Political Organization

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

Constitutional Theory generally describes constitutions and legal institutions as exogenous components of the political order. According to this account, the legal and the political orders are two distinct domains with low degree of overlap. Normative claims built on this framework state that each should avoid undue interferences in one another. Furthermore, a pure and reasoned legal practice should be safeguarded mainly by adopting language-based constraints. On the one hand, the legal order should speak only the language of principles and of legal arguments. On the other hand, the political order may speak a broader vocabulary, including policy-based arguments. However, this account leaves one question open: where is the power in Constitutional Theory? Answering this point requires depicting constitutions and legal institutions as endogenous components of the political order, in order to bring back a missing detail from the shadows of constitutional practice: how constitutions influence the interactions among political actors and institutions, at the same time that these interactions also contribute to what constitutions become.
Published on Beyond Rights Blog on November 2nd 2018 (http://paraalemdosdireitos.com/in-or-out-constitutions-and-political-orders/).

This chapter will address the question of public legitimacy in connection to the communication of political governed organizations (PGOs). My point of departure is that legitimacy in the public sphere is a central purpose in the communicative effort of any political governed organization. Overall, the paper takes an institutional approach to the subject and aims to clarify the institutional modes and forms PGOs are embedded in connection to the public sphere, as well as how these forms and modes transform in the public sphere. I will not only address the institutional form and modes but also the agency and strategic ability to influence the challenge of public legitimacy.

Français
Le refus des élections politiques est devenu avec le temps un principe fondamental du mouvement anarchiste, au point de constituer aujourd’hui un élément important de son identité. C’est le cas à la Fédération anarchiste, où l’abstentionnisme fait figure de norme. En étudiant l’organisation comme une institution, l’article s’intéresse à la façon dont cette norme est appropriée, pour faire partie intégrante du rôle militant. Devenir militant de l’organisation signifie dès lors devenir abstentionniste, et tout manquement à ce principe est sanctionné par la désapprobation du groupe. Bien que difficile, la transgression n’est cependant pas impossible, même si elle tend généralement à demeurer secrète. Ce n’est que dans des circonstances exceptionnelles que certains militants s’autorisent à contester publiquement la norme anti-électorale. Ils s’appliquent toutefois à le faire au nom des objectifs mêmes de l’institution et à affirmer le caractère ponctuel de la transgression, ce qui diminue la portée de leur dissidence.

Anglais
English
Throughout history, the refusal to participate in political elections has become a basic rule of the anarchist movement. It is now part of its identity and it is therefore a core principle of the French Anarchist Federation. This article intends to study the organization as an institution by focusing on how activists’ roles are learned and enacted. It shows that non-voting is considered as a part of the role of every member in the institution, and that failing to play it correctly exposes the individual to strong disapproval from the group. But this does not mean that it is impossible to infringe the rule, although deviance tends to remain hidden most of the time. Only in exceptional circumstances can the general rule be challenged, but in order to be heard, those who challenge it can only claim to do so on account of the institution’s goals and in very specific conditions, which somehow weakens their undertaking.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party devoted itself to reviving and unifying the Syrian nation and establishing this nation’s complete independence over its historical homeland, Greater Syria. It continues its struggle today, influencing and shaping Lebanese and Syrian society and politics. Yet, the party remains largely unknown and misunderstood, a condition that stems from the lack of any comprehensive study of it. This book fills this gap.

Based on an extensive and thorough examination of Arabic, French, and English primary sources, the monograph is the first comprehensive, systematic history of the SSNP to date, detailing its struggle to fulfill its nationalist vision and establish a secular, independent state in Greater Syria through a thorough analysis of its formation, evolution, and political activities in Lebanon and Syria.

This paper weaves together two recurring themes in philosophical and political debates of recent years: the idea, loosely inspired by Walter Benjamin, that describes melancholia as a dominant structure of feeling and desire among the left; and the suggestion that we are currently witnessing a revival of debates on the question of organisation. My argument identifies not one but two left-wing melancholias, the specular relation between which precludes the work of mourning and deprives us of the conditions for thinking organisation concretely. I follows that a real return to the question of organisation can only take place if we escape this melancholic mechanism; I propose that the very idea of organisation might offer us theoretical resources with which to do so. We come to love our left passions and reasons, our analyses and convictions, more than we love the existing world that we presumably seek to alter with these terms or the future that would be aligned with them. … What emerges is a Left that operates without either a deep and radical critique of the status quo or a compelling alternative to the existing order of things. But perhaps even more troubling, it is a Left that has become more attached to its impossibility than its potential fruitfulness, a Left that is most at home dwelling not in hopefulness but in its own marginality and failure, a Left that is caught in a structure of melancholic attachment to a certain strain of its own dead past, whose spirit is ghostly, whose structure of desire is backward looking and punishing. Wendy Brown The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

by Daraka Larimore-Hall iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with most accomplishments in life, the first people I must thank are my parents. Not only have they been outrageously supportive (indulgent, perhaps) of me throughout my graduate studies, both emotionally and financially, but their lives and experiences have been background inspiration for my interest in politics, social change, and even political parties themselves. My mother is a staunch and deeply partisan Democrat, my father a progressive activist steeped in social justice and international solidarity work. My maternal grandfather was a small town Democratic Party leader in Illinois for whom Adlai Stevenson was a lifelong hero. My father's mother was an activist in Jamaica's People's National Party during that country's tumultuous first years of nationhood. Arguments in the Larimore/Hall home, about US foreign policy or the performance of Democratic presidents, served as a tremendous political schooling, and the first time I witnessed social movements and political parties mashing it up.

Resistance and counter-resistance are familiar tropes to those who labour in the garden of Irish nationalist history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the armed rebellions inspired by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in 1867 and again in 1916, to the agrarian struggles of the Land League, the Plan of Campaign and the United Irish League (UIL) in the 1870s, 1880s and early 1900s respectively, Irish nationalists sought to disengage from the hegemonic presence of the British state and its agents. Nationalists of all hues also sought to resist the creeping and insidious social and cultural influence of “England” through the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1892. Yet by far the most complex and comprehensive in terms of strategic resistance and the creation of a de facto alternative government was the UIL. This, by its very nature and appeal across a wide sector of nationalist support, meant that uneasy alliances were forged in the heat of battle which would be repudiated later.
These were further enhanced by the structures of the UIL which functioned as an Irish nationalist state in embryo. Local branches were organised into executives at parliamentary division level, with a National Directory providing governance at an all-island level; a Standing Committee organised the League on a day-to-day basis. Coterminous with these stood the local government structures put in place by the 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act. These county, rural and urban district councils allowed the UIL membership to practise electoral and popular politics, all the while taking control of governance from the agents of the British state (bar, of course, the policing and military which remained an invidious presence). All of these representatives gathered annually (sometimes more often) at a National Convention in Dublin, ostensibly to pass judgement on the performance of their parliamentary representatives in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) by scrutinising legislation recently passed at Westminster or forthcoming from the governments in power.   
The structures of the UIL were designed to provide more representation for grassroots nationalism and more interaction with an IPP which clung to the structures and tenets set down during the heydays of Charles Stewart Parnell. A consequence of the paralysing and psychological effects of the violent and damaging split of 1890-1, the eddies of which were still reaching the shores at the turn of the twentieth century, the relationships between the lieutenants of Parnell – John Dillon, O'Brien and John Redmond, as well as the gadfly Tim Healy – were fraught by the time O'Brien founded the UIL in 1898. Over the following two years, a complicated series of negotiations ended with the UIL merging with the IPP, a merger ratified at a National Convention held in June 1900 which approved the UIL Constitution and Rules. This Convention signalled the beginning of the end of ‘phase one’ of the UIL growth, and ushered in ‘phase two’, a consolidation of the League and clarification of its modus operandi. 
Consolidation somewhat blunted the UIL’s radical impulse, and brought to the surface tensions inherent within the movement.

Aus Dokumenten der Leipziger Bürger- und Menschenrechtsgruppen Arbeitskreis Gerechtigkeit, Arbeitsgruppe Menschenrechte, Sonnabendskreis sowie der Redaktion der Samisdat-Zeitschrift Grenzfall in Berlin.
Erstmals wird die Revolution von 1989 als ein politisch gewollter Weg transparent gemacht. Ab 1987 können die Bürger- und Menschenrechtsgruppen als Wegbereiter der Friedlichen Revolution verstanden werden. Subversive Aktionen werden dokumentiert und die Auseinandersetzung der Bürgerrechtsbewegung in und mit der evangelischen Kirche. Entstehung und Funktion des Sonnabendskreises in Leipzig, einer bisher nicht betrachteten Organisationsform, werden dokumentiert. Über den Sonnabendskreis wurden Gruppen von Greifswald bis Großhennersdorf koordiniert, ca. 20 Samisdat-Redaktionen, 15 alternative Bibliotheken sowie ca. 20 weitere Friedens- und Umweltgruppen in ca. 50 Orten der ehemaligen "DDR". Tagesereignisse werden aus Originaltexten aus dem Bestande des Archivs der Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte Sachsen e.V., aus Flugblättern, Pressemitteilungen, Tagebucheinträgen und teilweise aus Akten rekonstruiert.

The purpose of the work is to make a digression on the implementation of a form of government based on direct democracy and highlight the linkage that this has had with  a particular party organization: the Bolshevik Party. Infatct, the paper describe the evolutionary trajectory of the Soviets from organs of a rivolutionary power to a governing bodies. The initial questions are: there would be an application of the Soviets theory without the contribution of the Bolsheviks? What are today the best practices of democracy?

This paper advances the case for the abolition of rent, interest, and profit. Rent, interest, and profit often appear perfectly normal for those living and working in capitalist economies, and are made to look normal in capitalist economics, the media, the capitalist state, and more generally by those who benefit from these forms of income without working. Because of the basic systemic violence on which they rest, however, rent, interest, and profit also produce resentment, criticism, refusal, and, at times, organised resistance. Systematic political organisation against the practices of rent, interest, and profit has been and should still be at the basis of Left politics. By this same measure, almost all so-called ‘Left’ parliamentary parties in Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere have given up the game. What is developed here is not another lament about what has been lost. Rather, this paper seeks to give some conceptual clarity to the need to organise politically, with a clear intent of victory, against rent, interest, and profit.

Happiness is one of the most precious goals that human beings need to reach. Farabi, who has a very important place in Islamic thought tradition, attaches special value to the concept of happiness. In his understanding of politics, man has a central position, and the center of political philosophy is how to establish virtuous city and virtuous state. Here, the connection of happiness with politics is inevitable. In this context, the virtuous city can only be reached by a political organization. The virtuous political organization needs a political system in the universe that will require others to reach happiness. Within this system, the president is the person who carries all virtues of humanity. According to Farabi, the aim of man is to reach supreme happiness. In this study, we will examine relationship between politics and happiness and ways to achieve happiness on Farabi’s View.

Complexity is understood differently in anthropology and the complexity studies. I discuss the two principles of socio-political organization, particularly, the phenomenon of homoar-chy as a counterpart to that of heterarchy. Respectively to heterarchy – “… the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for be-ing ranked in a number of different ways,” homoarchy is “the relation of elements to one another when they are rigidly ranked one way only, and thus possess no (or limited) poten-tial for being unranked or ranked in another or a number of different ways at least without cardinal reshaping of the whole socio-political order.” For anthropology, it is wrong to pos-tulate that either heterarchy or homoarchy presupposes a higher level of complexity, while for the complexity students the heterarchic model is more complex than homoarchic: It is not less sustained but has a higher degree of non-equilibrium.

The Santal form the third largest tribal community of India and have been recognized as a scheduled tribe in West Bengal. They are endogenous having a common name, traditional home, common dialect, distinctive social structure, traditional power structure, common ritual patterns and a self - sufficient economy. Customary law is the body of traditional and normative rules that maintain the social order of the Santal community and regulate the continuity of its culture. Though the different aspects of Santal way of life have shown a differential rate of change, yet the interrelationship of various aspects in the dynamics of change has not led to disintegration of Santal culture as a whole. Now, they have become more mobile and interacting with the outside world in the modern perspective of change and development.

In their latest book Assembly, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2017) take up the issue of organization head on. They seek to reclaim strategy for emancipatory ends – removing it from the boardrooms and bringing it down to the streets of everyday struggle. Such a project is clearly relevant for critical management studies (CMS) or for anyone who would like to see organizational strategy put to for more radical ends. But Hardt and Negri also overlook something that CMS scholars have been stressing for years: the relationship between strategy and history. The following critical review provides an summary of Hardt and Negri’s argument, before showing how their notion of strategy ultimately rests on a (false) utopianism that ignores the existing archive of radical organizational experiments.

Max Weber re-presents "Politics as a vocation," on the 100th anniversary of the lecture, originally given to students in Munich, Germany. A class at the University of California - Santa Cruz taught by Professor Hillary Angelo hears  a shorter, updated version. For a video of the performance go to: https://youtu.be/CyfwF90QI_E . As a special bonus, in the video, Weber takes questions concerning his own scholarship as well as politics in the wake of neo-liberalism today.

В центре данной работы стоят взаимоотношения власти и народа в их институциональном оформлении, а именно проблематика соотношения власти правителя, действующей общественной нормы и ее носителей. На широком конкретно-историческом материале, включающем традиционные и модернизирующиеся общества, прослеживаются такие аспекты данной проблематики, как характер представлений о непогрешимости или, напротив, несовершенстве правителя и политической системы, возможности правителя по отношению к действующим социальным нормам, возможности критики в адрес правителя и принудительных общественных санкций в его адрес, понятия о легитимности правителя и ее источниках, концепция высших целей существования института верховной власти и др. Используемый конкретно-исторический материал обобщается на основе формализованного выделения ключевых параметров, характеризующих данные феномены с установлением корреляций между ними, что позволяет осуществить типологизацию социумов с точки зрения исследуемой тематики.

Despite intensive study by John R. Swanton, in the early twentieth century, of social organization in the towns of the early Creek Confederacy, we are left with certain puzzling features. The article outlines two of them. First, despite the remarkable attention paid to clans and clanship, the nature of local, corporate kin groups was never clearly resolved. Second, despite evidence of a strong separation between the matrilineal organization, on the one hand, and the town council on the other, Swanton gives numerous examples where the two seem impossibly commingled. The article offers thoughts toward resolving both puzzles.

Until recently, cultural evolution has been regarded as the teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy. Research based upon the principle of heterarchy – “... the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for be-ing ranked in a number of different ways” (Crumley 1995:3) changes the picture. The opposite of heterarchy would be a condition in society in which relationships in most con-texts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organiza-tional principle may be called “homoarchy”. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal “ideal” (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organiza-tion. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical having an equal level of complexity. A culture could change its basic organ-izational principle without transition to another complexity level. Alternativity also exists within each of the types.

Presenting a "communism of textual matter,” Anti-Book explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing, shifting the politics of text from an exclusive concern with content and meaning to the media forms and social relations by which text is produced and consumed. Taking a “post-digital” approach in considering a wide array of textual media forms, Thoburn invites us to challenge the commodity form of books—to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce. His critique is, instead, one immersed in the many materialities of text.

Documenting the historical sequence running from the post-war ‘New Deal’ and corresponding economic boom up until the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, this thesis outlines the rise of post-politics internationally. With the collapse of the former Soviet-states signalling the left’s capitulation to neoliberal capital under the guise of the ‘third way’, this period marked the ostensible ‘End of History’ and the dawn of post-politics. Here, politics is no longer about contestation, antagonism or disagreement but is reduced to its purely administrative function, whereby its primary purpose is to facilitate the continuous and successful operation of the economy. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Chantal Moffe, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, this thesis demonstrates that post- politics does not result in the evisceration of politics but, rather, the repression of politics. The outcome of this is the inevitable return of the repressed, this being politics ‘proper’. In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the emergence of Occupy, Trump, Brexit, and numerous other revolts and uprisings, this period signals the fall of post-politics and the ‘Rebirth of History’, witnessing the emergence of politics ‘proper’. An explicit exercise in self-clarification, this thesis ultimately documents the international rise and fall of post-politics, exploring how this maps onto the local context in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Drawing on Dylan Taylor’s identification of a ‘third phase’ of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s left, characterised by a potential ‘period of renewal’, this thesis seeks to inquire into whether this trend has continued. Given that Taylor’s thesis was completed immediately prior to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, an ‘updating’ is therefore required to account for the events of the last ten years. Coinciding with international fall of post-politics, this thesis ultimately identifies the emergence of a new politics outside of the parliamentary sphere, potentially indicative of a ‘fourth phase’ of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s left.

La incorporación de las tierras comprendidas entre la Cordillera Cantábrica y el Duero a las estructuras políticas del reino astur supondría el inicio de un proceso de jerarquización del espacio político a partir de la paulatina subordinación política de las poblaciones campesinas al poder de comites, imperantes y potestates. En este trabajo se analizarán los marcos territoriales que encuadraron el ejercicio del poder político por parte de magnates e instituciones eclesiásticas en el siglo X, intentando dar cuenta de la génesis, dinámica y naturaleza de estos distritos con el objeto de esbozar una caracterización global del espacio político en el Reino de León.

Claiming that critical education is circling a cul-de-sac of impotent critique, this article seeks to breathe new life into the field by formulating a magical marxist pedagogy. This pedagogy is not so much about revolutionary critique—which brings like minds together—but more about imagining possible futures—which affectively brings like spirits together. Selectively reading the three volumes of Marx’s Capital, I demonstrate that Marx figures communism as a contradictory assemblage of freedom and planning, autonomy and centralization, and negation and affirmation. At heart, then, I argue that Marx presents communism as a pedagogical problem that demands magical thinking. Next, I insist that it is only by reclaiming the successful history of the struggles of the dispossessed and exploited can we effectively engage in magical marxism and, as such, to begin imagining the future I verify an overlooked reality: we have already been post-capitalist. I bring in the political program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation as an example of magical marxist education. The Party program is a testament to the movement from critique to imagination that makes it so the present doesn’t just seem detestable, but actually feels foreign, thereby instituting the affective dis-jointedness that is key to political struggle. In the end, this article suggests that the left has retreated from the question of power and politics precisely because it has not acknowledged the communist project as a pedagogical one: how to chart and navigate the heterotopic space of transition.

The paper provides an anthropological analysis of the socio-political system of the Kingdom of Benin during the longest and most important period of her history: from coming to power of the ruling up to now Second (Oba) dynasty presumably in the 13th century till the British colonial conquest in 1897. The course of this system formation and its basic characteristic features are outlined. It is argued that the Benin Kingdom of the 13th – 19th centuries was a supercomplex society which yet was not a state, as it was lack of the latter’s fundamental parameters. Particularly, the Benin society was not based on suprakin (territorial) social ties and there was no professional (bureaucratic) administration in it. The kin-based extended family community always remained this society’s focus, and the supracommunal institutions were built up by its matrix, what is impossible in a state. So, notwithstanding its overall socio-cultural supercomplexity, Benin was not a state but rather a specific alternative to it, labeled “megacommunity”. Its structure can be depicted as four concentric circles forming an upset cone: the extended family, the community, the chiefdom, and finally the kingdom. A number of other African and non-African examples of this underconceptualized and understudied by now type of socio-political organization are offered.

"The advent to power of the Second (Oba) dynasty in the early 13th century signified considerable increase of centripetal tendencies in the Benin society. However, the centuries of its rule did not result in the socio-political homogenization: communities (and chiefdoms) with political institutions of their own continued to exist within the country. The preservation of this situation for the whole space of the Oba Benin history proves that “multilayer-ness” was an essential feature of her socio-political structure and not an expression of a cer-tain “transitional character” of the society. The same should be said about the familial-territorial community as the groundwork of the society: it existed in this capacity till the occupation of Benin by the British in 1897. The community was its socio-cultural focus. The Benin society was the center of the whole Uni-verse for the Bini, so the community turned out the Universal “core of the core” for them.
Communities preserved all the initial specific features of their internal organization. Though the central authority’s potential of influencing the communities increased, it did not intervene in their internal affairs and reminded of itself only when the interests of the whole country (associated with those of the political center) were infringed. Communalists paid tribute, were enlisted to corvée labor and military service. There are no grounds for arguing the communalist’s personal attaching to the land.
The supreme power over communities was exercised by all-Benin titled chiefs through local chiefs which did not transform into officials but remained chiefs with all the mecha-nisms of obtaining and exercising power, rights, privileges, obligations attributed to their status. The inseparability of the authority from the people is also testified by the fact that the idea of reciprocal service exchanges as the basis of social relations dominated in the com-munity. Such an orientation of political culture corresponded completely to the general men-tal and behavioral paradigm, Weltanschauung of the Bini. As the basic socio-political institution the community fastened together all the levels of the hierarchical socio-political structure. Ties and relations characteristic of the familial-territorial community, found forms and contents similar to themselves on qualitatively other, supracommunal levels of the society’s being, including the highest, all-Benin one."

The paper seeks to circumscribe the profound meaning of the verb μναμονεῦϝην («remember») that figures in the famous agreement concerning the appointment of the ποινικαστάς («scribe») Spensithios, concluded between the latter and the community of Dataleis located somewhere in central Crete, in c. 550–500 BC (SEG XXVII 1977, 631 = Nomima, I, 22). The issue of relationship between orality and writing is explored. But the main focus is on close interaction of two levels on which highly self-organizing human communities function — it means the social level on the one hand, the political one on the other — and its, sometimes suicidal, consequences.

Se discute la posibilidad de plantear una filosofía de la jefatura indígena tal como fuera postulada por Pierre Clastres. Para hacerlo se propone un doble estudio etnográfico del liderazgo amerindio (los chacobo de la Amazonía boliviana y los chané del Noroeste argentino) precedido por una breve genealogía de la construcción de los estereotipos sobre el liderazgo indígena en las tierras bajas sudamericanas (Acosta, Cooper, Steward, Lowie, Clastres, etc.). A partir del análisis comparativo de ambos casos, las conclusiones exploran las aporías semánticas o formales que obstaculizan la traducción antropológica de las categorías nativas del liderazgo, los contextos sociológicos y sus redes de articulaciones, influjos y dependencias (particularmente misioneras), la operación cotidiana del liderazgo como hecho social total, así como algunas de las implicancias conceptuales, metodológicas y epistemológicas del uso de modelos antropológicos.

In the upcoming fall, the 19th Party Congress will face critical decisions about who will move up into the top leadership circle of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) alongside General Secretary Xi Jinping. Analyses of leading personnel and power constellations in the party are undoubtedly important. However, to properly assess the prospective political development of China, we should also look at the CCP membership structure, which has changed considerably in the past decade.The number of CCP members increased strongly, the social composition of the party base changed, and the party continues to strengthen its presence in private businesses and the civil society.

"Until recently, cultural evolution has commonly been regarded as a permanent teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy, crowned with state formation. However, recent research based upon the principle of heterarchy – ‘... the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways’ (Crumley 1995: 3) changes the usual picture dramatically. The opposite of heterarchy, then, would be a condition in a society in which relationships in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organizational principle may be called ‘homoarchy’. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal ‘ideal’ principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural (including political) organization and its transformations. There are no universal evolutionary stages – band, tribe, chiefdom, state or otherwise – inasmuch as cultures so characterized could be heterarchical or homoarchical: they could be organized differently, while having an equal level of overall social complexity.
However, alternativity exists not only between heterarchic and homoarchic
cultures but also within each of the respective types. In particular, the present article attempts at demonstrating that the Benin Kingdom of the 13th – 19th centuries, being an explicitly homoarchic culture not inferior to early states in the level of complexity, nevertheless was not a state as it lacked administrative specialization and pronounced priority of the supra-kin ties. The Benin form of socio-political organization can be called ‘megacommunity’, and its structure can be depicted as four concentric circles forming an upset cone: the extended family, community, chiefdom, and megacommunity (kingdom). Thus, the homoarchic megacommunity turns out an alternative to the homoarchic by definition (Claessen and Skalník 1978: 640) early state."

RedTraSex is a Latin American transnational network organizing sex workers to push back and challenge the persistent and leading narrative on sex work, labour and human trafficking. The presence of the network highlights the role of collective action needed to challenge laws and address the rights of sex workers across the region. Representing sex worker organizations in fifteen countries in the region, RedTraSex creates an alternate vision around organizing and affirming the rights of sex workers and they contribute to the formulation of an alternative to the language of human trafficking that is based in sex worker's own definitions, experiences and organizing. This research analyzes writings produced by RedTraSex, and qualitative interviews conducted with members of the Costa Rican sex worker organization, La Sala (The Living Room).