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Article
Publication date: 30 July 2020

Christian Nold

The purpose of this paper is to articulate an ontological anarchist approach for an engaged post-human politics and present insurrection training as a pragmatic tool for…

226

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to articulate an ontological anarchist approach for an engaged post-human politics and present insurrection training as a pragmatic tool for researchers to directly transform the world.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper analyses how post-humanism has been criticised for dissolving political agency. It shows that this is due to the way post-humanism has been framed as sensitising and including non-humans into liberal politics. Instead, the paper examines anarchist-influenced post-humanism and combines this with the notion of multiple ontologies and ontological interventions. The paper presents the notion of insurrection training as offering the possibility for researchers to become emotionally sensitised to ontological difference. A case study of the “Seeds of Hope East Timor Ploughshares action” (1996) is used to illustrate what insurrection training and ontological interventions look like in practice. Finally, the paper makes suggestions as to how post-human researchers can apply this approach in their everyday lives.

Findings

The paper suggests that beyond a liberal framing of post-humanism as inclusion, there is also an ontological anarchist post-humanism that can support transformative impacts in the world. This form of post-humanism offers specificity of intervention and reflexive training practices. Insurrection training can offer new possibilities for post-humanist researchers: experience ontological difference, de-trivialise the everyday, connect to social movements, make post-human politics “doable” and offer “direct” change.

Originality/value

The paper addresses discussions that claim post-humanism is disabling political change. Its contribution is to map an anarchist post-humanism and extend this with concepts of multiple ontologies. It proposes the notion of insurrection training which places attention on the role of the researcher as an active agent that needs to be sensitised to ontological difference to carry out interventions. A case study of direct action illustrates what ontological intervention and insurrection training look like in practice. The case study suggests that insurrection training is an everyday performative practice that integrates and negotiates the personal, material and political. Finally, the paper suggests how researchers can adopt such an approach in their everyday lives.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 41 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 19 May 2021

Erika Cudworth, Will Boisseau and Richard J. White

Abstract

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 41 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 April 2020

Rhiannon Firth and Andrew Robinson

This paper maps utopian theories of technological change. The focus is on debates surrounding emerging industrial technologies which contribute to making the relationship between…

2048

Abstract

Purpose

This paper maps utopian theories of technological change. The focus is on debates surrounding emerging industrial technologies which contribute to making the relationship between humans and machines more symbiotic and entangled, such as robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. The aim is to provide a map to navigate complex debates on the potential for technology to be used for emancipatory purposes and to plot the grounds for tactical engagements.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper proposes a two-way axis to map theories into to a six-category typology. Axis one contains the parameters humanist–assemblage. Humanists draw on the idea of a human essence of creative labour-power, and treat machines as alienated and exploitative form of this essence. Assemblage theorists draw on posthumanism and poststructuralism, maintaining that humans always exist within assemblages which also contain non-human forces. Axis two contains the parameters utopian/optimist; tactical/processual; and dystopian/pessimist, depending on the construed potential for using new technologies for empowering ends.

Findings

The growing social role of robots portends unknown, and maybe radical, changes, but there is no single human perspective from which this shift is conceived. Approaches cluster in six distinct sets, each with different paradigmatic assumptions.

Practical implications

Mapping the categories is useful pedagogically, and makes other political interventions possible, for example interventions between groups and social movements whose practice-based ontologies differ vastly.

Originality/value

Bringing different approaches into contact and mapping differences in ways which make them more comparable, can help to identify the points of disagreement and the empirical or axiomatic grounds for these. It might facilitate the future identification of criteria to choose among the approaches.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 41 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2019

Linda Chisholm

Abstract

Details

Teacher Preparation in South Africa
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-694-7

Article
Publication date: 21 June 2013

John H. Humphreys, Jane W. Gibson and Jennifer D. Oyler

Based upon an analysis of 30 historic narrative accounts of mutinies, Coye, Murphy, and Spencer recently extended voice theory to clarify the ontological status of the concept of…

Abstract

Purpose

Based upon an analysis of 30 historic narrative accounts of mutinies, Coye, Murphy, and Spencer recently extended voice theory to clarify the ontological status of the concept of upward defiance. The purpose of this article is to extend the framework of Coye et al. and illustrate the process of escalation towards hostility to offer practicing managers guidance on appropriate steps to interrupt the extreme escalation of member resistance.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors examined the significant historical insurrection within the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain. With the case of the Blair Mountain War, the historical record provides ample narrative data for a textual, interpretive, pseudo‐ethnographical analysis.

Findings

The examination of the Battle of Blair Mountain provides additional support for the upward organizational defiance framework proposed by Coye, Murphy, and Spencer. In addition, the authors have extended the theoretical upward defiance framework to account for the escalation of constructive to destructive forms of voice towards mutiny to reveal managerial actions and attitudes to mitigate follower defiance.

Research limitations/implications

The common limitation to any historic case study is one of generalizability, although it often useful to accept the trade‐off between limited generalizability and the potential discernment associated with the methodology.

Originality/value

The paper investigates a mutiny outside of a maritime setting to offer support for Coye et al.’s conceptual framework, extend that framework in a manner more consistent with organizational practice, and offer guidance to practitioners.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 19 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 5 December 2014

Linda S. Watts

This chapter discusses successful practices within inquiry-based learning in the humanities and arts. The focus remains on an example of interdisciplinary inquiry conducted in an…

Abstract

This chapter discusses successful practices within inquiry-based learning in the humanities and arts. The focus remains on an example of interdisciplinary inquiry conducted in an American Studies core course taught at the undergraduate level: “Memory and Dissent in American Culture: Remembering Nat Turner.” This chapter addresses the course design and in particular, its casebook assignment sequence, devoting central attention to the manner in which the casebook model supports students in becoming more adept and autonomous in framing responses to questions of their own devising.

Details

Inquiry-Based Learning for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: A Conceptual and Practical Resource for Educators
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-236-4

Book part
Publication date: 15 July 2009

Maraike Wenzel and Sami Faltas

On December 24, 1989, an armed insurrection began in Liberia. Charles Taylor, a former government official, led a rebel force, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), into…

Abstract

On December 24, 1989, an armed insurrection began in Liberia. Charles Taylor, a former government official, led a rebel force, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), into the north-eastern Nimba County. A breakaway faction, the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL), led by Prince Yormie Johnson gained control of central Monrovia – the capital – and killed the President Samuel Doe. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened in August 1990, sending monitoring troops (the ECOWAS Military Observer Group, ECOMOG), and convened a national conference which elected an Interim Government of National Unity. In October 1990, ECOMOG established a neutral zone in Monrovia where Dr. Amos Sawyer was installed as Interim President in November. Various different factions and opposition groups were formed and clashes between the rebel groups and the Liberian army continued.

Details

Putting Teeth in the Tiger: Improving the Effectiveness of Arms Embargoes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-202-9

Article
Publication date: 11 October 2011

John S. Jeremie

The purpose of this paper is to explain why, as a matter of law and policy, loss suffered as a consequence of terrorism, insurrection and/or civil uprising is not generally…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explain why, as a matter of law and policy, loss suffered as a consequence of terrorism, insurrection and/or civil uprising is not generally compensable in insurance law. The paper postulates that it is the duty of the state, particularly in small states, to compensate loss of this type.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper achieves this objective by studying the attempted coup d'état by Muslim fundamentalists in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 and the devastating property losses suffered during the attempted coup as a consequence of looting and arson. The standard terms of two main policies then in use are meticulously set out and examined in the context of the relevant case law and textbook learning on the subject of losses of this type.

Findings

The paper demonstrates that losses occasioned as a consequence of activity of the type under reference – that is terrorist activity, insurrection and civil uprising – cannot be dealt with by insurance companies and that it falls to the state as the guardian of national security and as an honest broker in the development of the economy to ensure even development by compensating losses occasioned as a consequence of terrorist activity, insurrection and/or civil uprising.

Originality/value

The paper for the first time puts in context losses of the type now being experienced in many parts of the world and explains the limitations of the traditional insurance law principles to treat with these losses. The solution of state compensation as a last resort to compensate innocent victims in these circumstances is advanced as a possible solution.

Details

Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 18 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1359-0790

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Teacher Preparation in South Africa
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-694-7

Article
Publication date: 1 December 1999

David E. Barlow and Melissa Hickman Barlow

Places recent trends in policing in the USA into historical context, emphasizing the critical importance of political, economic, and social forces on the formation and development…

2482

Abstract

Places recent trends in policing in the USA into historical context, emphasizing the critical importance of political, economic, and social forces on the formation and development of police institutions and practices. Specifically, this paper describes four major developments in policing in relation to the US political economy: pre‐industrial police, industrial police, modern police, and postmodern police. Each of these developments has unique characteristics. At the same time, each retains certain structural imperatives which transcend the particulars and ultimately tend to preserve the police as front line defenders of the status quo. It is through an analysis of historically specific characteristics of, and fundamental structural conditions for policing that this paper contributes to a better understanding of the potential of contemporary police agencies to play a role in achieving either greater social justice or just greater social control.

Details

Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1363-951X

Keywords

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