Diversity and knowledge in the age of nation-building: Space and time in the thought of Yanagita Kunio

The study examines the thought of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), an influential Japanese nationalist thinker and a founder of an academic discipline named minzokugaku. The purpose of the study is to bring into light an unredeemed potential of his intellectual and political project as a critique of the way in which modern politics and knowledge systematically suppresses global diversity. The study reads his texts against the backdrop of the modern understanding of space and time and its political and moral implications and traces the historical evolution of his thought that culminates in the establishment of minzokugaku. My reading of Yanagita’s texts draws on three interpretive hypotheses. First, his thought can be interpreted as a critical engagement with John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of history, as he turns Mill’s defense of diversity against Mill’s justification of enlightened despotism in non-Western societies. Second, to counter Mill’s individualistic notion of progressive agency, he turns to a Marxian notion of anthropological space, in which a laboring class makes history by continuously transforming nature, and rehabilitates the common people (jomin) as progressive agents. Third, in addition to the common people, Yanagita integrates wandering people as a countervailing force to the innate parochialism and conservatism of agrarian civilization. To excavate the unrecorded history of ordinary farmers and wandering people and promote the formation of national consciousness, his minzokugaku adopts travel as an alternative method for knowledge production and political education. In light of this interpretation, the aim of Yanagita’s intellectual and political project can be understood as defense and critique of the Enlightenment tradition. Intellectually, he attempts to navigate between spurious universalism and reactionary particularism by revaluing diversity as a necessary condition for universal knowledge and human progress. Politically, his minzokugaku aims at nation-building/globalization from below by tracing back the history of a migratory process cutting across the existing boundaries. His project is opposed to nation-building from above that aims to integrate the world population into international society at the expense of global diversity.

The Efficacy of San Lazaro and His Manifestations: Divine Mediators of Health Within Miami's Cuban-American Santeria Community.

This study explored the origins, evolution and influence of the tradition of San Lázaro as it currently pertains to the Cuban-American Santeria community in Miami. The main argument of the study is that in the context of the contemporary religious culture of Santeria in Miami, San Lázaro is a hybrid spirit. Many manifestations of healing entities have come to merge in the person of this spirit. Though practitioners identify with specific manifestations of this spirit, the processes of transmigration have blurred the lines of deep-rooted faiths and created a fusion of meanings from disparate traditions, making San Lázaro an ambivalent personality. San Lázaro’s ambivalence is the very quality that makes him such an important Orisha. As a deity whose personalities demonstrates the combination of a diversity of qualities, including those that contradict each other, San Lázaro is deployed in a very broad range of healing context, making him a versatile Orisha. This study clarified the contrasting qualities this deity embodies and traces the socio-historical context in which the deity acquires the layers of meanings it is currently associated with. Drawing on interviews with Lázaranian worshipers [Lázarenos] in Miami and engaging in Bourdieu’s concept of Habitus, the study provided a window into the nature of the tradition of San Lázaro and how its usage is linked with the African heritage of the worshipers.

Raúl Castro's Government: Recent Economic Reforms and Some Political Considerations.

Four years after calling for structural and conceptual changes, Raúl Castro finally unveiled a roadmap of substantive economic reforms. Over the next 18 months, at least a million workers will be laid off from the bloated state sector. Alternative forms of earning a living – self-employment, cooperatives, leasing of land or physical space, among others – are being authorized as old constraints on these alternatives are rescinded. From the perspective of ordinary Cubans, these reforms – called an actualizaciόn, or an update of the economic model – were long overdue. Yet, in hindsight, the slow-paced process can be explained, not in terms of the need for time to “identify” Cuba’s economic problems which have been known for decades, but by Raúl Castro’s emphasis on la institucionalidad, the need to channel decision making through institutions. His brother left a chaotic state apparatus which first needed mending before an elite consensus on the reform package could be forged. Cuba is entering a situation without precedent: this package is likely to run its own course without the Comandante (Fidel Castro) stopping it. By 2015, Cuban society will probably look different than today, featuring unprecedented inequality and living standards that are on the rise.