test 2 Flashcards
Depoliticization
“the removal of public scrutiny and debate, with the result that issues of social justice are transformed into technocratic matters to be resolved by managers, ‘experts’, or in this case, humanitarian celebrities
Thus, when celebrities speak for the Third World on issues of debt or poverty, or NGOs
act as ‘witnesses’ on behalf of disaster ‘victims’, they reduce the Other into passive bystander, unilaterally representing her/his needs and desires.”
Helps “decaffeinate” capitalism
Uses the ‘caring’ language of corporate ‘social responsibility’
The concept of the other
promotes a ‘Self’ usually based on explicitly western values such as individualism and consumerism.
ideologically constructs a disadvantaged and downtrodden non-western ‘other’.
The concept of ‘The Other’:
“She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject (or Self), he is the Absolute – she is the Other”
(Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1948).
Orientalism
a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates, and distorts differences of Arab ppl and culture as compared to that of Europe and the US
- involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backwards, uncivilized, and at times dangerous
- Edward W. Said - book “Orientalism” - acceptance in West of basic distinction between East and West as starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its ppl, customs, mind, destiny, etc
Disaster capitalism
refers to generation of profits based on occurence of some type of disaster
- term first coined by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine” and focuses mainly on big business activities that seek to create products that consumers then purchase due to fear of some type of potential or impeding disaster
- over time has been applied to profits made due to deforestation, during and after a natural disaster, and even in the marketing of products in a manner that generates anxiety that can only be relieved by consuming a given product
Philanthrocapitalism
‘harnessing the profit motive to achieve social good’ (Kapoor, 49);
a.k.a, ‘creative capitalism’;
“corporate social responsibility”; “green capitalism”
capitalism’s new ‘moral’ and ‘caring’ brand
Decaf capitalism
the appearance of consumer products that endeavour to remove risk or danger, that try to cleanse their poison or sweeten their astringent, as indicative of the ideological make-up of our age
Consumer capitalism
the economic and social political condition in which consumer demand is manipulated, in a deliberate and coordinated way, on a very large scale, through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers.
Illusion of freedom and individuality
Reduces citizenship to consumerism
the politics of fear
The politics of fear involves the systematic use of fear, both overtly and covertly, for the purposes manipulating popular opinion and gaining political advantage (such as winning elections or passing unpopular policies).
terrorism and the politics of fear
The strategic use of terror to produce a politics of fear which can include the instigation of fear, the framing of fear and objects of fear, and the management of fear.
anarchy
the absence of order and the tools of governance such as leaders, laws, rules.
Fear of anarchy – hobbes’s leviathan
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679); one of the most influential modern political thinker
Humans are naturally selfish and their natural is anarchy (the absence of order and the tools of governance such as leaders, laws, rules)
people create government for fear of anarchy and in order to secure themselves against anarchy
4 types of security
State security: protection of borders and governmental structures from outside threats
Regime security: defined by the leaders’ ability to protect their power.
National security: the protection of state interests including tribal, ethnic or other groups that exist within a state’s borders
Individual security: the protection of the interests of individuals within states
Power
the fear of anarchy (the absence of order) determines the power relations the characters
‘Power’: both the capacity to influence and the means of influencing another; the stronger is represented as the leader(s) and the weaker is represented as those that are ruled
Anarchy and states: realism says that…
the international system is anarchic since there is no overarching authority (e.g. the UN is not a world government)
the system made up of sovereign states; ‘sovereignty’
to have absolute authority over its territory and people
the overriding goal of states in this environment of international anarchy is to survive; states can use violence to survive.
The politics of fear
how fear mediates governance and war; the politics of fear affects how we define security in relation to a perceived state of insecurity or threat to the survival of a group or people or nation
fear of anarchy motivates the politics of friends and enemy between states
