forces inhibiting global understanding and advance international coalitions through this struggle itself. The question is not whether a given being is living or not, nor whether the being in question has the status of a "person"; it is, rather, whether the social conditions of persistence and flourishing are or are not possible. --Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? On 13 February 2013 US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta introduced the Distinguished Warfare Medal. The medal would honour those military technicians carrying out and defending against cyberattacks and directing unmanned aerial vehicles, or "drones." Panetta, a former CIA director, emphasized that he had seen these "modern tools" change the "way wars are fought" throughout his tenures at Langley and the Pentagon. "This award," he added, "recognizes the reality of the kind of technological warfare that we are engaged in in the twenty-first century." The Distinguished Warfare Medal would rank higher than the Bronze Star but lower than the Silver Star, and it faced almost immediate criticism. Veterans' organizations argued that the award should not outrank combat medals. Critics of drone strikes characterized the medal as a way to institutionalize permanent war, denouncing it as a "Nintendo medal" or "drone medal." Two months later, Chuck Hagel, Panetta's successor, cancelled the medal. In a brief memo, Hagel announced that he would be replacing it with a "distinguishing device" in order to reserve military medals for "those Service members who incur the physical risk and hardship of combat, [...] are wounded in combat, or as a result of combat give their last full measure for our Nation." American military medals are, as Hagel suggests, less about what is achieved than what is risked along the way. Some soldiers are faced with a greater likelihood of injury or death than others. This is the logic that informs the hierarchy of military medals. And yet politicians and policymakers are disinclined to recognize non-American life in the same way; they refuse to see Afghan and Pakistani lives--the chief targets of these drone strikes--according to the conditions that sustain or endanger those lives. With the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and PATRIOT Act still in effect and no end in sight to the decade-old War on Terror, it is critical that we understand the way in which war circumscribes our ability to recognize the lives of others. Literature is one channel through which we might learn to think otherwise. In the last twenty years, the so-called "transnational turn" in literary studies has led many critics to analyze national traditions in relation to global currents of culture and finance. And more recently, scholars are beginning to theorize a global literature that goes beyond the discourses of transnationalism and canonical world literature. These scholars consider how literary works endeavour to transcend national boundaries and imagine global community. Literature can, they argue, lend narrative structure to an emerging global imaginary. But this body of work tends to focus more on a future coming-together than the ongoing warfare, inhumane detainment, and belligerent nationalism that block this imagined future. Through a reading of Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I thus aim to outline what could be called "critical global fiction": literary works that contest the forces inhibiting global understanding and build international coalitions through this struggle itself. This literature is founded on the idea that life is not bounded and isolated but always conditioned by one's material and social surroundings. The issue then becomes, as Judith Butler notes, "whether the social conditions of persistence and flourishing are or are not possible" and why (Frames 20). …

Us or Them? Social Representations and Imaginaries of the Other in Venezuela

Abstract: Please address all correspondence to: Dr Mireya Lozada, Instituto de Psicologia, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela. (email mireyaloza@gmail.com) Papers on Social Representations Volume 23, pages 21.1-21.16 (2014) Peer Reviewed Online Journal ISSN 1021-5573 © 2014 The Authors [http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/psr/] Us or Them? Social Representations and Imaginaries of the Other in Venezuela MIREYA LOZADA Universidad Central de Venezuela Polarisation, which seems to have established itself and spread worldwide as a mechanism for power and social control, has become more acute in Latin America, a region of long standing socioeconomic and political conflicts. In Venezuela, in the context of the “Bolivarian revolution”, although political confrontation has encouraged social participation processes, it has also led to an acute social polarization and to controversial representations held in the imaginary of the enemy-Other, which generate rivalries and struggles between opposing groups, in a climate of emotional exacerbation, mistrust and collective fear. In this context, marked by polarisation and intergroup violence, there is a progressive fracture of symbolic practices, which hinders consensus, generating antagonistic relationships in a permanent struggle for positions of real or symbolic power. From the experience of research developed during the 2002-2013 period at the Universidad Central of Venezuela, and the experience derived from programs of mediation and psychosocial attention developed with different political groups, some lines of problematisation arise that I will set forth here. The article deals with the triad: polarisation, representation and social imaginaries, focusing on the controversial representations that emerge in a context marked by sociopolitical conflict.