The Imaginary

About: The Imaginary is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4807 publications have been published within this topic receiving 87663 citations.

¿Enemigos o colegas? El 15M y la hipótesis Podemos

Abstract: Through an ethnography and participant observation in Madrid, Malaga and Cordoba about 15M (since 2011) and Podemos (since 2014) the article analyzes the tensions that cross the attempted to take the indignant movement to political institutions. We show that these tensions are understood from the place and the meaning of consensus in the movement of the indignados, partially hidden by the criticism of the lack of effectiveness of the movement and its refusal to adopt a political strategy based on the institutional representation. Through consensus, the 15M unveils, besides the concept of Multitude to which was primarily associated, an irrepresentable imaginary of a society of equals. If we understand the consensus as the key element of indignados’ political significance, we wonder how the hegemonic translation proposed by Podemos could be claimed from that imaginary.

African diaspora and colombian popular music in the twentieth century

Abstract: In this paper I argue that the concept of disapora is problematic insofar as it implies a process of traffic outwards from an origin point (usually seen as geographical, cultural and/or "racial"). This origin is often seen as being a key to the definition of diaspora--without it, the concept descends into generalized incoherence (Brubaker 2005). I want to argue for the continued usefulness of a concept of diaspora, in which the "origin" is understood as a space of imagination (which is not to say that it is imaginary, although it may also be that) and in which the connections between the "outlying" points of the diaspora are as important, or more so, than the connections between the outliers and the origin. Analytically speaking, diaspora has to be distanced from simple concerns with uni-directional outward dispersals from a single origin point (which may also carry certain masculinist connotations). Specifically, I think the concept of diaspora points at a kind of cultural continuity but one where "cultural continuity appears as the mode of cultural change" (Sahlins 1993, 19). For theorists such as Hall and Gilroy, diaspora serves as an antidote to what Gilroy calls "camp thinking" and its associated essentialism: diasporic identities are "creolized, syncretized, hybridized and chronically impure cultural forms" (Gilroy 2000, 129). This is an important perspective, which is both analytic and descriptive: the analytic term refers to the everyday phenomenon of identities as they exist in the world. But the emphasis on hybridization runs the risk of sidelining continuities. Hall is right to say that the rich cultural roots from Asian and African aesthetic traditions that feed U.K. black experience are, in a diasporic context "re-experienced through the categories of the present" (Hall 1996, 448), but this does not entirely capture the sense of continuity that is often accorded those roots by the people who are interpreting their own lives. For Brubaker (2005), diaspora as "thing" does not really exist as an analytic concept; instead the analytic term should be used in adjectival form to refer to the phenomenon of the diasporic stance or attitude adopted by people who seek to maintain or create identities that refer to a homeland. This is also important because it reflects the notion of cultural continuity or sameness, which may persist alongside (or rather because of--in the sense of mutually constituting) cultural change. The point about diaspora as an analytic concept is that it reflects that continuity, both in terms of an insider perspective of people who (as one might expect) interpret cultural change in a selective and appropriative way, and in terms of grasping that continuity as something that, partly as a result of these interpretations, creates a real cultural complex of interconnections. Tradition is a term that Gilroy deconstructs fairly comprehensively, but, rather in passing, he gives it some residual room that I think is worth repeating here: [I]t may make sense to try to reserve the idea of tradition for the nameless, evasive, minimal qualities that make these diaspora conversations possible ... as a way to speak about the apparently magical processes of connectedness that arise as much from the transformation of Africa by disapora cultures as from the affiliation of diaspora cultures to Africa and the traces of Africa that those diaspora cultures enclose. (Gilroy 1993, 199) I think the very concept of diaspora should refer to what Gilroy admits as tradition here: rather than conceiving of a tension between routes and roots, the roots constitute the possibility of existence of routes. As the history of Colombian popular music that I will present here indicates, musical processes are characterized by a seiles of multilateral exchanges, which are dynamic and often unpredictable. However, these exchanges are always being read and interpreted in specific ways, by different sets of audiences and commentators, who are interested in constructing certain narratives, often ones in which origins play an important role. …

Towards Different Conversations about the Internationalization of Higher education/Vers Des Conversations Différentes Au Sujet De L'internationalisation De L'enseignement Supérieur

Abstract: The acceleration of institutional commitments to "internationalize" higher education over the past few decades has resulted in a pressing need for reflection on the practice, pedagogy, and study of this work A decade after offering her widely cited definition of the term,1 Jane Knight (2014) lamented, "internationalization has become a catch-all phrase used to describe anything and everything remotely linked to the global, intercultural or international dimensions of higher education and is thus losing its way" (p 76, emphasis added) In response to this identity crisis of internationalization, Knight proposes, however, not to revise the definition of the term, but rather to focus on examining "the fundamental values underpinning it" (p 76)In this article, we respond to Knight's call (and others', eg, Tarc, Clark, & Varpalotai, 2013; de Wit, 2014; Madge, Raghuram & Noxolo, 2015) to rethink the "fundamentals" of internationalization by mapping the landscape of its existing and potential articulations This approach is also motivated by concerns that a failure to examine the less celebratory elements of internationalization may contribute to the reproduction of harmful patterns of economic and epistemological dominance on a global scale (see Shultz, 2015) Although a growing number of scholars have raised ethical questions about the theory and practice of internationalization (eg, Adnett, 2010; Naidoo, 2010; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Suspitsyna, 2015), there remains a widespread consensus about its positive benefits and a reluctance to engage with the more difficult and unsettling paradoxes and challenges that arise in its enactment (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011; Teichler, 2010) In our efforts to initiate and facilitate substantive conversations around these complex and difficult issues with other scholars and practitioners, we also realized that there is a dearth of shared vocabularies and frameworks that would allow us to do so We further found, when compiling undergraduate and graduate syllabi for courses in this area, that there is a need for more accessible yet conceptually rigorous texts in this areaBased on these experiences as well as a detailed review of existing scholarship, this paper brings into conversation diverse approaches to internationalization in an effort to enable students, scholars, and practitioners alike to engage in more collective, self-reflexive examinations of the challenges involved in the internationalization of higher education Specifically, we draw on decolonial scholarship to suggest that most institutional internationalization efforts operate from within a dominant global imaginary that tends to naturalize existing racial hierarchies and economic inequities in the realm of education and beyond This imaginary acts as a structuring frame that legitimizes certain perspectives and delegitimizes others Using social cartography (Andreotti, Stein, Pashby & Nicholson, 2016; Paulston, 2000), we consider how four articulations of internationalization relate to this imaginary by tracing their situated histories, orientations, and assumptionsWe begin this paper by introducing the concept of the dominant global imaginary, including its modern/colonial origins and its contested but enduring ordering logics Next we detail our social cartography of internationalization, and provide an illustration of a higher education initiative (ie, policy, program, or project) that exemplifies the goals, driving motivations, and educational aims of each articulation, even as we acknowledge that most practices and policies are a contingent assemblage of multiple articulations operating at once We then consider different possible readings of this cartography, and finally consider how cartographies can facilitate new kinds of conversations about internationalization that might bring us to the edges of the dominant global imaginaryThe Dominant Global ImaginaryThe term "social imaginary" refers broadly to the organizing structure of shared understanding that makes legible or illegible certain relationships and practices within a given community (Taylor, 2002) …