Though a recent phenomenon, land grabs have generated considerable debate that remains highly polarized. In this debate, one view presents land deals as a path to sustainable and transformative rural development through capital accumulation, infrastructural development, technology transfer, and job creation while the alternative view sees land grabs as a new wave of neo-colonization, exploitation, and domination. The underlying argument, at least theoretically, is that international land deals unlock the much needed capital to accelerate the achievement of sustainable and transformative (...) rural development in developing countries. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the contribution of large scale land deals in Malawi to rural development by employing the political economy perspective using the Limphasa Sugar Corporation as a case study with particular focus on the nature and interest of the actors involved; the legal framework supporting large scale land deals; major individual and community benefits; and the extent to which these large land deals can indeed bring about sustainable and transformative rural development. The findings of this article demonstrate that large scale land deals present short term benefits to local communities such as capital for rural development; technology transfer and job creation in exchange for the priceless economic and social capital that local people depend upon; destruction of local social systems; deepening of local communities’ vulnerability to economic shocks; and the entrenchment of community dependence that may in the long run result in social and political unrest. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

May Day was the most popular holiday of the two major wings of the German labor movement, Social Democratic and Communist, during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). While the political importance and ideological significance of May Day celebrations for the German labor movement have been extensively researched, its geographicity, the inherently spatialized and spatializing moment of lived experience, as well as the content of that geographicity have been relatively neglected. Examining working-class May Day celebrations in a specific built environment like the (...) Lustgarten permits detailed consideration of the ways that the festive has involved spatializing and spatialized moments of lived experience which were part of the spatial reproduction of class relations and class experiences at the local level in Berlin in the Weimar Republic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartography: The Ideal and Its History by Matthew H. EdneyAlex ZukasCartography: The Ideal and Its History BY MATTHEW H. EDNEY Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019As Matthew Edney notes in the introduction, “This book is the product of my entire career as a map historian (so far);” it does, indeed, represent the culmination of more than thirty years of his research in the history of maps and mapping (...) that began in graduate school (ix). From the outset of his career, Edney has followed and advocated a postmodern or poststructural approach to map studies. This book follows that theoretical approach, which is both a strength and a weakness. Adopting another theoretical approach would have enabled his desired critique of cartography without being self-refuting, as his poststructuralism turns out to be when he makes a positive case for studying mapping processes rather than cartography and “maps.”1Edney is a major and respected figure in the history of mapping. Along with Brian Harley, Denis Wood, Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins, and John Pickles, he has helped reshape the field over the past thirty-plus years in the direction of “critical cartography” or “critical map studies.” He has directed the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2005, and co-edited the fourth volume in that series, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (2019). He notes that co-editing that volume tested and tempered many of his ideas (ix). Since 2007 he has held the Osher Chair in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. [End Page 111]A provocative and complex polemic, the beautifully illustrated book is, as indicated by its title, divided into two main thematic sections: a philosophical deconstruction of the cartographic ideal and a retelling of the ideal’s historical development. It contains four content chapters with a brief introduction and conclusion. While the second historical half has much to recommend it (chapters 4 and 5), the first poststructurally-informed philosophical part (chapters 2 and 3) critiques propositions that he deploys to make his historical narrative work. Edney’s central argument in the book is that “cartography” is a prescriptive model that “exists only as an idealization produced by modern culture and that it cannot provide a valid conception of mapping in the past, present, or future. Cartography is not an endeavor common to all societies and cultures. Rather, it is very much a creation of the modern West and is permeated by many of the myths that Westerners tell themselves about their rationality and superiority” in which “the ideal of cartography is the entire belief system, while cartography is the fiction generated by the ideal” (8, 1). We will see that, in less sweeping form, there is value to these claims historically. However, key aspects of Edney’s philosophical position undermine his historical argument by undercutting its foundations. In fact, the polemics come mainly in the philosophical section whose tone is prescriptive, reproving, insistent, and absolute, which is ironic given his arguments against universality. His tone detracts from the value of the first section of the book and makes it a challenging read. Edney divides his book into philosophical and historical halves because he believes that “A true critique of cartography requires, first and foremost, the delineation of the ideal’s multiple tenets and all of their flaws” (26). However, he makes no specific argument on behalf of this sweeping, absolute, and universal premise, especially regarding its claims that it is a “true critique” and other critiques are “misguided and misleading” (26). If the book is supposed to provide the evidence for his premise and these claims, then the argument is circular.The introduction (chapter 1) lays out the ideal and the book’s structure. Chapter 2 examines sociocultural critiques of the ideal that emerged over the past thirty-five years and Edney’s recommended “processual approach” to mapping, which he claims “provides an intellectual framework to pursue map studies without running into the ideal’s flaws [End Page 112] and preconceptions” because “it encourages scholars to address issues about why and how maps are produced and consumed... in an explicit and empirically founded manner... (shrink)

This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity.

The #1bestseller that presents a funny, honest, and engaging look at the craziness of modern life, explaining why we're all just a little bit out of our minds. In Sane New World, Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health advocate - shows us just how our minds can send us mad as our internal critics play on a permanent loop tape. 'Don't do that.. why you... you didn't... should have... but you didn't...'. Ruby knows those voices well. She (...) has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. In Sane New World, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work and how we can rewire our thinking - often through simple mindfulness techniques - to find calm in a frenetic world. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is contended that British Idealists, New Liberals and Liberal Imperialists were all in favour of imperialism, especially when it took the form of white settler communities. The concession of relative autonomy was an acknowledgement of the potential of white settler communities to go the way of America by severing their relationship with the Empire completely. Where significant differences emerge in their thinking is in relation to non-white territories in the Empire where native peoples comprised the majority, and the British (...) Government and its agents administered in trust ‘lower’ peoples on the scale of civilisation with the ostensible goal of guiding them towards self-determination in the Empire. The differences in degree of commitment to these ideals were largely expressed in terms of the pejorative categories of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’ imperialism, which were flexible and manipulated for political gain, rather than analytic precision. Liberal Imperialists and New Liberals were opposed to each other in terms of the degree to which they supported imperialism, whereas British Idealists aligned themselves on both sides of the divide. (shrink)

The article analyses the role and moral force of consent in BDSM (Sado-masochistic and related practice). The view defended accepts consent as a key feature in sexual morality, and explains in detail the relation between consent and autonomy. In brief, it is argued that consent as a genuine extension of personal autonomy both justifies and draws limits to justifiable BDSM-practices: autonomy-undermining practices cannot be justified by appealing to autonomy. The paper discusses in detail the necessary conditions for consent with an (...) emphasis on relevant pitfalls in the context of BDSM and moves to an analysis of the prevalent “official” morality of the BDSM-community, expressed in the slogan “safe, sane, and consensual.” Finally, it draws attention to an un-discussed parallel between sexual morality and the concept of exit-rights as it is known from political philosophy. (shrink)

Following the publication of the seminal Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm applied his unique vision to a critique of contemporary capitalism in The Sane Society. Where the former dealt with man's historic inability to come to terms with his sense of isolation, and the dangers to which this can lead, The Sane Society took his theories one step further. In doing so it established Fromm as one of the most controversial political thinkers of his generation. Anaylsing how individuals (...) conform to contemporary capitalist and patriarchal societies, the book was published to wide acclaim and even wider disapproval. It was a scathing indictment of modern capitalism and as such proved unwelcome to many. Unwelcome because much of what Fromm had to say was true. Today, as we settle into the challenges of the 21st century, Fromm's writings are just as relevant as when they were first written. Read it and decide for yourself - are you living in a sane society? (shrink)

In his influential work Unpoetische Wörter, B. Axelson mentions sane as one of the words used freely in prose but generally avoided in verse.1 He briefly discusses its occurrences in poetry. A closer look at these occurrences offers some insight into the manner in which Roman poets employed words usually associated with prose writing or everyday speech, while raising some interesting questions about the accepted text of a passage in the Aeneid and the style of Ovid's Heroides 16–21.

Our reluctance to demystify grief is a sign of the distinctive obligation and discomfort that people feel towards those who have died. These feelings, however, are instructive about the nature of grief. As a vehicle of a living person’s relation to the dead, grief is mysterious—and we are rightly reluctant to take that mystery away. But grief is not to be avoided by philosophy on that account. I defend a less Romantic view of grief, in which a grieving person’s experience (...) of “normal” grief: 1) is felt to require an objectively recognized loss; 2) is felt to be dedicated to that lost object; 3) seems to most people to be something that she ought to feel; and 4) probably ought not to be medicalized, nor consequently medicated. This view of grief affords an understanding and appreciation of this rather special and important emotion without reducing its mystery. (shrink)

Inspired by an interesting quotation from the literature, we propose four modalities, called ‘sane belief’, ‘insane belief’, ‘reliable belief’ and ‘unreliable belief’, and introduce logics with each operator as the modal primitive. We show that the four modalities constitute a square of opposition, which indicates some interesting relationships among them. We compare the relative expressivity of these logics and other related logics, including a logic of false beliefs from the literature. The four main logics are all less expressive than (...) the standard modal logic over various model classes, and the logics of sane and insane beliefs are, respectively, equally expressive as the logics of unreliable and reliable beliefs on any class of models. The logics of reliable and unreliable beliefs are then combined into a bimodal logic, which turns out to be equally expressive as the standard modal logic. Despite this, we cannot obtain a complete axiomatization of the minimal bimodal logic, by simply translating the axioms and rules of the minimal modal logic $\textbf{K}$ into the bimodal language. We then introduce a schematic modality which unifies reliable and unreliable beliefs and axiomatize it over the class of all frames and also the class of serial frames. This line of research is finally extended to unify sane and insane beliefs and some axiomatizations are given. (shrink)

“But surely if it's not irrational, it can’t be OCD!” my friend exclaimed, when I told them about the paper Carolina Flores and Brent Kious provided their excellent comments for. In all fairness, my friend is not working in philosophy, or psychiatry, or in psychology. Still, I take their sentiment to be expressive of a widely held view: if you have a certain mental illness, then you must be irrational. Conversely, rationality guarantees mental health; the sane life is the (...) rational life. -/- In my paper, I attempted to complicate this picture. My main line of thought was that if the sane life is the rational life, we do not have a good conception of rationality yet. For, our best theories of rationality fail to capture what is going wrong in some cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Addressing the criticisms raised by my commentators will allow me to clear up some misunderstandings and sketch avenues for further work. (shrink)

In July 1907 the Holy Office issued the decree „Lamentabili“, which has been regarded as the first important formulation of the antimodernism prevalent under Pope Pius X. This essay offers the first reconstruction of the internal history of „Lamentabili“ as a document, based on the archival material in the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The history behind Lamentabili goes back to the censuring of Loisy's main works in 1903. The long and difficult process of drafting and discussing (...) the propositions of „Lamentabili“ reveals divergent opinions about Loisy and the entire „modernist“ problem within the Holy Office. Lamentabili bears traces of attenuation and compromise, and it seems probable that the necessity of drafting the papal Encylica „Pascendi“ against the errors of the „Modernists“ sprang from the dissatisfaction of leading antimodernists with the formalized and tedious process of conducting discussions within the Roman Inquisition. (shrink)

En este trabajo propongo analizar la polémica de Manuel Ugarte con el periódico socialista La Vanguardia, en 1913, situándola en el marco más amplio de los conflictos en torno a definiciones doctrinarias marcadas por una tensión entre el internacionalismo proletario propio del socialismo decimonónico y las preocupaciones por los asuntos nacionales, durante el proceso de consolidación del Partido Socialista de Argentina. Estas últimas se vieron atravesadas por la necesidad de construir definiciones respecto de la inmigración, del imperialismo norteamericano en el (...) subcontinente y de la reciente inserción de Argentina en la división internacional del trabajo. Un examen detenido de algunas intervenciones de Ugarte, Justo y otros colaboradores de La Vanguardia revela una heterogeneidad de posicionamientos mucho mayor de la que ha sido señalada hasta hoy. Así, esto dio lugar a debates doctrinarios descentrados respecto de los debates europeos, que implicaron respuestas creativas en el interior de la Segunda Internacional Socialista durante los años previos a la Primera Guerra Mundial. A su vez, en el caso de Ugarte, la polémica es reveladora de un modo de intervención intelectual que puede caracterizarse en términos de un diletantismo militante propio de la tradición dreyfusiana, acaso en desfasaje respecto de las condiciones de un partido en pleno proceso de institucionalización. I aim to analyze Manuel Ugarte’s polemics with the socialist Journal La Vanguardia, in 1913, in the larger frame of the conflicts around doctrinarian definitions, which were characterized by a tension between proletarian internationalism typical from 19th Century Socialism, and a concern about national questions during the consolidation process of Socialist Party in Argentina. This concern was related to the necessity of making definitions on immigration, American imperialism along the Latin American area and the recent Argentinean insertion in international work division. A close approach of some of Ugarte’s, Justo’s and other articles in La Vanguardia reveals an heterogeneity of positions much bigger than the one that has been observed up to the present. In this way, the doctrinarian debates were a bit off-center in regard to European ones, and they implied some creative responses into the Second Socialist International previous to First World War. Besides, in Ugarte’s case, this polemics exposes a particular way of intellectual intervention which can be described as a dilettante engagement specific to Dreyfusian tradition, in phase shift with the conditions of a Party involved in a whole process of institutionalization. (shrink)

Continuing and amplifying his earlier work, Fromm here maintains that modern society is not sane and is heading toward greater insanity. He begins by defining the human situation, and derives a criterion of sanity from this; examines in detail the development of man in modern society, diagnosing some of its major ills; and finally proposes, as a solution, a Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. The book has a welcome positive approach, but it sometimes sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth of scope. (...) --R. B. (shrink)

J Martin Stafford; John Wilson, Prophet of the Sane Society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 169–186, https://doi.org.

Are conspiracy theory beliefs pathological? That depends on what is meant by "pathological." This paper begins by unpacking that ill-defined and value-laden term before making the case that widespread conspiracy theory belief should not be conceptualized through the “othering’ perspective of individual psychopathology. In doing so, it adopts a phenomenological perspective to argue that conspiracy theory beliefs can be reliably distinguished from paranoid delusions based on falsity, belief conviction, idiosyncrasy, and self-referentiality. A socio-epistemic model is then presented that characterizes the (...) broader phenomenon of conspiracy theory belief as a product of a sick society plagued by epistemic mistrust and vulnerability to misinformation that is ubiquitous in today’s post-truth world. Finally, it is proposed that for individuals, the harmfulness of conspiracy theory belief is less related to belief content as it is to belief conviction and degree of self-relevant consequentiality. Staging conspiracy theory belief in terms of ideological commitment offers a conceptual framework to estimate behavioral risks and test hypotheses about the effectiveness of interventions along a continuum of belief conviction and associated socio-epistemic dynamics. Interventions should target not only individuals, but the dysfunctional social conditions that give rise to the pervasive and enduring phenomenon of conspiracy theory belief. (shrink)

Marion Milner introduces this edited collection of her papers from 1942 to 1977 with a fascinating biographical account of her development in psychoanalysis. The collection includes her classic papers on symbolism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:1. The present state of the questionEsser's turnaboutIn his collection of studies on the writings of Francis, published in 1973, Kajetan Esser, the acknowledged master of Franciscan textual criticism, wrote that in verse 13 of Francis's Letter to the Clergy there exists "a striking difference, that is difficult to explain," between the oldest manuscript which originally belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco and was written before 1238, and (...) the famous manuscript Assisi 338 which originated between 1250 and 1260. However, Esser considered this difference "a too weak basis to accept a double version of the Letter to the Clergy." It is therefore somewhat strange, to say the least, that in his textcritical edition of the writings of Francis, published only three years later in 1976, the same Esser concludes, without any further explanation, that the differences are "so serious that one has to accept two versions of one and the same letter."Esser's conclusion immediately raises the question about which one of the two versions would be the first. Esser opted for the Subiaco manuscript as the first version and the Assisi manuscript as the second. An important reason for Esser's option was the fact that the Assisi manuscript of the Letter to the Clergy added in verse 13 that the clerics have to observe all of these matters "according to the precepts of the Lord and the constitutions of holy mother Church ." With "the constitutions of holy mother Church" Francis referred, according to Esser, to the papal bull Sane cum olim, issued by pope Honorius III on November 22, 1219. And as this bull, in Esser's view, also "contained references to the will of God as laid down in Holy Scripture," Francis decided to insert both a reference to the papal bull and to "the precepts of the Lord" in a new, second version of the letter. This would imply that Francis, who in the summer of 1219 left for Egypt, wrote the second version only after his return from the Middle East in the spring of 1220. For it was only then that he came to know about the existence of the papal bull issued during his absence from Italy, and could refer to it in order to strengthen his appeal to the clergy to show greater reverence for the Eucharist. At the same time, however, the absence of these important additions in the first version implies that this version was written before the papal bull of Honorius was issued and thus also before Francis's departure for the Middle East in the summer of 1219.Present reception of Esser's theoryThe latest English translation, published in 1999, follows Esser and contains a separate translation of both versions, the first of which was written before 1219 and the second in 1220. In the most recent German translation Leonhard Lehmann acknowledges the existence of two versions but the differences between the two are so small that it suffices to print only the text of the oldest manuscript, that of Subiaco, written before 1238. He agrees, though, that the addition constitutiones sanctae matris Ecclesiae in the second version refers to the papal bull Sane cum olim and that the earlier version may have been written before 1219. The revised edition of the Fonti Francescane still follows Esser's theory as regards the existence of two versions, the early date of the first version and the reference of the second version to Sane cum olim. However, in a lengthy article on Francis's letters, C. Paolazzi, the author of the introduction to the Letters in FF, revised his previous opinion in 2008. He still accepts the existence of two versions but dates both after Sane cum olim and therewith also after Francis's return from the Middle East in 1220. His main argument is that theimplicit quotations.. (shrink)

Review of Van Parijs and Vanderborght's book, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Van Parijs refers to this book as not only a "toolkit for the people advocating Basic Income around the world, but also for people criticizing it." This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Basic Income.

J Martin Stafford; John Wilson, Prophet of the Sane Society, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 169–186, https://doi.org.

Gerald Vann, author of this wise book, maintains that only the wisdom of St. Thomas can heal the spiritual agony and barrenness of our broken age. In chapters that include a brief biography of Aquinas and explanations of the main aspects of his thought, Vann shows that Aquinas's thought and example can reconcile the broken shards of modern life: rationalism and spirituality, action and mysticism. With the guidance of The Aquinas Prescription, you'll be able more richly than ever to give (...) glory to the Light that Aquinas so ably and lovingly illuminated. (shrink)

This stuff is everywhere -- The damage that it does -- On weasel words -- Building your own bullshitometer -- Noble monkeys: where we all came from -- The wonderful power of woo -- Bugs, bodies: mysteries of medicine -- Implacable foes of reason: the antivaxers -- No hoax: the truth about climate change -- That isn't exactly how it went: faking history -- Coprolite claims: faking archaeology -- All the news that's fit to fake.