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Showing posts from November, 2014

The civility police and censoring protest against uncivil violence

This past summer, the months of July and August in 2014, witnessed gruesome attacks carried out by Israel on Gaza. As the social media reverberated with images and protests against these ghastly and uncivil acts of violence carried out by a powerful nation state with its imperial backing, civility on social media emerged as the metric of conversation, operating strategically to silence dissent. As I have blogged in earlier posts, Professor Steven Salaita, who had secured an appointment at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, was de-hired from his job apparently because he had violated some unspoken civility code. In speaking about the decision to de-hire Professor Salaita, Chancellor Phyllis Wise of the UIUC cited personnel reasons while ironically parroting her well-practiced speech on her commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, safe spaces on university campuses, and academic freedom. Later in the summer and through the early Fall, several University leaders across t

Empiricism and the project of critical social sciences: The contribution of the CCA

Culture-centered projects of social change intervene in the elite world of theorizing by seeking to co-create spaces for subaltern theories. A key element of this intervention is the actual creation of material and symbolic spaces for subaltern articulations in conversations with subaltern communities. Subaltern theories emerge through conversations among subaltern communities, activists, and academics. Empiricism, attending to the expressions of materiality in everyday lived experiences, is integral to the formulation of theories within the meta-theoretical framework of the CCA. Emergent theories voiced through articulations of lived experiences by subaltern communities, are grounded in the everyday understandings, interpretations, and actions negotiated by community members. The CCA thus is a constitutive framework for method and theory. Culture-centered projects seek to contribute to subaltern struggles with material resources by creating material interventions.