Cultural Politics

To contribute to studies of contemporary anti-fascism, the goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the governmental, corporate and activist institutions and tactics that aim to resist the far-right mobilization and recruitment processes. Focusing on the United States, this chapter highlights efforts by actors within the political sphere (e.g. the American State’s repressive and judicial apparatuses), the economic sphere (e.g. the corporate news, entertainment and high-tech industries) and civic sphere (e.g. Left anti-fascist activism) to resist the far right. While efforts by State and corporate actors to take on and take down white supremacist individuals and hate groups are positive and needed, it is important to consider the political possibilities and limits of these challenges to the far right.Racial capitalism and a largely white ruling class persists in the United States, and so the institutional sources and practices of far-right resistance must be critically examined with regard to that social context (Burden-Stelly 2020; Issar 2020; Rahman 2020; Roediger 2017, 2019; Taylor 2016; Virdee 2019). To this end, the first section contextualizes American racial capitalism, the role of the State and political parties in propping up this system and the enduring power of a mostly white and male American ruling class. Following this, the second and third sections identify some U.S. State and corporate sources of opposition to the white supremacist far right, and assess the politics of these within a country whose ‘mainstream’ political and economic institutions have long been enmeshed with the system of racial capitalism and white supremacy. For a potentially emancipatory source of resistance to the far right and to the system of racial capitalism that emboldens it, the third section looks to broad-based left anti-fascist activism.

Current discourses about migrants and diaspora communities in Europe are often informed by a social worker's perspective and haunted by residual notions of supposedly pure and authentic cultures of origin. Between national entrenchment and transnational globalization, ethnic minorities are "imagined" as outsiders on a subnational level. The consequent othering of so-called "third" or "substate" cinemas by cultural producers, critics and policymakers is highly problematic. I therefore propose to reframe the discussion about such "minor" cinemas within a broader consideration of traveling cultures and global flows, of mobility between margin and center, between independent and mainstream productions, as well as crossovers between different genres and their reception across national boundaries.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

"Re-imagining 21st century education is ambitious, an ambition born of a sadness as I reflect on a book written 30 years ago.  And I shall of course fall far short of the ambition.  Just to reiterate again the question raised in the invitation to this talk.

What sort of educational vision and practice may be fostered to underpin a new world where people matter?

This is an age-old question.  Its origins is in the idea of the good society that has long been the object of philosophical and political debate. So, specifically we can ask, what sort of education does a vision of the good society demand?  And how should schools be organised to lay a foundation for the realisation of this vision?
"

In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, ”La Trahison des clercs”. (...) Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medi eval sense” to mean “scribe” — someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia, an“intellectual.” Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. The English translation, The Treason of the Intellectuals, sums it up neatly.
The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as men devoted to the life of the mind. (Roger Kimball)

The purpose of this article is to share some reflections on the long research experience I have developed with circus artists in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. These reflections revolve around the question of the contributions of social sciences, particularly anthropology, through research practices conducted in collaboration with artists. I am interested in rethinking the role of the researcher by understanding science from a conception in which commitment, collaboration, and participatory knowledge-building can potentiate research practices and, at the same time, create dilemmas and challenges. What are the theoretical-methodological implications of the roles we can play throughout a long research process? What are the tools we can use when conducting research on the fields we also participate in, socially and politically? How can we reconcile the time it takes to conduct academic work with the short amount of time it takes for events to unfold in real-time?

Године 1933. иницирана је обнова родне куће Вука Караџића у Тршићу. Паралелно са том иницијативом је предложена изградња Дома културе Вук Караџић у Лозници који би служио као центар културних и еманципаторских активности овог места. Околности под којима је дом подизан представљају веома добру студију случаја културне политике у време Краљевине Југославије. С друге стране, архитектура Дома културе се истиче у амбијенту својим модернистичким декоратитивизмом, што захтева подробнију анализу. На основу веома специфичног пројектантског рукописа, Дом културе се до сада приписивао архитекти Фрањи Урбану. Међутим, како Дом културе у Лозници до сада није био предмет подробнијег истраживања, овај рад би имао за циљ да покуша да на основу доступне архивске грађе у Архиву Југославије и Архиву у Шапцу коначно потврди Урбаново ауторство, као и ближе околности под којим је овај значајан пример међуратне архитектуре Лознице подигнут.

Independent India resolved to maximize the deployment of its own languages in public domains where English alone was in use. This paper considers the case of higher education in Bangla, and focuses on the introduction and dissemination of appropriate technical terms. In this context, the paper argues that the development of terminological carriers of modernity needs to be seen not as a spinoff of the general practices of development or modernization, but as central to it. It is argued here that the task of coming up with appropriate technical terms needs to be turned into an opportunity to decolonize our minds and our practices. The phrase ‘decolonize our minds’ in this abstract, of course, invokes later writings. The paper was presented in 1982, without any abstract.

After 1997, sustained public debate emerged in Hong Kong over a suite of cultural issues, yet international analyses of the handover predictably continue to emphasize economic forecasts as if disconnected from cultural politics. This examination problematizes what is culture in Hong Kong, beginning with the idea of the trope of the "cultural desert" as a "placism," to train analysis on cultural processes in political economic and local contexts. The place-based treatment takes a postcolonial perspective on contemporary cultural political economy through the West Kowloon Cultural District, the role of the municipal state in cultural policy, the rise of studio and contemporary arts in the city, and the heritage conservation movement, to demonstrate how Hong Kong's cultural turn reflects the tensions of the postcolonial era in the unprecedented time-space of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Winner of 2009 Outstanding Book Award, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.

In parks and cafes, homes and stadium stands, Cubans talk baseball. I contend that when they are analyzing and debating plays, games, teams, and athletes, Cubans are exchanging ideas not just about baseball but also about Cuba and cubanidad, or what it means to be Cuban. I explore the interconnections between baseball and Cuban identity. Suggesting that baseball is in many ways an apt metaphor for cubanidad, I point out aspects of the sport that resonate with Cuban social and political life: the perpetual tension between risk and security, the interplay between individual style and collective regulation, and the risky journeys undertaken with the intention, but not the guarantee, of returning home.

Chapter One is available below

In the wide geopolitical context encompassing local as well as regional and international dimensions, what the research does is provide a modest yet novel and required contribution to the analysis of the dynamic between cultural influence and cultural relations
across the South Mediterranean. It focuses on the impact of primarily British and French influence on cultural relations in four cities and their respective countries, namely Algiers in Algeria, Beirut in Lebanon, Casablanca as well as Rabat in Morocco and Valletta as the cultural capital of Malta. The research focuses on Britain and France because of the dominant imperial roles they held in the Mediterranean as well as beyond and the influence they still yield in cultural affairs on the basis of this past.

This paper examines Korea's cultural policy in tandem with the Korean Wave. It maps out the vital role of the Korean government in the Korean Wave phenomenon in the midst of the confrontations between neoliberal globalization and developmentalism. It investigates the ways in which Korea has developed the Korean Wave by analysing whether or not neoliberal ideologies have completely altered state developmentalism. More specifically, it studies the major characteristics of each administration between 1993 and 2016 in cultural policy, leading to the theorization of the nation-state in the context of the Korean Wave. Since studies of cultural policy assume that a wide range of policy tools are available to a government in promoting its cultural industries, it examines not only major cultural policy directions driven by each president, but also governmental practices executed at the level of the executive branch, in particular, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

This paper aims to analyze the contemporary works of the history of the indigenous people in Taiwan. On the one hand, the author examines the transformation of historical vicissitude from “oral tradition” to “written text” to show how “the past in the present” is re-memorized, presented, and constructed. On the other hand, the author explores the dialectical relationship between “myth” and “history.” As the title implies, this paper draws a theoretical response to the well-known book chapter, “When Myth Becomes History,” by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Not only the government departments have coordinated the writing, revising, and publishing projects of “history of the indigenous people in Taiwan” actively, but also the indigenous intellectuals have realized the importance of construction of history, which plays an inevitable role in the subject matter of racial identities and subjectivity when they went back to revive the tribes since the 1990s. Nevertheless, how “the past” is selected, created, and quoted when the government departments intervene tactfully in the projects of “history of the indigenous people in Taiwan” in “cultural politics” terms? A crucial point that the author wants to make concerns the de-contextualization, re-contextualization, and textualization of “oral tradition.” This triangulation has ruptured the tradition of socio-cultural meanings and their practices of the rituals and everyday life in tribes. Meanwhile, this rupture might “reconstruct” the cultural roots and ancestral depth of emotion of the indigenous people with an “origin” of myth or history. The author believes that the argument mentioned above is a dialectical process concerning with historical construction and cultural politics for the indigenous people in Taiwan.

I want to engage here with some of Suzuki’s most recent activity as
a public intellectual in order to consider his specific approach to and understanding of the nature of the political pedagogy and activism enacted by fi gures such as him. In focussing on the figure of the public intellectual, I engage the larger concerns of this volume by also raising broader and more general questions about intellectual activity in relation to the public today. I want to look in particular at Suzuki’s second autobiography, David Suzuki: An Autobiography (2006) and The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for Our
Sustainable Future (2010). These two books represent a small fraction of Suzuki’s activity as an intellectual over a long career that has seen him engage the public in multiple ways: as a newspaper columnist (for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star ); the host and originator of a long-running radio program (CBC’s weekly science program Quirks and Quarks, started in 1975); and host since 1979 of the celebrated (and globally disseminated) television program, The Nature of Things . Nevertheless, in these two career-capping books, one can find in condensed form Suzuki’s ongoing reflections on the activities of the public intellectual and the approaches, pathways, and mechanisms that one might use in order to help animate significant social and political change.

This course examines the sonic expressions of people's status, identity, rights, and duties as political subjects across multiple scales of place. We will consider the value of cultural advocacy in the public sector and social activism in the public sphere; and the importance of partnering with (non)governmental institutions, community organizations, and grassroots affiliates to advance one's musical art. While this class does not ignore the important critiques of cultural policy's hegemonic tendencies in modern states, it will take seriously the possibilities of political engagement, appeal, and protest in culture sectors that both encompass and exceed those states. Further, by taking a comparative, cross-cultural, and trans-national perspective, we will consider the myriad ways in which music (and expressive culture more generally) is (and is not) implicit to social contracts worldwide. Students will approach these issues through a range of ethnographic case studies, including ample examples of related performance practice, a broad survey of current (ethno)musicological scholarship, as well as popular commentary and critiques, and practical engagement with the politics of cultural production in Columbus, Ohio.

Social inclusion, communality and well-being. Evaluating the impact of art and culture in EU projects The aim of the article is to discuss how the impacts of cultural and artistic activities are discussed, conceptualized and evaluated in the documents of Finnish EU-funded arts and well-being projects. In the documents, artistic activities are claimed to promote social inclusion , participation and communality. During the last decades, EU has financed hundreds large-scale projects in Finland. For this article, we have analyzed the public documents and reports of three extensive EU-funded art projects. In the present situation, there are not yet unambiguous evaluation instruments for the impact of art on well-being. The analyzed projects aim at enhancing the well-being of individuals and communities both in work organizations and health and social services. They also aim at preventing social exclusion in everyday life and long term care. In the current Finnish society, profound social, political, economic and cultural changes shape the context for the work of EU projects. First, the projects are seen as a part of a social structural change called projectisation, which is characterized by a new market economy and a gradual decline of the welfare state. Second, the projects are addressed in the context of cultural policy, which currently takes a shape of social policy. Third, the changes for working life are ambiguous. On the one hand, the projects have offered a new field for cultural and art activities, which are used in organizations to improve the well-being of individuals and communities. On the other hand, they also create more surplus value and productivity for the organizations. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that the effects of arts and culture activities on communality and participation can be viewed as a continuum. In one end of the continuum, communality and participation, which are assisted by the projects' culture and health activities , may help individuals to get at least a grip on their lives. In the other end, communality and participation are the very conditions for any further effects of arts and culture. In conclusion, we argue that an extensive part of the vagueness in the evaluation is due to the concrete situation of the development projects where they lack methodological training in the evaluation of controversial effects in the interdisciplinary contexts and among multiple public interests.

Resumo: O moderno marca a virada do século XIX para o século XX no Brasil, construindo e se apropriando das cidadescomo espaços privilegiados para a encenação do poder. No período, os imaginários moderno e urbano se difundem na capital da república,inspirando e inflando a cultura.Especificamente pelo ofício das letras, as cidades foram tematizadas à exaustão, sintomatizando o novo período.Nos textos as cidadesdeixam de ser o cenário do que se conta e passam a ser contadas, ganhando feições, afetos e personalidade.E no fenômeno de conferir legibilidade e distinção às cidades, o Rio de Janeiro passou a ser representado como Cidade Maravilhosa. Pretendemos nesse trabalho lançar luzes sobre a associação entre o Rio de Janeiro e o termo Cidade Maravilhosa, buscando a origem do termo e refletindo sobre as formas escritas de representar o Rio de Janeiro. Palavras chave: Cidade Representação Imaginário Literatura Moderno

This article discusses the cultural circuits present in the space of “low” Amazon - the more consolidated área, in the region, in terms of their West- ern occupation - with reference to three population groups, here understood as social trajectories, which differ among themselves by their way of economic and cultural occupation of space. We observe as two of these social trajectories partici- pate more actively in cultural circuits, while the third shows up more reserved. We propose to interpret these relations of closeness and distance from the intersubjec- tive social experience that involves them.

Tomislav Longinovic extends the concept of translation of texts to the translation of political contexts: The politics and history of the Balkans, he argues, represent the "untranslatable" and "foreign" that can not be compared under any circumstances to the politics of the "western world". And yet, as Longinovic argues, similarities between American and Serbian behaviour against the perceived Islamic threat after September 11 and during the Kosovo war respectively, exist. These unacknowledged and "untranslated" similarities between politically unequal partners demonstrate the need for the translation of cultures and political contexts that open up spaces between cultures whilst keeping in mind the alterity of the foreign in translation.

У овом раду разматраћемо процес конституисања левичарски оријентисаног сегмента у пољу музике и културе у Краљевини Југославији концентрисаног око чланова и симпатизера КПЈ и сродних организација, као и активности које су спроводиле његове присталице. Указујући на кључне актере и догађаје који су доприносили јавном опредмећивању такозваног левог музичког фронта у југословенској средини фокусираћемо се на анализу следећих појава: 1. дискурса о музици у новом, бескласном друштву, као и 2. његових актуелизација у пракси. Циљ нам је да представимо програмске оквире културне политике КПЈ у области музике развијене у дијалогу ширег круга присталица левичарских идеја, као и покушаје њене институционализације. Осим тога, намера нам је да истакнемо историјски значај међуратног левог музичког фронта као важног исходишта музичке праксе након Другог светског рата.

For many contemporary media celebrities, the environment—and in particular, climate change—is the new black. One cursory gaze across the global media-scape confirms this: Leonardo DiCaprio has produced and starred in Before the Flood (2016) which tells the tales of his journey as the UN Ambassador of Peace to engage powerful leaders about climate change. This, of course, was preceded by his widely publicised Best Actor speech at the Oscars where he made an impassioned plea for the audience to be concerned about climate change, public procrastination and inequality. Olivia Munn, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessica Alba witness and ‘emote’ for audiences about the impacts of climate change across the world on ordinary people and ecologies in the television programme Years of Living Dangerously (2014). Mark Ruffalo writes a series of prominent columns about fracking, solar power and clear air and water in the Huffington Post, the Millennial ‘newspaper’ of record. Even ‘public intellectual’ celebrities such as Naomi Klein are getting in the act: She has starred in—along with her six-year old son—an online short film put together by the UK’s Guardian newspaper entitled Under the Surface that shows the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. For her, discussing her emotional responses to climate change and introducing her son in the film, worked as a way for her to ‘communicate in a visceral way, the intergenerational theft at the heart of this crisis’ (Klein, 2016). Environmental politics, with this celebritization and media-isation of climate change and other ecological issues, has gone spectacular. Celebrities, as our witnesses and muses, now speak very loudly for and about the environment in increasingly important ways that have impacts on what we know about Nature, how we feel about it and what we should do to ‘save’ it. In this era of global environmental change, environmental celebrities have positioned themselves as increasingly powerful and politicised meditators of our increasingly fraught human-environment relationship.

The United States has long grappled with the question of how to maintain an appropriate combination of religion and politics in the public sphere. The current electoral cycle is no different, as Presidential candidates attempt to negotiate both the political and religious landscapes. This essay introduces a special forum on rhetoric and religion in contemporary politics and touches on some recent instances of how religious differences have played out in the current political environment. Some of the issues discussed include the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Rick Santorum’s conception of the “war on religion,” and the controversy over contraceptives at religious institutions and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on a Georgetown law student.

Whilst the condition of a damaged ethical life has received due scholarly attention to date, only rarely is resistance to it conceived as an actual possibility with the potential of real effects on a macro-social scale. This is not just a curious lacuna in the literature. To ignore or miss concrete possibilities or even instances of resistance is to reinforce the apparent naturalness and inevitability of structures of injustice. The aim of this edited collection is to help address this epistemological neglect, exploring the multiplicity of motives, presuppositions, sites, ways, and consequences of acts of resistance. As shown in the ensuing contributions, resistance can be recalcitrant or transformative in its aims, discursive or physical in its means, and local or generalised in its loci. If there is a single argument that can be distilled, it is that the emergence of progressive resistance entails the incessant rational critique of so-styled ‘common sense’ and prevalent ethical claims–a process which could be called ‘the banality of good’. Contributors (in alphabetical order): Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Lilie Chouliaraki, Spiros Gangas, Richard Kearney, Alison Liebling, John O’Neill, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Justice Tankebe, Ezra Tessler, Sappho Xenakis.


Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

1. Roots, Rites, and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good: An Introduction
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

2. Values, Crisis, and Resistance: Prospects for Freedom Reconsidered
Spiros Gangas

3. Narcissism, Humanism, and the Revolutionary Character in Erich Fromm’s Work
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

4. Thinking after Terror: An Interreligious Challenge
Richard Kearney

5. Ecce Homo: The Political Theology of Good and Evil
John O’Neill

6. Resistance as Transformation
Andrea Mubi Brighenti

7. Acting on Vulnerable Others: Ethical Agency in Media Discourse
Lilie Chouliaraki

8. Sites of Resistance: Death Row Homepages and the Politics of Compassion
Ezra Tessler

9. Face to Face with Abidoral Queiroz: Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil
Nancy Scheper-Hughes

10. Resisting Submission? The Obstinacy of ‘Balkan’ Characteristics in Greece as Dissidence against ‘The West’
Sappho Xenakis

11. Legitimation and Resistance: Police Reform in the (Un)Making
Justice Tankebe

12. ‘Governmentality’ and Governing Corrections: Do Senior Managers Resist?
Alison Liebling

Internationale Zusammenarbeit ist im Kulturbetrieb und in der Kulturpolitik selbstverständlich. Kultureller Austausch muss auf Augenhöhe geschehen, um wirklich fruchtbar zu sein. Doch geschieht das? Sind es „faire“ Kooperationen?
Dr. Annika Hampel hat mit ihrer preisgekrönten Dissertation ein Themenfeld eröffnet, dass auch im deutschen Kulturbetrieb noch viel zu selten diskutiert wird. Hier gibt sie einen kurzen Einblick in ein sehr komplexes Thema.

Lässt sich die politische Problemlage unserer Zeit literarisch erfassen? Was ist die Rolle von Literatur im globalen Kapitalismus? Lässt sich ein dauerhafter Arbeitszusammenhang von Autorinnen und Autoren organisieren? Diesen Fragen widmete sich im April 2015 eine Schriftstellertagung unter dem Titel „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“, die im Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus stattfand. In Zentrum stand die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Literatur, Engagement und kapitalistischer Gesellschaft. Der Band „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“ zeichnet die Tagung dokumentarisch nach und präsentiert darüber hinaus aktuelle Statements der Beteiligten. Mit Beiträgen von Ann Cotten, Annett Gröschner, Joachim Helfer, Jan Loheit, Thomas Meinecke, Norbert Niemann, Helmut Peitsch, Monika Rinck, Kathrin Röggla, David Salomon, Stefan Schmitzer, Erasmus Schöfer, Ingo Schulze, Ingar Solty, Enno Stahl, Thomas Wagner, Michael Wildenhain und Raul Zelik.

European cultural policy is based on the exchange of artists. It has devoted decades to the objective of encouraging dialogue and enabling cooperative production; especially between the countries of the so-called 'Global North' and 'Global South'. Cultural policy makers and agents in Europe, such as those working in cultural institutions and at the ministries responsible for cultural relations, constantly stress their claims of a 'dialogue of equals'. However, if and how cultural cooperations really are in practice brought to life on equal terms is an open question.
Annika Hampel analyzes the working conditions of partnerships to understand how current artistic collaborations function, what structures and processes they involve, on what premises and within what frameworks the collaborators work, and what challenges they have to cope with. The foundation of her reflections are the experiences and insights of actors in cooperative projects who are responsible for the implementation of the goals of the European Cultural Policies in practice.
Annika Hampel uses five case studies, which offer insights across the spectrum of artistic cooperation, to display the wide range of Indo-German collaborations in the arts. From her analysis of the practical reality, Annika Hampel develops and proposes cultural and political measures to foster a new culture of international cooperation on an equal footing. The author shows how to minimize power relations, promote cultural diversity, and exploit the underused potential of cooperative work.

O campo cultural é tido usualmente como potencial crítico do status quo vigente. A revolução cultural de Maio de 1968 é um marco no combate às políticas culturais conservadoras na Europa. No entanto, como bem sabemos, é à escala dos territórios locais que a produção social de espaços de acção diferenciados e significativos, maior potencial permite gerar face às forças alienantes da desterritorialização global. Por outro lado, sabemos também que as práticas de cidadania e a diversidade cultural foram sendo negligenciadas em favor de lógicas mercantilistas e da competitividade entre “cidades marca”, na formatação de identidades e imaginários no seio de uma cultura financeira neoliberal. A economia criativa surgiu como novo paradigma da economia mundial, gerando conceitos que hoje ocupam o discurso político oficial sem se perceber concretamente os seus modelos de aplicação aos territórios. Há diversas razões para que este desvio se concretizasse nas sociedades contemporâneas. Uma delas prende-se certamente com a globalização enquanto sintoma de homogeneização e mercantilização da cultura. Mas também na ausente, ou débil, construção de políticas culturais locais, sem formulação de estratégias publicadas e debatidas. Todavia, esta deriva confronta-se hoje com reivindicações opostas: a Democracia Cultural, o Direito à Cidade, a Política dos Comuns, os Direitos Culturais, entre outras. Mas, como conceber estratégias artísticas, culturais e políticas que visem o desenvolvimento da Democracia e da Cidadania Cultural? Como revitalizar o quotidiano cultural das nossas cidades? De que modo afinal se cumpre a Constituição da República Portuguesa na efectivação da Democracia Participativa e dos Direitos Culturais?

A speculative examination of some manifestations of contemporary Horror through the lens of the Zombie; this article considers the relationship between Zombie Apocalypses, Zombies as agents (or not), and wider aspects of genre and theory including comic books and graphic novels, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.   

It surveys multimedia interest in zombies, mash-up novels, alternate universes, and the meetings of zombies with a range of other tropes in diverse narratives.

Full article online; please follow the link to read more.

Until 1993 there were conducted first excavations in what promised to be the site of one of the most important buildings of Petra, the stunning capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Its construction, whose initiation century BC, several changes, reconstructions and landslides along its more than five hundred years of operation. But despite this still unknown for certain functions for which it was designed and that, regardless of the construction elements, materials have been located just still less inscriptions that shed some light on a mystery that will try here exhibit various theories that enable closer to resolution.

Abstract: There is a common misconception about local government politics that for some reason it is supposed to be less ideological than national or international politics. But if by “ideological” we mean “based on values” there is no way that any act or field of politics could be deemed less ideological than another. When we decide to act or not, and when we choose between alternative actions, we always consider the options and pick what we conceive of as the best choice for the moment. Volition and the evaluation of alternatives are part of every rational (and free) action and hence, if we regard politics as action, or at least plans for action, all politics is based on values. The general aim of this study is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the problems of local democracy: both by emphasising the importance of ideological conscious¬ness even in local politics; and by trying to provide instruments that help to make actually existing ideological dimensions visible and easier to understand. Another aim of this study is therefore to say something about the connection between the democratic institutions in a representative democracy and the ideological beliefs of its representatives.
The study focuses on cultural politics in Swedish local government, with the prime motive for choosing this focus being that this policy area could be seen as somewhat of a symbol of the consensus spirit that traditionally has characterized local government in this country. A survey was sent out in the year 2000 to all the members of local committees responsible for culture in Sweden (close to 2,700 people). The results from this survey comprise the main data source for this study.
After having examined the ideological beliefs of these politicians, the conclusion of the study is that they are far less unanimous than they believe themselves to be. The party system, however, fails to reflect many of the key ideological dimensions that are essential in this policy area. How the municipalities choose to organize their committees is also important, while politicians in specialised committees for cultural affairs tend to be more protective about their sector; a result partly due to the fact that specialised committees attract certain groups of representatives who are more interested in cultural issues. In fact, social identity and personal experience from the field of responsibility are often more important in explaining which politicians have which ideological beliefs than party membership.Abstract: