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2 Mediated unity in question: on the relation between law, politics, and other social systems in modern societies The discussion in chapter 1 shows that two premises are often invoked to articulate the theoretical preconditions of modern democratic statehood. Whilst the mediated unity of the governors and the governed is normally taken to be the basis of rational political representation, overarching legal- political form is taken to be the foundation of democratic government and consensual normative integration. The epistemological and sociological critique
violence. They argued that the bilateral framing of the CPA and its focus on power-sharing had ignored other actors and aspects of the conflict, and hence recurrence of violence was imminent (Jok 2015 ). In response to the revived scepticism, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional body in the Horn of Africa, mandated a mediation mission that aims to provide ‘a conducive environment for all stakeholders to participate and determine(d) that face-to-face talks by all stakeholders in the conflict’ will be conducted (IGAD 2013 :4). While the
argument, no conclusions. In a sense there is not even an argument: the argument emerges in the mind of the reader in the process of repeated reading. It is hard work, though: Adorno’s ‘handbook entry’ is not for quick orientation. Structure of the selected text 1 Society, process, humans (267) 2 Society as dynamic and functional totality (267–268) 3 The concrete and the abstract mediate each other (268–269) 4 Only theory can tell (269) 5 Society is mediation (269–270) 6 Intentionality
5306ST New Patterns-C/lb.qxd 3/9/09 16:45 Page 34 3 Mediating forces and the domestic polity Brid Quinn and Bernadette Connaughton Introduction The effects of Europeanisation have been filtered by Ireland’s complex history, distinctive political and social culture, nationalistic penchants and strongly centralised political-administrative structures. This chapter outlines the key elements of Irish political and social culture and analyses the way in which these factors have moderated the Europeanisation process. It looks at the underpinnings of Irish society
3 Functional differentiation and mediated unity in question: looming constitutional conflicts between the de-centralist logic of functional differentiation and the bio-political steering of austerity and global governance It has been seen so far that the theoretical premises informing prevailing accounts of modern statehood and political representation have become susceptible to comprehensive critique and deconstruction. This is not to argue that states no longer exist or have ceased to be important actors in domestic and international politics. In many parts
126 7 Tragic mediation in The White Devil Thomas J. Moretti Observe, that no society hath the privilege to be free from a Judas. Thomas Adams, ‘The White Devil’ (1613)1 For decades, John Webster’s The White Devil has been pushed and pulled between the poles ‘early’ and ‘modern’: on one end is the claim that the play in fact offers a complexly moralist, even providentialist worldview; on the other end is the reading of The White Devil as a cynical, even radical tragedy, one which bears witness to a culture facing nihilistic anxieties and which represents the
James Tod (1782-1835) spent twenty-two years in India (1800-1822), during the last five of which he was Political Agent of the British Government in India to the Western Rajput States in north-west India. His book studies Tod’s relationships with particular Rajput leaders and with the Rajputs as a group in general, in order to better understand his attempts to portray their history, geographical moorings and social customs to British and European readers. The book highlights Tod’s apparently numerous motivations in writing on the Rajputs: to bring knowledge about the Rajputs into European circles, to demonstrate that the Rajputs maintained historical records from the early middle ages and were thus not a primitive people without awareness of their own history, and to establish possible ethnic links between the warrior-like Rajputs and the peoples of Europe, as also between the feudal institutions of Rajputana and Europe. Fierce criticisms in Tod’s time of his ethnic and institutional hypotheses about connections between Rajputs and Europeans illustrate that Tod’s texts did not leave his readers indifferent.
The approach adopted uses available documents to go beyond a binary opposition between the colonisers and the colonised in India, by focusing on traces of friendly exchanges between Tod and his British colleagues on the one hand, and on the other hand, various members of the kingdoms of western India, with whom they interacted. Under themes like landscape, anthropology, science, Romantic literature, approaches to government policy, and knowledge exchanges in India and in London, this volume analyses Tod’s role as a mediator of knowledge through his travels across a little-known part of the British Empire in the early 19th century.
5 Re-thinking inclusion beyond unity and mediation beyond discretionary steering: on social systems and societal constitutions Previous chapters have looked at the ways in which the evolutionary gains of political modernity and sociological modernity might be symbiotically maintained and further enhanced as the twenty-first century continues to unfold. Here the term ‘evolutionary’ is evidently not synonymous with peaceful, natural, predominantly consensual, or any other designation that suggests spontaneous progress towards harmoniously agreed norms of
Puddock’s preference is in fact for Rowe’s play of 1702, where the hero is presented as a calm philosopher-prince and presented also as modelled on William III! In Puddock and Dunoran, the Chattesworth ladies have chosen husbands who mediate between the undeniable violence of the Elizabethan era when Ireland was finally conquered and the uneasy, smoke-clouded politics of an
4 Mediated politics, promotional culture and the idea of ‘propaganda’ PRELIMINARY NOTE As earlier chapters have indicated, ‘propaganda’ is a term used regularly in political and public discussion of the media, but one that has a less marked and more intermittent usage as a term of theory and analysis in media research. One notable exception to this is in that work using the ‘propaganda model’ as outlined by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky over twenty years ago (Herman and Chomsky, 1988), in which the general relations between the political system and the media