Renewable energy transition under multiple colonialisms: passive revolution,fascism redux and utopian praxes

ABSTRACT

This essay outlines intermedia theory’s contribution to the emerging multiple colonialisms framework and argues that a socio-ecological reproduction feminist approach to the multiple colonialisms problematic is critically necessary for thinking through the contradictions of renewable energy transition. A multiple colonialisms framework needs to be a kind of utopian theorizing, I argue, just as any feminist renewable energy transition seeking to realize energy democracy and energy justice must create a utopian collective praxis that regenerates common-being and reproduces common wealth. Drawing on research on a network of petroleum-free subaltern feminist agricultural cooperatives in Medak, India, and on the creativity of their media practices, this article examines the social contradictions of energy democracy and just transition politics in a conjuncture defined by green passive revolution and fascism redux. The essay proposes the concepts of ‘subaltern counter-environments’ and ‘molecular media’ to decolonize energy democracy and just transition discourse and to articulate the importance of an autonomous domain of subaltern politics for a degrowth strategy of regenerative delinking through and against the state. Molecular media created by the Feminist Energy Futures research collaboration at the University of Alberta seek to regenerate the bias of time in our contemporary intermedia ecology where the bias of spectacularized and colonized space is otherwise dominant so that regenerative delinking strategies can endure social contradictions they embody through subaltern counter-environments they can create.     

马克思哲学变革的精神实质及其当代意义

马克思的实践哲学不是如同亚里士多德、康德等哲学家那样在研究对象的意义上探讨人类行为的学说,而是在思想范式的意义上探讨理论与实践关系的学说。马克思哲学变革的精神实质在于:它不是对传统理论哲学问题的解决,而是消解了心/物、思维/存在的关系问题,转变了哲学的提问方式和问题域,实现了从理论哲学向实践哲学的范式转换。其当代意义在于:开启了现代西方哲学的思想主题,提供了解决生态危机的哲学基础,深化了公共领域问题的研究,推进了人的自由的实现和人性的完善,恢复了哲学的地位和尊严,促进了中国传统哲学的创造性转换。     

New social intervention technologies as a challenge in social work: IFSW Europe perspective

ABSTRACT

This study aims at analyzing the degree of training, use, and practice of the new technologies among the social work professionals in their work environment and at finding out their main reluctance or reservations to a more intensive use of ICTs in the performance of their tasks. For this purpose, a structured and closed questionnaire has been sent to the chairpeople of the professional organizations’ members of the International Federation of Social Workers Europe (IFSW Europe), which also includes Turkey and Israel. The reason for this choice lies in the fact that the representatives for the professional organizations have a privileged view on the situation of the profession from a global perspective and are the key informants on the current situation surrounding the social workers. This study allows us to know, among other results, that the success of ICTs among the professionals will depend on their ability to adapt to the specific professional nature of the social worker in the intervention domain. However, the uncertainty regarding the security of the personal data treatment, regarding the increase of the non included or paid work hours, and also, regarding the increase of professional stress are key factors explaining the reluctance of some professionals to a more intensive use of ICTs.     

对实践的批判性反思

任何一种理论要走向成熟都必须通过批判找到它的理论界限,任何一种理论当它被泛化时都需要通过批判彰显其理论的精神.以实践开启的理解马克思主义的新范式,到了需要反思的时候了.根据亚里士多德范畴分类的方法,可以把事物分为实体、实体属性两类,由此可从实践的主体、实践的客体、实践与理论、实践的合理性与不合理性四个方面对实践进行反思.个体的人是实践的主体、始点和本源,集体实践、阶级实践最终都可归结于个体实践,社会、生产力、生产关系不是实践的主体;理论和实践可以有相同的对象,在实践活动中人通过对象,实现人与自然、人与世界、自由与必然的统一;实践智慧与实践活动相互吁求,实践智慧指向本然的真,但理论理性却没能达到本然的真,由此导致了理论理性和实践智慧的对立;人是自然存在物和人是在世存在使人的实践存在不合理的可能性,而人的行为和意志的相反倾向性则使这一问题成为现实.     

The Case for Prefigurative Feminist Organizing

Contemporary feminist community organizing is not entirely consistent in practice. Drawing from current and historic examples, as well a feminist literature, this article examines tensions and contradictions between feminist ideas and praxis. The author suggests that contemporary feminist organizing ideas and practices adhere to masculinist models, and do not offer a liberatory and inclusive model for social change. Recommendations for a consistency between the public and private spheres, and processes and outcomes, are discussed.     

Grounding Twenty-first-Century Public Relations Praxis in Aristotelian Ethos

ABSTRACT

By grounding public relations praxis in Aristotelian ethos, practitioners can function as liaison officers with balanced perspectives, capable of co-creating meaning with both client organizations and their publics between whom experts are hired to facilitate mutually beneficial relationships. This approach locates persuasion at the nexus of speaker ethos in the public relations process. It allows practitioners to balance their commitment to the ethics of their profession with loyalty to clients, while empowering audiences (organizations and their publics) to function as the final arbiters of any courses of action proposed to them. Moreover, because the approach enables practitioners, based on their credible ethos, to participate in organizational decision-making, it has the potential to transfer their ethical worldview to client organizations. Ultimately, the central theoretical contribution of this essay is an alternative approach to public relations praxis founded on an analysis of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, arête, and eunoia.     

Modes of Cognitive Praxis in Transnational Alternative Policy Groups

Abstract

Transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) are networks and centres within and around which counter-hegemonic knowledge is produced and mobilized among subaltern communities and critical social movements. Based on in-depth interviews with practitioners at 16 TAPGs, this article presents eight modes of cognitive praxis and discusses how they appear in the work of alternative policy groups. The eight modes are not sealed off from each other, but overlap and interpenetrate. In combination, these modes of cognitive praxis strive to produce transformative knowledge concomitantly with knowledge-based transformation. The analysis evidences tracings of a double dialectic in the cognitive praxis of alternative policy groups: a dialectic of theory and practice, and one of dialogue. It is in a forward movement—fostering solidaristic dialogue among counterpublics in combination with the iterative integration of theory and practice—that alternative knowledge makes its indispensable contribution to counter-hegemony.     

Cultural studies as praxis: (making) an autobiographical case

This autobiographical essay ‘takes cultural studies personally’, drawing on experience, identity and the personal to indicate how and why the author is proponent of and is working on developing a model of cultural studies as social justice praxis despite the constraints academia in general and of the university as an institution in particular. The paper travels roughly from the author’s student and teacher days in Sierra Leone through his graduate student days in Canada to his current role as university teacher in the USA. He selectively concentrates on his experience as a teacher of literature (and African multi-role utilitarianism), education and cultural studies (using one of his cultural studies courses and students’ questions about the utility of cultural studies as example), his shifting and overlapping racial/ethnic identities (African/black) and the politics of identity, and his thoughts on the place of theory in cultural studies and a black approach to theory (black ambivalent elaboration) as contributory factors. While this account acts in its own way as an argument for conceptualizing cultural studies as praxis, the primary focus is more modestly on my own autobiographical account as a specific case. In fact, an autobiographical approach is employed precisely to be specific and in the attempt to avoid the pitfalls of over­generalization and the authority of authenticity.     

实践、经济实践到文化实践--兼论马克思主义经济实践的本质

在马克思主义哲学中,马克思不但贯彻了实践的自由品质,而且还找到了实践的最基本的现实形式--经济活动.通过对马克思主义经济实践内涵的分析表明,它既不同于形而上学的"实践"概念,也不同于古典经济学源于"经济人"假设的"经济"概念,它是人类的基本生存方式,从属于文化的范畴.经济实践不仅仅满足人的需要,其最终目的是以物质的形式体现人的价值和目的.因此,经济实践中包含着文化实践的要求,文化实践实现着经济生活向人类的自由价值取向的超越.     

“新实践美学”的现代性批判

“新实践美学”是实践美学与后实践美学之争孕育出的一个由多家美学理论组成的美学流派。“新实践美学”在实质内容上并没有超出“旧实践美学”的理论思路和理论范式。“新实践美学”的理论思想具有西方美学在现代性发展行程中出现的诸种缺陷。