Deadly serious: Humor and the politics of aesthetic transgression

This essay examines the political utility of humor using a framework developed in recent geopolitical scholarship read through Jacques Rancière's theorization of the politics of aesthetics and applied to everyday political life in contemporary Mexico City. Geopolitics here offers a unique lens through which to understand the spatiality of humor and its effects on the aesthetic and affective processes by which urban identities are constructed and contested. Building on roughly 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that humor's subversive potential allows for simultaneous or co-constitutive aesthetic effects, such as the simultaneous disruption of political norms and the genesis of a more inclusive spatial imaginary of urban citizenship. This argument extends previous work on humor by emphasizing the complex, mutable, and multifarious nature of humor effects in practice, perhaps most especially in subversive modes. I demonstrate the strategic political value of humor through the exploration of three ethnographically derived examples: an episode of a popular satirical video series, a newly christened popular saint said to protect residents of an historic neighborhood from gentrification, and a humorous tirade against the city's mayor at a local neighborhood meeting.

Tareq Oubrou's Concept of Islamic Identity in a Secular Society

The migration and the problem of preserving national identity remain the central issues of the political agenda and public debate in many modern countries. The article discusses the views of the French imam Tareq Oubrou – the author of the concept of "sharia of the minority" – on the issues of Muslim identity, as well as the integration of migrants in France. T. Oubrou symbolizes a figure at the junction of two civilizations: a kind of theorist and mediator for the reorganization of Islam in France. The research was based on monographs, individual articles, and texts of speeches of the French imam over the past twenty years. The work involved the methods of cognitive and conceptual text analysis, which made it possible to reconstruct the structure of the political message and its individual components. The research results suggest that T. Oubrou refocuses Islamic identity to its inner dimension by revising its defining markers. Minimizing Islamic identity is designed to preserve and maintain the Muslim presence in the West. At the same time, he nationalizes Islamic identity, subordinating it to the civil and political norms of France. Despite the fact that the proposed identification model evokes ambiguous emotions in the Muslim environment and great doubts in the host society, some of its provisions are in demand at the state level.

‘Who’ or ‘what’ is the rule of law?

The standard account of the relation between democracy and the rule of law focuses on law’s liberty-enhancing role in constraining official action. This is a faint echo of the complex, constitutive relation between the two. The Greeks used one word – isonomia – to describe both. If democracy is the system in which people have an equal say in determining the rules that govern social life, then the rule of law is simultaneously before, after, concurrent and synonymous with democracy: It contributes to the formation of citizens with the capacity for self-governance, serves as the instrument through which democratic decisions are implemented, functions as one of the central social practices that constitute citizens as equals and addresses the question of how to ensure that government by the people operates for the people. The rule of law has many independently valuable qualities, including impartiality and predictability. But, to valorise the rule of law for its own sake is to fetishize authority. The fundamental values of the rule of law are as the instrument of democratic self-governance and the expression of the equal dignity of all persons. Democracy thus entails the rule of law, but both implicate the yet more comprehensive ideal of equality. Core rule-of-law values require political norms and conditions of equality, generality and comprehensiveness. In a modern, differentiated society, however, the constitutive relation between democracy and the rule of law is fractured and law becomes the agent of authority. Courts in the modern constitutional state have contributed to the decline of rule-of-law values, supporting role specialization through judge-made immunity doctrines that protect officials at all levels. The crisis of police violence against minorities is a symptom of this breakdown. Greater accountability can ameliorate the problem. But an effective solution requires the fair and equal distribution of political power.

Disability and Identity Transformation in Selma Dabbagh’s Out of It

This paper examines the significance of disability in Arab British novelist Selma Dabbagh’s Out of It (2011). It underscores how disability engenders an identity transformation that Sabri Mujahed undergoes in the novel. The study highlights how disability triggers resistance strategies to the oppressive socio-political norms and occupying powers. The paper also draws attention to the psychological and socio-cultural impacts of disability on the life of Sabri Mujahed. Sabri turns his skills toward a great mission of writing the history of Palestinian resistance and exposing aggressive Israeli policies. The process of writing itself has a therapeutic effect that helps Sabri overcome his disability and channel his mental powers to a greater cause. Taking into consideration disability studies’ tendency to provide a fresh approach to understand a disabled character’s inner world, this paper employs disability studies as a theoretical and critical framework in light of which the novel is analyzed. The paper also foregrounds the socio-political, cultural and historical conditions and circumstances that Palestinians in Gaza experience and undergo. In this context, continuous Israeli military attacks, a stifling blockade and internal factional conflicts are some of the challenges that people in Gaza, including disabled Sabri, have to cope with on daily basis.

The Republic of Violence and the Empire of Peace

Both conservatives in the senate and populist reformers learned how to use violence as a political tool in the years after Tiberius Gracchus’s murder. Populists allied with figures like Marius made increasingly effective use of mobs to sway elections. The senate used the senatus consultum ultimum to deprive citizens of their rights. Sulla’s use of his army to seize power over Rome and dictate the terms of his restoration of the Republic represented a natural evolution of this process. By the late 50s BC, it had again become clear that Republican political norms had deteriorated to such a degree that prominent citizens could not trust that their rights would be protected. In Cicero’s formulation, Rome had become a Republic of violence. This violent climate prompted Julius Caesar’s march on Rome, but it took Augustus’s victory in the civil war with Antony to fully restore peace and the rule of law.

NAHDLATUL ULAMA AND ITS COMMITMENT TOWARDS MODERATE POLITICAL NORMS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE ABDURRAHMAN WAHID AND JOKOWI ERA

This article addresses recent development related to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) � Indonesia�s largest Islamic organization - and its recent actions as it faces ideological and political challenges from other conservative Islamist organizations. In the process, NU seems to have engaged in backtracking its commitment to consistently promote moderate norms like democracy and tolerance toward different religious and political viewpoints. It examines the factors which explains this reversal and answers the following research puzzle: Under which socio-political conditions do a religious organization that has adhered to follow moderate political norms and discourses decide to backtrack from them and decide to pursue policies to embrace an �exclusivist moderation�? The article concludes the declining commitment to moderate norms within the NU is due to growing ideological competition from conservative Islamists both within and outside of the organization, leading NU to embrace immoderate responses to crack down against its competitors.

Emergent Political Norms in Local State–Private Enterprise Relations during China’s Big Push for Poverty Reduction

In 2014, the Chinese government adopted a version of the controversial Big Push approach to poverty reduction, and augmented this once-discredited developmental narrative by enlisting very large private enterprises to operate in the poorest regions. Not without controversies, this approach and the resources associated with it has created new state-large business relations in China. This article studies four large enterprises and examines why they participated in poverty reduction, the resulting state–business relations and the outcomes of poverty reduction. The field research was conducted in 2018 through in depth interviews with company management and site visits. The findings show that the local state became collaborators of big businesses that were endorsed by the central government. Whether these relationships become formalised will depend on the future direction of poverty reduction. This research contributes to the literature on how state–business relations may initiate economic growth.

BRI: A Marvel of Economic Diplomacy for China and Pakistan

The continent of Asia is of vital importance as overall 40 countries, with two densely populated countries India and China are been in it. In this region China and Pakistan share mutual friendly relations. The revival of the ancient silk road, reckoned to established cross-continental communication and trade infrastructure, which offer China with an unprecedented Geopolitical advantage in the future. China has utilized capitalist ambition for its emergence as the new superpower and requires further consolidation of global capital to sustain its status. The (BRI) Belt and Road Initiative of China, is estimated USD 8 trillion involving 70 countries which combined represent 60% of the world population and 40% off the global GDP, which offers tremendous prospects for global growth. The intervention of globalization has though blurred cultural, socio-economic and political norms and divides eventually reshaping their distinct peculiarities around the world. These changes have also reorganized the Geostrategic configurations through borderless transactions coupled with Economic Diplomacy. This article argues that now China’s cultural and Economic Diplomacy could play a pivotal role in mobilizing countries, especially Pakistan circumventing conspiracy theorism vis a vis protecting its assets and investments. And the economic supremacy tactics been carried by China.

The city emptied and the homes and hospitals turned into 'the world'. A sociological approach

Background: The coronavirus pandemic has generated social measures in order to contend virus expansion, and deaths. One of the most important political norms in the first wave was the domestic enclosure. This measure generates social, psychological and personal problems. Objective: The aim of this paper is to analyze the social impact of this home confinement through the study of journalistic images. Methods: We use a set of images selected previously according our epistemic necessities. Results: The results show that the fundamental elements of the current life were questioned. In fact, social space, and the own society had collapsed. Also, the enclosure of Spanish populations has been accompanied by the intensification of the individualism, but also has generated an increase of the ideal of communitas. Conclusions: Coronavirus enclosure has produced that the cities have emptied, and the houses and hospitals, were the last refuge of society. This phenomenon has generated that population has been accompanied by the paradox intensification of social relationships.