We have extended the deadline for abstracts for ISSH2024 by ten days.
Though the deadline for text for the proceedings is still 1st May. Conference is 26-27 July. Please consider coming. Its hard to show what is great about a conference, but having organised many – in nine countries – it was not until doing this series of events in Vietnam that I learned what a real team effort can achieve – the pictures do NOT do it justice – https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/innovations-in-the-social-sciences-and-humanities-issh2019/
Tuesdays 4pm in Vietnam [8pm Melbourne/Sydney; 9am UK; 2.30pm Kolkata; 5pm Taiwan] Tune in on the same zoom link each time. [Bilingual event, please scroll down for English]
Dec 19, 2023 16:00 (Time Zone: UTC+7) Professor Joyce C.H. Liu Limit as Method -Phương Thức Giới Hạn
Jan 23, 2024 16:00 (Time Zone: UTC+7) Professor Ned Rossiter Reflections on Organized Networks and Collective Research Methods – Những Phản Ánh về Mạng Lưới có Tổ Chức và Những Phương Pháp Nghiên Cứu Tổng Hợp
PHƯƠNG PHÁP TRONG 30 PHÚT
Trường Đại học Tôn Đức Thắng, Ban Công tác phía Nam Hội Xã hội học Việt Nam và Transit Asia Research Network, 2023-3024
Chuỗi seminar “Phương pháp trong 30 phút” mời các học giả nổi tiếng trình bày hiểu biết sâu của họ về những phương pháp xã hội học mới và cấp bách.
Năm học 2023-2024, chuỗi seminar là sự hợp tác giữa Khoa Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn Trường Đại học Tôn Đức Thắng, Ban Công tác phía Nam Hội Xã hội học Việt Nam, và Mạng lưới Nghiên cứu quá độ châu Á (TARN).
Diễn giả từ TARN bao gồm GS. Brett Neilson (Viện Văn hóa và xã hội, Đại học Tây Sydney) thuyết trình ngày 12/12/2023, GS. Joyce C. H. Liu (Trung tâm Nghiên cứu văn hóa quốc tế, Đại học Quốc gia Yang Ming Chiao Tung) thuyết trình ngày 19/12/2023, và GS. Ned Rossiter (Viện Văn hóa và xã hội, Đại học Tây Sydney), thuyết trình ngày 23/01/2024.
Chuỗi seminar có phiên dịch Anh-Việt.
Ngày 12/12/2023, 16.00-18.00, GS. Brett Neilson thuyết trình “Biên giới với tính cách là phương pháp”.
Ngày 19/12/2023, 16.00-18.00, GS. Joyce C. H. Liu thuyết trình “Giới hạn với tính cách là phương pháp”.
Ngày 23/1/2024, 16.00-18.00, GS. Ned Rossiter thuyết trình “Phản tư về những mạng lưới có tổ chức và các phương pháp nghiên cứu tập thể”.
30 Minute Methods TDTU, VSA (Sth) and TARN 2023-3024
The 30-minute Methods seminar series invites noted scholars to present their insights on new and pressing sociological approaches.
In 2023-2024, the series is a collaboration between the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU), the Southern Department of the Vietnam Sociological Association (VSA – Sth) and the Transit Asia Research Network (TARN).
TARN provides the speakers: Professor Brett Neilson of the Institute for Culture and Society at the Western Sydney University (12/12/23), Professor Joyce C H Liu of The International Center for Cultural Studies of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (19/12/23) and Professor Ned Rossiter, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University (23/01/24). [Slides will be bilingual and spoken text will be translated]
30 Minute Methods TDTU, VSA (Sth) and TARN 2023-3024
The 30-minute Methods seminar series invites noted scholars to present their insights on new and pressing sociological approaches.
In 2023-2024, the series is a collaboration between the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU), the Southern Department of the Vietnam Sociological Association (VSA – Sth) and the Transit Asia Research Network (TARN).
TARN provides the speakers: Professor Brett Neilson of the Institute for Culture and Society at the Western Sydney University (12/12/23), Professor Joyce C. H. Liu of The International Center for Cultural Studies of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (19/12/23) and Professor Ned Rossiter, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University (23/01/24). [Slides will be bilingual and spoken text will be translated]
Dec 12, 2023 16:00 (Time Zone: UTC+7) Professor Brett Neilson Border as Method -Lý Thuyết Giới Hạn
Dec 19, 2023 16:00 (Time Zone: UTC+7) Professor Joyce C.H. Liu Limit as Method -Phương Thức Giới Hạn
Jan 23, 2024 16:00 (Time Zone: UTC+7) Professor Ned Rossiter Reflections on Organized Networks and Collective Research Methods – Những Phản Ánh về Mạng Lưới có Tổ Chức và Những Phương Pháp Nghiên Cứu Tổng Hợp
Courage, cleverness and tenacity have not been enough. After years of spirited resistance, it is now time to face facts – without its core funding, NIAS cannot survive. With a heavy heart, we announce the final closure of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies on 31 December 2023.
For over 55 years, NIAS has served as one of the leading research centres on Asia in the Nordic region. The reasons why it was founded back in the 1960s remain true today. Asia plays an increasingly important role in our lives yet is poorly understood. One reason is because, across the Nordic region, the field of Asian Studies has a marginal status and is fragmented across various disciplines and research environments. Read the full announcement here
About NIAS
NIAS is an academically independent Nordic research and resource center, focusing on modern Asia from a predominantly social sciences perspective. NIAS is an integrated part of the University of Copenhagen with the status of a centre under the Department of Political Science. Read more about NIAS here.
“Indigenous Peoples’ Un-Freedoms and Our Academic Freedom A Call for Solidarity”
Not usually a petition signer, but in this case there is informative text and urgent reasons….
“We, the undersigned, note with deep concern and urgency the escalating drone attacks by security forces on India’s Indigenous (Adivasi) people, particularly the recent bombings of Adivasi areas in Bastar. These acts not only violate the Indian Constitution but also infringe upon the fundamental rights and dignity of Adivasi communities. As scholars concerned about indigenous communities, we consider it our responsibility to draw attention to these attacks on Adivasi lives and livelihoods, and advocate for justice for the people whose lives are intertwined with our research and scholarship….”
Besides the usual wiki stuff, I would welcome any recommendations on Shaumian. Or Shaumyan as Louis Aragon spells his name in The History of the USSR (1962) – an excellent book by the way, with snide comments on Trotsky I have appreciated, some set up re the anticipated revisions regarding Stalin – I am at page 400 or 600+, but lots of things that simply have been forgotten by many. By me at least. And one of those Not To Be Forgotten, as the poster says, is Stepan Shaumian of the Baku Soviet that really is a story deserving greater attention. THis is especially so as his murder along with 26 others (even though ‘some’ claim there were a few escapes) is part of the prelude to the Armenian massacre that is also too often lost in the admittedly pretty full annals of atrocity. The despicable role of the British in selling Stepan Shaumian and the Baku Soviet leadership into execution is clear enough (the alleged alternate British “intention”, or mealy-mouthed apologetics, was to use them in prisoner exchange) but I would like very much to learn more. Who knows of the best book on this (besides Aragon’s snippet)?
Graeber, David. 2023. Pirate Enlightenment, Or the real Libertalia. London: Allen Lane.
In this entertaining book, the world of early eighteenth century Madagascar piracy, and the women they liaised with, turns out to have been the font of “a great historical achievement” in that “public assemblies”, with “a decentralized and participatory system of self-governance” (91), were brought into the pirate settlements and the subsequent Betsimisaraka “confederation”. This utopian scenario involves a fabled egalitarian, talkative (endless meetings – “The Great Kabary” 104), enlightened society beyond the reach of the Royal Navy and the East India Company – a “confederation” (87), that others call a kingdom, or, as Graeber calls it at one point, “nation” (100). This is where, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, as many as a thousand pirates settled, intermarrying with sexually “adventurous” local women keen on trade (52), holding shared views of “hostility to the slave trade” (96) and with aspirations for sending their offspring for education in England (98), and much else besides.
This is a rattling good yarn, hedged often enough with noting that the sources are thin, that the main text, A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson – we are told three times – may or may not have been written by Daniel Defoe (xxiv, 12, 23) and in many ways is “intentionally provocative” (88). Graeber’s text is provocative, that is, and the provocations are many: that the relationships, and indeed the lives pirates were able to live on the islands, were effectively managed by local women, and with the arrival of the pirates, these women had been “liberated from earlier sexual restrictions” (54) – they were largely “sequestered” by Muslim or Jewish immigrants (52). As well, the salons in which such ideas were discussed in Europe were run by women we have also now forgotten (xii, 148, perhaps the books on Lady Blessington that clutter some shelves might counteract this). Provocations are to be welcomed of course – though how welcome the pirates were in Madagascar, at one point facing an uprising which saw most murdered in 1697, is not clear. There might be other reasons to wonder at the motivations.
Madagascar is massively interesting though, and there is much in this book on magic charms, myth, even some psychoanalysis, so it is a rewarding read. Yet, as Graeber mentions Defoe, as noted, several times, it’s a bit of a worry that he ignores the part of Robinson Crusoe that takes place on Madagascar – a rape and a massacre by Crusoe’s crewmates (see a forthcoming article in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing). Graeber stresses the ways the import of pirate democracy was brought into the settlements (this story is fodder for TV series like Black Sails,Crossbones, unmentioned here), and on this, his ethnographic work of some decades past, and wide reading of relevant texts, is harnessed to offer a great speculative discussion that must complicate any simplistic idea of piratical politics. Unfortunately, much of the existing scholarship on the history of Madagascar seems to suffer – we are told – from the dreaded “strain” of Marxist analysis (the “high water mark” 88) and an obsession with elites and the encroachment of the “system of trade” (88). These are problems that “corresponded to a period when Madagascar, like so many postcolonial societies, was itself experimenting with state socialism” (88). While it is hard to credit that only the work that departs from this focus is “superb” (88-89) it is nevertheless a very good point to stress that “political elite … primarily in the business of accumulating wealth and power” do tend to erase variety with the “intellectual currents” of “popular movements”. That however was the point of the initial critique of postcoloniality, used by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1993), for example, to refer to refer to the betrayal of the anti-colonial struggles by new elites claiming the mantle of decolonization in a “hoax” that reintroduced neo-colonial ways. Alas, this use of the term postcoloniality has also been erased by those who take it as a temporal historical noun rather than presenting a diagnosis of disappointment in what might have been.
Which is generally how this book ends up – a sense of disappointment that doubles as an imaginative rewriting of the script for a reboot of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, now set in the Indian Ocean, with Occupy Wall Street stylings. Indeed, although this is provocation, the echoes of Occupy explicitly ring the closing bell of the book, as we discover “99 percent of all this has been lost to us” (141). Graeber means the conversations of the general assemblies of the Madagascar revolution “have, of course, been entirely lost to us” (146), but an imaginative ethnographic reconstruction of “pirate utopias discussed in the salons of Paris under Louis XV” (149) should be a welcome idea – indeed, “its hard to imagine they weren’t [discussed], since at that time, they were being discussed virtually every-place else” (149).
Pirate-affiliated “Besimisarka women dominating markets, and forming commercial alliances with wealthy men to act as their commercial agents” so that these men – pirates remember, unsavoury scurvy lot – with “substantial amounts of tradable commodities” (68) could unload their plunder, should indeed provoke us to think of the origins of the global trade system. It might be worth sampling some more of the “scholarship” on Defoe/Johnson. Graeber ignores any engagement with this, but Defoe had at one point endorsed the idea that England should trade directly with the pirates and that the notorious Captain Avery should be offered a deal. Was Defoe involved in conversations ahead of his times or not? – he had apparently “suggested the possibility of offering” Avery “a pardon in exchange for a portion of his wealth in the Review of 18 October 1707” (Novak 2003: 581). Novak also notes that in a South Sea Company pamphlet (before it spectacularly failed in 1722), Defoe had written in favour of trade with the pirates settled in Madagascar (2003, 569). This should not surprise us at all, Defoe was an advocate, as Alan Downie notes, of colonial expansion “through trade, not through force of arms” (Downie 1983, 74). Yet he disapproves of pirates and illicit trade too (Downie 1983, 82n). He “is not the prophet of progress he is so often painted” and was “primarily concerned with the preservation of England’s present advantages” (Downie 1983, 78). Downie warns against distorting Defoe’s message (Downie 1983, 83). Underneath the piratical posturing in Johnson/Defoe, there is ultimately a commitment to business-as-usual that we might today register as neo-colonial today – we should ask about how anyone gets involved in this – women, pirates, their children, the intellectuals in the salons…
Defoe is against war and for trade. A trade underpinned by violence that wins for England 300 years of EIC and imperial dominance starting, more or less, with Drake and Raleigh writing their accounts as benign memoirs (Hakluyt [1589] 1962). Siraj Ahmed makes the case in his book The Stillbirth of Capital, that “commerce between English pirates and the East India Company […] occurred at the very origins of the British Empire” and via a deft allusion, finds that “Defoe had a much more critical understanding of ‘capitalism’ than we have attributed to him” (Ahmed 2012, 56).
It may be a “strain”, but the erasure of the antecedents of capitalism are found lying at the heart of capital to this day, as set out already by Marx as “the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of” ([1867] 1990, 507). Plunder laundered through trade domesticates theft, making it difficult to conceive of the lost conversation here as being more than capital’s delusion about the propriety of its actions. Th pirates were not wrong to resist the British Navy, the opportunism of trade as a way out of a tight spot makes sense, the context is complicated, magic plays its part – yet, what it leaves us with today is continued duplicity and double-dealing. Seems to me that the “confederation” is alive and well, and we do well to be provoked to rethink who was involved.
Ahmed, Siraj. 2012. The Stillbirth of Capital: Enlightenment Writing and Colonial India. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Downie, J. Alan. 1983. “Defoe, Imperialism, and the Travel Books Reconsidered.” The Yearbook of English Studies, Colonial and Imperial Themes 13:66-83.
Fanon, Frantz. (1961) 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press
Hakluyt, Richard. (1589)1962. Voyages (8 Volumes) Edited by John Masefield. London: Dent.
Marx, Karl. (1867) 1990. Capital: Critique of Political Economy. MEGA II(9). Hamburg: Dietz.
Novak, Maximillian E. 2003. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1993. “Situations of Value (Interview with Pheng Cheah).” Australian Feminist Studies, 17:141-162.
This is Hanif Kureishi’s study, and I am looking forward to his next book that will be greater than Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, with Italianate stylings. He had a fall in Rome, but he is a gladiator, and is in recovery. Get well soon mate, meet you back in the old dart.
ISSH2021 is all online now thanks to the National Library of Australia – this was somehow automatic I guess because of the ISBN thing. Nevertheless, here you go: Conference proceedings : the 2nd International Conference on Innovations in The Social Sciences & Humanities 2021: ISSH 2021
sometimes these maps are so pro-capital its embarrassing. This one is of course, but its also informative. Here are the paths of need and greed, crime and time – the expropriation circuit writ large.
Two little intro to the author books that I think are absolute gems – and they will get inside your ear to tell you more about the world and Australia than you can usually get, well, anywhere.
Christos Tsiolkas on Patrick White and Michelle de Kretser On Shirley Hazzard
I typed this out a week ago on Facebook and it was shared nearly 200 times on the first day. This, I think, indicates that the time is very much ripe…
‘COMMUNISM’
“I have studied socialism and communism long and carefully in lands where they are practiced and in conversation with their adherents, and with wide reading. I now state my conclusion frankly and clearly: I believe in communism. I mean by communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part. I believe that all men should be employed according to their ability and that wealth and services should be distributed according to need. Once I thought that these ends could be attained under capitalism, means of production privately owned, and used in accord with free individual initiative. After earnest observation I now believe that private ownership of capital and free enterprise are leading the world to disaster. I do not believe that so-called “people’s capitalism” has in the United States or anywhere replaced the ills of private capitalism and shown an answer to socialism. The corporation is but the legal mask behind which the individual owner of wealth hides. Democratic government in the United States has almost ceased to junction. A fourth of the adults are disfranchised, half the legal voters do not go to the polls. We are ruled by those who control wealth and who by that power buy or coerce public opinion.
I resent the charge that communism is a conspiracy: Communists often conspire as do capitalists. But it is false that all Communists are criminals and that communism speaks and exists mainly by means of force and fraud. I shall therefore hereafter help the triumph of commimism in every honest way that I can: without deceit or hurt; and in anyway possible, without war; and with goodwill to all men of all colors, classes and creeds. If, because of this belief and such action, I become the victim of attack and calumny, I will react in the way that seems to me best for the world in which I live and which I have tried earnestly to serve. I know well that the triumph of communism will be a slow and difficult task, involving mistakes of every sort. It will call for progressive change in human nature and a better type of manhood than is common today. I believe this possible, or otherwise we will continue to lie, steal and kill as we are doing today.
Who now am I to have come to these conclusions? And of what if any significance are my deductions? What has been my life and work and of what meaning to mankind? The final answer to these questions, time and posterity must make. But perhaps it is my duty to contribute whatever enlightenment I can” (Du Bois 1968: 57-8)
In the current conjuncture, with the increasingly complete capture of university research by corporate interests, only the alternative incorporation of research teams that start outside the university seems viable, resisting heavy-handed external oversight but stressing ethics. This is behind this is my current interest in Cora Du Bois’s Bhubaneswar project and her involvement in AAA at a very interesting time, but it also shaped my pre-pandemic attempts at fieldwork teams (stalled, but to be continued):
Click the image, then the pdf tab, to see the full text… here
A ten-minute walkthrough of the conference programme for the Dec 17-18 ISSH2021, the international conference Innovations in the Social Sciences and Humanites, at Ton Duc Thang Univeristy, Vietnam. with some narrative for some of the papers I am particularly excited about, or focused upon – see http://issh2021.tdtu.edu.vn for details of how to register as a participant.
I get the occasional cold call from secondary school students and always try to respond with some things that are expected and some unexpected. They might miss the mark, or be a bit wayward, but you know its a good sign when a year 11 student is interested in research. This one came from South Australia – literally five minuted response, so hardly even as taxing as the effort of posting it here (almost). The questions were about the Sundarbans, as the student Fariha had read a review essay on recent-ish books:
Can you explain the situation that transpired in the Sundarban, after Cyclone Amphan hit?
To be fair, compared to you or anyone else with internet access, I cannot say anything much on this because I’m unable to travel at present and really, I would need to go and have a look for myself. Everything else I could tell you about the Sundarbans in the last year would be a summary of what is already online. I think having a look for yourself is the only way an anthropologist can say something different to what an year 11 researcher might find after a few weeks looking online. To some extent the habit of contextualising is something you learn with time, but if you are sensible you will know not to rush to judgement, to consider as many interpretations you can, and come up with your interpretation without thinking its always correct or final. That is the fun of research though, isn’t it.
Why is the Sundarban area so important (culturally, ecologically, economically, etc.)?
Trees, people, animals. In Annu Jalais book Forest of Tigers, you can read heaps about the relationships of humans to animals and jungle. Its fascinating, and there is a lot to learn for all of us.
What strategies are being implemented and/or proposed in the Sundarban to protect the site and local communities?
Hmmm, many, good and bad. You should investigate the Marichjhapi massacre for an example of something that went wrong.
What determines the livelihood of the local people in Sundarban? How has extreme weather events such as cyclone Amphan affected their livelihood?
Much. Much. Much. Much. But then, ‘extreme weather’ is becoming less extreme in the sense that its hitting everywhere, so that by definition is not extreme but the new normal, however much we’d like to keep thinking its not. I mean, is ‘extreme weather’ or ‘climate change’ not just a way of talking about pollution without putting the blame of the top 100 corporations that easily produce the majority of world pollution, from plastics to carbon monoxide to toxins, to the entire commodity system?
How does the local community’s perspective on the Sundarban and what solution do they perceive will help mitigate the impact of extreme weather events?
The mitigation you speak of requires a wider revolutionary movement, the return and even greater engagement of people’s organisations to wrest control of the means of production from the greedy plutocrats that currently dominate and ensure no voice of the people can be heard except when they are controlling the microphone (platform, outlet, forum).
Some writers and scholars have highlighted that dating back to the colonial era, the government has historically offered little help to victims of natural disasters. Do you see any parallels between the situation then and now?
What is the difference between colonialism and neo-colonialism? Perhaps the difference is that while people know about it now, people do less about it. A kind of mass paralysis of everyone sitting in front of a screen nodding to the ever slowing heartbeat of their own disengagement.
How has the nature of the Sundarban itself changed over time as a result of lack of consultation and lack of political will for a solution and how has that impacted the lives of the community?
Lack of consultation – sounds like a thing, but consultation with who? The lack of political will is real at least I guess, even as communities have been forced out of the area for various reasons.
What do you think needs to change in order for the situation in the Sundarban to improve?
Overthrow of the ruling class, defeat of corporate culture, opportunism and bigotry, a real critique of the so-called ‘climate crisis’ (pollution/world destruction). Of which a research project like yours can be a start, but cannot be all we do – it can start with research but it must expand to get more people involved, more people need to be reading and learning about revolutionary theory and thinking long and hard about forming organisations that are collectively run, counter-hegemonic (look it up if need be – against the dominant) and in the business of informed critical engagement, questioning everything, accepting nothing (including this) and of course allowing for occasional five minute rants by grizzled old professors who wish they were a part of the coming global communist insurrection that will be the only thing that will save us all from rampant grasping crazy-ass capital.
There are some crimes that are longer-term than others… As I am finding from spending part of the morning exploring archival images, such as this one. A ‘British propaganda poster from the Second World War, printed in England by A.C. Ltd, listing Britain’s 49 colonies. A soldier from the Ceylon Garrison Artillery takes pride of place in the centre, and the regimental badge of the force is displayed at the foot of the poster’. I am taken by surprise that neither India nor Australia could as a colony in this list, but nevertheless, I think the list is a start for reparation payments. How these can be implemented now that Boris has shifted all the assets to offshore accounts is obviously an administrative issue (armed force to descend upon Bermuda banks and the like with the queen’s bank account number to start).
Physical Location: Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library Classmark: RCMS 22/57/1
I was looking something up and stumbled upon a quote of me that I did not recognise – that class ‘does not make much sense’. I am pretty appalled to be called left libertarian and neo-Weberian from a Northern think-tank (!!) – and completely misquoted – in this way by Ebert and Zavarzadeb in an otherwise marvellous chapter called ‘Hypohumanities’ from the 2010 book Class in Education: Knowledge, Pedagogy, Subjectivity, edited by Deborah Kelsh, Dave Hill & Sheila Macrine. I reproduce page 44 from that chapter, as follows:
Ha! – Do our authors think Marx and Engels really do have a bipolar view of class as ‘ossified and simplistic, if not simple’ – rather than this being a caricature that I expose. But no, I am associated somehow with Laclau and Hardt and Negri too – the very people I was critiquing in the book from which these misquotes are taken out of context. Yes, I said something almost like those they attribute, but there are important differences if you read with care. I’m afraid my point is missed and they attribute associations that do not stand up if attention is paid to the actual words, which are relational: ‘as much sense’ and makes ‘less sense’. They might also attend to the context in which these sense are deployed as there is no way that I am erasing production – on the contrary, I am making that same accusation of those who do not see class in the context on international production, outsourced imperialist capital and a brutal immiseration of a more diverse (non cloth cap wearing) global proletariat.
What I actually wrote in a book that spends a lot of time talking about Marx’s analysis of multiple class conflict in the Eighteenth Brumaire is that a notion of class from 1847 used today:
“does not make as much sense if rigidly restricted to a bipolar opposition of the kind necessarily sketched in the polemical opening of the Manifesto nor within rigidly maintained notions of nation. The working-class hero is best thought of as a far more diverse identity than that of the cloth-capped union man. For sure, the idea of class struggle makes less sense today in a national context but retains all its urgency and coherence if the international division of labour is, rather than ignored, taken as a key part of the calculus.”
I then do quote, on that same page, Gibson-Graham, and I see my interpreters do also, but it is a funny inverted honour to associate me with those I was saying were unable to even approximate Marx’s developed analysis (and recognise the Manifesto of Marx and Engels as a polemical text, about which their view moves). Marxism and class struggle are to be understood in a materialist international framework where ‘the immiseration of a global proletariat proceeds apace’ where the ‘division of labour prevails’ and ‘not to say the nation has no power, nor military might with heavy weaponry’ (p191)
Which leaves me a big surprised and amused that no matter how much one takes care to ask for at least some attention to the ways Marx’s text is framed and develops over his writing and rewriting and the contexts of that writing and the audiences, and which all the while should not be taken to be as ‘bad’ as so many commentators make out. Bad Marxism was the name of the book after-all, as if that had one single and only referent.
Of course in the end, its all welcome I guess – as I also pointed out on that very same page they quote, where I objected that:
“accusations of ‘bad’ Marxism as a way of silencing debate is an old routine. Divinations of correct line Marxism act as a form of censure and as assertions of correct behaviour or discipline. The use of citation and counter-citation in hegemonic maintenance is not something ever completely avoided, the mystification of authority and pedagogic demonologies are also symptoms – there are so many contests and contexts. Given all this, I am inclined to see debate over the line as evidence of vitality and leave it to the secret tribunal of the central committee to decide in the very last instance where we ‘really’ went wrong, so long as that grim finale never actually comes” (p 192)
The inadequacy of charitable care as an international cure is evidenced despite the widespread propagation of philanthropic intervention. Bill Gates dedicates millions towards eradication of less glamorous diseases, and receives favourable blanket coverage across BBC World and other outlets. All manner of charitable organisations leech goodwill from the small-scale individual touristic concern through to huge Christian institutions with administrative apparatus and sans frontiers bureaucracy. Newspapers give support to campaigns to outlaw genital mutilation or to screen for trachoma, but a general inability to scale-up to the required distribution of universal well-being is structurally implied in philanthropic effort, even among those who would reject the injustice of global inequality. All very well-meaning and caring for sure, but fundamentally inadequate as a ‘cure’, dealing in a terminology of medical symptom and unable to confront the epidemiology of capitalism itself.
Here is a grotesque let them eat cake image – it shows the three billionaire amigos: Bill Gates, Akilo Dangote, Mohammed Ibrahim, and 2 women. The women are not named in the first five paras of the Forbes article I could read before the paywall closed on me. Erm, paywall? These are the richest guys in the world, and we all know no-one earns a billion dollars – do the math – you need to get $4578 per hour working ten hours a day every day for 60 years to ‘earn’ a billion. Of course, if you had $100 billion to invest in shares that rose 1% you would earn a billion in a day. Its nabbing that first $100 billion that is the trick. Anyway, instead of stealing all that money, there could be a global health service run by Governments rather than the discount Gates love-in reported here. Gates claims he pays more tax than anyone, at 10 billion on 106 billion, that is still a lower rate than I pay on my not even $1500 a month, and even as he says he’s given away $35 billion in charity, he is still ‘worth’ $106 billion (after tax? = good accountants). How can anyone be worth that, when clearly – do the math – they are still stealing the money, and asking you to smile at how generous their gifts are. Take a hike Bill. I mean, instead of thanking Gates for his self-aggrandising alibi donations in favour of a spot of science research, he could without fanfare pay proper taxes and that science x 10 could be funded by Governments without any of us having to see these cake-cutting bloated egoist philanthropists that even Charles Dickens would have mocked at Christmas.
Innovations are the key. In method and analysis, in the ways in which scholarship engages with society and organisations today, there can be no doubting the relevance of the social science and humanities to all our pressing questions. The Innovations discussed at the conference challenged our thinking. The topics were wide-ranging and varied, the approaches distinctly alive; some of the papers demonstrated a vivid combination of theoretical and practical research, some were insistently in a humanities’-oriented style, others more forthright and strictly social science, and still others experimented with the form and tone of the social sciences. Perhaps while bringing new methods to Vietnam, the creativity of the social sciences and relevance of the humanities for contemporary understanding was brought out even more by the diversity of themes and perspectives. Of course the traditional scholarship of the social sciences was also represented, but in writing that has an urgency and verve that excited discussion.
Professor Guido Abbattissta from the University of Trieste in Italy said the conference ‘was an exciting experience’. Dr Arnab Choudhury from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said it was an ‘immensely wonderful conference, by far one of the most well-organised conferences I have ever attended’.
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Stephen Muecke Flinders University
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The featured keynotes included a powerfully engaging presentation from Professor Stephen Muecke of Flinders University Australia. Prof Muecke is a hugely important voice in cultural studies and theorist of notions of the cultural landscape and ways of reading cultural relations between settler and Aboriginal Australia. His explanation of the walking method innovated by Aboriginal traditional landholders will inspire reflection and new practices, and perhaps some in Vietnam will want to take up the invitation of Aboriginal elder Paddy Roe to visit Western Australia and walk the ancient dreaming tracks near Broome with his family.
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Professor Joyce Liu (NCTU Taiwan) and Professor Ursula Rao (Uni Leipzig, Germany)
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A keynote lecture by Professor Joyce Liu from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, on new methods of inter-Asian joint and multi-site research inaugurated a perspective on political and cultural research that promises new opportunities for collaboration and debate across borders. She spoke with an engagement that should never be sacrificed in scholarship while there are so many urgent and relevant issues upon which scholars must comment as the leading presenters of, explorers of, and advocates for ideas.
The conference as a whole addressed debates about why innovation and new methods in the social sciences and humanities in Vietnam are needed. This was to respond to clear demands within Vietnam for such methods and enthusiasms (perspectives of a number of Government and non-Government agencies have supported this with relevant statements, such as the government Global Challenges position papers in 2018, and the work of independent research units like Social Life). Mild Hombrebueno from the Philippines said she had ‘learnt a lot from the conference, built new networks, friendships and linkages’ and claimed enthusiastically:
‘I have been to other international conferences, but so far, this is the best experience I’ve ever had. The host university and the organizing committee were so accommodating even up to the last leg of the program. It was indeed full of intellectual discussions, where I made many realizations’
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Professor Rao
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Participatory development projects need a new lease of life and a major rethink – and this was provided by Professor Ursula Rao from the University of Leipzig in Germany as she explored new thinking on the challenges of development in anthropology.
Ms Hombrebueno again commented:
‘meeting with Prof. Rao and her advocacy on Shaping Asia is just so exciting one! I am grateful [to have] the chance to be with the team’
Professor Elaine Carey from Purdue NorthWest in Indian a, USA, spoke on women and research on drugs in the archive, the depredations of the war on drugs and the lives of women drug lords were fascinating topics, with side excursions into the interests of American author William Burroughs and images from the press of mid-20th century Mexico and South America. The thinking here was deep as well as a gripping story – if there are no short cuts and no easy solutions, we are challenged at least to think hard – and it is also an inspiration to hear how we can also care about writing well, and hear this from the leading international scholars of our times.
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The conference had articles/panels on over 40 topics by cutting edge thinkers and on themes that remain urgent and pressing – for example, there was a session on the new area of sociobiology, there was the panel on education provision and socialization with a discussion of Vietnam and Australia on higher education successes. There was an engaging panel on participatory methods as a research tool eminently suited for new ways of doing research in the social sciences and humanities. Experts were involved and risking their ideas and critiques in every panel of the conference, though the discussions also spilled over into conversations in the corridors and in cafes afterwards. And the conference will continue to have an impact on scholarship in Vietnam and the region because the papers were published in a conference volume and some will be rewritten for journals and books in the coming months. The effect of the conference will help make TDTU one of the major centres in Vietnam for discussion of new research in these areas.
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The conference was open-ended and its assessment will continue long afterwards, with consequences that will shape ongoing research. As such, the papers presented are not only about new results, so much about new ways of going about getting those results and discussing those results – fostering a culture of research in the Universities that are open to the experience of social change, the challenges of the times and globally, shifting the locus of advanced research towards the region again, so that perhaps we will begin to arrest the so-called brain-drain where so much budding talent leaves the country for several, sometimes many, years . The conference will be part of a much-needed boost to refresh the social sciences and humanities.
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The key point to make is: that with such a large number of regional delegates – from India, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines – and a significant number of wider international guests – from the USA, Europe and Australia – this conference can be seen as a crucial establishing part of the project of making Vietnam, and TDTU, a key hub in the region for discussions about innovative research in the social sciences and humanities. It is highly appropriate then that this conference was held at TDTU – a young university, able to do things in a creative and exciting new way. We can only hope for more of this.
Innovations are the key. In method and analysis, in the ways in which scholarship engages with society and organisations today, there can be no doubting the relevance of the social science and humanities to all our pressing questions. The Innovations to be discussed at the conference challenge our thinking. The topics are wide-ranging and varied, the approaches distinctly alive; some of the papers demonstrate a vivid combination of theoretical and practical research, some are insistently in a humanities’-oriented style, others more forthright and strictly social science, and still others experiment with the form and tone of the social sciences. Perhaps bringing new methods to Vietnam, the creativity of the social sciences and relevance of the humanities for contemporary understanding is brought out by the diversity of themes and perspectives. Of course the traditional scholarship of the social sciences is represented, but in writing that has an urgency and verve that will excite discussion.
The features include a keynote lecture by Professor Stephen Muecke, a hugely important voice in cultural studies and theorist of notions of cultural landscape and ways of reading cultural relations between settler and Aboriginal Australia. His walking method will inspire reflection.
A keynote lecture by Professor Joyce Liu on new methods of inter-Asian joint and multi-site research inaugurates a perspective on cultural research that promises new opportunities for collaboration and debate across borders, and with an engagement that should never be sacrificed in the social science and humanities. There are many urgent and relevant issues upon which scholars must comment as the leading presenters of, explorers of, and advocates for ideas
The conference as a whole addresses debates about why innovation and new methods in the social sciences and humanities in Vietnam are needed. This is to respond to clear demands within Vietnam for such methods and enthusiasms (perspectives of a number of Government and non-Government agencies have supported this with relevant statements, such as the government Global Challenges position papers in 2018, and the work of independent research units like Social Life).
Professor Ursula Rao will explore new thinking on the challenges of development in anthropology. Professor Elaine Carey on women and research, in the archive, on drugs. There are no short cuts and no easy solutions – we are challenged to think hard with the leading international scholars of our times.
The conference brings articles/panels on 43 topics by cutting edge thinkers and on themes that are urgent and pressing – for example, there is a session on the new area of sociobiology by Jon Solomon and Samiksha Bahn, or there is the panel on education provision and socialization with discussion of Vietnam and Australia on higher education successes and problems. There is an engaging panel on participatory methods as a research tool eminently suited for new ways of doing research in the social sciences and humanities. Experts and serious scholars are involved in every panel of the conference, though the discussions will spill out into conversations and publications that will continue to have an impact on scholarship in Vietnam and the region. The effect of the conference is to make TDTU one of the hubs in Vietnam for discussion of new research in these areas.
The conference is open-ended and will continue long afterwards, with consequences that will shape ongoing research. As such, the papers presented are not only about new results, so much about new ways of going about getting those results and discussing those results – fostering a culture of research in the Universities that are open to the experience of social change, the challenges of the times and globally, shifting the locus of advanced research towards the region again, so that perhaps we will begin to arrest the so-called brain-drain where so much budding talent leaves the country for several, sometimes many, years . The conference will be part of a much-needed boost to refresh the social sciences and humanities.
The key point to make is: that with a number of regional delegates – India, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines – and a number of wider international guests – from the USA, Europe and Australia – this conference can be a crucial establishing part of the project of making Vietnam, and TDTU, a key hub in the region for discussions about innovative research in the social sciences and humanities – highly appropriate then that this conference will be held at TDTU – a young university, able to do things in a creative and exciting new way.
Hugo Chavez (1954-2013) The United States is putting in place its long planned intervention for regime change in Venezuela with serious consequences for the future of…
There is near silence about the war on Yemen led by KSA and UAE and supported by US, UK and France indicating the success of public relations bought by Saudi money.
A school bus explodes:
Saudis: we deny doing that, we would not do that, even if it was a legitimate target.
UN: we will have an inquiry [yet to happen]
Saudis: the school bus was a mistake. [oops].
Here is the Saleh Mamon’s blog post on Yemen (also published by Labour Briefing).
The hidden war in Yemen is reaching its genocidal climax So effective is the suppression of knowledge about the war in Yemen by the mainstream media that 42 percent of the people in a recent poll…
People got wishful thinking a lot, and I am always for breaking the borders, but as this can be read from afar, I reckon yes, but the prognosis offered below by Hardt and Negri back in the Empire day ends up objectively anti-communist – the wrong side is lauded as abandoning the discipline of the system. What if rather, all the exploited under capitalism had pushed at the wall the other way, the former soviet block might not be a pit of cowboy corruption and proto-fascist gangsterism, but rather a renewal – walls can fall both ways, and maybe H&N were pushing the wrong way. I don’t mean everyone should now move to Mexico, but abandoning the shopping centre queues in favour of a Leninist discipline supporting an organised alternative to empty glitz is a long term better solution for all rather than this multitude exodus which does tend to me to sound a bit like Pol Pot’s year zero as well.
“A specter haunts the world and it is the specter of migration. All the powers of the old world are allied in a merciless operation against it, but the movement is irresistible. Along with the flight from the so-called Third World there are flows of political refugees and transfers of intellectual labor power, in addition to the massive movements of the agricultural, manufacturing, and service proletariat. The legal and documented movements are dwarfed by clandestine migrations: the borders of national sovereignty are sieves, and every attempt at complete regulation runs up against violent pressure. Economists attempt to explain this phenomenon by presenting their equations and models, which even if they were complete would not explain that irrepressible desire for free movement. In effect, what pushes from behind is, negatively, desertion from the miserable cultural and material conditions of imperial reproduction; but positively, what pulls forward is the wealth of desire and the accumulation of expressive and productive capacities that the processes of globalization have determined in the consciousness of every individual and social group—and thus a certain hope. Desertion and exodus are a powerful form of class struggle within and against imperial postmodernity. This mobility, however, still constitutes a spontaneous level of struggle, and, as we noted earlier, it most often leads today to a new rootless condition of poverty and misery. A new nomad horde, a new race of barbarians, will arise to invade or evacuate Empire. Nietzsche was oddly prescient of their destiny in the nineteenth century. ‘‘Problem: where are the barbarians of the twentieth century? Obviously they will come into view and consolidate themselves only after tremendous socialist crises.’’ We cannot say exactly what Nietzsche foresaw in his lucid delirium, but indeed what recent event could be a stronger example of the power of desertion and exodus, the power of the nomad horde, than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc? In the desertion from ‘‘socialist discipline,’’ savage mobility and mass migration contributed substantially to the collapse of the system. In fact, the desertion of productive cadres disorganized and struck at the heart of the disciplinary system of the bureaucratic Soviet world. The mass exodus of highly trained workers from Eastern Europe played a central role in provoking the collapse of the Wall. Even though it refers to the particularities of the socialist state system, this example demonstrates that the mobility of the labor force can indeed express an open political conflict and contribute to the destruction of the regime. What we need, however, is more. We need a force capable of not only organizing the destructive capacities of the multitude, but also constituting through the desires of the multitude an alternative. The counter-Empire must also be a new global vision, a new way of living in the world… If in a first moment the multitude demands that each state recognize juridically the migrations that are necessary to capital, in a second moment it must demand control over the movements themselves. The multitude must be able to decide if, when, and where it moves. It must have the right also to stay still and enjoy one place rather than being forced constantly to be on the move. The general right to control its own movement is the multitude’s ultimate demand for global citizenship. This demand is radical insofar as it challenges the fundamental apparatus of imperial control over the production and life of the multitude. Global citizenship is the multitude’s power to reappropriate control over space and thus to design the new cartography.”
Thanks J Adams for the reminder of this bit of Empire
4th and 5th of October 2019.
Ho Chi Minh City, Socialist republic of Vietnam
Welcome to the website for the conference Innovations in the Social Sciences and Humanities,jointly organised by The University of Trieste, Italy; the Universität Leipzig, Germany; National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan; University of Warwick, UK; College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (CHESS) at Purdue University Northwest (PNW), USA; and Ton Duc Thang University, Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Conference Venue – Ton Duc Thang University
Address: 19 Nguyen Huu Tho Street, Tan Phong Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Invitation and Call for papers:
For the International Conference 4-5 October 2019 at Ton Duc Thang University, HCMC, Vietnam, we would like to hear from those working on innovative approaches to public engagement in the social sciences and humanities. Methodological, empirical, archival or conceptual-theoretical work is encouraged, especially where a keen interest in application, consequence, practice or outcome is involved. Sometimes this is called impact on the one side, or intervention on the other, but we are nevertheless interested in all inquiries and investigations which advance the emancipatory possibilities of scholarship in a radically changed global context.
Social and cultural practices in both modern life and in the preservation of historical memory, could suitably connect sociology, social work, history, ethno-anthropology (museums, exhibitions, fairs, monuments, collective ceremonies), cultural tourism, eco-preservation policies, and other urgent contemporary social issues. Comparative studies are welcome, but not the only focus. We are especially interested in deep and detailed studies which have wider significance and suggestions for ‘best practice’. After many years of ‘interdisciplinarity’, or at least talk about this, we are interested to see examples where this works well in practice. We can assume all studies are comparative and interdisciplinary in a way, and all certainly have consequences, implications…
We are especially keen to hear from those working in three overlapping areas of engaged activity: these may be people working as anthropologists, historians, museum and preservation/heritage studies; cultural geographers, sociologists and in cultural studies; or on border studies, migrant labor and workplace and institutional inquiries. Our themes will interact within the structure of the conference, but we are keen in particular to go deeply into each area.
With Innovations in Public Engagement we anticipate discussions of the ways scholarship might best go about communicating in public the experience of the past and of human, cultural and environmental diversity, including technological and bio-political innovations and their contemporary reshaping of pasts and presents. Challenges to questions of who produces scholarship and why, for whom and by whom, can apply to past and present uses of knowledge, where the models of research and inquiry are actively reworked in the face of new public demands.
With Historical/contemporary practices and policies we seek to address issues related to contemporary forms of social conflict, including unequal citizenship and new racisms, the rise of right-wing populist movements and infiltration of religious power in secular governmentality, migrant workers as neoliberal slavery, questions of human trafficking and refugees, developmentalism and environmental pollution, crony capitalism and geo-economic zoning politics.
With Innovations of methodology, training and new skills for the future it seems to us crucial that our work respond to rapid reconfigurations of the very possibility and consequences of engaged social sciences and humanities scholarship. Whether the changing context is imposed by governments by industry or by civil society, when we deal with institutional change and competitive and imperative demands, we do need to develop new tools for knowledge(s) and new sensibilities/sensitivities. Education, reform and responsiveness, new skills and objectives, new modes of investigation and teaching in general. An urgent and targeted focus on how scholarship might remain relevant and critical in the face of global trends – funding cuts, social constraints, new demands, new conservatism, and crises of certitude.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam will be our venue, but it need not necessarily be the context or focus of all papers, nor are comparative, or East-West or ‘post’ or neo-colonial framings always to be foregrounded in the papers. We are interested however in papers that encourage us to think anew about the implications of where we are and about how to re-orient humanities and social sciences scholarship in contexts where rising tensions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia call on us to innovate and apply once more.
On acceptance of your paper, we will provide you a letter of acceptance or an invitation letter for your visa application to Vietnam or financial sponsorship from your institution. Therefore, you are encouraged to submit your paper at the earliest time possible.
Language:
The conference proceedings and papers will be in English.
Important dates:
Abstract Submission: By February 28th, 2019
Notification of Paper Acceptance: Before March 30th, 2019
Full Paper Submission: By May 30th, 2019
Registration and Payment by: August 20th, 2019 (early bird discounts apply)
Conference Dates: October 4th– 5th, 2019
We look forward to receiving your contributions and kindly ask you to disseminate the call to your colleagues who may be interested in participating the conference.
Please do not hesitate to contact us at issh2019@tdtu.edu.vn if you need any further information.
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Assoc. Prof. Le Thi Mai, Ph.D
Head of Sociology Department
I am on (of course) various lists like that of the Posadaists, so this is interesting because to my shame my best efforts to keep up have not kept up. I suspect that is nearly universally true among my friends. So, who else has news on this?:
No end in sight to ‘Silent War’ in the Donbas –
bombing, shelling and blockade go on
End British military aid to Kiev!
Protest opposite Downing Street, Whitehall, London
Thursday 4 October 5.30-7pm
200,000 people line the streets of Donetsk City for Alexander Zakharchenko’s funeral
Rumours of a big new offensive by the Ukraine army against the anti-fascist People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine have been rife for weeks, while the daily bombardment and sniper attacks continue daily.
The attacks and ongoing war are recorded by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe mission in Ukraine, but totally ignored across the Western media.
On September 2 Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, died in an explosion in a restaurant in Donetsk city, the latest in a string of assassinations.
According to the DPR authorities, the terrorist act was carried out by Security Service of Ukraine operatives trained by the US and NATO.
As new information shows that the fascist dictatorship in Ukraine is far worse than previously realised, and the Minsk peace process is blocked by Kiev and its US masters, calls are growing for the Donbas republics to become part of the Russian Federation.
This would at last bring about peace in the Donbas, but the leave the rest of Ukraine languishing under brutal fascist repression.
10-15,000 people, mainly civilians, have already died in the war, and men, women and children in the Donbas are still being killed or injured daily.
The war started with Kiev‘s massive “Anti-Terrorist Operation” to crush the anti-fascist resistance in the Donbass against the US-backed February 22 2014 “Maidan” coup. That operation was announced by Ukraine’s acting president Aleksandr Turchinov one week after a visit to Kiev by CIA chief John Brennan.
We recognise that without Russia’s humanitarian support the Donbas republics may well not have survived four years of war and blockade. This assistance has included giving refuge to thousands of children from the Donbas including breaks in holiday camps.
We must continue to build solidarity with the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics and all anti-fascists in Ukraine, and to defend whatever measures Russia takes to support and defend the Donbass.
Meanwhile the British government continues to support the illegal fascist-backed Poroshenko regime in Kiev, including sending military personnel to train Ukrainian armed forces troops.
We do not agree with the then foreign secretary William Hague, who told parliament in 2014 that the regime change on Ukraine was legal.
We call on the British government to end all support for the current government in Kiev, and to back a peaceful negotiated end the war in Ukraine.
Organised by the New Communist Party, Socialist Fight, Posadists in Britain,
and members of Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine.
‘Inoculation against smallpox, a major killer in Europe up to the middle of the nineteenth century, was a practice imported from Ottoman Turkey. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described the procedure for inoculation in England in a 1717 letter (Poner 1995). Inoculation was thereafter widely introduced in many parts of northern and western Europe and, as Jennerian vaccination, became part of the public health system by the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. This practice substantially reduced infant mortality, especially in the Scandinavian countries’
Trinketization 