scholarly journals A Monograph on Theoretical Understanding of the Contradictions of Vested Interests and Underdevelopment in Peripheral Social Formation

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Hyginus Obinna Ogbonna

This paper focuses on theoretical understanding of the contradictions of vested interests and the underdevelopment in the peripheral social formations; having as its raison d'être, to explore the possible ways by which the vested interests of a particular social group or class has contributed in shaping the underdevelopment of the periphery in the global economy –with inferences from a sub-Saharan African country, Nigeria (with empirical-based evidences); and moving forward, to find ways to counteract or mitigate these contradictions for the amelioration of the human condition in the periphery. Thus, the paper achieves its objectives by adopting a qualitative descriptive method of analysis, investigating the contradictions of the vested interests of both the neo-colonial elite in the Periphery and the capitalists of the Center (advanced capitalist nations), with an admixture of "Dependency Perspective" in its exploration. A theoretical framework, Marxian Ideology, was employed to help for a better epistemic understanding of the dynamics of vested interests aided by helpful extrapolations in its analysis. In the final analysis, the paper made some findings. A few of these include, 1) that the ruling class of the peripheral nations, especially in Africa (typically, Nigeria) has the culture of diverting national wealth for own personal interest. 2) That every moment of domination precipitates moments of resistance by the subjugated class, hence revolutions and instability are endemic in any polity fraught with vested interests of the dominant class. 3) That the peripheral nations have remained underdeveloped due to the selfish interests of both the peripheral ruling class (the puppets of the capitalist of the Center) and the advanced capitalist nations. The paper therefore recommends: that the peripheral social formations should pursue serious independent policies of social justice along egalitarian lines as well as economic and political self-reliance –e.g. state incentives for local industrialists and integrating and strengthening the domestic productive base to attain a self-reliant articulated economy. 2) There is need for total commitment to democratic ethos or permissiveness including popular-empowerment in every aspect for the amelioration of the human condition; among others.   Received: 2 May 2021 / Accepted: 15 June 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

The analysis in this chapter focuses on Christine Jeffs’s Rain as evidence of a shift that had occurred in New Zealand society whereby puritan repression is no longer perceived as the source of emotional problems for children in the process of becoming adults, but rather its opposite – neoliberal individualism, hedonism, and the parental neglect and moral lassitude it had promoted. A comparison with Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name, upon which the adaptation is based, reveals how Jeffs converted a poetic meditation on the human condition into a cinematic family melodrama with a girl’s discovery of the power of her own sexuality at the core.


Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Damiano Benvegnù

From Hegel to Heidegger and Agamben, modern Western philosophy has been haunted by how to think the connections between death, humanness and animality. This article explores how these connections have been represented by Italian writers Tommaso Landolfi (1908–79) and Stefano D'Arrigo (1919–92). Specifically, it investigates how the death of a nonhuman animal is portrayed in two works: ‘Mani’, a short story by Landolfi collected in his first book Il dialogo dei massimi sistemi (Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies) (1937), and D'Arrigo's massive novel Horcynus Orca (Horcynus Orca) (1975). Both ‘Mani’ and Horcynus Orca display how the fictional representation of the death of a nonhuman animal challenges any philosophical positions of human superiority and establishes instead animality as the unheimlich mirror of the human condition. In fact, in both stories, the animal — a mouse and a killer whale, respectively — do die and their deaths represent a mise en abyme that both arrests the human narrative and sparks a moment of acute ontological recognition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-473
Author(s):  
Rachel Zellars

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us” (Byrd, 2019a, p. 342), and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty.  


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Alexander Pschera

"Neben der Industrie hat die Digitalisierung auch die Natur ergriffen. Die Tatsache, dass Tausende von Tieren mit GPS-Sendern aus- gerüstet und überwacht werden, erlaubt, analog zur Industrie 4.0 auch von einer Natur 4.0 zu sprechen. Dieses Internet der Tiere verändert den Begriff, den der Mensch von der Natur hat. Er transformiert die Wahrnehmung vor allem der Natur als etwas fundamental An- deren. Neben den vielen kulturellen Problematisierungen, die das Internet der Tiere mit sich bringt, lassen sich aber auch die Umrisse einer neuen, ganz und gar nicht esoterischen planetarisch-post-digitalen Kultur aufzeigen, die die conditio humana verändert. In addition to industry, digitalization has also taken hold of nature. The fact that thousands of animals are provided and monitored with GPS transmitters allows to speak of nature 4.0 by way of analogy to industry 4.0. This internet of animals changes our idea of nature. Most of all, it transforms the perception of nature as something fundamentally other. Beside the many cultural problems that the internet of animals implies, it can also outline a new, not at all esoteric planetary post-digital culture that is about to change the human condition. "


Author(s):  
Leticia Flores Farfán

Assuming with Georges Bataille that men is a being who is not in the world “like water within the water”, that is to say, in an immanent and lack of distinction state, but that its destiny is shaped in the permanent significant joint or logos to which its unfinished nature jeopardizes him, we analyze the form in which the mythical story, characterized like a sacred word with symbolic and ontological quality within the perspective of Mircea Eliade, gives account of the wound or the original tear that constitutes the human condition.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Rea

This book is the first of two volumes collecting together the most substantial work in analytic theology that I have done between 2003 and 2018. The essays in this volume focus on the nature of God, whereas the essays in the companion volume focus on humanity and the human condition. The essays in the first part of this volume deal with issues in the philosophy of theology having to do with discourse about God and the authority of scripture; the essays in the second part focus on divine attributes; and the essays in the third part discuss the doctrine of the trinity and related issues. The book includes one new essay, another essay that was previously published only in German translation, and new postscripts to two of the essays.


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