Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1177/09213740211014304
M. Crichlow, D. Philipsen
This special issue composed of essays that brainstorm the triadic relationship between Covid-19, Race and the Markets, addresses the fundamentals of a world economic system that embeds market values within social and cultural lifeways. It penetrates deep into the insecurities and inequalities that have endured for several centuries, through liberalism for sure, and compounded ineluctably into these contemporary times. Market fundamentalism is thoroughly complicit with biopolitical sovereignty-its racializing socioeconomic projects, cheapens life given its obsessive focus on high growth, by any means necessary. If such precarity seemed normal even opaque to those privileged enough to reap the largess of capitalism and its political correlates, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic with its infliction of sickness and death has exposed the social and economic dehiscence undergirding wealth in the U.S. especially, and the world at large. The essays remind us of these fissures, offering ways to unthink this devastating spiral of growth, and embrace an unadulterated care centered system; one that offers a more open and relational approach to life with the planet. Care, then becomes the pursuit of a re-existence without domination, and the general toxicity that has accompanied a regimen of high growth. The contributors to this volume, join the growing global appeal to turn back from this disaster, and rethink how we relate to ourselves, to our neighbors here and abroad, and to the non-humans in order to dwell harmoniously within socionature.
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Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1177/09213740211014310
Marisa Wilson
Plantations have long been justified by moral and racial hierarchies that value specialised, export-oriented producers over domestic or subsistence-oriented producers. In this paper, I associate this value hierarchy with the neoliberal moral economy, explain its roots in classical political economy, provide examples of its workings and argue that the Covid-19 crisis provides a crucial opportunity to debunk the neoliberal moral economy. Collective experiences of food insecurity wrought by the pandemic expose the fallacy of central moral economic values underpinning industrial capitalist food supply chains, such as comparative advantage. Shared experiences of food supply chain failures, borne by people in the global North as well as the South, strengthen the moral and economic legitimacy of alternatives.
{"title":"COVID-19 and the modern plantation: Debunking the neoliberal moral economy","authors":"Marisa Wilson","doi":"10.1177/09213740211014310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211014310","url":null,"abstract":"Plantations have long been justified by moral and racial hierarchies that value specialised, export-oriented producers over domestic or subsistence-oriented producers. In this paper, I associate this value hierarchy with the neoliberal moral economy, explain its roots in classical political economy, provide examples of its workings and argue that the Covid-19 crisis provides a crucial opportunity to debunk the neoliberal moral economy. Collective experiences of food insecurity wrought by the pandemic expose the fallacy of central moral economic values underpinning industrial capitalist food supply chains, such as comparative advantage. Shared experiences of food supply chain failures, borne by people in the global North as well as the South, strengthen the moral and economic legitimacy of alternatives.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"185 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211014310","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46097816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1177/09213740211019523
Nandita Sharma
{"title":"Indian Migration and the Shift in How States Limit Free Mobility","authors":"Nandita Sharma","doi":"10.1177/09213740211019523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211019523","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"263 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211019523","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41937946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1177/09213740211014315
A. Klamer
Economics makes sense of the economy. Another economy that may or may not come about in response to the Corona crisis will require another sense making. This article provides a possible alternative perspective, a value-based approach. It includes a model with five spheres that encourages a visualization and conceptualization of the economy beyond the market and governmental spheres that dominate the standard economic perspective. By including social and cultural spheres as well as the sphere of the oikos (home) we are encouraged to think of social arrangements, relationships and other “shared goods,” sense making, culture and other qualities of living. The exploration of another perspective includes two concrete proposals for alternative institutions to deal with problematic debts and creating work for people with limitations.
{"title":"Another economy calls for another perspective","authors":"A. Klamer","doi":"10.1177/09213740211014315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211014315","url":null,"abstract":"Economics makes sense of the economy. Another economy that may or may not come about in response to the Corona crisis will require another sense making. This article provides a possible alternative perspective, a value-based approach. It includes a model with five spheres that encourages a visualization and conceptualization of the economy beyond the market and governmental spheres that dominate the standard economic perspective. By including social and cultural spheres as well as the sphere of the oikos (home) we are encouraged to think of social arrangements, relationships and other “shared goods,” sense making, culture and other qualities of living. The exploration of another perspective includes two concrete proposals for alternative institutions to deal with problematic debts and creating work for people with limitations.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"207 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211014315","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45542089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-20DOI: 10.1177/09213740211029684
Susanne Epple
Following the implementation of ethnic federalism in 1995, for the first time, government officials have been appointed from among the various ethnic groups rather than being only drawn from the central Ethiopian highlands. As such, they carry the responsibility of mediating and translating between two rather different worlds and value systems: those of the state and state law and those of the local population, many of whom continue to widely apply customary law. Many of these native government officials find themselves in a normative dilemma, as they have to balance the, often contradictory, expectations of the government and the local population.
{"title":"When ‘street-level bureaucrats’ act as cultural brokers: The normative dilemmas and personal commitment of government officials in southern Ethiopia","authors":"Susanne Epple","doi":"10.1177/09213740211029684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211029684","url":null,"abstract":"Following the implementation of ethnic federalism in 1995, for the first time, government officials have been appointed from among the various ethnic groups rather than being only drawn from the central Ethiopian highlands. As such, they carry the responsibility of mediating and translating between two rather different worlds and value systems: those of the state and state law and those of the local population, many of whom continue to widely apply customary law. Many of these native government officials find themselves in a normative dilemma, as they have to balance the, often contradictory, expectations of the government and the local population.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"348 - 364"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211029684","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42463847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-02DOI: 10.1177/09213740211029683
Kathrin Knodel
Local NGO brokers in Africa and beyond negotiate and mediate between (inter)national donors and potential beneficiaries within their communities. They translate local needs into development projects to make them suitable for international donors. This article looks at two main conditions that influence their work: First, windows of opportunity, which open and close according to structures and institutions beyond their sphere of influence; and second, their personality and skills. Based on two case studies from Burkina Faso, this article offers insights into biographies and life stories of such brokers where engagement leads to a distinguished lifestyle that contains aspects of cosmopolitanism and distinctiveness.
{"title":"NGO brokers between local needs and global norms: Trajectories of development actors in Burkina Faso","authors":"Kathrin Knodel","doi":"10.1177/09213740211029683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211029683","url":null,"abstract":"Local NGO brokers in Africa and beyond negotiate and mediate between (inter)national donors and potential beneficiaries within their communities. They translate local needs into development projects to make them suitable for international donors. This article looks at two main conditions that influence their work: First, windows of opportunity, which open and close according to structures and institutions beyond their sphere of influence; and second, their personality and skills. Based on two case studies from Burkina Faso, this article offers insights into biographies and life stories of such brokers where engagement leads to a distinguished lifestyle that contains aspects of cosmopolitanism and distinctiveness.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"298 - 315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211029683","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45348365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-02DOI: 10.1177/09213740211029686
Ricardo Márquez García
This article presents insights into the life story of Johny Baleng, a subchief from the Cameroon Grassfields. I argue that understanding him as a broker in a colonial context helps to identify local agency beyond the paradigm of coloniser-colonised. He needed to prove to his paramount chief that he was able to manage people and facilitate a high agricultural production rate, in order to achieve a more elevated social status in the local context. He travelled extensively and forged alliances with several chiefs of the region. At the same time, he worked with the German and French colonial administrations as a tax collector, worker recruiter and interpreter. These activities secured him an important position in his social environment and in the colonial structures.
{"title":"Johny Baleng (c. 1890–1964): A colonial broker from the Cameroon Grassfields","authors":"Ricardo Márquez García","doi":"10.1177/09213740211029686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211029686","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents insights into the life story of Johny Baleng, a subchief from the Cameroon Grassfields. I argue that understanding him as a broker in a colonial context helps to identify local agency beyond the paradigm of coloniser-colonised. He needed to prove to his paramount chief that he was able to manage people and facilitate a high agricultural production rate, in order to achieve a more elevated social status in the local context. He travelled extensively and forged alliances with several chiefs of the region. At the same time, he worked with the German and French colonial administrations as a tax collector, worker recruiter and interpreter. These activities secured him an important position in his social environment and in the colonial structures.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"365 - 381"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211029686","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43534869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-26DOI: 10.1177/09213740211020923
R. Mongia
My very sincere thanks to Cultural Dynamics, particularly the editor Michaeline Crichlow, for convening a forum on my book, Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State (2018), and to Jennifer Chaćon and Nandita Sharma for taking the time to serve as interlocutors. Their astute and generous commentaries traverse several issues explored in my book and raise numerous potential threads I could pursue in my response. However, given the constraints of space, I will use their commentaries to largely address only two themes. First, drawing on Chaćon’s commentary, I develop further the importance of the 1772 decision in Somerset v. Stewart, that deemed a slave brought to England legally free, thus preventing his forcible departure to Jamaica. Though Lord Mansfield rendered the decision almost 250 years ago, it has long been understood as a landmark habeas corpus case and has emerged as significant in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Department of Homeland Security et al. v. Thuraissigiam (2020). Second, I take up two interrelated issues that Sharma identifies as important contributions of my book: namely, what I call the “logic of facilitation” and the “logic of constraint” in migration regulations and the centrality of the labor contract to the regime of Indian indentured migration, that followed in the wake of the 1834 abolition of slavery in British colonies. Before directly addressing these issues, to situate my discussion, I provide a brief summation of the chief arguments of the book. Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State is an investigation into the history of state control over migration. The book considers colonial Indian migration from about 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in its plantation colonies, up to about 1914, when the world confronted a new geopolitical reality with the onset of World War I. In the course of less than a century, we see profound transformations in the logics, rationales, institutions, and legal forms of state control over mobility. My analysis argues that the formation of colonial migration regulations was dependent upon, accompanied by, and generative of profound changes in normative understandings of the modern state. Traversing a diverse array of British colonial formations, including Mauritius, the Caribbean, India, Canada, and South Africa, the book foregrounds the analytical modality of co-production to inquire into the relational processes, across these varied sites, that produced a state monopoly over migration. This monopoly, accompanied 1020923 CDY0010.1177/09213740211020923Cultural DynamicsAuthor’s Response book-review2021
{"title":"On Learning Lessons from the Past: Slavery, Freedom, and Migration Regulation","authors":"R. Mongia","doi":"10.1177/09213740211020923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211020923","url":null,"abstract":"My very sincere thanks to Cultural Dynamics, particularly the editor Michaeline Crichlow, for convening a forum on my book, Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State (2018), and to Jennifer Chaćon and Nandita Sharma for taking the time to serve as interlocutors. Their astute and generous commentaries traverse several issues explored in my book and raise numerous potential threads I could pursue in my response. However, given the constraints of space, I will use their commentaries to largely address only two themes. First, drawing on Chaćon’s commentary, I develop further the importance of the 1772 decision in Somerset v. Stewart, that deemed a slave brought to England legally free, thus preventing his forcible departure to Jamaica. Though Lord Mansfield rendered the decision almost 250 years ago, it has long been understood as a landmark habeas corpus case and has emerged as significant in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Department of Homeland Security et al. v. Thuraissigiam (2020). Second, I take up two interrelated issues that Sharma identifies as important contributions of my book: namely, what I call the “logic of facilitation” and the “logic of constraint” in migration regulations and the centrality of the labor contract to the regime of Indian indentured migration, that followed in the wake of the 1834 abolition of slavery in British colonies. Before directly addressing these issues, to situate my discussion, I provide a brief summation of the chief arguments of the book. Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State is an investigation into the history of state control over migration. The book considers colonial Indian migration from about 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in its plantation colonies, up to about 1914, when the world confronted a new geopolitical reality with the onset of World War I. In the course of less than a century, we see profound transformations in the logics, rationales, institutions, and legal forms of state control over mobility. My analysis argues that the formation of colonial migration regulations was dependent upon, accompanied by, and generative of profound changes in normative understandings of the modern state. Traversing a diverse array of British colonial formations, including Mauritius, the Caribbean, India, Canada, and South Africa, the book foregrounds the analytical modality of co-production to inquire into the relational processes, across these varied sites, that produced a state monopoly over migration. This monopoly, accompanied 1020923 CDY0010.1177/09213740211020923Cultural DynamicsAuthor’s Response book-review2021","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"267 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211020923","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45559013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-10DOI: 10.1177/09213740211014313
Minh-Hoang Nguyen
Through the experience of a quarantine camp in Vietnam, the essay discusses how the experience was a third-culture phenomenon in overdrive because of spatial and social isolation. Through such resemblance, the author points toward a path to understanding and embracing third-culture in the larger context of globalization.
{"title":"Liminality, third-culture and hope in a quarantine camp","authors":"Minh-Hoang Nguyen","doi":"10.1177/09213740211014313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211014313","url":null,"abstract":"Through the experience of a quarantine camp in Vietnam, the essay discusses how the experience was a third-culture phenomenon in overdrive because of spatial and social isolation. Through such resemblance, the author points toward a path to understanding and embracing third-culture in the larger context of globalization.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"33 1","pages":"199 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211014313","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41555556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-06DOI: 10.1177/09213740211011193
Janelle Rodriques
Die the Long Day narrates the 24 hours following the flight, capture, and brutal murder of Quasheba, a fugitive slave, on an 18th-century Jamaican plantation. Quasheba is remembered, retroactively, for her defiance of, despite ultimate defeat by, both the extreme gendered violence of the plantation and the paternalism of the narrative. The climax of this novel is Quasheba’s funeral, on which her community insists in accordance with their communal, African religious (Myal) rites. In these following pages I will consider how Quasheba’s spirit galvanizes this community as much as it may threaten to destroy it, and how this narrative places Obeah/Myal at the center of spiritual survival in the face of ever-present physical—and social—death during and after slavery, and at the center of strategies for the survival of its aftereffects.
{"title":"“It’s enough to survive through this hell to make ourselves immortal in the eyes of our descendants:” Myal, death and mourning in Die the Long Day","authors":"Janelle Rodriques","doi":"10.1177/09213740211011193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09213740211011193","url":null,"abstract":"Die the Long Day narrates the 24 hours following the flight, capture, and brutal murder of Quasheba, a fugitive slave, on an 18th-century Jamaican plantation. Quasheba is remembered, retroactively, for her defiance of, despite ultimate defeat by, both the extreme gendered violence of the plantation and the paternalism of the narrative. The climax of this novel is Quasheba’s funeral, on which her community insists in accordance with their communal, African religious (Myal) rites. In these following pages I will consider how Quasheba’s spirit galvanizes this community as much as it may threaten to destroy it, and how this narrative places Obeah/Myal at the center of spiritual survival in the face of ever-present physical—and social—death during and after slavery, and at the center of strategies for the survival of its aftereffects.","PeriodicalId":43944,"journal":{"name":"CULTURAL DYNAMICS","volume":"34 1","pages":"28 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09213740211011193","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47528850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}