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tony curzon price

Muslim liberals: epistles of moderation | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...muslim_pope

meaning performance violence

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Nov 07 - Cached
  • True, liberalism everywhere gestures towards the supposed horrors of an alternative political order in order to justify itself, but in the west these days it usually does so with power on its side. Muslim liberals, on the other hand, not only possess little power in their own right, they have also been unable thus far to stage the spectacular acts of sacrifice that mobilise people for a cause - acts of the kind that militants are so adept at performing. These sacrificial acts need not even be violent to be effective, as Gandhi and after him Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela demonstrated so well through the entire course of the 20th century. Perhaps liberals are incapable of staging such spectacles, given their devotion to protecting interests rather than sacrificing them, which is why liberalism has always come to power on the back of far more radical movements dedicated to religion, revolution or revenge.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 14 Nov 07
       
      costly signals - violence and meaning
tony curzon price

Zygmunt Bauman: globalisation, politics and Europe Ian Varcoe - openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...zygmunt_Bauman_4488.jsp

intellectuals self-knowledge

shared by tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07 - Cached
  • Reading Bauman helps people to insulate themselves from these false solutions to their difficulties.
  • might say that the problem for people today is how to resist consumer society, to find ways of caring for others, and to find a new politics that is above the nation-state. The globalisation phenomenon requires this if it is to be encountered by humanity in a more balanced form than at present when its negative side predominates over its positive side. The European integration project may offer some guidance.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      The european project as a hope for a better globalisation ... but does it have the right bottom-up legitimacy to be that? is it not too much of an elitist project?
  • The political institutions of this are parliamentary democracy and the public sphere; the former has been eroded and the latter hollowed out.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      This makes me think of Simon Zadek at AccounAbility, who believes that the future of democracy will be found in the accountability of non-state instituions, like business and NGOs. Davos and CSR, not EU and UN.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Bauman is a declared European
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      a good description of the Scylla and Charibdys of the EU alternative - dialogue that paves the way between relativism and fundamentalisms
  • tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
     
    How, I wonder ...
tony curzon price

Multiculturalism's civic future: a response | openDemocracy - 0 views

opendemocracy.net/...multiculturalism_future

multiculturalism

shared by tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Nick Pearce objects to my joining those who deny the possibility of state neutrality in relation to culture and identity. He says that I thereby regrettably place myself outside the liberal egalitarian tradition, but then adds that "in reality few believe that the state can or should embody one version of the good life". So, it is unclear to me what the objection about neutrality is.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07
       
      Pearce want liberal "state neutrality to identity" - in other words, no preferences for this or that group based just on who they happen to be, where they come from historically or geographically or ethnically etc. Modood goes on to point out that Pearce says that "no one really believes that the state can embody one version of the good life", and Modood thinks this lets him off the first objection. I don't get the argument: a state could be set up to make some types of lives easier than others (eg secular consumerist versus religious) and yet not "embody one version"... of the good life. If there are 2 types of lives possible under a state, one slightly harder to pursue, does that mena the state "embodies the easier version?" And is the answer to this a function of the degree of cost?
  • Some critics of multiculturalism worry about "where it will all end", and so deny that multiculturalism is compatible with individual rights, with equality before the law, with civic belonging.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07
       
      this seems to me to be the sort of argument: imagine a case where multiculturalism allows something _incompatible_ with individual rights - as in the clitoridectomy example. Then individual rights should trump "culural rights". Now imagine the alternative case where multiculturalism allows something that can co-exist with individual rights. Why is there anything now for the state to do? In other words, where does it ever bite? This must go back to the original question about the _neutrality_ of the state. Only if neutrality is impossible, then there is room for multiculturalism as an organising principle.
tony curzon price

TouchGraph | Products: Google Browser - 0 views

www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

communities visualisation web

shared by tony curzon price on 10 Sep 07 - Cached

  • Use this free Java application to explore the connections between related websites.

    Try it now! Enter keywords or a URL, and click 'Graph it!' See
    Getting Started below for more details.

  • tony curzon price on 10 Sep 07
     
    great visualisation of links between web sites
Arabica Robusta

Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analysis - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...nd-democracy-support-a-new-era

democratization fukuyama david held

shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The "end of the end of history" has many architects. Today, several states (an increasingly assertive Russia and China in particular) embody alternative political models that have come to challenge any notion of liberal-democratic hegemony; others (such as Venezuela and Iran) experiment with forms of rule that too take them further away from its orbit. These models and forms face many problems of their own, but they may not be quite as unattractive - either to the people of these countries or to many observers around the world - as lingering triumphalists in the west might assume.
  • There has been a tendency to focus the work of democracy-support in very practical ways: toolkits, implementation, strategy and policy. This was and remains essential; but there is also a need to reflect on the underpinnings of these practices in how democracy itself is understood in this new, testing global environment.
  • The dominance of a liberal-democratic conception with an American accent is reflected in the overwhelming predominance of United States institutions, academics, journals - and ideas - in the democracy-support "industry". Again, this is not in itself a problem: all discourses of democracy are grounded in specific social-political contexts and  power-relations. But the current circumstances of the kind described above - authoritarian challenges, stalled democratic transitions, discontent with democracy, deep and growing economic problems - suggest that an expanded understanding of democracy might be a route towards a healthy redefinition of democracy-support.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This is not to advocate a simplistic "mix and match" approach, but to suggest that a creative inclusion of new elements from different sources could contribute to democracy's rethinking from within.
  • For most people, at the heart of democracy is toleration of difference combined with an openness to listen to a plurality of voices and opinions. This makes it more than a little strange that there is so little debate over what democracy can and should mean in relation to democracy-support. The logic here is that democracy-support itself needs to be "democratised" - in part by engaging in continuing dialogue, interaction and learning between communities moving to democracy and those seeking to support these processes.
  • Arabica Robusta on 29 Mar 09
     
    This article is good in that it advocates examination of the many models of democratization/democracy. However, it does not adequately question the terms of the debate, in particularly looking more deeply at how the movement is driven and what the role of corporations and other key exploiters (members of the "capital class"?) is.
James Camry

The Lesser of Two Evils & Mid Term Elections - 0 views

ithp.org/...midtermelections.html

new world order business news conspiracy alternative obama barack president elections mid term

shared by James Camry on 20 May 10 - Cached
  • Here’s the real question we need to ask these people. We live in America, so why do we have to vote for evil, period? Why is evil the only option on the ballot? What’s the point of democracy if it means rule by the people, represented by evil. The reason evil is the only option is because somewhere in our country’s history, the political elite decided that the masses are holistically retarded, and all voting issues should be limited to a color-coded choice between red and blue.
  • James Camry on 20 May 10
     
    This article really rang true with me
Arabica Robusta

Beyond armistice: women searching for an enduring peace | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-searching-for-enduring-peace

war versailles germany human rights women social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 01 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The 1919 Zurich gathering is where the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom first took its name. You could say the League was born out of profound dismay at the unjust outcome of Versailles. A worn old volume is our one extant copy of the report of that conference. Holding it in our hands as we prepared this article, we saw anew just how central had been the women's preoccupation with economic issues.
  • This demoralizing sense of 'no alternative' has impacted on the thinking of the peace and women's movements too. Yet, we are resourced today with factual evidence of the economic oppression and inequality at the root of war, data of a scope and accuracy that the women of 1919 sorely lacked. The UN’s Human Development Report provides us annually with a clear picture of who profits and who lives in poverty.  The recent scandal of the so-called Global Financial Crisis has brought to view hard evidence of the subsidy made available to the financial institutions and individuals responsible, while a hyper-capitalism is imposed upon populations through austerity measures that attack public services, and on labour standards and conditions hard won over decades. Today, given the palpable rivalry of corporate interests and their national backers for control of resources and markets, peace activism can scarcely afford to ignore the causality of capitalism in militarization and war.
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