Introduction:Diversities of Sociological Traditions (original) (raw)
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Global mobilities: united by dividing and accelerating precarities
Migration and Development, 2019
This special issue was originally founded upon a symposium, 'Global migration in a changing UK', held on the 10th of May 2017, at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, discussing how the changing nature of global migration is shaping the local economy, culture and society of Manchester, an emerging global city within the UK. These discussions were set within the context of significant economic and political developments, such as the increasing neo-liberal public spending and policy choices of the UK government and the climate of 'Brexit'the UK decision to withdraw from the European Union, leading to UK political policy and public opinion clouded in fear and uncertainty. Global migration is currently a highly politicized issue (Porter & Russell, 2018) and the political context of the UK has led to a fall in migration numbers (Syal & O'Carroll, 2018), bucking global trends. The world-leading authority on global cities, Saskia Sassen the keynote speaker at the symposium, drew on her recent work on Expulsions (2016), demonstrating how the term migration actually conceals multiple forms of socioeconomic dislocation and predatory formations, whereby assemblages of knowledge, interests, and outcomes, lead to expulsions of people, social groups and livelihoods. The persistent effects of neo-liberalism lead to damaging consequences and vulnerabilities for migrants. The collection of papers here develops these themes by focussing upon the relationship between neo-liberalism, contemporary forms of migrant transnationalism and precarity, within a wider context than the city of Manchester. Definitions and discussions of transnationalism often distinguish between 'broad' and 'narrow' transnational social practices (Basch, Glick Schiller, & Szanton Blanc, 1994; Itzigsohn, Cabral, Hernandez Medina, & Vazquez, 1999), or transnationalism 'from above' and 'below' (Smith & Guarnizo, 1998), with the former referring to the transnational activities of global economic institutions and nation-states and the latter relating to networks of relationships between migrant populations and people and places within an original sending society. Studies of the migration-development nexus have focussed heavily upon narrow transnationalism, with many celebrating the progressive consequences of migrant transnationalism, in terms of both the social mobility of migrants and the 'development' of sending societies. Whilst it has been recently recognised, not least within the pages of this journal, that the relationship between migration and development is more complex and contradictory than these celebratory discourses suggest, there has been insufficient attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between broad and narrow transnationalism. Migrant social and transnational practices take place within, shape and are shaped by wider, broad,
Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization â By Janet M. Conway
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2009
Sociological theory has many faces. The overview of current books which are classified as theoretical allows us to distinguish two major types of theorizing. Some authors treat theory as the explanation of observed events and phenomena, attained by discovering general and universal mechanisms of social life represented by social laws. They answer 'why questions'. This is a rigid idea of a theory, patterned on the practice of some of the 'hard' natural sciences. But it is not the dominant approach. Today most famous and widely read theoretical contributions are of a different order. They aim at providing orientation in the chaos of social events and phenomena which surround us, by means of generalized diagnoses of social condition. These are not just concrete descriptions in common-sense terms, but generalized descriptions using special, more sophisticated and precise vocabulary,And they do not avoid value judgements, depicting visions of 'the good society', that sometimes border on new utopias. This brand of theorizing becomes particularly relevant in a time of rapid and fundamental social change, when not only ordinary people but sociologists stand baffled in view of the emerging new social world surrounding them and ask: where we are, where have we come from, and where we are going. We undoubtedly live in such a period. The awareness of the novelty and uniqueness of our epoch is rendered by the multiple terms now widely used in sociological discourse: postmodernity, late modernity, high modernity, second modernity, reflexive modernity, risk society, network society, information society, globalized society, and the most recent in this list -Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan society. For the common people and sociologists alike the question 'What is going on?' becomes more pressing than the question 'Why do these events happen?'. Hence the proliferation of 'diagnostic' rather than 'explanatory' theories, attempting to squeeze reality into some orderly conceptual framework, some manageable model that would give defined meaning to the perceived transformations and also promise a future, better world. The famous social theorists of our time -Jurgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Manuel Castells, Jean Baudrillard and others -have provided various generalized and axiologically tainted diagnoses of this sort (sometimes as a second track to their universal, explanatory models, e.g. Habermas's communication theory, Giddens's structuration theory etc.). Ulrich Beck joins their ranks with the two volumes under review, originally published in Germany and now available in English. I would suggest that they should be read in the reverse order of publication: Cosmopolitan Vision first, because it explicates the foundations of Beck's theory (generalized diagnosis), and Power in the Global Age after, because it provides more concrete applications of the theory, particularly to the domain of politics, both internal and international. In both books he extends and elaborates some ideas already hinted at in the earlier, well-known works on the 'risk society' and 'second modernity'. The reader who is acquainted with those will have a much easier task understanding the recent volumes. But the scope and ambition of the present project (with the third volume on Cosmopolitan Europe already announced) is incomparably larger. Beck's theoretical program is getting persistently enriched.
Identity Politics and the Third World
Academica Press, 2018
I also wish to thank the team at Academica Press for their promptness and ready support for the publication of this work. Critically analyzing Said's system of binary oppositions, which necessitates the fabrication of an 'other' to define the 'self', and Homi Bhabha's concept of postcolonial ambivalence, which forms the basis for a hybrid identity, the discourses of identity can be analyzed and their authenticity and applicability in postcolonial contexts can be questioned. preference to those narratives of identity fixation that are based on homogeneity, timelessness and popular belief. A perception of discursive identity is created out of traditional and inherited definitions and is often depictive of a sense of doubtless permanency and lack of transmutability. It is such definitions of identity that support global discourses about Americans and progress, Islam and terrorism, women and oppression, thirdworld cultures and backwardness, and so on. It must be noted however that identity in terms of discourse theory is not 'essentialist' without purpose and is more 'strategic and Identity is then a 'patchwork [that] lives no less from its seams and ruptures than from individual patches of social affiliation of which it is made up' (Meyer, 2001: 16). Identity is not only an attempt to negotiate conflicts without, but also to negotiate the conflicts that exist and erupt within. Further identity includes not only what one projects the 'self' as, but also what the 'other' perceives this 'self' to be. It is an 'open process of negotiation between the self-image that the individual conjures up of himself and the image that his partners in social interaction form of him in changing contexts' (15). 'know[ing] thyself' (Forgacs, 1988: 326); the inherent narcissistic impulse to superiority; and the Nietzschean 'will to power' (Nietzsche, 1967). The history of imperialism (colonial or economic), is driven by the reins of discursive practice and hegemonic control. Be it the imputed Darwinism of 'survival of the fittest' (Spencer, 2002: 444), the so-called civilizing mission that forms the 'white man's burden' (Kipling, 1954: 280), or the current popular/mass culture of cosmopolitanism, representation is never a 'nonpower laden discourse' (Kahn, 1995: 7). The broad understanding of identity refers to the location of one's 'self' in order to describe who and what one is. But this act of locating one's 'self' is not simple. It is underlined with an all-pervading sense of paradox and politics. 're-presenting' or presenting again, and representing or politically standing for. The act of politically "speaking for" as well as that of 're-presentation as in art or philosophy' includes a certain politics and arbitrariness and in both these aspects the act of representation becomes a function of power (Spivak, 1995: 28). 'third-world' may be euphemistically liberating but in the current scenario too, the hierarchies, imperialisms and the self/other dichotomies exist and govern the politics of identity. The term 'third-world' then occupies a significant space in the context of identity politics as it is evocative of subservient and regressive communities. It brings memories of the myths of oriental inferiority and the colonial 'mission civilisatrice' (Said, 1994a: 33) to the continuing western claim to supremacy. Thirdly, and on a slightly different plane, in the The common cultural and historical experience of the peoples of a nation is discursively employed by the means of 'stories, literature, popular culture and media' and together creates a shared imagination which manifests itself in the form of national identity (Barker 253). 'other' that national identity is determined against is the extranational and the international. It is ironic though that the extranational and the international both include the national to some extent or the other: the former in the sense of a default opposite, and the latter as a constitutive element. Whereas the creation of an extra-national identity is analogical with the While moving from the metaphor of the national to the extra-national, or the international, identity undergoes a change of scope and constitution. With colonial advancement identity and culture come to a space of interaction. The hegemonic discourse of identifying the west as a superior 'self' and the
The Protest Masks: Politics of Culture and Identity
Politics of Culture, Identity and Protest in North-East India, 2012
The thesis being proffered in this paper is that in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic terrain like India cultures (of tribes/castes/regions) act like individuals. They seek for recognition and assert their identity. In the absence of a legitimate response and acceptance of the identity of the culture (tribe/caste/region) in question there erupt protests and violence, or, conversion, as an outlet and as a renewed assertion and search for recognition of identity. This argument shall be elaborated with special reference to North East and the question of Dalit/Tribe conversion in particular. It is however applicable elsewhere. I Unmasking Protest: A Metaphor for Cultural Identity The approach, however, shall be more theoretical with reference to the happenings in the region providing a key to understand and read the cultural text emerging in the region. Prior to unmasking the politics of culture and identity behind the protests one needs to ask the meta question as to how these categories of assessment came into the scheme when it comes to assessing the Indian reality. The colonial legacy and the post-colonial situation accentuate certain allegiances to norms and paradigms that are implicitly accepted. These are deployed to read the civilizational heritage that has arrived at a crossroads of modernity replacing tradition. The trajectory of Indian modernity, ever since the encounter with European cultures, languages and religions, has been on the ascent in an ever inclusive spiral of reworking the past in new perspectives. The debates that revolved around Anglicization giving way to the debate on westernization and secularization have given supremacy to the present trend of seeing everything through the eyes of globalization. It is within the pervasiveness of western European, educational disciplines of sociology, politics, anthropology and ethnography that today we can afford to make sense of what has happened and is going to happen to our indigenous civilizational growth, developments and history. We are in other words, what others have taught us to see ourselves as. This is the power of globalization. The questions raised today in all probability will sound hollow and purposeless for a generation hence already set on the trajectory of an alternative history, culture and politics with their accompanying developments eventually erasing the memories of the past. This detour provides the horizon against which the critique is to be positioned and read. It is seen in the kind of differential perspectives that surface depending on where one is rooted, and is visible for instance in the way one chooses to use the word 'sanskriti' or 'culture' to refer to what goes on among a people as a consequence of the interactions that keep them in place as individuals, families, networked class, groups and associations etc. Three vivid examples indicate how culture explodes and constitutes the myth of identity and in turn lays the foundation for protest as to assert difference. We shall refer to three such cases: the first is the emergence of the Mizo problem in 1960s lasting a whole twenty years PAGE 8
Anna Amelina, 2020
The concept of assemblage has recently become fashionable in studies of cross-border, global and transnational relations. In addressing the most important elements of this approach, the article provides an analytical vocabulary for analysing the processes of societalization in the context of global and transnational realms. After critically reflecting on the classical sociological approaches to society and social differentiation, the article argues that, because of its poststructuralist basis, the concept of assemblage is the appropriate conceptual tool for studying societal macro-relations of power and inequality while avoiding the modernist heritage of classical social theory. Furthermore, by synthesizing poststructuralist thinking, intersectional theory and multiscalar approaches to space, the article suggests that the assemblage theory can be used to better understand the current forms of cross-border social inequalities in the multiple and partly overlapping contexts of postcolonialism, postsocialism and the EU political project. In a nutshell, it is not a plea to adopt the assemblage approach as a new 'grand theory' but rather as a flexible conceptual tool that allows an inductive theory-building.