Decolonizing my hair,unshackling my curls: an autoethnography on what makes my natural hair journey a Black feminist statement

ABSTRACT

There is unquestionably a buzz in US Black women’s communities about a trending “natural” phenomenon. Sales of chemical relaxers (sometimes dubbed “creamy crack” among the US Black community) have dropped 34 percent since 2009, while sales of “natural” hair care products that promise to non-chemically enhance or beautify “natural” curls are up exponentially. Corresponding to the rise in sales of “natural” hair care products are beauty blogs, YouTube instructional videos and supportive social groups—such as “natural hair” meet-ups, which have organically emerged for, and been mostly created by, Black women as a tool to support and nurture women as they take this journey. In this article, I use Black feminist P.H. Collins’s work because her understanding of the relationship between knowledge, consciousness and empowerment provides a framework or point of departure for grasping my own lived experience of going “natural” with regards to modes of oppression and methods of resistance.     

When is brokerage negatively associated with economic benefits? Ethnic diversity,competition, and common-pool resources

There is a growing body of literature positively linking dimensions of social capital to economic benefits. Yet recent research also points to a potential “dark side” of social capital, where over-embeddedness in networks and the pressures associated with brokerage are hypothesized to constrain actors, having a negative effect on economic outcomes. This dichotomy suggests that context is important, yet the overwhelming majority of existing empirical evidence stems from socially homogenous populations in corporate and organizational settings, limiting a broader understanding of when and how context matters. We advance this discourse to a socially fragmented, ethnically diverse common-pool resource system where information is highly valuable and competition is fierce. Merging several unique datasets from Hawaii's pelagic tuna fishery, we find that network prominence, i.e., being well connected locally, has a significant, positive effect on economic productivity. In contrast, we find that brokerage, defined here as ties that bridge either structurally distinct or ethnically distinct groups, has a significant, negative effect. Taken together, our results provide empirical support to widespread claims of the value of information access in common-pool resource systems, yet suggest that in ethnically diverse, competitive environments, brokers may be penalized for sharing information across social divides. Our results thus contribute to an emerging theory on the fragile nature of brokerage that recognizes its potential perils and the importance of context.     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

水工美学的理论框架

人文水利要解决的是水与文化、水利与人的关系问题。水工美学的研究对象是山、水、水工建筑物的序结构,是美学四载体形、光、与声、色的最优配置。我们应以诗心、书骨、画眼、园趣、乐感、文蕴、哲理去建构水工美学。     

英国马克思主义美学在中国的译介与研究

目前,中国学术界对英国马克思主义美学著作的译介与研究存在着不均衡的局面,即译介正在走向繁荣,而研究却相对薄弱。本文认为,在英国马克思主义美学著作的译介和研究过程中还存在探讨不够深入、留有空白领域、忽视方法论的研究与转换等问题,今后应予以修正与完善。     

中国瓷器审美论略

中国瓷器是中国陶瓷史上最重要的篇章。审视中国瓷器的发展历史沿革,按其自身的文化脉络,至今仍然同人民生活密切结合,并维系着中华民族精神和审美情趣。     

西方机械论自然观兴衰之省察

机械论自然观渊源于古希腊的原子论,肇始于文艺复兴时期,勃兴于近代科学革命中,19世纪后半叶受到挑战,20世纪初渐趋衰微,在西方思想史乃至世界思想史上居于统治地位有年,其成就骄人其缺陋也尖锐。由它所产生的并反过来支持它的主客二分论形上学思维也与它一样命运波舛,成为被指摘的现代生态环境危机的深层思想根源。     

论黑格尔艺术美定性的伦理内涵

黑格尔的“美就是理念的感性显现”这一美学论断本身包含了艺术美的定性过程。理念是真是美也是善,要符合道德的要求。因此,艺术美的定性也必然地显示出深刻的伦理内涵。黑格尔在理想的定性中对这一问题进行了辩证的阐述。理想的定性,单就它本身来看,表现为“神性—伦理”的演化,也就是伦理内涵的演化;就动作或情节来看,表现为伦理实体在“情况—情境—情节”,伦理内涵表现为这一过程中发生的分化、冲突及其艺术价值。黑格尔艺术美定性的伦理内涵昭示了艺术的伦理道德价值,这在当前伦理观念发现剧烈变化、艺术创作中的伦理道德底线一再下降的时期,无疑具有很好的现实意义。     

Vulnerabilities and risks in population and environment studies

In the study of risks , different sciences use the same category in different ways, each related to its own ontological assumptions. But many of these fields communicate very little with one another. This article seeks to approximate two of these areas of study that have shown similar concerns and that can mutually strengthen one another, namely, geography and demography. Geography was one of the first disciplines to include risk in its environmental dimension and has had broad experience in simultaneously focusing on social and natural dynamics. Demography, on the other hand, faces greater difficulties because only recently has it incorporated the environmental dimension into its scientific scope. Both have brought the concept of vulnerability into their conceptual framework as complementary to that of risk. Geographers understand vulnerability as a more symbiotic form of the relationship between society and nature, whereas demographers give it a strong socioeconomic component. In this regard, the conceptual discussion on risks and vulnerabilities, in its attempt at approximating these two fields, is a way of conceptually advancing and strengthening the different approaches to empirical work, especially in population–environment studies which is the common ground for the dialogue between the two disciplines.

论李泽厚的实践美学

李泽厚的实践美学大体上可以分为三个时期:20世纪50—60年代前期为萌芽和初步形成时期;70年代末—80年代前期为发展完善时期;80年代后期至今为深入时期。对实践美学的主要概念和命题,如主体性、积淀、自然的人化、内在自然的人化、新感性、人的自然化等进行梳理及对实践美学的形成、发展和深化过程的知识社会学研究,不仅可以使我们更清晰地把握实践美学作为一种学术理论逐渐形成和发展的历史过程,同时也可以使我们对中国的现代性进程研究多了一个视角———一个现代美学学术史的视角。李泽厚对美学的研究从来不是空中楼阁,不是形而上的纯粹思辨,他的所有的问题都植根于现实生活并力图在此基础上为中国甚至整个人类、为每个个体幸福生活寻找出一个方向。李泽厚的实践美学不仅从美学上提出了一系列有价值的命题和学说,而对中国的现代性启蒙产生了重要作用并且必将对新世纪中国社会的精神文化建设发挥重要作用。