#dev

la police française se compare au bras armé d’une dictature impériale qui fait régner la terreur dans toute une galaxie et commet des génocides tout en écrasant la rébellion., @Nantes_Revoltee sur touiteur
▻https://twitter.com/Nantes_Revoltee/status/1364265194403344390

QUAND LA RÉALITÉ DÉPASSE LA FICTION

Pour tenter de surfer sur le buzz de #DaftPunk, la police nationale se compare aux « Stormtroopers », ces soldats de l’armée des « méchants » de la saga #StarWars.

#Fail #ÉtatPolicier #Rebellion #DégommonsLempire

Concrètement la police française se compare au bras armé d’une dictature impériale qui fait régner la terreur dans toute une galaxie et commet des génocides tout en écrasant la rébellion. Voyons cela comme un aveu : au moins, on sait dans quel camp se trouve la police. #Lallement

On s’étonnera que des gens qui travaillent tant sur leur propre image aient aussi peur qu’on les filme en train d’exercer. #LoiSécuritéGlobale

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu7VrALXUAIxAub?format=jpg&name=large#.jpeg

Pour rappel, il y a quelques mois une banderole apparaissait en tête de manifestation à #Nantes… avec un Stormtrooper aux couleurs de la police nationale portant un LBD.

La communication de la police va donc au-delà des dénonciations des manifestant-es. Heureusement que le ridicule ne tue pas, ça serait une hécatombe au ministère de l’Intérieur !

#késkonrigole

Migration, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Knowledge —> An Interview with #Juliano_Fiori.

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh: In this issue of Migration and Society we are interested in the overarching theme of “Recentering the South in Studies of Migration.” Indeed, it is increasingly acknowledged that studies of and policy responses to migration and displacement often have a strong Northern bias. For instance, in spite of the importance of different forms of migration within, across, and between countries of the “global South” (i.e., “South-South migration”), there is a significant tendency to focus on migration from “the South” to countries of “the North” (i.e., South-North migration), prioritizing the perspectives and interests of stakeholders associated with the North. Against this backdrop, what is your position with regard to claims of Eurocentrism in studies of and responses to migration?

Juliano Fiori: To the extent that they emerge from immanent critiques of colonialism and liberal capitalism, I am sympathetic toward them.1 Decentering (or provincializing) Europe is necessarily an epistemological project of deconstruction. But to contribute to a counterhegemonic politics, this project must move beyond the diagnosis of epistemicide to challenge the particular substance of European thought that has produced systems of oppression.

The idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” is, of course, à la mode (Sabaratnam 2017; Vanyoro 2019). It is difficult to dispute the pedagogical necessity to question epistemic hierarchies and create portals into multiple worlds of knowledge. These endeavors are arguably compatible with the exigencies of Enlightenment reason itself. But, though I recognize Eurocentrism as an expression of white identity politics, I am wary of the notion that individual self-identification with a particular body of knowledge is a worthy or sufficient end for epistemic decolonization—a notion I associate with a prevalent strain of woke post-politics, which, revering the cultural symbols of late capitalism but seeking to resignify them, surely produces a solipsistic malaise. Decolonization of the curriculum must at least aim at the reconstruction of truths.

Eurocentrism in the study of human migration is perhaps particularly problematic—and brazen—on account of the transnational and transcultural histories that migrants produce. Migrants defy the neat categorization of territories and peoples according to civilizational hierarchies. They redefine the social meaning of physical frontiers, and they blur the cultural frontier between Self and Other. They contribute to an intellectual miscegenation that undermines essentialist explanations of cultural and philosophical heritage. Migration itself is decentering (Achiume 2019).

And it is largely because of this that it is perceived as a threat. Let’s consider Europe’s contemporary backlash against immigration. The economic argument about the strain immigration places on the welfare state—often framed in neo-Malthusian terms—can be readily rebutted with evidence of immigrants’ net economic contribution. But concerns about the dethroning of “European values” are rarely met head-on; progressive political elites have rather responded by doubling down on calls for multiculturalism from below, while promoting universalism from above, intensifying the contradictions of Eurocentricity.

It is unsurprising that, in the Anglophone world, migration studies developed the trappings of an academic discipline—dedicated university programs, journals, scholarly societies—in the late 1970s, amid Western anxieties about governing increased emigration from postcolonial states. It quickly attracted critical anthropologists and postcolonial theorists. But the study of the itinerant Other has tended to reinforce Eurocentric assumptions. Migration studies has risen from European foundations. Its social scientific references, its lexicon, its institutional frameworks and policy priorities, its social psychological conceptions of identity—all position Europe at the zero point. It has assembled an intellectual apparatus that privileges the Western gaze upon the hordes invading from the barrens. That this gaze might be cast empathetically does nothing to challenge epistemic reproduction: Eurocentrism directs attention toward the non-Western Other, whose passage toward Europe confirms the centrality of Europe and evokes a response in the name of Eurocentrism. To the extent that Western scholars focus on South-South migration, the policy relevance of their research is typically defined by its implications for flows from South to North.

The Eurocentrism of responses to forced migration by multinational charities, UN agencies, and the World Bank is not only a product of the ideological and cultural origins of these organizations. It also reflects the political interests of their principal donors: Western governments. Aid to refugees in countries neighboring Syria has been amply funded, particularly as the European Union has prioritized the containment of Syrians who might otherwise travel to Europe. Meanwhile, countries like India, South Africa, and Ivory Coast, which host significant numbers of regional migrants and refugees, receive proportionally little attention and support.

It is an irony of European containment policies that, while adopted as a measure against supposed threats to Europeanness, they undermine the moral superiority that Eurocentrism presupposes. The notion of a humanitarian Europe is unsustainable when European efforts to deter immigration are considered alongside the conditions accepted for other regions of the world. A continent of more than half a billion people, Europe hosts just under 2.3 million refugees; Lebanon, with a population of six million, hosts more than 1.5 million refugees from Syria alone. It should be noted that, in recent years, European citizens’ movements have mobilized resources to prevent the death of people crossing the Mediterranean. Initiatives like Alarm Phone, Open Arms, Sea Watch, and SOS MEDITERRANEE seem to represent a politicized humanitarianism for the network age. But in their overt opposition to an emboldened ethnonationalist politics, they seek to rescue not only migrants and refugees, but also an idea of Europe.

EFQ: How, if at all, do you engage with constructs such as “the global North,” “the global South,” and “the West” in your own work?

JF: I inevitably use some of these terms more than others, but they are all problematic in a way, so I just choose the one that I think best conveys my intended meaning in each given context. West, North, and core are not interchangeable; they are associated with distinct, if overlapping, ontologies and temporalities. As are Third World, South, and developing world.

I try to stick to three principles when using these terms. The first is to avoid the sort of negative framing to which your work on South-South encounters has helpfully drawn attention (i.e., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015, 2018; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2018). When we come across one of these terms being deployed negatively, it invariably describes that which is not of the West or of the North. As such, it centers Europe and North America, and it opens up an analytical terrain on which those residing beyond the imagined cultural bounds of these regions tend to be exoticized. When I need to frame something negatively, I try to do so directly, using the appropriate prefix.

Second, I try to avoid setting up dichotomies and continuities. Placing East and West or North and South in opposition implies entirely dissimilar bodies, separated by a definite, undeviating frontier. But these terms are mutually constitutive, and it is rarely clear where, or even if, a frontier can be drawn. Such dichotomies also imply a conceptual equilibrium: that what lies on one side of the opposition is ontologically equivalent to what lies on the other. But the concept of the West is not equivalent to what the East represents today; indeed, it is questionable whether a concept of the East is now of much analytical value. South, West, North, and East might be constructed dialectically, but their imagined opposites are not necessarily their antitheses. Each arguably has more than one counterpoint.

Similarly, I generally don’t use terms that associate countries or regions with stages of development—most obviously, least developed, developing, and developed. They point toward a progressivist and teleological theory of history to which I don’t subscribe. (The world-systems concepts of core, semiperiphery, and periphery offer a corrective to national developmental mythologies, but they are nonetheless inscribed in a systemic teleology.) The idea of an inexorable march toward capitalist modernity—either as the summit of civilization or as the point of maximum contradiction—fails to account for the angles, forks, and dead ends that historical subjects encounter. It also tends to be founded on a Eurocentric and theological economism that narrows human experience and, I would argue, mistakenly subordinates the political.

Third, I try to use these terms conceptually, without presenting them as fixed unities. They must be sufficiently tight as concepts to transmit meaning. But they inevitably obscure the heterogeneity they encompass, which is always in flux. Moreover, as concepts, they are continuously resignified by discursive struggles and the reordering of the interstate system. Attempts to define them too tightly, according to particular geographies or a particular politics, can give the impression that they are ahistorical. Take Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s definition of the South, for example. For Santos, the South is not a geographical concept: he contends that it also exists in the geographical North (2014, 2016). Rather, it is a metaphor for the human suffering caused by capitalism and colonialism. It is anticapitalist, anticolonialist, antipatriarchal, and anti-imperialist. According to this definition, the South becomes representative of a particular left-wing politics (and it is negative). It thus loses its utility as a category of macrosociological analysis.

Ultimately, all these terms are problematic because they are sweeping. But it is also for this reason that they can be useful for certain kinds of systemic analysis.

EFQ: You have written on the history of “Western humanitarianism” (i.e., Fiori 2013; Baughan and Fiori 2015). Why do you focus on the “Western” character of humanitarianism?

JF: I refer to “Western humanitarianism” as a rejoinder to the fashionable notion that there is a universal humanitarian ethic. Within both the Anglophone academy and the aid sector, it has become a commonplace that humanitarianism needs to be decolonized, and that the way to do this is to recognize and nurture “local” humanitarianisms around the world. In the last decade and a half, enthusiasm for global history has contributed to broader and more sophisticated understandings of how humanitarian institutions and discourses have been constructed. But it has also arguably contributed to the “humanitarianization” of different altruistic impulses, expressions of solidarity, and charitable endeavors across cultures.

The term “humanitarian” was popularized in English and French in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it soon became associated with humanistic religion. It thus connoted the existence of an ideal humanity within every individual and, as Didier Fassin (2012) has argued, it has come to represent the secularization of the Christian impulse to life. It was used to describe a wide range of campaigns, from abolition and temperance to labor reform. But all promoted a rationalist conception of humanity derived from European philosophy. That is, an abstract humanity, founded upon a universal logos and characterized by the mind-body duality. What is referred to today as the “humanitarian system”—of financial flows and liberal institutions—has been shaped predominantly by Western power and political interests. But the justification for its existence also depends upon the European division between the reasoned human and the unreasoned savage. The avowed purpose of modern humanitarianism is to save, convert, and civilize the latter. To cast modern humanitarian reason as a universal is to deny the specificity of ethical dispositions born of other conceptions of humanity. Indeed, the French philosopher François Jullien (2014) has argued that the concept of “the universal” itself is of the West.

Of course, there are practices that are comparable to those of Western humanitarian agencies across different cultures. However, claiming these for humanitarianism sets them on European foundations, regardless of their author’s inspiration; and it takes for granted that they reproduce the minimalist politics of survival with which the Western humanitarian project has come to be associated.

So why not refer to “European humanitarianism”? First, because it must be recognized that, as a set of evolving ethical practices, humanitarianism does not have a linear intellectual genealogy. European philosophy itself has of course been influenced by other traditions of thought (see Amin 1989; Bevilacqua 2018; Hobson 2004; Patel 2018): pre-Socratic Greek thinkers borrowed from the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Egyptians; Enlightenment philosophes had exchanges with Arab intellectuals. Second, reference to the West usefully points to the application of humanitarian ideas through systems of power.

Since classical antiquity, wars and ruptures have produced various narratives of the West. In the mid-twentieth century, essentialist histories of Western civilization emphasized culture. For Cold War political scientists, West and East often represented distinct ideological projects. I refer to the West as something approaching a sociopolitical entity—a power bloc—that starts to take form in the early nineteenth century as Western European intellectuals and military planners conceive of Russia as a strategic threat in the East. This bloc is consolidated in the aftermath of World War I, under the leadership of the United States, which, as net creditor to Europe, shapes a new liberal international order. The West, then, becomes a loose grouping of those governments and institutional interests (primarily in Europe and North America) that, despite divergences, have been at the forefront of efforts to maintain and renew this order. During the twentieth century, humanitarians were sometimes at odds with the ordering imperatives of raison d’état, but contemporary humanitarianism is a product of this West—and a pillar of liberal order.2

EFQ: With this very rich historically and theoretically grounded discussion in mind, it is notable that policy makers and practitioners are implementing diverse ways of “engaging” with “the global South” through discourses and practices of “partnership” and supporting more “horizontal,” rather than “vertical,” modes of cooperation. In turn, one critique of such institutionalized policy engagement is that it risks instrumentalizing and co-opting modes of so-called South-South cooperation and “hence depoliticising potential sources of resistance to the North’s neoliberal hegemony” (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2018: 2). Indeed, as you suggested earlier, it has been argued that policy makers are strategically embracing “South-South migration,” “South-South cooperation,” and the “localisation of aid agenda” as efficient ways both “to enhance development outcomes” and to “keep ‘Southerners’ in the South,” as “part and parcel of Northern states’ inhumane, racist and racialised systems of border and immigration control” (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2018: 19). What, if any, are the dangers of enhancing “policy engagement” with “the South”? To what extent do you think that such instrumentalization and co-option can be avoided?

JF: The term “instrumentalization” gives the impression that there are circumstances under which policy engagement can be objectively just and disinterested. Even when framed as humanitarian, the engagement of Western actors in the South is inspired by a particular politics. Policy engagement involves an encounter of interests and a renegotiation of power relations; for each agent, all others are instruments in its political strategy. Co-option is just a symptom of negotiation between unequal agents with conflicting interests—which don’t need to be stated, conscious, or rationally pursued. It is the means through which the powerful disarm and transform agendas they cannot suppress.

The “localization agenda” is a good example. Measures to enable effective local responses to disaster are now discussed as a priority at international humanitarian congresses. These discussions can be traced at least as far back as Robert Chambers’s work (1983) on participatory rural development, in the 1980s. And they gathered momentum in the mid-2000s, as a number of initiatives promoted greater local participation in humanitarian operations. But, of course, there are different ideas about what localization should entail.

As localization has climbed the humanitarian policy agenda, the overseas development divisions of Western governments have come to see it as an opportunity to increase “value for money” and, ultimately, reduce aid expenditure. They promote cash transfer programming as the most “empowering” aid technology. Localization then becomes complementary to the integration of emergency response into development agendas, and to the expansion of markets.

Western humanitarian agencies that call for localization—and there are those, notably some branches of Médecins Sans Frontières, that do not—have generally fallen in line with this developmental interpretation, on account of their own ideological preferences as much as coercion by donor governments. But they have also presented localization as a moral imperative: a means of “shifting power” to the South to decolonize humanitarianism. While localization might be morally intuitive, Western humanitarians betray their hubris in supposing that their own concessions can reorder the aid industry and the geostrategic matrix from which it takes form. Their proposed solutions, then, including donor budgetary reallocations, are inevitably technocratic. Without structural changes to the political economy of aid, localization becomes a pretext for Western governments and humanitarian agencies to outsource risk. Moreover, it sustains a humanitarian imaginary that associates Westerners with “the international”—the space of politics, from which authority is born—and those in disaster-affected countries with “the local”—the space of the romanticized Other, vulnerable but unsullied by the machinations of power. (It is worth stating that the term “localization” itself implies the transformation of something “global” into something local, even though “locals”—some more than others—are constitutive of the global.)

There are Southern charities and civil society networks—like NEAR,3 for example—that develop similar narratives on localization, albeit in more indignant tones. They vindicate a larger piece of the pie. But, associating themselves with a neomanagerial humanitarianism, they too embrace a politics incapable of producing a systemic critique of the coloniality of aid.

Yet demands for local ownership of disaster responses should also be situated within histories of the subaltern. Some Western humanitarian agencies that today advocate for localization, including Save the Children, once faced opposition from anticolonial movements to their late imperial aid projects. More recently, so-called aid recipient perception surveys have repeatedly demonstrated the discontent of disaster-affected communities regarding impositions of foreign aid, but they have also demonstrated anguish over histories of injustice in which the Western humanitarian is little more than an occasional peregrine. It is the structural critique implicit in such responses that the localization agenda sterilizes. In the place of real discussion about power and inequalities, then, we get a set of policy prescriptions aimed at the production of self-sufficient neoliberal subjects, empowered to save themselves through access to markets.

While some such co-option is always likely in policy engagement, it can be reduced through the formation of counterhegemonic coalitions. Indeed, one dimension of what is now called South-South cooperation involves a relatively old practice among Southern governments of forming blocs to improve their negotiating position in multilateral forums. And, in the twenty-first century, they have achieved moderate successes on trade, global finance, and the environment. But it is important to recognize that co-option occurs in South-South encounters too. And, of course, that political affinities and solidarity can and do exist across frontiers.

EFQ: You edited the first issue of the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, which focused on “humanitarianism and the end of liberal order” (see Fiori 2019), and you are also one of the editors of a forthcoming book on this theme, Amidst the Debris: Humanitarianism and the End of Liberal Order. New populisms of the right now challenge the liberal norms and institutions that have shaped the existing refugee regime and have promoted freer movement of people across borders. Can decolonial and anticolonial thinking provide a basis for responses to displacement and migration that do more than resist?

JF: Any cosmopolitan response to migration is an act of resistance to the political organization of the interstate system.4 As blood-and-soil politicians now threaten to erect walls around the nation-state, the political meaning and relevance of cosmopolitan resistance changes. But if this resistance limits itself to protecting the order that appears to be under threat, it is likely to be ineffective. Moreover, an opportunity to articulate internationalisms in pursuit of a more just order will be lost.

In recent years, liberal commentators have given a great deal of attention to Trump, Salvini, Duterte, Orbán, Bolsonaro, and other leading figures of the so-called populist Right. And these figures surely merit attention on account of their contributions to a significant conjunctural phenomenon. But the fetishization of their idiosyncrasies and the frenzied investigation of their criminality serves a revanchist project premised on the notion that, once they are removed from office (through the ballot box or otherwise), the old order of things will be restored. To be sure, the wave that brought them to power will eventually subside; but the structures (normative, institutional, epistemological) that have stood in its way are unlikely to be left intact. Whether the intention is to rebuild these structures or to build new ones, it is necessary to consider the winds that produced the wave. In other words, if a cosmopolitan disposition is to play a role in defining the new during the current interregnum, resistance must be inscribed into strategies that take account of the organic processes that have produced Trumpism and Salvinism.

French geographer Christophe Guilluy offers an analysis of one aspect of organic change that I find compelling, despite my discomfort with the nativism that occasionally flavors his work. Guilluy describes a hollowing out of the Western middle class (2016, 2018). This middle class was a product of the postwar welfarist pact. But, since the crisis of capitalist democracy in the 1970s, the internationalization of capital and the financialization of economies have had a polarizing effect on society. According to Guilluy, there are now two social groupings: the upper classes, who have profited from neoliberal globalization or have at least been able to protect themselves from its fallout; and the lower classes, who have been forced into precarious labor and priced out of the city. It is these lower classes who have had to manage the multicultural integration promoted by progressive neoliberals of the center-left and center-right. Meanwhile, the upper classes have come to live in almost homogenous citadels, from which they cast moral aspersions on the reactionary lower classes who rage against the “open society.” An assertion of cultural sovereignty, this rage has been appropriated by conservatives-turned-revolutionaries, who, I would argue, represent one side of a new political dichotomy. On the other side are the progressives-turned-conservatives, who cling to the institutions that once seemed to promise the end of politics.

This social polarization would appear to be of significant consequence for humanitarian and human rights endeavors, since their social base has traditionally been the Western middle class. Epitomizing the open society, humanitarian campaigns to protect migrants deepen resentment among an aging precariat, which had imagined that social mobility implied an upward slope, only to fall into the lower classes. Meanwhile, the bourgeois bohemians who join the upper classes accommodate themselves to their postmodern condition, hunkering down in their privileged enclaves, where moral responses to distant injustices are limited to an ironic and banalizing clicktivism. The social institutions that once mobilized multiclass coalitions in the name of progressive causes have long since been dismantled. And, despite the revival of democratic socialism, the institutional Left still appears intellectually exhausted after decades in which it resigned itself to the efficient management of neoliberal strategies.

And yet, challenges to liberal order articulated through a Far Right politics create a moment of repoliticization; and they expose the contradictions of globalization in an interstate system, without undermining the reality of, or the demand for, connectivity. As such, they seem to open space for the formulation of radical internationalisms with a basis in the reconstruction of migrant rights. In this space, citizens’ movements responding to migration have forged a politics of transnational solidarity through anarchistic practices of mutual aid and horizontalism more than through the philosophizing of associated organic intellectuals. Fueled by disaffection with politics, as much as feelings of injustice, they have attracted young people facing a precarious future, and migrants themselves; indeed, there are movements led by migrants in Turkey, in Germany, in Greece, and elsewhere. They construct social commons with a basis in difference, forming “chains of equivalence.” Decolonial and anticolonial thinking is thus more likely to influence their responses to migration and displacement than those of Western governments and conventional humanitarian agencies. Indeed, beyond the political inspiration that horizontalism often draws from anticolonial struggles, decolonial and postcolonial theories offer a method of deconstructing hierarchy from the inside that can transform resistance into the basis for a pluralist politics built from the bottom up. But for this sort of internationalism to reshape democratic politics, the movements promoting it would need to build bridges into political institutions and incorporate it into political strategies that redress social polarization. To the extent that this might be possible, it will surely dilute their more radical propositions.

I rather suspect that the most likely scenario, in the short term at least, involves a political reordering through the reassertion of neoliberal strategies. We could see the development of the sort of political economy imagined by the early neoliberal thinker Gottfried Haberler (1985): that is, one in which goods, wages, and capital move freely, but labor doesn’t. This will depend on the consolidation of authoritarian states that nonetheless claim a democratic mandate to impose permanent states of emergency.

▻https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/migration-and-society/3/1/arms030114.xml

#migrations

Conceptualising the global South and South–South encounters

https://southernresponsesorg.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/img_2425.jpg?w=1400#.jpg

Long before the institutional interest in ‘engaging with’, and ostensibly mobilising and co-opting actors from across the global South, rich, critical literatures have been published in diverse languages around the world, demonstrating the urgency of developing and applying theoretical and methodological frameworks that can be posited as Southern, anti-colonial, postcolonial and/or decolonial in nature.[1] These and other approaches have traced and advocated for diverse ways of knowing and being in a pluriversal world characterised (and constituted) by complex relationalities and unequal power relations, and equally diverse ways of resisting these inequalities – including through historical and contemporary forms of transnational solidarities.

Of course, the very term ‘South’ which is included not once but twice in the title of the Handbook of South-South Relations, is itself a debated and diversely mobilised term, as exemplified in the different usages and definitions proposed (and critiqued) across the Handbook’s constituent chapters.

For instance, a number of official, institutional taxonomies exist, including those which classify (and in turn interpellate) different political entities as ‘being’ from and of ‘the South’ or ‘the North’. Such classifications have variously been developed on the basis of particular readings of a state’s geographical location, of its relative position as a (formerly) colonised territory or colonising power, and/or of a state’s current economic capacity on national and global scales.[2]

In turn, Medie and Kang (2018) define ‘countries of the global South’ as ‘countries that have been marginalised in the international political and economic system’. Indeed, Connell (2007) builds upon a long tradition of critical thinking to conceptualise the South and the North, respectively, through the lens of the periphery and the metropole, as categories that transcend fixed physical geographies. And of course, as stressed by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Kenneth Tafira in their contribution to the Handbook, such geographies have never been either static or defined purely through reference to physical territories and demarcations:

‘imperial reason and scientific racism were actively deployed in the invention of the geographical imaginaries of the global South and the global North.’

Through conceptualising the South and North through the lenses of the periphery and metropole, Connell argues that there are multiple souths in the world, including ‘souths’ (and southern voices) within powerful metropoles, as well as multiple souths within multiple peripheries. As Sujata Patel notes in her chapter in the Handbook, it is through this conceptualisation that Connell subsequently posits that

‘the category of the south allows us to evaluate the processes that permeate the non-recognition of its theories and practices in the constitution of knowledge systems and disciplines’.

It enables, and requires us, to examine how, why and with what effect certain forms of knowledge and being in the world come to be interpellated and protected as ‘universal’ while others are excluded, derided and suppressed ‘as’ knowledge or recognisable modes of being.[3] Indeed, in her chapter, Patel follows both Connell (2007) and de Sousa Santos (2014) in conceptualising ‘the South’ as ‘a metaphor’ that ‘represents the embeddedness of knowledge in relations of power’.

In turn, in their contribution to the Handbook, Dominic Davies and Elleke Boehmer centralise the constitutive relationality of the South by drawing on Grovogu (2011), who defines ‘the term “Global South” not as an exact geographical designation, but as “an idea and a set of practices, attitudes, and relations” that are mobilised precisely as “a disavowal of institutional and cultural practices associated with colonialism and imperialism”’ (cited in Davies and Boehmer). Viewing the South, or souths, as being constituted by and mobilising purposeful resistance to diverse exploitative systems, demonstrates the necessity of a contrapuntal reading of, and through, the South.

As such, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Tafira powerfully argue in their chapter,

‘the global South was not only invented from outside by European imperial forces but it also invented itself through resistance and solidarity-building.’

In this mode of analysis, the South has been constituted through a long history of unequal encounters with, and diverse forms of resistance to, different structures and entities across what can be variously designated the North, West or specific imperial and colonial powers. An analysis of the South therefore necessitates a simultaneous interrogation of the contours and nature of ‘the North’ or ‘West’, with Mignolo arguing (2000) that ‘what constitutes the West more than geography is a linguistic family, a belief system and an epistemology’.

Indeed, the acknowledgement of the importance of relationality and such mutually constitutive dynamics provides a useful bridge between these rich theoretical and conceptual engagements of, with and from ‘the South’ on the one hand, and empirically founded studies of the institutional interest in ‘South–South cooperation’ as a mode of technical and political exchange for ‘international development’ on the other. In effect, as noted by Urvashi Aneja in her chapter, diverse policies, modes of political interaction and ‘responses’ led by political entities across the South and the North alike ‘can thus be said to exist and evolve in a mutually constitutive relationship’, rather than in isolation from one another.

An important point to make at this stage is that it is not our aim to propose a definitive definition of the South or to propose how the South should be analysed or mobilised for diverse purposes – indeed, we would argue that such an exercise would be antithetical to the very foundations of the debates we and our contributors build upon in our respective modes of research and action.

Nonetheless, a common starting point for most, if not all, of the contributions in the Handbook is a rejection of conceptualisations of the South as that which is ‘non-Western’ or ‘non-Northern’. As noted by Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (here and in the Handbook), it is essential to continue actively resisting negative framings of the South as that which is not of or from ‘the West’ or ‘the North’ – indeed, this is partly why the (still problematic) South/North binary is often preferred over typologies such as Western and non-Western, First and Third World, or developed and un(der)developed countries, all of which ‘suggest both a hierarchy and a value judgment’ (Mawdsley, 2012).

In effect, as Fiddian-Qasmiyeh argues in the Handbook (drawing on Brigg), such modes of negative framing risk ‘maintaining rather than disrupting the notion that power originates from and operates through a unidirectional and intentional historical entity’. She – like other contributors to the Handbook addressing the relationships between theoretical, conceptual and empirical dynamics and modes of analysis, response and action – advocates for us to ‘resist the tendency to reconstitute the power of “the North” in determining the contours of the analysis’, while simultaneously acknowledging the extent to which ‘many Southern-led responses are purposefully positioned as alternatives and challenges to hegemonic, Northern-led systems’.

This is, in many ways, a ‘double bind’ that persists in many of our studies of the world, including those of and from the South: our aim not to re-inscribe the epistemic power of the North, while simultaneously acknowledging that diverse forms of knowledge and action are precisely developed as counterpoints to the North.

As noted above, in tracing this brief reflection on conceptualisations of the South it is not our intention to offer a comprehensive definition of ‘the South’ or to posit a definitive account of Southern approaches and theories. Rather, the Handbook aims to trace the debates that have emerged about, around, through and from the South, in all its heterogeneity (and not infrequent internal contradictions), in such a way that acknowledges the ways that the South has been constructed in relation to, with, through but also against other spaces, places, times, peoples, modes of knowledge and action.

Such processes are, precisely, modes of construction that resist dependence upon hegemonic frames of reference; indeed, the Handbook in many ways exemplifies the collective power that emerges when people come together to cooperate and trace diverse ‘roots and routes’ (following Gilroy) to knowing, being and responding to the world – all with a view to better understanding and finding more nuanced ways of responding to diverse encounters within and across the South and the North.

At the same time as we recognise internal heterogeneity within and across the South/souths, and advocate for more nuanced ways of understanding the South and the North that challenge hegemonic epistemologies and methodologies, Ama Biney’s chapter in the Handbook reminds us of another important dynamic that underpins the work of most, perhaps all, of the contributors to the Handbook. While Biney is writing specifically about pan-Africanism, we would argue that the approach she delineates is essential to the critical theoretical perspectives and analyses presented throughout the Handbook:

’Pan-Africanism does not aim at the external domination of other people, and, although it is a movement operating around the notion of being a race conscious movement, it is not a racialist one … In short, pan-Africanism is not anti-white but is profoundly against all forms of oppression and the domination of African people.’

While it is not our aim to unequivocally idealise or romanticise decolonial, postcolonial, anti-colonial, or Southern theories, or diverse historical or contemporary modes of South South Cooperation and transnational solidarity – such processes are complex, contradictory, and at times are replete of their own forms of discrimination and violence – we would nonetheless posit that this commitment to challenging and resisting all forms of oppression and domination, of all peoples, is at the core of our collective endeavours.

With such diverse approaches to conceptualising ‘the South’ (and its counterpoint, ‘the North’ or ‘the West’), precisely how we can explore ‘South–South relations’ thus becomes, first, a matter of how and with what effect we ‘know’, ‘speak of/for/about’, and (re)act in relation to different spaces, peoples and objects around the world; subsequently, it is a process of tracing material and immaterial connections across time and space, such as through the development of political solidarity and modes of resistance, and the movement of aid, trade, people and ideas. It is with these overlapping sets of debates and imperatives in mind, that the Handbook aims to explore a broad range of questions regarding the nature and implications of conducting research in and about the global South, and of applying a ‘Southern lens’ to such a wide range of encounters, processes and dynamics around the world.[4]

[…]

From a foundational acknowledgement of the dangers of essentialist binaries such as South–North and East–West and their concomitant hierarchies and modes of exploitation, the Handbook aims to explore and set out pathways to continue redressing the longstanding exclusion of polycentric forms of knowledge, politics and practice. It is our hope that the Handbook unsettles thinking about the South and about South–South relations, and prompts new and original research agendas that serve to transform and further complicate the geographic framing of the peoples of the world for emancipatory futures in the 21st century.

This extract from Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley’s Introduction to The Handbook of South-South Relations has been slightly edited for the purposes of this blog post. For other pieces published as part of the Southern Responses blog series on Thinking through the Global South, click here.

References cited

Anzaldúa, G., 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Brigg, M., 2002. ‘Post-development, Foucault and the Colonisation Metaphor.’ Third World Quarterly 23(3), 421–436.

Chakrabarty, D., 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Connell, R., 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. London: Polity.

Dabashi, H., 2015. Can Non-Europeans Think? London: Zed Books.

de Sousa Santos, B., 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Dussel, E., 1977. Filosofía de Liberación. Mexico City: Edicol.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., 2015. South-South Educational Migration, Humanitarianism and Development: Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East. Oxford: Routledge.

Gilroy, P., 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.

Grosfoguel, R., 2011. Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1(1). Available from: ▻https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq [Accessed 7 September 2018].

Grovogu, S., 2011. A Revolution Nonetheless: The Global South in International Relations. The Global South 5(1), Special Issue: The Global South and World Dis/Order, 175–190.

Kwoba, B, Nylander, O., Chantiluke, R., and Nangamso Nkopo, A. (eds), 2018. Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire. London: Zed Books.

Mawdsley, E., 2012. From Recipients to Donors: The Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape. London: Zed Books.

Medie, P. and Kang, A.J., 2018. Power, Knowledge and the Politics of Gender in the Global South. European Journal of Politics and Gender 1(1–2), 37–54.

Mignolo, W.D., 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mignolo, W.D., 2015. ‘Foreword: Yes, We Can.’ In: H. Dabashi, Can Non-Europeans Think? London and New York: Zed Books, pp. viii–xlii.

Minh-ha, Trinh T., 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J., 2013. Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Quijano, A., 1991. Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. Perú Indígena 29, 11–21.

Said, E., 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Vintage Books.

Spivak, G.C., 1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge.

Sundberg, J., 2007. Reconfiguring North–South Solidarity: Critical Reflections on Experiences of Transnational Resistance. Antipode 39(1), 144–166.

Tuhiwai Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.

wa Thiong’o, N., 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann Educational.

Wynter, S., 2003. Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument. The New Centennial Review 3(3), 257–337.

* Notes

[1] For instance, see Anzaldúa 1987; Chakrabarty 2007; Connell 2007; de Sousa Santos 2014; Dussell 1977; Grosfoguel 2011; Kwoba et al. 2018; Mignolo 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013; Quijano 1991, 2007; Said 1978; Spivak 1988; Sundberg 2007; Trinh T. Minh-ha 1989; Tuhiwai Smith 1999; wa Thiong’o 1986; Wynter 2003.

[2] Over 130 states have defined themselves as belonging to the Group of 77 – a quintessential South–South platform – in spite of the diversity of their ideological and geopolitical positions in the contemporary world order, their vastly divergent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and per capita income, and their rankings in the Human Development Index – for a longer discussion of the challenges and limitations of diverse modes of definition and typologies, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015.

[3] Also see Mignolo 2000; Dabashi 2015.

[4] Indeed, Connell notes that ‘#Southern_theory’ is a term I use for social thought from the societies of the global South. It’s not necessarily about the global South, though it often is. Intellectuals from colonial and postcolonial societies have also produced important analyses of global-North societies, and of worldwide structures (e.g. Raúl Prebisch and Samir Amin).

▻https://southernresponses.org/2018/12/05/conceptualising-the-global-south-and-south-south-encounters
#développement

Exploring refugees’ conceptualisations of Southern-led humanitarianism

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By Prof Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Principal Investigator, Southern Responses to Displacement Project

With displacement primarily being a Southern phenomena – circa 85-90% of all refugees remain within the ‘global South – it is also the case that responses to displacement have long been developed and implemented by states from the South (a construct we are critically examining throughout the Southern Responses to Displacement project – see here). Some of these state-led responses to displacement have been developed and implemented within the framework of what is known as ‘South-South Cooperation’. This framework provides a platform from which states from the global South work together to complement one another’s abilities and resources and break down barriers and structural inequalities created by colonial powers. It can also be presented as providing an alternative mode of response to that implemented by powerful Northern states and Northern-led organisations (see here).

An example of this type of South-South Cooperation, often driven by principles of ‘internationalism,’ can be found in the international scholarship programmes and schools established by a number of Southern states to provide primary, secondary and university-level education for refugees from across the Middle East and North Africa. In particular, since the 1960s, Cuba has provided free education through a scholarship system for Palestinian refugees based in camps and cities across the Middle East following the Nakba (the catastrophe) and for Sahrawi refugees who have lived in desert-based refugee camps in Algeria since the mid-1970s.

In line with the Southern Responses to Displacement project, which aims to purposefully centralise refugees’ own experiences of and perspectives on Southern-led initiatives to support refugees from Syria, throughout my previous work I have examined how Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees have conceptualised, negotiated or, indeed, resisted, diverse programmes that have been developed and implemented ‘on their behalf.’ While long-standing academic and policy debates have addressed the relationship between humanitarianism, politics and ideology, few studies to date have examined the ways in which refugee beneficiaries – as opposed to academics, policymakers and practitioners – conceptualise the programmes which are designed and implemented ‘for refugees’. The following discussion addresses this gap precisely by centralising Palestinian and Sahrawi graduates’ reflections on the Cuban scholarship programme and the extent to which they conceptualise political and ideological connections as being compatible with humanitarian motivations and outcomes.

This blog, and my previous work (here and here) examines how Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees have understood the motivations, nature and impacts of Cuba’s scholarship system through reference to identity, ideology, politics and humanitarianism. Based on my interviews with Palestinians and Sahrawis while they were still studying in Cuba, and with Palestinian and Sahrawi graduates whom I interviewed after they had returned to their home-camps in Lebanon and Algeria respectively, this short piece examines the complex dynamics which underpin access to, as well as the multifaceted experiences and outcomes of, the scholarship programme on both individual and collective levels.
Balancing ‘the humanitarian’

Although both Palestinian and Sahrawi interviewees in Cuba and Sahrawi graduates in their Algeria-based home-camps repeatedly asserted the humanitarian nature of the Cuban scholarship programme, precisely what this denomination of ‘humanitarianism’ might mean, and how compatible it could be given the ideological and political links highlighted by Palestinian graduates whom I interviewed in a range of refugee camps in Lebanon, requires further discussion.

The contemporary international humanitarianism regime is habitually equated with the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence (Ferris 2011: 11), and a strict separation is firmly upheld by Western humanitarian institutions between morality and politics (as explored in more detail by Pacitto and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2013). However, many critics reject the assertion that humanitarianism can ever be separated from politics, since ‘“humanitarianism” is the ideology of hegemonic states in the era of globalisation’ (Chimni 2000:3). Recognising the extent to which the Northern-led and Northern-dominated humanitarian regime is deeply implicated in, and reproduces, ‘the ideology of hegemonic [Northern] states’ is particularly significant since many (Northern) academics, policymakers and practitioners reject the right of Southern-led initiatives to be denominated ‘humanitarian’ in nature on the basis that such projects and programmes are motivated by ideological and/or faith-based principles, rather than ‘universal’ humanitarian principles.

Palestinians who at the time of our interviews were still studying in Cuba, in addition to those who had more recently graduated from Cuban universities, medical and dentistry schools and had ‘returned’ to their home-camps in Lebanon, repeatedly referred to ‘ideology’, ‘politics’, ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘human values’ when describing the Cuban scholarship programme. Yet, while they maintained that Cuba’s programme for Palestinian refugees is ‘humanitarian’ in nature, Palestinian graduates offered different perspectives regarding the balance between these different dimensions, implicitly and at times explicitly noting the ways in which these overlap or are in tension.

Importantly, these recurrent concepts are to be contrasted with the prevalent terminology and frames of reference arising in Sahrawi refugees’ accounts of the Cuban educational programme. Having also had access to the Cuban educational migration programme, Sahrawi graduates’ accounts can perhaps be traced to the continued significance of Spanish – the language learned and lived (following Bhabha 2006:x) in Cuba – amongst graduates following their return to the Sahrawi refugee camps, where Spanish is the official language used in the major camp-based Sahrawi medical institutions.

As such, in interviews and in informal conversations in the Sahrawi camps, Cuban-educated Sahrawis (commonly known as Cubarauis) consistently used the Spanish-language term solidaridad (solidarity) to define both the nature of the connection between the Sahrawi people and Cuba, and the nature of the scholarship programme; they also regularly cited Cuban revolutionary figures such as José Martí and Fidel Castro. In contrast, no such quotes were offered by the Palestinian graduates I interviewed in Lebanon, even if the significance of Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara was noted by many during our interviews in Cuba.

Explaining his understanding of the basis of the scholarship programme for Palestinians, Abdullah elaborated that this was:

‘mainly prompted because Cuban politics is based upon human values and mutual respect, and in particular upon socialism, which used to be very prominent in the Arab world during that time.’

In turn, referring to the common visions uniting both parties and facilitating Cuba’s scholarship programme for Palestinian refugees, Hamdi posited that:

‘Certain ideological and political commonalities contributed to this collaboration between the Cuban government and the PLO. However, the humanitarian factor was present in these negotiations.’ (Emphasis added)

These accounts reflect the extent to which ideology and humanitarianism are both recognised as playing a key role in the scholarship programme, and yet Hamdi’s usage of the term ‘however’, and his reference to ‘the humanitarian factor’, demonstrate an awareness that a tension may be perceived to exist between ideology/politics and humanitarian motivations.

Indeed, rather than describing the programme as a humanitarian programme per se, eight of my interviewees offered remarkably similar humanitarian ‘qualifiers’: the Cuban education programme is described as having ‘a humanitarian component’ (Marwan), ‘a humanitarian dimension’ (Younis), a ‘humanitarian aspect’ (Saadi), and ‘humanitarian ingredients’ (Abdel-Wahid); while other interviewees argued that it is ‘a mainly humanitarian system’ (Nimr) which ‘carr[ies] humanitarian elements’ (Hamdi) and ‘shares its humanitarian message in spite of the embargo [against Cuba]’ (Ibrahim).

As exemplified by these qualifiers, Palestinians who participated in this programme themselves recognise that humanitarianism was not the sole determining justification for the initiative, but rather that it formed part of the broader Cuban revolution and a particular mode of expressing support for other liberation movements, including the Palestinian cause.

In terms of weighting these different motivating and experiential elements, Mohammed argued that the ‘humanitarian aspect outweighs the ideological one’, emphasising the ‘programme’s strong humanitarian aspect’. In turn, Ahmed and Nimr declared that the Cuban scholarships were offered ‘without conditions or conditionalities’ and without ‘blackmailing Palestinians to educate them’.

These references are particularly relevant when viewed alongside critiques of neoliberal development programmes and strategies which have often been characterised by ‘tied aid’ or diverse economic, socio-political and gendered conditionalities which require beneficiaries to comply with Northern-dominated priorities vis-à-vis ‘good governance’ – all of which are, in effect, politically and/or ideologically driven.

Concurrently, Khalil argued that the programme is ‘humanitarian if used correctly’, thereby drawing attention to the extent to which the nature of the programme transcends either Cuba’s or the PLO’s underlying motivating factors per se, and is, rather, characterised both by the way in which the programme has been implemented since the 1970s, and its longer-term impacts.

With reference to the former, claims regarding the absence of conditionalities on Cuba’s behalf must be viewed alongside the extent to which Palestinians could only access the scholarships if they were affiliated with specific Palestinian factions (as I explore in the book): can the programme be ‘truly’ humanitarian if individual participation has historically been contingent upon an official declaration of ideological commonality with a leftist faction and/or the Cuban internationalist project?

With universality, neutrality and impartiality being three of the core ‘international’ humanitarian principles, a tension is apparent from the perspective of ‘the Northern relief elite’ who arguably monopolise the epithet humanitarian (Haysom, cited in Pacitto and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2013: 6). Indeed, although José Martí’s humanitarian principle to ‘compartir lo que tienes, no dar lo que te sobra’ (‘to share what you have, not what is left over’) has historically guided many of the Cuban state’s revolutionary programmes on national(ist) and international(ist) levels, precisely who Cuba should share with (on a collective) has often been geopolitically framed. Whilst designed to overcome the historical legacy of diverse exclusionary processes in Cuba, the programme could itself be conceptualised as being guided by an ideological commitment to inclusion with exclusionary underpinnings.

The imposition of a hegemonic discourse leaves people out, primarily on ideological grounds. Ideological repression means that everybody who questions the regime in a fundamental way is basically left out in the dark. There is a creation of boundaries between Self and Other that leaves very little room for fundamental critique. However, the existence of a hegemonic discourse, and demands for students to publicly assert their affiliation to an official ideological stance, whether this refers to Cuban or Palestinian discourses, should not necessarily be equated with the exclusion of individuals and groups who do not share particular opinions and beliefs.

In the case explored in this blog and in the book it is based on, a distinction can therefore perhaps be usefully made between the collective basis of scholarships primarily being offered to groups and nations with political and ideological bonds to Cuba’s revolutionary project, and the extent to which individual Palestinian students have arguably negotiated the Cuban system and the factional system alike to maximise their personal, professional and political development. To achieve the latter, individuals have developed official performances of ideological loyalty to access and complete their university studies in Cuba, whilst ultimately maintaining or developing political and ideological opinions, and critiques, of their own.

With reference to the broader outcomes of the programme, is it sufficient to announce, as seven Palestinian graduates did, that the project was ‘humanitarian’ in nature precisely because the beneficiaries of the scheme were refugees, and the overarching aim was to achieve professional self-sufficiency in refugee camps?

In effect, and as explored in my other research (here) Cuba’s programme might appear to fall under the remit of a developmental approach, rather than being ‘purely’ humanitarian in nature, precisely due to the official aim of maximising self-sufficiency as opposed to addressing immediate basic needs in an emergency phase (with the latter more readily falling under the remit of ‘humanitarian’ assistance).

Nonetheless, Cuba’s aim to enhance refugees’ self-sufficiency corresponds to the UNHCR’s well-established Development Assistance to Refugees approach, and programmes supporting medium- and long-term capacity building are particularly common in protracted refugee situations. At the same time, it could be argued that the distinction between humanitarianism and development is immaterial given that the rhetoric of solidarity underpins all of Cuba’s internationalist projects, whether in contexts of war or peace, and, furthermore, since Cuba has offered scholarships not only to refugees but also to citizens from across the Global South.

Related to the programme’s reach to citizens and refugees alike, and simultaneously to the nature of the connection between humanitarianism and politics, Younis drew attention to another pivotal dimension: ‘although the educational system had a humanitarian dimension, I don’t think it is possible to separate the human being from politics’. Cuba’s political (in essence, socialist) commitment to the ‘human being’ was reasserted throughout the interviews, with Saadi, for instance, referring to Cuba’s prioritisation of the ‘relationship between a human being and a fellow human being’, and Khalil explaining that Cuba had adopted ‘the cause of the human being, and that’s why it supported Palestinians in their struggle’.

While critiques of Northern-led human rights discourses have been widespread, and such critiques have often paralleled or influenced critical analyses of humanitarianism (as I explore elsewhere), in their responses Palestinian graduates invoked an alternative approach to supporting the rights of human beings.

By conceptualising Cuba’s commitment to human beings as being inherently connected to politics, graduates, by extension, also highlighted that politics cannot be separated from approaches geared towards supporting humanity, whether external analysts consider that such approaches should be labelled ‘development’ or ‘humanitarianism’. Whilst absent from the terminology used by Palestinian graduates, it can be argued that the notion of solidarity centralised in Cubaraui (and Cuban) accounts captures precisely these dimensions of Cuba’s internationalist approach.
Moving Forward

These dynamics – including conceptualisations of the relationship between politics, ideology, and humanitarianism; of short-, medium- and long-term responses to displacement; and how refugees themselves negotiate and conceptualise responses developed by external actors ‘on their behalf’ – will continue to be explored throughout the Southern Responses to Development from Syria project. This ongoing research project aims, amongst other things, to examine how people displaced from Syria – Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Kurds … -, experience and perceive the different forms of support that ‘Southern’ states, civil society groups, and refugees themselves have developed in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011. This will include reflections on how refugees conceptualise (and resist) both the construct of ‘the South’ itself and diverse responses developed by states such as Malaysia and Indonesia, but also by different groups of refugees themselves. The latter include Palestinian refugees whose home-camps in Lebanon have been hosting refugees from Syria, but also whose educational experiences in Cuba mean that they are amongst the medical practitioners who are treating refugees from Syria, demonstrating the complex legacies of the Cuban scholarship programme for refugees from the Middle East.

*

For more information on Southern-led responses to displacement, including vis-à-vis South-South Cooperation, read our introductory mini blog series here, and the following pieces:

Carpi, E. (2018) ‘Empires of Inclusion‘

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2019) ‘Looking Forward. Disasters at 40′

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2018) Histories and spaces of Southern-led responses to displacement

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2018) Internationalism and solidarity

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2018) Refugee-refugee humanitarianism

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2014) The Ideal Refugees: Islam, Gender, and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Daley, P. (2018) Conceptualising the global South and South–South encounters

Featured Image: A mural outside a school in Baddawi camp, N. Lebanon. Baddawi has been home to Palestinian refugees from the 1950s, and to refugees from Syria since 2011 (c) E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2017

▻https://southernresponses.org/2019/04/08/exploring-refugees-conceptualisations-of-southern-led-humanitaria

#réfugiés #post-colonialisme #ressources_pédagogiques

Le raccolage est encore un délit en France ? Je croyait que la loi abolitionniste changeait la charge de la culpabilité entre prostitueurs et prostitué·es. Est-ce que c’est une étude sur les pratiques avant cette loi ?

Égologie. Écologie, individualisme et course au bonheur

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#Développement_personnel, habitats groupés, jardins partagés... : face au désastre capitaliste, l’écologie se présente comme une réponse globale et positive, un changement de rapport au monde appuyé par des gestes au quotidien. Comme dans la fable du colibri, « chacun fait sa part ».
Mais en considérant la société comme un agrégat d’individus, et le changement social comme une somme de gestes individuels, cette vision de l’écologie ne succombe-t-elle pas à la logique libérale dominante, signant le triomphe de l’individualisme ?

►http://www.lemondealenvers.lautre.net/livres/egologie.html

#livre

#souveraineté_alimentaire #liberté_individuelle #alternatives #Nicolas_Marquis #capitalisme #jardins_partagés #classes_sociales #jardinage #justice_environnementale #dépolitisation

Du bien-être au marché du malaise. La société du développement personnel

Des ouvrages qui prétendent nous aider dans notre développement personnel, à « être nous-mêmes » ou à « bien communiquer », et des individus qui déclarent que ces lectures ont « changé leur vie » : voilà la source de l’étonnement dont ce livre est le résultat. Comment comprendre ce phénomène ? Comment est-il possible que tant de personnes puissent trouver du sens au monde si particulier du « développement personnel », au point d’en ressentir des effets concrets ?

Nicolas Marquis prend au sérieux cette expérience de lecture, en cherchant à comprendre ce qui se passe très concrètement entre un lecteur qui veut que quelque chose change dans son existence et un ouvrage qui prétend l’aider en lui parlant de ce qu’il vit personnellement. En procédant à la première enquête sur les lecteurs, il montre en quoi le développement personnel est l’une des institutions les plus frappantes des sociétés individualistes : son succès permet de comprendre les façons dont nous donnons, au quotidien, du sens à notre existence.

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Le Syndrome du bien-être

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Vous êtes accro à la salle de sport ? Vous ne comptez plus les moutons mais vos calories pour vous endormir ? Vous vous sentez coupable de ne pas être suffisamment heureux, et ce malgré tous vos efforts ? Alors vous souffrez sûrement du #syndrome_du_bien-être. Tel est le diagnostic établi par Carl Cederström et André Spicer.
Ils montrent dans ce livre comment la recherche du #bien-être_optimal, loin de produire les effets bénéfiques vantés tous azimuts, provoque un sentiment de #mal-être et participe du #repli_sur_soi. Ils analysent de multiples cas symptomatiques, comme ceux des fanatiques de la santé en quête du régime alimentaire idéal, des employés qui débutent leur journée par un footing ou par une séance de fitness, des adeptes du quantified self qui mesurent – gadgets et applis à l’appui – chacun de leurs faits et gestes, y compris les plus intimes... Dans ce monde inquiétant, la bonne santé devient un impératif moral, le désir de transformation de soi remplace la volonté de changement social, la culpabilisation des récalcitrants est un des grands axes des politiques publiques, et la pensée positive empêche tout véritable discours critique d’exister.
Résolument à contre-courant, ce livre démonte avec une grande lucidité les fondements du culte du corps et de cette quête désespérée du bien-être et de la santé parfaite.

▻https://www.lechappee.org/collections/pour-en-finir-avec/le-syndrome-du-bien-etre

#André_Spicer
#Carl_Cederström

Rigolez, vous êtes exploité

« Vous êtes éreinté ? Votre activité professionnelle vous plonge dans la #dépression ? Vous songez à mettre fin à vos jours ? Nous avons la solution : ri-go-lez ! » Voilà en substance le message de la direction des #ressources_humaines (DRH) du centre hospitalier universitaire (CHU) de Toulouse au personnel de l’établissement. La solution arrive à point nommé, car la situation menaçait de devenir dramatique…

Un peu comme France Télécom hier ou la Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) aujourd’hui, le #CHU toulousain est confronté à une recrudescence de #suicides de salariés. Le rapport d’un cabinet de conseil établi en 2016 est formel : les quatre personnes ayant mis fin à leurs jours en quelques semaines la même année (dont une dans les locaux du CHU) l’ont fait à cause de leurs #conditions_de_travail. L’année suivante, dans un des 26 000 documents internes révélés par la presse (1), une infirmière en gynécologie décrit ainsi son quotidien : « Mise en danger de la vie des patientes, mauvaise prise en charge de la douleur, dégradation de l’image des patientes (patientes laissées plusieurs minutes souillées de vomis) (…) mauvaise prise en charge psychologique (annonce de cancer faite récemment, pas le temps de discuter). (…) Une équipe épuisée physiquement (même pas cinq minutes de pause entre 13 h 30 et 23 heures) et moralement (sentiment de travail mal fait et de mettre en danger la vie des patients). »

Les choses n’ont guère progressé depuis. En février 2019, un patient meurt d’une crise cardiaque dans le sas des urgences. L’infirmier de garde cette nuit-là, en poste depuis 10 heures du matin, avait la charge de plus de quinze patients. Il n’a pas eu le temps de faire les gestes de premiers secours (2). Début mai 2019, rebelote au service de soins intensifs digestifs, en pleine restructuration, où un problème informatique a mené à la mort d’un patient.

Depuis 2015, une soixantaine de préavis de grève ont été envoyés à la direction par les syndicats. Au moins quatorze grèves ont eu lieu (cinq rien qu’en 2019), sans compter les quelque vingt mobilisations collectives, la douzaine d’actions d’envergure et les chorégraphies parodiques de soignants vues six millions de fois sur les réseaux sociaux. « À l’hôpital des enfants, le nombre d’arrêts-maladie des quatre premiers mois de 2019 est de 20 % supérieur à celui de la même période en 2018, nous explique Mme Sandra C., vingt ans d’hôpital public à son actif, dont dix-sept à l’hôpital des enfants de Toulouse. Nous avons l’impression d’être traités comme des numéros par une direction dont le seul but est de faire appliquer les réductions de coûts et la baisse du personnel. Nous avons besoin d’au moins six cents embauches dans tout le CHU, et vite. »

Embaucher ? Impossible !, rétorque la direction, largement convertie au lean management, le « management sans gras », une doctrine d’optimisation du rendement élaborée par les ingénieurs japonais du groupe Toyota après la seconde guerre mondiale et peaufinée ensuite dans les éprouvettes néolibérales du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). L’objectif ? Faire produire plus avec moins de gens, quitte à pousser les équipes à bout.

Des conditions de travail déplorables, des contraintes de rentabilité qui interdisent d’améliorer le sort du personnel, des salariés qui préfèrent mettre fin à leurs jours plutôt que d’endurer leur activité professionnelle ? Il fallait réagir. C’est chose faite grâce à une initiative de la DRH : des séances de rigologie, cette « approche globale permettant une harmonie entre le corps, l’esprit et les émotions », comme on peut le lire dans le « Plan d’actions 2018 pour la prévention des risques psychosociaux et la qualité de vie au travail » du pôle hôpital des enfants du CHU de Toulouse.

Yoga du rire, méditation de pleine conscience, techniques variées de relaxation et de respiration, sophrologie ludique… la rigologie vise à « cultiver les sentiments positifs et sa joie de vivre ». Sur la page d’accueil du site de l’École internationale du rire (« Bonheur, joie de vivre, créativité »), l’internaute tombe sur la photographie d’un groupe de salariés hilares faisant le symbole de la victoire. S’ils sont heureux, suggère l’image, c’est qu’ils ont tous décroché leur diplôme de « rigologue » à la suite d’une formation de sept jours en psychologie positive, yoga du rire et autres techniques de « libération des émotions », facturée 1 400 euros. Un rigologue estampillé École du rire, le leader du marché, se fera rémunérer entre 1 000 et 3 000 euros la journée. Il pourra éventuellement devenir chief happiness officer, ces responsables du service bonheur dont les entreprises du CAC 40 raffolent (3).

La souffrance au travail est devenue un marché, et le service public apparaît comme un nouveau terrain de jeu du développement personnel. Ainsi des policiers confrontés à une vague de suicides (vingt-huit en 2019), auxquels le directeur général de la police nationale a envoyé, fin mai, une circulaire incitant les encadrants à favoriser « les moments de convivialité et de partage » comme les barbecues, les sorties sportives ou les pique-niques en famille (4). Ainsi des agents de la SNCF, une entreprise qui compte depuis le début de l’année 2019 un suicide de salarié par semaine. La direction lilloise de la société ferroviaire en pleine restructuration a fait appel au cabinet Great Place to Work (« super endroit pour travailler »), qui lui a conseillé de… distribuer des bonbons aux agents en souffrance, de mettre en place des goûters-surprises ou encore des ateliers de maquillage (5).

« Au départ, nous explique Mme Corinne Cosseron, directrice de l’École internationale du rire et importatrice du concept de rigologie en France, je me suis formée pour plaisanter, comme un gag, au yoga du rire, une technique mise au point par un médecin indien, qui s’est rendu compte que ses patients joyeux guérissaient mieux que les sinistres. Le rire permet de libérer des hormones euphorisantes qui luttent contre la douleur », explique cette ancienne psychanalyste qui évoque les endorphines (« un antidouleur naturel qui agit comme une morphine naturelle »), la sérotonine (« la molécule du bonheur »), la dopamine (celle de la motivation) ou encore l’ocytocine (« l’hormone de l’amour »). « C’est un grand shoot gratuit. Beaucoup de grandes entreprises ont commencé à faire appel à nous (SNCF, Total, Suez, Royal Canin, Danone, etc.), car le rire répare point par point tout ce que les effets du stress détruisent. Non seulement le salarié va aller mieux (il ne va pas se suicider, il n’ira pas voir chez le concurrent), mais, en plus, l’entreprise va gagner en productivité. Donc c’est du gagnant-gagnant. »

Novateur, le CHU de Toulouse a vu se mettre en place des séances de « libération émotionnelle » et de « lâcher-prise » dans le service des soins palliatifs dès 2017. Dans le cadre de ses propositions d’actions 2018-2019 pour prévenir les risques psychosociaux et pour la qualité de vie au travail, la DRH propose désormais d’élargir son offre à d’autres unités sous tension, comme l’hôpital des enfants, où, au mois de mars dernier, deux grèves ont éclaté pour protester contre le projet de réduction du nombre de lits et d’intensification du travail des soignants.

On soumet ce projet de lâcher-prise à M. Florent Fabre, 31 ans, infirmier au service des urgences psychiatriques. Sa première réaction est de laisser éclater un long rire, générant probablement un apport non négligeable en bêta-endorphines — ce qui lui permet de dire avec une voix parfaitement détendue : « C’est grotesque et indécent. » Pour ce soignant, qui a participé à la lutte victorieuse des salariés de son service, lesquels ont arraché deux postes supplémentaires d’infirmier à l’issue de deux mois de grève durant le printemps 2019, « le niveau du mépris social affiché par la direction du CHU ainsi que par les cadres régionaux de l’agence régionale de santé est totalement aberrant. Dès lors qu’il s’agit d’entendre qu’il y a un vrai manque de soignants, le dialogue se rompt. La santé des agents hospitaliers est le moindre de leurs soucis ». Contactée, la direction du CHU a refusé de répondre à cet appel à embaucher, qu’elle qualifie de « théories de la CGT [Confédération générale du travail] ». « On assume totalement ce document de proposition de rigologie », nous a précisé le directeur de la communication avant de nous raccrocher au nez. On ne rigole plus.

« Mais, s’agace Mme Maguy Mettais, la pharmacienne chargée de la prévention des risques psychosociaux, avez-vous déjà testé la rigologie ? Ça serait peut-être intéressant que vous essayiez une séance, non ? C’est génial, vous verrez. » Adeptes du journalisme total, nous acceptons la proposition. « Alors, vous mettez les mains droit devant vous et vous expirez en faisant “chah” ! On le fait ensemble ? C’est parti ! Après on met les bras sur le côté et on fait “chou” ! Et un dernier, les bras levés vers le ciel et on va faire un grand “chiii” sur le temps d’expiration. » Docile, nous nous exécutons, pour la bonne cause. « Au final, ce qui est rigolo, c’est que ça fait chah-chou-chi… Comme si ça faisait “salsifis” [elle éclate de rire]. Voilà, j’avais envie de vous le faire découvrir, ça peut être bien avant d’écrire votre article. »

▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2019/07/BRYGO/60014

#rire #thérapie_du_rire

–—

Pour rappel, les #formations dédiées au personnel de l’#Université_Grenoble_Alpes :
1. Gestion de #conflits (formation mise sous le thème « #efficacité_professionnelle »)
2. Mieux vivre ses #émotions dans ses #relations_professionnelles (aussi mise sous le même thème : #efficacité_professionnelle)
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/882135

La démocratie aux champs. Du jardin d’Éden aux jardins partagés, comment l’agriculture cultive les valeurs

https://extranet.editis.com/it-yonixweb/IMAGES/DEC/P3/9782359251012.jpg

On a l’habitude de penser que la démocratie moderne vient des Lumières, de l’usine, du commerce, de la ville. Opposé au citadin et même au citoyen, le paysan serait au mieux primitif et proche de la nature, au pire arriéré et réactionnaire.
À l’opposé de cette vision, ce livre examine ce qui, dans les relations entre les cultivateurs et la terre cultivée, favorise l’essor des valeurs démocratiques et la formation de la citoyenneté. Défi le alors sous nos yeux un cortège étonnant d’expériences agricoles, les unes antiques, les autres actuelles ; du jardin d’Éden qu’Adam doit « cultiver » et aussi « garder » à la « petite république » que fut la ferme pour Jefferson ; des chambrées et foyers médiévaux au lopin de terre russe ; du jardin ouvrier au jardin thérapeutique ; des « guérillas vertes » aux jardins partagés australiens.
Cultiver la terre n’est pas un travail comme un autre. Ce n’est pas suer, souffrir ni arracher, arraisonner. C’est dialoguer, être attentif, prendre une initiative et écouter la réponse, anticiper, sachant qu’on ne peut calculer à coup sûr, et aussi participer, apprendre des autres, coopérer, partager. L’agriculture peut donc, sous certaines conditions, représenter une puissance de changement considérable et un véritable espoir pour l’écologie démocratique.

▻https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/la_democratie_aux_champs-9782359251012démocratiques

La #durabilité en pratique(s) : gestion et appropriation des #principes_durabilistes véhiculés par les #écoquartiers

Dans cette contribution, il est question de la durabilité comme objet, dans sa dimension heuristique, en tant que moyen de compréhension voire d’explication des initiatives individuelles, collectives et politiques ainsi que des dynamiques. Il s’agit tout d’abord de se pencher sur la manière dont la durabilité est mobilisée et signifiée, aussi bien sur l’horizon du pensable qui l’accompagne que sur les « manières de faire » qu’elle véhicule, parmi des acteurs divers, pris dans des jeux d’échelles, d’intérêts et dans des engagements parfois contradictoires. Politiquement, la mise en œuvre de la durabilité se décline dans des contextes, pour des raisons et à des finalités diverses que peuvent être la transformation des comportements individuels, la modification de la législation et des cadres réglementaires nationaux et locaux, la redéfinition des stratégies communautaires, etc. Entre pratiques, éthique, fiscalité individuelle d’un côté et enjeux techniques, politiques et sociétaux de l’autre, ces multiples mobilisations de la durabilité rendent cette notion évasive, voire équivoque. Au-delà d’un recensement et d’une classification de cette multiplicité d’usage et de traduction « en pratiques » de la durabilité, c’est sur la base des multiples tensions qui caractérisent ces manières de voir, comprendre, mobiliser et opérationnaliser la durabilité que nous cherchons à venir éclairer les pratiques leurs implications mais aussi leurs conséquences. Pour ce faire nous nous appuyons sur les 37 entretiens (15 avec les concepteurs, 22 avec les habitants) réalisés lors d’une enquête menée en 2012 et 2013 sur l’écoquartier de Lyon Confluence dans le cadre de la thèse de doctorat de Matthieu Adam. Nous analysons les discours portant sur la durabilité. Ceux-ci ont toujours une portée normative et performative mais peuvent aussi être considérés en tant qu’embrayeur de sens permettant de saisir les modalités de réactions, passives (acceptation) et/ou actives (refus, adaptation, contre-proposition, etc.) face à cette quête de durabilité. En analysant les pratiques, les manières d’être, les attitudes ainsi que les représentations d’une part liées à l’injonction de durabilité et d’autre part à sa mise en pratique, nous mettrons au débat des éléments portant tant sur les décalages entre intentions et actions que sur les moyens utilisés pour tenter de les lever. De plus, en changeant de focale, l’analyse fine des discours permet de tirer des enseignements sur le développement durable en tant que valeur et idéologie dominante du projet urbain mais aussi en tant que modalités pratiques quotidiennes.

https://static.openedition.org/covers/OB/cse/102/102-225x270.jpg

▻https://books.openedition.org/cse/124

#Georges-Henry_Laffont #Matthieu_Adam

Conservation Refugees. The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large_book_cover/http/mitp-content-server.mit.edu%3A18180/books/covers/cover/%3Fcollid%3Dbooks_covers_0%26isbn%3D9780262012614%26type%3D.jpg?itok=Rx5NB34W#.jpg

How native people—from the #Miwoks of #Yosemite to the #Maasai of eastern Africa—have been displaced from their lands in the name of conservation.

▻https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/conservation-refugees

#livre #réfugiés #IDPs #déplacés_internes

... et un nouveau terme pour la liste de @sinehebdo :
#conservation_refugees (comment le traduire ?)
La liste :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/414225

#webperf #développement #web #conception

c’est en gros ce que fait l’installeur de IntéGraal qui est uniquement en spip-cli :
▻https://git.spip.net/spip-contrib-outils/spip-cli/src/branch/master/src/Command/IntegraalGenerer.php

Sachant qu’en spip-cli, enfin avec le module Console de Sf quoi, une fois qu’on a fait des commandes unitaires pour ci ou ça, on peut aussi faire des commandes qui appelle d’autres commandes.

Moi je fais donc tout en PHP/spip-cli/Console, vu que c’est bien plus simple à coder, propre, beau avec des couleurs, tableaux, barre de défilement, etc, sans avoir à coder en Bash.

Pour spip-cli, par contre, hors commandes de base, ça va chercher que les commandes qui sont dans des plugins activés, d’où le fait que pour l’instant celle pour IntéGraal est dans le socle commun, sinon on peut pas l’utiliser.

Ce qu’on pourrait imaginer c’est que spip-cli cherche aussi au moins les commandes placées dans un dossier « spip-cli » à la racine du dossier où on le lance et/ou à la racine du spip (pas juste les plugins activés).

Pour l’instant, mes besoins sont rudimentaires, donc bash me va bien :)

Ce que ça fait :

– crée la base mySQL pour installer SPIP via spip-cli
– crée les dossiers plugins et auto (désactivable)
– clone ZCM
– édite paquet.xml avec le préfixe du plugin
– renomme les fichiers options/fonctions/zcm-xx.svg avec le préfixe du plugin
– commit le tout dans un repo du nom du préfixe préalablement créé (désactivable)

Et donc les commandes :

– télécharger SPIP spip dl --branche master
– initialiser ZCM Intaller zcminstaller (créer à minima la base de données)
– installer SPIP spip core:installer --db-server "mysql" --db-login "login" --db-pass "motdepasse" --db-database "nomdelabase" --admin-nom "nom" --admin-login "login" --admin-email "mail@domaine.net" --admin-pass "motdepasse"
– ajouter le dépôt des plugins spip plugins:svp:depoter https://plugins.spip.net/depots/principal.xml

La seule chose que je n’arrive pas à faire via SPIP Cli, c’est installer mon plugin car ça ne gère pas les dépendances (téléchargement et installation). Ou alors, je rate une commande ?

Le #Parlement_européen vote pour conditionner son aide au développement au contrôle des migrations

Le Parlement européen a adopté hier un rapport sur “l’#amélioration de l’#efficacité et de l’#efficience de l’aide au développement”, qui soutient la conditionnalité de l’aide au développement au contrôle des migrations.

Cette position était soutenue par le gouvernement français dans une note adressée aux eurodéputés français.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, directrice France de ONE, réagit : « Le Parlement européen a décidé de modifier soudainement son approche et de se mettre de surcroit en porte-à-faux du #traité_européen qui définit l’objectif et les valeurs de l’aide au développement européenne. Cela pourrait encore retarder les négociations autour de ce budget, et donc repousser sa mise en œuvre, en pleine urgence sanitaire et économique. »

« Les études montrent justement que lier l’aide au développement aux #retours et #réadmissions des ressortissants étrangers dans leurs pays d’origine ne fonctionne pas, et peut même avoir des effets contre-productifs. L’UE doit tirer les leçons de ses erreurs passées en alignant sa politique migratoire sur les besoins de ses partenaires, pas sur des priorités politiques à court terme. »

« On prévoit que 100 millions de personnes supplémentaires tomberont dans l’extrême pauvreté à cause de la pandémie, et que fait le Parlement européen ? Il tourne le dos aux populations les plus fragiles, qui souffriraient directement de cette décision. L’aide au développement doit, sans concessions, se concentrer sur des solutions pour lutter contre l’extrême #pauvreté, renforcer les systèmes de santé et créer des emplois décents. »

▻https://www.one.org/fr/press/alerte-le-parlement-europeen-vote-pour-conditionner-son-aide-au-developpement-a

En lien avec de chouettes personnes grace à ce texte, je vais nourrir un peu ce seen :)

Écriture inclusive et accessibilité numérique, table ronde lors des Journées d’étude technologies et déficience visuelle
De Julie Moynat Publié le : 30 décembre 2020
▻https://www.lalutineduweb.fr/ecriture-inclusive-accessibilite-numerique-jetdv2020

avec aussi Écriture inclusive au point médian et accessibilité : avançons vers des solutions (2019)
▻https://www.lalutineduweb.fr/ecriture-inclusive-accessibilite-solutions

Écriture inclusive : un premier bilan de la controverse
11 octobre 2020
►https://theconversation.com/ecriture-inclusive-un-premier-bilan-de-la-controverse-147630

Et la liste de liens de @tetue

Écriture inclusive : faisons le point autour de la cheminée
Romy Duhem-Verdière 21 décembre 2017
►https://www.24joursdeweb.fr/2017/ecriture-inclusive-faisons-le-point-autour-de-la-cheminee

Et si vous avez la flemme de lire, y’a même une vidéo :
▻https://tv.octo.com/permalink/v125a91b8f8cetmpq4w0

Écriture inclusive et accessibilité font-elles bon ménage ?
29 mars 2017, par Sylvie Duchateau
►https://access42.net/langage-non-genre-accessibilite

Abréviations inclusives : oui, mais comment ?
Nantes, le 30 mars 2017.
▻https://vincent-valentin.name/articles/abreviations-inclusives-oui-mais-comment

Point médian final : point d’hyphénation‧
▻https://medium.com/@matti_sg_fr/point-m%C3%A9dian-final-point-dhyph%C3%A9nation-3f749c32b659

#écriture_inclusive
#point_median
#développement_web
#handicaps
#mal_voyant·es
#accessibilité

Quelques solutions et décisions techniques pour le web

Extensions web :
▻https://github.com/ANN-MB/LEIA

https://camo.githubusercontent.com/d4d0857bda810673831aa3483161bba489edcece5b5c0e0707735f3fae468f35/68747470733a2f2f6164646f6e732e63646e2e6d6f7a696c6c612e6e65742f757365722d6d656469612f70726576696577732f66756c6c2f3232312f3232313538302e706e67#.jpg

CMS
WordPress 5.6 : des changements visant à améliorer l’inclusivité de l’interface d’administration
Publié le 26 novembre 2020

▻https://fr.wordpress.org/2020/11/26/wordpress-5-6-des-changements-visant-a-ameliorer-linclusivite-de-linte

Les commentaires sous l’article sont consternants. Un commentateur propose sa version des traductions expurgées des éléments inclusifs.

Boh laissons pisser les merdeux fiers de leur zézette, on a mieux à faire.

#Aude_Vidal #égalité #inégalité #développement_personnel #santé #bonheur

#conception #web #formulaire #UX #interface #inclusivité

Des explications sur : ▻https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/understanding-radicle/why-radicle
En raccourci :
But :

In a world where nearly all software relies on open source code, maintaining the resilience and health of the free and open source ecosystem is more important than ever. That’s why we believe that dependence on centrally hosted platforms and corporations for the distribution of critical open source infrastructure is unsustainable. Reliance on such centralized services contradicts the values of the free and open source ecosystem and threatens its well-being.

Principes :

Designing by principles
As we set out to build an alternative, we started by thinking about the values that we recognize as integral to free and open source code collaboration. With that said, we developed the following list of guiding principles:
1. It must prioritize user freedom In the words of the free software movement
2. It must be accessible and uncensorable
3. It must be user-friendly
4. It must be offline-first
5. It must not compromise on security

Fonctionnement :

Radicle’s approach is meant to return to the protocol-first philosophy by focusing on building code collaboration primitives instead of user experiences, and to reject data collection and siloing by intermediaries. This is reflected in the decision to build on and extend git. Having it as the nexus of replication builds on its strengths and decentralized nature. Having issues, pull requests, comments, and reviews locally gives developers the tools to manage and design their workflows without locking them into a new “experience”. Despite any front-end interface that will be built (😉), Radicle exists foremost as an open protocol — not a platform.

Pour le « comment ça marche » : ▻https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/understanding-radicle/how-it-works

#développement #collaboratif #protocole #github #gitlab #bazaar

« On a oublié le rôle de l’#humiliation dans l’Histoire », par #Olivier_Abel

Pour le philosophe, « en sacralisant les #caricatures, nous sommes devenus incapables de percevoir ce que les Grecs anciens désignaient par le #tragique ».

Quel rapport entre les crimes abjects des djihadistes, le danger que représentent à certains égards les « réseaux sociaux » pour la démocratie et la civilité, la question de la liberté d’expression et du blasphème, le durcissement quasi-guerrier de la laïcité, les gilets jaunes, les majorités dangereuses qui ont porté Trump ou Erdogan au pouvoir, et qui poussent à nos portes ? Nous ne comprenons pas ce qui nous arrive, ces colères qui montent en miroir sans plus rien chercher à comprendre, nous ne savons et sentons plus ce que nous faisons. Je voudrais proposer ici une hypothèse.

Nous avons globalement fait fausse route. Le drame des caricatures n’est que la partie visible d’un énorme problème. Nous nous sommes enfoncés dans le #déni de l’humiliation, de son importance, de sa gravité, de son existence même. Nous sommes sensibles aux #violences, comme aux #inégalités, mais insensibles à l’humiliation qui les empoisonne. Comme l’observait le philosophe israélien Avishaï Margalit, nous n’imaginons même pas ce que serait une société dont les institutions (police, préfectures, administrations, prisons, hôpitaux, écoles, etc.) seraient non-humiliantes. Dans l’état actuel de rétrécissement des ressources planétaires, on aura beaucoup de mal à faire une société plus juste, mais pourquoi déjà ne pas essayer une société moins humiliante ?

Ni quantifiable, ni mesurable

Il faut dire que l’humiliation est une notion – et une réalité - compliquée. L’#offense est subjective, et dépend au moins autant de ceux qui la reçoivent que de ceux qui l’émettent. Ce qui humiliera l’un laissera l’autre indifférent, et cela dépend même du moment où ça tombe. L’humiliation n’est pas quantifiable, mesurable, comme le sont les coups et blessures. D’où la tentation de dire que là où il n’y a pas de #dommage ni #préjudice il n’y a pas de #tort. Ce n’est pas une affaire de #droit mais seulement de #sentiment ou de #morale personnelle, donc circulez, il n’y a rien à dire.

Et pourtant… Si les violences s’attaquent au #corps de l’autre, dans ses capacités et sa #vulnérabilité, l’humiliation fait encore pire : elle s’attaque au visage de l’autre, dans son #estime et son #respect_de_soi : elle le fait blanchir ou rougir, et souvent les deux en même temps.

Car l’humiliation se présente de deux façons, en apparence contradictoires. Par un côté, elle porte atteinte à l’estime de soi, en faisant #honte à l’individu de son expression, de ce qu’il voudrait montrer et faire valoir, elle le rabroue et l’exclut du cercle de ceux qui sont autorisés à parler. Mais, par un autre côté, elle porte atteinte également au #respect et à la #pudeur, en dévoilant ce qui voulait se cacher, en forçant l’individu à montrer ce qui constitue sa réserve, en le surexposant au #regard_public, en lui interdisant de se retirer.

L’humiliation s’attaque au sujet parlant. Les humains ne se nourrissent pas de pain et de cirques seulement, mais de #paroles_vives en vis-à-vis : ils n’existent qu’à se reconnaître mutuellement comme des sujets parlants, crédités comme tels, et reconnus dans leur crédibilité. L’humiliation fait taire le sujet parlant, elle lui fait honte de son expression, elle ruine sa confiance en soi.

Quand le faible est trop faible

Elle peut également atteindre des formes de vie, des minorités langagières, sexuelles, raciales, religieuses, sociales, etc. Il peut même arriver qu’une majorité endormie dans sa complaisance soit humiliée par une minorité active. Elle devient ce que j’appelais plus haut une majorité « dangereuse », pour elle-même et pour les autres.

Une #parole_humiliée devient sujette à ces deux maladies du langage que sont la #dévalorisation ou la #survalorisation de soi. Ou, pour le dire autrement : la #dérision ou le #fanatisme. Commençons par la genèse du fanatisme. Simone Weil avait proposé d’expliquer les affaires humaines par cette loi : « on est toujours #barbares avec les faibles ». Il faudrait donc que nul ne soit laissé trop faible et sans aucun #contre-pouvoir, et que le plus fort soit suffisamment « déprotégé » pour rester sensible au faible, bon gagnant si je puis dire, et conscient qu’il ne sera pas toujours le plus fort.

Mais quand le faible est trop faible pour infliger quelque tort que ce soit au plus fort, le pacte politique posé par Hobbes est rompu. Les faibles n’ont plus rien à perdre, ne sont plus tenus par le souci de la sécurité des biens et des corps, il ne leur reste que l’au-delà et ils basculent dans le #sacrifice_de_soi, dans une parole portée à la folie. Ici la #religion vient juste au dernier moment pour habiller, nommer, justifier cette mutation terrible.

« C’est à l’humiliation que répond la #barbarie »

La violence appelle la violence, dans un échange réciproque qui devrait rester à peu près proportionné, même si bien souvent la #violence s’exerce elle-même de manière humiliante, et nous ne savons pas ce que serait une violence vraiment non-humiliante. Avec l’humiliation cependant, le cercle des échanges devient vicieux, les retours sont longuement différés, comme sans rapport, et ils ont quelque chose de démesuré. Ils sont parallèles, mais en négatif, aux circuits de la #reconnaissance dont on sait qu’ils prennent du temps.

C’est pourquoi les effets de l’humiliation sont si dévastateurs. Ils courent dans le temps, car les humiliés seront humiliants au centuple. Comme le remarquait #Ariane_Bazan, ils peuvent aller jusqu’à détruire méthodiquement toute scène de reconnaissance possible, toute réparation possible : la mère tuera tous ses enfants, comme le fait Médée rejetée par Jason. Lisant Euripide, elle concluait : « c’est à l’humiliation que répond la barbarie ». Les grandes tragédies sont des scènes de la reconnaissance non seulement manquée, mais écrabouillée.

Pourquoi nos sociétés occidentales sont-elles collectivement aussi insensibles à l’humiliation ? Est-ce la différence avec ce qu’on a appelé les sociétés de honte, le Japon, le monde arabe ? Sans doute est-ce d’abord aujourd’hui parce que nous sommes une société managée par des unités de mesure quantifiable, la monnaie, l’audimat, et par une juridicisation qui ne reconnaît que les torts mesurables, compensables, sinon monnayables.

Cette évolution a été accélérée par une #morale_libérale, qui est une #morale_minimale, où tout est permis si l’autre est consentant : or on n’a pas besoin du #consentement de l’autre pour afficher sa #liberté, tant que son expression n’est ni violente ni discriminante à l’égard des personnes, et ne porte aucun dommage objectif — les croyances n’existent pas, on peut en faire ce qu’on veut. Le facteur aggravant de l’humiliation, dans une société de réseaux, c’est la diffusion immédiate et sans écrans ralentisseurs des atteintes à la réputation : la #calomnie, la #moquerie, le #harcèlement.

L’angle mort de notre civilisation

Mais plus profondément encore, plus anciennement, notre insensibilité à l’humiliation est due à l’entrecroisement, dans nos sociétés, d’une morale stoïcienne de la #modestie, et d’une morale chrétienne de l’#humilité. Celle-ci, en rupture avec les religions de l’imperium, de la victoire, propose en modèle un divin abaissé et humilié dans l’ignominie du supplice de la croix, réservé aux esclaves. Le #stoïcisme est une sagesse dont la stratégie consiste à décomposer l’opinion d’autrui en des énoncés creux dont aucun ne saurait nous atteindre : l’esclave stoïcien n’est pas plus humiliable que l’empereur stoïcien.

La dialectique hégélienne du maître et de l’esclave est d’ailleurs héritière de ces deux traditions mêlées, quand il fait de l’expérience de l’esclavage une étape nécessaire sur le chemin de la liberté. Cette vertu d’humilité a paradoxalement creusé dans le monde de la chevalerie médiévale, puis dans la société française de cour, et finalement dans le dévouement de l’idéal scientifique, un sillon profond, qui est comme l’angle mort de notre civilisation.

Et cet angle mort nous a empêchés de voir le rôle de l’humiliation dans l’histoire : c’est l’humiliation du Traité de Versailles qui prépare la venue d’Hitler au pouvoir, celle de la Russie ou de la Turquie qui y maintient Poutine et Erdogan, c’est la manipulation du sentiment d’humiliation qui a propulsé la figure de Trump. Et cette histoire n’est pas finie. Les manipulations machiavéliques des sentiments de peur et les politiques du #ressentiment n’ont jamais atteint, dans tous nos pays simultanément, un tel niveau de dangerosité. Les djihadistes ici jouent sur du velours, car à l’humiliation ancienne de la #colonisation militaire, économique, et culturelle, s’est ajoutée celle des #banlieues et du #chômage, et maintenant les caricatures du prophète, répétées à l’envi.

#Fanatisme et #dérision

Car la genèse de la dérision est non moins importante, et concomitante à celle du fanatisme. On a beaucoup entendu parler du #droit_de_blasphémer : curieuse expression, de la part de tous ceux (et j’en suis) qui ne croient pas au #blasphème ! Réclamer le droit de blasphémer, s’acharner à blasphémer, n’est-ce pas encore y croire, y attacher de l’importance ? N’est-ce pas comme les bandes iconoclastes de la Réforme ou de la Révolution qui saccagent les églises, dans une sorte de superstition anti-superstitieuse ?

Tout le tragique de l’affaire tient justement au fait que ce qui est important pour les uns est négligeable pour les autres. Il faudrait que les uns apprennent à ne pas accorder tant d’importance à de telles #satires, et que les autres apprennent à mesurer l’importance de ce qu’ils font et disent. Ce qui m’inquiète aujourd’hui c’est le sentiment qu’il n’y a plus rien d’important, sauf le droit de dire que rien n’est important.

Une société où tout est « cool » et « fun » est une société insensible à l’humiliation, immunisée à l’égard de tout scandale, puisqu’il n’y reste rien à transgresser, rien à profaner. Or la fonction du #scandale est vitale pour briser la complaisance d’une société à elle-même. Pire, lorsque l’ironiste adopte un point de vue en surplomb, pointant l’idiotie des autres, il interrompt toute possibilité de #conversation. On peut rire, mais encore faut-il que cela puisse relancer la conversation !

Sacralisation des caricatures ?

Le différend tient peut-être aussi au fait que nous ne disposons pas exactement des mêmes genres littéraires. #Salman_Rushdie et #Milan_Kundera observaient que le monde musulman a du mal à comprendre ce que c’est qu’un « roman », comme une forme littéraire typique d’une certaine époque européenne, et qui met en suspens le jugement moral. Nous aussi, nous avons un problème : on dirait parfois que le genre littéraire éminent qui fonde notre culture est la caricature, la dérision, le #comique.

Ce qui est proprement caricatural, c’est que les caricatures, le #droit_de_rire, soient devenues notre seul sacré. Serions-nous devenus incapables de percevoir ce que les Grecs anciens désignaient par le tragique ? N’avons-nous pas perdu aussi le sens de l’#épopée véritable (celle qui honore les ennemis), et le sens de quoi que ce soit qui nous dépasse nos gentilles libertés bien protégées ?

Aujourd’hui, aux manipulations de la peur et de la xénophobie par les néonationalistes français, qui sacralisent la #laïcité comme si elle n’était plus le cadre neutre d’une #liberté_d’expression capable de cohabiter paisiblement avec celle des autres, mais la substance même de l’#identité française (une identité aussi moniste et exclusive que jadis l’était le catholicisme pour l’Action française), répond la manipulation cynique du sentiment d’humiliation des musulmans français par les prédicateurs-guerriers du djihadisme, qui n’ont de cesse d’instrumentaliser le ressentiment, dans le monde et en France.

Liberté d’abjurer et laïcité réelle

Aux organisations musulmanes françaises, nous dirons : demandez aux pays dominés par l’islam politique d’accorder à leurs minorités les mêmes libertés réelles qui sont celles des musulmans de France, et accordez solennellement à toutes les musulmanes et à tous les musulmans le droit d’abjurer, de se convertir, ou simplement de se marier en dehors de leur communauté.

Aux néonationalistes, nous dirons : si la laïcité n’est plus que cette identité sacrée, c’est-à-dire le contraire de ce qu’elle a été dans l’histoire réelle (oui, enseignons d’abord l’histoire réelle dans son long cours, ses compromis complexes, et pas les histoires simplistes que nous nous racontons !), le #pacte_laïque sera rompu, et nous ferons sécession, il faudra tout recommencer, ensemble et avec les nouveaux venus.

Car ce pacte est ce qui, au nom de notre histoire commune, et inachevée, autorise, au sens fort, la #reconnaissance_mutuelle. Il cherche à instituer un théâtre commun d’apparition qui fasse pleinement crédit à la parole des uns et des autres. C’est bien ce qui nous manque le plus aujourd’hui.

►https://www.nouvelobs.com/idees/20201122.OBS36427/on-a-oublie-le-role-de-l-humiliation-dans-l-histoire-par-olivier-abel.htm

Le #rire du dominant

Ce que démontre pourtant la passion qui anime cette posture faussement libertaire, c’est à quel point le rire peut être l’arme de l’imposition de la #norme, d’une rare #violence_sociale. Libérateur lorsqu’il représente la voix des faibles, il devient le plus effrayant instrument d’#oppression lorsqu’il leur impose le #silence.

▻https://seenthis.net/messages/897982

#développement #versioning #documentation