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"In this post-universalist era, the idea of providing guidance for culturally different communities and individuals is rightly condemned as imperialist. Yet this very recognition of cultural limitations ironically encourages further Eurocentrism: fearful of making imperialist claims about political life that apply to all, many contemporary theorists carefully qualify the reach of the problems they examine and the applicability of the normative theories they propose. How may this vicious cycle be truncated? The emerging field of comparative political theory joins postcolonial studies, feminism, and subaltern studies to suggest that more sensitively calibrated forms of inclusion may deparochialize our political thinking, without replicating the homogenizing universalism of earlier centuries. Painfully aware that they are situated within the privileged cultural frames of the modern West, comparative political theorists identify their struggle in terms of understanding differently situated others amid power disparities created by colonialism, American hegemony, and the global flow of capital."

"For most indigenous communities, communal lands and natural resources have fundamental spiritual, social, cultural, economic and political significance that is integrally linked to both their identity and continued survival. Denial of the inherent and inalienable rights to their traditional land and natural resources is often at the root of human rights violations, giving rise to intra-state tensions and laying the foundation for emerging and ongoing conflicts. Full enjoyment of their land rights, including access to and control over the lands and their natural resources, would imbue indigenous peoples with the economic independence they need to preserve their distinct cultures and determine their futures. Immediate resolution of this issue is critical to ensuring that indigenous peoples are able to enjoy the rights to which they are entitled, and to enhance stability at the national level. It is suggested that one possible means is through the strategic reconceptualisation of self-determination. More specifically, the implementation of alternative manifestations of this right, particularly the effective realisation of the emerging right to autonomy, recognised in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would enable indigenous peoples to have effective, de facto control over all aspects of their political, social, cultural and economic survival."

The presence of Filipinos as corporeal and discursive subjects within both America and Asian America has long been contested. On one hand, the dynamic juridical status of Filipinos in America has ranged from American colonial subjects and American nationals to naturalized and native-born citizens. On the other hand, the presence of Filipinos in America has provided labor in key industries from agriculture to nursing. Filipino America has always been a transnational social formation whose history, economy, and culture reflect the interrelated histories of the Philippines and the United States. This essay explores Filipino American aesthetic practices that engage with the corporeal and discursive production of the "Filipino" in both America and Filipino America. The essay investigates the implications of Filipino American visual art and artists "returning" to the Philippines and argues that a cultural logic of "fictions of return" forms a central part of the production of Filipino America as a transnational sociospatial formation. The first section discusses the production of Filipino America in the context of America's exhibitionary complex. The article proceeds to trace exhibitionary practices in the transnational art project Galleon Trade Arts Exchange. The article then discusses works by Christine Wong Yap, Stephanie Syjuco, Reanne Estrada, and Gina Osterloh to highlight how Filipino American visual art has critically engaged with the multiple contradictions within Filipino and Filipino American experiences. The article ends with a rumination on the relationship between cultural production and desire to return and belong.

"This article entertains the possibility that new, locally-embedded cosmopolitanisms, critical of the violence inflicted by various forms of colonialism and globalization, are not just a matter of locus, or location, or topos, but also a question of the utopian. I begin with some autobiographically based observations related to a certain barely-documented social formation I witnessed as a young woman in colonial Rhodesia, and develop the scope of analysis by relating the notion of utopian solidarity among pariahs to cultural imaginings of three differently cosmopolitan cities. It will be proposed that what is at stake in defining utopian cosmopolitanism is a certain cultural metaphori city (a term that will be gradually explicated), encapsulated here in the process of tracing submerged similarities in the cultural histories of Harare, Ramallah and Cairo, and engaging with the work of Dambudzo Marechera, Mourid Barghouti, Alaa Al Aswany and Ahdaf Soueif."

"Structured around the idea that there is a non-linguistic and cross-cultural, possibly biological, basis on which the understanding of pictures rests, this essay looks at the ways whereby images in documentary films challenge the notion of cultural difference. Drawing on Said's Orientalism [1978] and its impact on the basic assumptions of anthropologists, the essay stresses Said's relevance to documentary film theorists, and discusses the work of visual anthropologists and filmmakers influenced by Merleau-Ponty's ideas about the phenomenology of perception. Discussion suggests that the kind of knowledge disclosed by revelatory films represents an important answer to one of the fundamental epistemological issues that Said does not take up in Orientalism, namely the question of the materialization of an "authentic human encounter" not subjugated to the dead book. The essay implies that we should have no objection in principle to the self/other dichotomy when it is used intelligently."

"This article examines news reports of the second-wave feminist movement during its most active political period (1968-82) in British and American newspapers, and specifically focuses on the ways postfeminist discourses were constructed and deployed. While most accounts of postfeminism relate to American cultural texts from the 1990s to the present day, they ignore (or are unaware of) the ways such discourses were constructed before this, or in different cultural contexts. In this article, I argue that postfeminist discourses are evident throughout the 1970s, during the height of the second-wave feminist movement, and that many of these discourses differed between the countries as a result of unique socio-cultural contexts, and the ways the women's movements evolved. That postfeminist discourses emerged early on indicates the extent to which patriarchal and capitalist ideologies contested feminist critiques from an early stage, demonstrating that notions of feminism's eventual illegitimacy and hence its redundancy were not constructed overnight, but took years to achieve hegemony."

"Critical examination of stories originating in everyday individual experiences of oppression as reenacted in Theater of the Oppressed and as articulated in the speech performances of participatory budgeting meetings shows how the rhetoric of oppression operates either to reproduce or to transform historically established cultural practices. The application of theories of mimesis, performance, representation, experience, and frame analysis helps explain how cultural patterns counter Theater of the Oppressed's proposals, simply providing a cathartic release, and how public participation in budgetary meetings is effective in producing social change. Um olhar crítico das experiências individuais com opressão re-encenadas no Teatro do Oprimido e articuladas nas falas de residentes nos distritos do orçamento participativo mostra como as retóricas de opressão opera para reproduzir ou transformar as práticas culturais estabelecidas históricamente. O uso de teorias de mimesis, performance, representação, experiência e analisis de ponto de referência social ajuda em compreender como os padrões culturais agem contra a proposta de transformação social no Teatro do Oprimido, providenciando nada mais que uma liberação catártica, e exemplifica como a participação pública no orçamento do governo é mais eficaz em trazer mudanças sociais."

"This paper aims to demonstrate how intersectionality provides an important conceptual tool to analyse practices of cultural production in ethnic minority media. In the context of the digital age, media are increasingly central as systems of representation of identity, culture and community. However, research examining how ethnic minority media become engaged in struggles of power is rare. Few works have paid attention to the ways in which race and gender operate in tandem to produce and maintain the unequal distribution of power in the mediascape of countries of post-colonial immigration. This paper juxtaposes gender studies and ethnic studies in order to analyse the representation of gender in ethnic media, with a particular focus on journalistic practices."

"The discrediting of the category of race in post-war European societies did not abolish racism: officially endorsed cultural relativism perpetuated Eurocentricism while dismissing racism as the pathology of the individual. Critique of culturalism is, however, to be distinguished from the new wave of anti-multiculturalism, argues Alana Lentin. Ostensibly aimed at the illiberalism of multiculturalism's "beneficiaries", the latter expresses intolerance of "bad diversity"."

In this article, I draw from ethnographic research conducted in Paris to analyze how new class competencies based on cultural capital in the form of the "authentically global" are acquired, wielded, and reproduced in a global network of web-based groups that organize offline, local events for "international people." Just as mass media such as radio, television, newsprint, and the novel have been implicated in the creation of national middle classes, new social media may be connected to the discursive production of a global middle class. Although the development of the national middle classes was key to the nation-building projects of modernity, the production of this global class is fundamental economically and culturally to expanding processes of neoliberal globalization.

Mauricio de Sousa's beloved comic books are a staple of many Brazilian childhoods. Starting in the 1960s, his six-year-old characters began providing not only entertainment, but also a distinctly Brazilian representative in a market dominated by imports. Currently, these publications-several different comic books and strips-represent 70 percent of the children's market in Brazil, with over one billion issues sold, not to mention a large Internet presence. The characters' expansive commercial empire includes an enormous indoor theme park, videos, live theater, and over 3,500 consumer products (Mauricio de Sousa Produções [MSP], "Mauricio de Sousa: Cartoonist"). Thus it is not surprising that Mauricio is sometimes referred to as the Walt Disney of Latin America. He was awarded the Yellow Kid (a major industry award), and recognized by the Order of Rio Branco for his service to the country in 1971. The thirtieth year anniversary publication, Mauricio: 30 Anos, includes a number of interviews in which various well-known Brazilians stress the national nature of the themes found in the comics, their identification with the characters, and their pride regarding the success of the series (Editora Globo 16-18). In 2009, in commemorating the fiftieth year of Mauricio's career, the Ministry of Culture declared his first character-Mônica-a cultural ambassador ("Personagem Mônica").

"At the roots of many travels to distant destinations, whether in the context of tourism or migration, are historically laden and socioculturally constructed imaginaries. People worldwide rely on such imaginaries, from the most spectacular fantasies to the most mundane reveries, to shape identities of themselves and others. These unspoken representational assemblages are powerful because they enact and construct peoples and places, implying multiple, often conflicting, representations of Otherness, and questioning several core values multicultural societies hold, by blurring as well as enforcing traditional territorial, social, and cultural boundaries. What are the contours of power, agency, and subjectivity in imaginaries of transnational mobility and the intersecting social categories those visions both reify and dissolve? Ethnographic studies of human (im)mobility provide an innovative means to grasp the complexity of the global circulation of people and the world-making images and ideas surrounding these movements. As a polymorphic concept, mobility invites us to renew our theorizing, especially regarding conventional themes such as culture, identity, and transnational relationships. This article critically analyzes some preliminary findings of an ongoing multisited research project that traces how prevalent imaginaries of transnational tourism to and migration from the "global South" are (dis)connected. I suggest anthropology has unique contributions to make to the current debate in the social sciences by ethnographically detailing how mobility is a contested ideological construct involving so much more than mere movement."

"This article reviews the development of universal women's human rights since 1970. It begins by discussing how the international feminist movement influenced the development of women's legal human rights, and continues by reviewing three debates in the literature on women's rights. The first debate is whether human rights as originally formulated were actually men's rights; the second debate is about the relationship between culture and women's rights; and the third considers the effects of globalization on women's rights. The author defends a liberal approach to human rights via the principles of equality and autonomy for women, but also argues that the socialist approach is very important for women to achieve their economic human rights. Autonomy, moreover, is the means by which women can negotiate their own way between "Western" style personal liberation, and participation as they see fit in their own religions and cultures."

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced.

Abstract The political theorist Michael Walzer has usually been taken as an opponent of global distributive justice, on the basis that it is incompatible with collective autonomy, would endanger cultural diversity, or simply on the basis that principles of global distributive justice cannot be coherently envisaged, given cross-cultural disagreement about the nature and value of the social goods that might be distributed. However in his recent work, Walzer demonstrates a surprising degree of sympathy for the claims of global distributive justice, even of the egalitarian variety. But the precise contours of his current position on global equality are not yet clearly developed. The paper, therefore, attempts to reconstruct what that position might be, paying particular attention to the conclusions we could draw firstly for our understanding of the opposition between global equality and national self-determination (which is more complex than has sometimes been thought), and secondly for the relationship between global equality and shared understandings.

This article investigates the complex relationship between digital media, religion, and politics in Egypt since the early 1990s. Charting the emergence of a new media landscape - one that is facilitated by technological innovations such as mobile telephony, high-speed Internet, and small digital cameras - this paper explores how a very strong Islamic revivalist trend is capitalizing on the power and reach of these new media practices in an effort to develop Islamically inflected models of citizenship. The paper argues that such a mediascape is contributing to the development of new models of nationalism and civic citizenship in Egypt - ones that are not orchestrated by the Egyptian State but are mediated through oppositional groups, mainly of the Islamist variety. The paper aims to chart a map of media practices in Egypt in the past two decades, and trace how these practices are informing the rise of new notions of citizenship, cultural policy, digital activism, and media consumption.

Amara Lakhous, born and raised in Algeria, has had a significant impact on the changing landscape of contemporary Italian letters and cultural production. He is the author of three novels, all of which he has written in both Arabic and Italian. His best known work is the much-acclaimed Scontro di civilt per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio (2006)/Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), now translated into numerous languages, including French, German and Dutch. Lakhous draws on his position as cultural mediator to elucidate the importance of fiction in today's contentious debates over national identities. In the following interview, he speaks about his relationship to Arabic, Berber and Italian and the place these languages occupy in the conceptualization of his works. He also discusses the craft of writing, irony, politics, his views on Italy and Algeria today, and his latest novel, published in 2010.

This article analyzes how objects that are 'vessels of meaning' are involved in social interactions that create and maintain identity and community. Specifically, it examines the production and uses of chapbooks within poetry communities. Chapbooks are cheaply produced booklets of poetry that are distributed hand-to-hand rather than through institutionalized publication and distribution systems. The analysis draws from in-depth interviews with poets and ethnographic observation of literary events. By outlining the creation and deployment of chapbooks, a case is made for the centrality of material objects in constitutive social interactions. It is argued that material objects are both cultural products and cultural producers, not only because of their physical characteristics, but because of the ways in which they circulate.

This paper reflects upon Bourdieu's concept of cultural fields, Becker's concept of 'art worlds' and the concept of networks as developed in social network analysis. We challenge the distinction that Bourdieu makes between the objective 'relations' and 'positions' constitutive of 'social space' and visible social relationships. In contrast, we maintain that interaction is generative of social spaces and positions and should be integral to any account of them. Becker's position is better from this perspective, but while Becker refers repeatedly to social networks, he fails to develop the concept or exploit its potential as a means of exploring social structures. Both Becker and Bourdieu have an underdeveloped conception of social connection which weakens their respective conceptions of the space of cultural production. Our proposed remedy is to use social network analysis to derive 'positions' and 'relations' between 'positions', as prioritized by Bourdieu, from data on concrete interactions and relations. This allows 'world' analysis to speak to the issues of field analysis without sacrificing its strengths. We illustrate our case by way of an analysis of two UK music scenes from the late 1970s.

This paper compares the response to the hijb in France, Quebec and the rest of Canada to explore the different political cultures of those three polities, the ideals behind them and the modes of repression and tolerance which give meaning to those cultures. More specifically, the paper compares the Stasi Commission in France with the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in Quebec in terms of both process and conclusions. What role do public commissions play in the education of the public against a background of educational institutions charged with that task? In asking that question, the paper explores the role of daily practices in realising that ideal.