TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cörüt, Gözde Yazıcı
A1  - Cörüt, İlker
T1  - The neo-liberal conception of empowerment and its limits
BT  - micro-credit experiences of self-employed women in the bazaars of Bishkek
JF  - Central Asian survey
N2  - Through qualitative research conducted in the bazaars of Bishkek, this paper examines the posited tripartite relationship between the free market, micro-finance and women's empowerment by focusing on how loans from micro-finance institutions in Bishkek influence the lives of female loanees. The neo-liberal conception of 'individual autonomy' and 'empowerment', it is argued, may not adequately serve as indicators of actual female empowerment/disempowerment in Bishkek and lead us to fail to recognize moments of self-exploitation and forms of claim-making. The research also underlines the disempowering effects of the affectional burden, that is, the constant sense of anxiety, that the loanees have to manage in order to survive in the neo-liberal business environment, which offers high interest rate loans and exposes the loanees to over-indebtedness. These effects can be followed through the analysis of the role the desire for stability and 'ontological security' plays in the formation of the identities/world views of the loanees.
KW  - Kyrgyzstan
KW  - micro-credit
KW  - self-employed women
KW  - women's empowerment
KW  - neo-liberalism
KW  - debt
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2021.1969897
SN  - 0263-4937
SN  - 1465-3354
VL  - 41
IS  - 1
SP  - 118
EP  - 137
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pittel, Harald
T1  - Fin du globe
BT  - Oscar Wilde’s romance with decadence and the idea of world literature
JF  - Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology
N2  - This essay argues that Oscar Wilde noticeably contributed to the emerging discourse about world literature, even though his views in this regard have to be unearthed from the margins of his works, from his early and unpublished American lectures and 'between the lines' of his major critical essays. Wilde's implicit ideas around world literature can be understood as being closely related to his broader endeavour of redirecting and revaluing the pejorative discourse around 'decadence' in art and literature. More specifically, the arch-aesthete preferred to use the word 'romance' rather than 'decadence' (a term he hardly used at all in his writings), signalling a sensitivity attuned to what he called the 'love of things impossible'. This reconceptualization of the decadent outlook was to inspire a critical ideal of literature which relied on creatively activating the other as Other, culminating in a vision of intersubjective, transcultural and unlimited literary communication. Wilde's thought can be more specifically understood as anticipating central tenets of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's evocations of the planetary, thus preparing the way for an alterity-oriented understanding of literary cosmopolitanism.
KW  - debt
KW  - decadence
KW  - planetarity
KW  - romance
KW  - world literature
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621994702
SN  - 0725-5136
SN  - 1461-7455
VL  - 162
IS  - 1
SP  - 121
EP  - 136
PB  - Sage
CY  - London
ER  -