Explore the vast range of titles available.

The aim of this volume is to explore new approaches to the problem of the constitution of the various aspects of sociality and to confront these with received ideas. Therefore many of the contributions to this volume are devoted to a rather holistic and antireductionist conception of social objects, groups, joint actions and collective knowledge. The topics, that are dealt with are: a) the question of the ontological status of social objects and their relation to physical objects, b) collective agency and c) the question whether there can be shared knowledge and shared beliefs - a rather new topic in the discussion of the social aspects of personal life.

Decolonizing Epistemologies builds upon the contributions of liberation and postcolonial theories in both philosophy and theology. Gathering the work of three generations of Latina/o theologians and philosophers who have taken up the task of transforming their respective disciplines, it seeks to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge by reflecting on the Latina/o reality in the United States as an epistemic locus: a place from which to start as well as the source of what is known and how it is known. The task of elaborating a liberation and decolonial epistemology emerges from the questions and concerns of Latina/os as a minoritized and marginalized group. Refusing to be rendered invisible by the dominant discourse, the contributors to this volume show the unexpected and original ways in which U.S. Latina/o social and historical loci are generative places for the creation of new matrices of knowledge. Because the Latina/o reality is intrinsically connected with that of other oppressed groups, the volume articulates a new point of departure for the self-understanding not only of Latina/os but also possibly for other marginalized and oppressed groups, and for all those seeking to engage in the move beyond coloniality as it is present in this age of globalization.

This paper asks how Indigenous ways of being and knowing can become legitimized within western theorizations of ontology, given the ongoing (neo)colonial relations that shape geographic knowledge production. My analysis emerges within my narrative accounts of being a Kwakwaka’wakw scholar in two spaces of knowledge production: a geography conference and a potlatch. Through these stories, I engage with the individual embodied scales at which we reproduce geography as a discipline and reproduce ourselves as geographers. I argue that making ontological shifts in the types of geographic knowledge that is legible within the discipline requires destabilizing how we come to know Indigeneity and what representational strategies are used in engaging with Indigenous ontologies, as differentiated from western ontologies of Indigeneity.

This paper examines four types of epistemic injustices (Fricker 2007): testimonial, hermeneutical, participatory, and curricular that occur within library and information science (LIS), and argues for an ethical shift to address these injustices within our programs, services, and curricula. To do this, we want to use epistemicide as a concept to actively interrogate neutrality, and call it out for the social construction that it is. By having a shared language, and a shared ethical intuition that explicitly addresses the harms from assumed neutrality, it also becomes possible to recognize testimonial, hermeneutical, participatory, and curricular injustice. The accumulation of injustices is what we refer to as epistemicide. We argue for an acknowledgement of neutrality, and the history of its conception within the LIS field, to better provide alternative ways of knowing and resisting legacy forms of colonization and epistemicide.

This article asks when, how, and why states started to use the concept of international community in the shared language of diplomacy and international law. It argues that the concept was accepted to the interstate language as a result of debates over international institutions, which were to acquire a universal character, at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. The article suggests that conceptual changes in interstate language should be understood as products of rhetorical power struggles, in which some arguments lose the battle while others prevail, some concepts are discarded while others modified. The article suggests a model of conceptual change that explains an innovation in interstate language. First, it draws attention to collective assertive speech acts at diplomatic events that signal changes in international politics. Second, it examines whether such acts implicate conceptual innovations. Third, it posits that the composition of epistemic community assembled at the Hague determines the nature of conceptual innovation. Fourth, it demonstrates how rhetorical interventions into debates at the conference introduce and mould relevant concepts. Fifth, it illuminates how contextualisation of the conference interventions in professional debates helps us understand the polemical nature of arguments and the scope of conceptual innovation.

The act of interpretation occurs in nearly every area of the arts and sciences. That ubiquity serves as the inspiration for the fourteen essays of this volume, covering many of the domains in which interpretive practices are found. Individual topics include: the general nature of interpretation and its forms; comparing and contrasting interpretation and hermeneutics; culture as interpretation seen through Hegel's aesthetics; interpreting philosophical texts; methodologies for interpreting human action; interpretation in medical practice focusing on manifestations as indicators of disease; the brain and its interpretative, structured, learning and storage processes; interpreting hybrid wines and cognitive preconceptions of novel objects; and the importance of sensory perception as means of interpreting in the case of dry German Rieslings.In an interesting turn, Nicholas Rescher writes on the interpretation of philosophical texts. Then Catherine Wilson and Andreas Blank explicate and critique Rescher's theories through analysis of the mill passage from Leibniz'sMonadology.

South Africa’s democratic dispensation ushered in a number of initiatives to transform the economy and alleviate divisions of the past. The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) ideology which served as the guiding policy framework to the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies called for radical measures such as nationalisation of strategic sectors. However, the ANC followed neo-liberal path in implementing adopted policies such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA) and the National Development Plan (NDP). The persisting triple socio-economic challenges (inequality, unemployment, and poverty) during President Zuma’s last tenure (2014-2018) spurred many calls for Radical Economic Transformation (RET). This article employs Afrocentricity as the alternative lens informed by African experiences that should provide a basis for analysis, understanding and implementation of RET as the proposed strategic policy to reduce inequality, unemployment, and poverty. The central argument of this desktop article is that African experiences should inform studies on any African phenomenon. Methodologically, the article employed Afrocentric qualitative research methodology to provide potential remedies on the research phenomenon.

The NOMINATE algorithm has become the most important analytical tool used in the study of the United States Congress. As such, congressional scholars have developed a great many social conventions, practices, and assumptions that enable interpretation of the statistical artifacts the algorithm produces. However, as many of these scholars recognize, serious problems emerge whenever we try to translate these statistical artifacts into language and thus attempt to assign them meaning in historical analysis. These problems are irresolvable because they reside in the very construction of the algorithm itself.

In August 2015 the municipality of Sinj, located in the Dalmatian hinterland, celebrated the 300-year anniversary of a historic victory against the troops of the Ottoman Empire, one that is legendarily attributed to the divine intervention of the Virgin Mary. The Sinj Tourist Board launched an unprecedented campaign in organizing and advertising the various events - ranging from historical re-enactments, film and music productions, folkloristic performances, sports events, exhibitions, and fashion shows, to religious processions and conferences. Using a variety of media formats, these efforts were aimed at creating a new national epic, expanding the meaning of the miraculous battle of 1715 from a local narrative to a nation-wide symbol, representing Croatia in a European and global context. This article focuses on various theatrical re-enactments of the historic battle and the alleged Marian apparition, assessing the role of nostalgia and authenticity in contemporary living history performances. While one of the underlying motifs in the case of Sinj is to enhance the region’s attraction as a tourist destination, the article also theorizes the re-enactment’s epistemological and political claims by proposing that these interactive engagements with history take an active stance in promoting and/or re-inventing heroic olden times to advance socio-political conditions in the present (Gegenwartsbewaltigung).

This paper will address an often-neglected agenda of the much-derided League of Nations: its ‘social’ and ‘technical’ works. These targeted human security through regulating different forms of international mobility, including the fight against trafficking in women and children. The League used conventions and conferences to commit nation-states, in a legal model, to standardized anti-trafficking measures. It also, however, worked to educate and inform states, voluntary organizations, and the general public about the nature of trafficking and the ways of combating it. The latter techniques are here interpreted using Foucault's governmentality writings, which encourage us to look beyond the juridical epistemologies of international relations and international law, but not beyond the interlacing of laws and norms, here explored through interwar League governmentalities.