World Music,nation and postcolonialism

Recent scholarship on representational politics in popular music tends to dwell on the macropolitical entailments of contradictory desires acted out through the consumerization of culture within the globalized circuitry of supranational capitalism. This article takes a micropolitical look at what salsa means for working-class Puerto Ricans in the colonial diaspora, positing salsa as a musical culture that fuels, and is fuelled by, the organic intelligence of its practitioners. Comparatively analysing the performative content and contexts of two albums produced at the symbolic juncture of the Quincentennial (1992) – Willie Colón's Hecho in Puerto Rico and Ruben Blades' Amor y Control – and sharing an auto-ethnographical account of experiences with salsa music in the Puerto Rican colonial diaspora, this article explores the cultural politics obtained between mainstream appropriations of Latin musical cultures and salsa within the working-class communities who created it. Thus shifting the critical lens from above to below, the most salient concerns become the ethical dimensions of subaltern (kin)aesthetics and knowledges, which can be charted alongside the overt rejection of consumerist assimilation, the conscious racialization of cultural agency and other articulations of liberatory desire.     

Au-delà de la nation culturelle,l'internationalisme civique

Cette contribution part de l'idée que le nationalisme est autant une invention internationale dont les origines positives remontent à la conception culturelle des nationalités du wilsonisme, qu'une dynamique interne. Elle réfléchit à deux modalités du nationalisme international, le postnationalisme et le nationalisme à distance qui, a priori, mettent en scène – et se réclament de – deux types de cultures différents: civique d'une part, ethnolinguistique d'autre part. L'auteur postule cependant que le postnationalisme ne peut pas ignorer l'incarnation nationale au profit de principes supranationaux abstraits, et que le nationalisme à distance ne se résume pas à une forme déterritorialisée du nationalisme culturel classique. Les deux modèles doivent être nuancés et ne sont convaincants que dans l'assomption d'une interaction entre les ingrédients de la culture civique, démocratique et ceux de la culture ethnolinguistique.     

Rethinking the nation and international relations: The space of nation states

Efforts to move sociology beyond the nation state and international relations theory have both been plagued by several limitations and dualisms. Recent research has begun to find ways beyond the problems by turning to Pierre Bourdieu's relational conception of social structure and practice. Yet one specific relational structure forming a key part of the puzzle has been neglected or merely implicitly assumed so far: the space of nation states. After clarifying the structural-constructivist nature of this concept, we aim to specify it by constructing an empirical model of the contemporary space of nation states using a specially compiled dataset and tools of geometric data analysis. The analysis reveals the distribution of powers on the world scene, and more specifically, the uneven possession of two varieties of “meta-capital” understood as capacities to regulate the value and exchangeability of certain capitals and to decree what even defines a legitimate “state”. We argue that the nation state, which is accurately understood as a contingent construct and well-founded fiction from a Bourdieusian viewpoint, should not be excluded when analyzing the expression and reproduction of contemporary global power relations.     

Uniting the nation? disability,stem cells,and the australian media

In this article, the 2002 Australian debate regarding embryonic stem cells is examined. This shows the importance of an analysis of the media to understanding how disability is constructed in discourses of nationhood and biotechnology. Media representation of disability—for instance, signifying disability as catastrophe—is seen as crucial in securing access to a variety of biotechnologies, such as embryonic stem cells. Analysis of such media moments shows a structure of privileged and excluded voices in debates regarding disability and biotechnology. The diversity of voices in the Australian community regarding disability is not represented in a range of media, nor are people with disability quoted as experts on disability. A recognition of the media's construction of disability must be matched by a commitment to disability as part of a truly civil society. It is only in this way that we will have biotechnologies, and diverse cultural and media representations that meet the requirements of the international disability rights movement motto of 'nothing about us without us', recently emphasized in the Disabled Peoples' International Europe's 2000 statement on biotechnology.     

A lesbian-feminist journey through queer nation

This article is an auto-ethnographical review of the political experiences and literary career of one of the early lesbian feminist critics and theorists. It poses the question: what does it mean to be shaped by one theoretical and political discourse (Lesbian Feminism) and then thrust by historical change into another (Queer Theory)? With the author's life and work as a frame and exemplar, it illustrates the development of lesbian feminist thought. Ultimately, it argues that the insights and values of Lesbian Feminism should not be suppressed by those of Queer Theory, and calls upon lesbian feminists to re-insert themselves into current scholarly and theoretical debates.     

Constructing the nation: Ethnicity,race, modernity and citizenship in early Indonesian thought

This article examines the ways in which some early twentieth-century Indonesian thinkers conceptualised the state they had so recently imagined, and particularly how they attacked the vast problem of accommodating ethnic difference within the framework of that new state. Notwithstanding the highly promising beginnings of Indonesian self-appreciation in the early twentieth century and an extraordinarily successful cooptation and, as necessary, subjugation of local and regional expressions of ethnicity to the notion of a united Indonesia, there developed at the same time the new and strange concept of an ‘Indonesian race’. That concept represented a regressive reluctance to dispense completely with pre-modern notions of culture and belonging, and created a damaging feature of the understanding of Indonesian citizenship that endures to this day.     

Culture and community: drink and soft drugs in Hebridean youth culture

This paper discusses the way in which ideas about deviance and thus moral judgements are ultimately grounded within native culture. Through focusing on underage drinking and soft drug use in the Western Isles of Scotland an analysis is presented which seeks to unfold the relationship between tradition, morality and belonging.     

Romancing the nation,effacing history: reading Kenya through patriotic choral music

This article looks at music as one of the channels used by oppressive regimes to persuade the public to pledge loyalty to the nation and government of the day while at the same time blinding citizens from acknowledging the social, economic and political realities on the ground. Music composed, performed and accompanied by dance and visual images, and subsequently broadcast through different media channels, can be effective in achieving this mission. This article examines the song Tuishangilie Kenya (1984, revised 2012) as an example of the way music and performance in the Kenyan context become tools to efface substantial historical realities in order to project an imagined vision of a united nation. This article draws on Stuart Hall’s argument that music channelled through mass media can instil a sense of patriotism and national consciousness, and Nicholas Cook’s analysis of music in television commercials, to argue that the 2012 remaking of Tuishangilie Kenya provides a potential avenue for constructing a kind of double meaning, one overtly intended and one subverted at the end. Through an analysis of the song’s lyrical, musical and visual parameters I demonstrate how the audience is “hoodwinked” but how propaganda can backfire.     

Foster care in India: An exploratory survey of the community perceptions and prospects for implementation of foster care in a developing nation: A study in Udaipur,Rajasthan, India

This study was conducted in order to assess the prospects for implementing foster care as an alternative to the dominant system of institutional care available to orphaned and abandoned children in India. 653 families in urban Udaipur participated in a mixed-methods based assessment of receptivity to foster and adoptive care. The majority of those who responded reported receptivity to the idea of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. However, analyses demonstrated that respondents also perceived barriers to implementing systematic foster care, particularly with regard to family recruitment due to problems securing family and community support for participation. The results are discussed in light of governmental calls for non-governmental organization and other stakeholders to institute alternatives to foster and adoptive care. The results of this study have applied significance for organizations and practitioners seeking to implement care alternatives for orphan and abandoned children in India.     

World revolution or socialism,community by community,in the Anthropocene?

ABSTRACT

The idea of a Fifth International has been around for some time and the historical record is not encouraging. We have all been wrestling with the contradictions the Left faces. The transnational capitalist class has taken setbacks in its stride, while the Left flounders almost everywhere. No communist revolution has resulted in the capture of power by the working class. Now we are all confronted by a new, rapidly unfolding ecological crisis, the Anthropocene. I argue that the most effective response is to exit rather than attempt to overthrow capitalism and the hierarchical state by international revolution. Socialists in positions of authority in state institutions and capitalist enterprises can facilitate this process by enacting legislation that helps people to transition to new smaller-scale non-statist social units, such as producer-consumer co-operatives producing their own food and other essential services over time. Mobilizing the ideas of degrowth, anarching, and consumer-producer cooperatives in the digital age, I argue that under Anthropocene conditions democratic socialism is best constructed from the bottom up, community by community, networked in mutually nurturing relationships.