New and Old Ways
Sustainability of Traditional Jeepneys In Central Luzon, Philippines
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Eduardo Valcos
After the Second World War in the Philippines in 1945, American military vehicles were modified by local entrepreneurs into a new form of mass transportation. For more than seven decades, local jeepneys were considered as the cheap and affordable public utility vehicles for the masses. It carries five to ten passengers. In the course of time, inevitable and constant development of traditional jeepneys occurred based on the necessity of the commuters, small cargoes, and distance. Number of passengers have increased from twelve to twenty seaters per vehicle. Roof racks were added particularly to those jeepneys that transverse from the cities to far-flung areas that carries various products. Besides, number of such vehicles are assembled from different parts found in automobile graveyard. The reasons why several jeepneys are dilapidated, smoke belcher and uncomfortable for many commuters. Early this year 2023, a strong campaign by the Philippine government to all jeepney drivers and operators were staged to abolish and phase out jeepneys that do not comply to the standard of the Land Transportation Office (LTO). The plight of both traditional jeepneys, drivers and operators are at stake in terms of sustaining the historical emblem of mass transportation on the road.
Metabolism from Biology to Critique of Capital
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Egidijus Mardosas
This paper explores the appropriation of the notion of metabolism for the critique of capitalist societies. The concept, originally developed in biology, was used already by Marx to analyse the relation between society and natural environment, with such conceptual formulations as “social metabolism”, and “the metabolism between humanity and nature”. The notion of metabolism received a renewed attention in recent decades due to human induced climate collapse and the Anthropocene theses. Marxist leaning critics of environmental destruction now use concepts of “metabolic rift” and “metabolic shift”. Thus, the idea of metabolism becomes key notion in social-ecological critique of capital. In this paper I explore the history of this appropriation of the notion of metabolism for social ecology and will comment on some challenges faced when attempting to use the notion from life sciences for social sciences.
Culture, Crisis, Conjuncture: Doing Cultural Studies with Stuart Hall
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lucy Hartley
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” This famous sentence from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks has been much discussed, much used. Gramsci wrote the sentence in 1930, that is, a year after the Wall Street Crash precipitated the Great Depression, when far right forces were mobilizing in Europe, and when the Italian Communist Party followed the world Communist movement in adopting an ultra-left position predicated on the demise of fascism and a proletarian revolution. That’s obviously a simplified version of a complex historical moment, with bearings on the present moment and the present state of the humanities. The first part of my paper charts the formation of cultural studies, primarily the Birmingham School and principally via the work of Stuart Hall while the second part considers what Hall learned from Gramsci for his understanding of culture, hegemony, and crisis, for rethinking class relations, and, perhaps most famously, the conjuncture. Through Gramsci and Hall, I present a view of crisis in terms of representation and consent: not abstractly but located in history, in the culture of our present moment in Europe and America and the tensions therein. What kind of crises are the humanities facing today? And to what extent can the study of culture as a conjuncture reveal lessons about the world that traditional politics and economics do not? These are the questions I address.
