scholarly journals Societal Constitutionalism in Japan: Neighbourhood Associations as Micro-relational Constitutional Sites

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-280
Author(s):  
Luca SILIQUINI-CINELLI
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Japanese Economy ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Civic Friendship ◽  
Suburban Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regulatory Dynamics ◽  
Constitutional Pluralism

AbstractOver the past few years, Japan has been witnessing the emergence, regeneration, and spread of micro-relational forms of cohesion, solidarity, and responsibility in response to the ryūdō-ka shakai and hikikomori phenomena. These terms refer to the crisis of social relations and co-operation, which commenced after the collapse of the Japanese economy in the early 1990s. While scholars, particularly sociologists and anthropologists, have consistently inquired into these micro-sites of civic friendship and responsibility, their juridical status is yet to be ascertained. This article argues that the paradigm of societal constitutionalism developed by Gunther Teubner can be of precious assistance in conducting such an assessment. In particular, it offers a contextualization of Teubner’s reflections on constitutional pluralism and fragmentation of social functions from the perspective of Kiyoshi Hasegawa’s state-centric scholarship on the regulatory dynamics of neighbourhood associations as micro-relational communities in suburban areas. A particular is given, and only given, within relations.1

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Pro linhvistychni pokaznyky vzayemodiyi mova – kulʹtura na prykladi analizu polʹsʹko- ukrayinsʹkoho pohranychchya XV-XIXst.

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Halyna Маtsyuk
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Polish Language

The article is devoted to the formation of a linguistic interpretation of the interaction of language and culture of the Polish-Ukrainian border territories. The material for the analysis includes nomic systems of Ukrainian and Polish languages, which are considered as a cultural product of interpersonal and interethnic communication and an element of the language system, as well as invariant scientific theory created in the works of Polish onomastics (according to key theoretical concepts, tradition of analysis, and continuity in linguistic knowledge). The analysis performed in the article allows us to single out the linguistic indicators of the interaction of language and culture typical for the subject field of sociolinguistics. These are connections and concepts: language-territory, language-social strata, language-gender, language-ethnicity, social functions of the Polish language, and non-standardized spelling systems. Linguistic indicators reveal the peculiar mechanisms of the border in the historical memory and collective consciousness, marking the role of languages in these areas as a factor of space and cultural marker and bringing us closer to understanding the social relations of native speakers in the fifteenth-nineteenth centuries.

Differences in temporal reasoning

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Flexibility ◽  
Shrinking City

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.

Socio-spatial transformations at the urban fringes of Rome: Unfolding suburbanisms in Fiano Romano

2021 ◽  
pp. 096977642110316
Author(s):  
Lorenzo De Vidovich
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Spatial Expansion ◽  
Spatial Transformations ◽  
Suburban Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatial Changes ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
New Inequalities

Today, suburbs and urban fringes are pivotal places for understanding contemporary urban transformations because the majority of the world’s urban population live in suburbs. Suburbanization (i.e. the process of combining the non-centric population, economic growth, and spatial expansion) and suburbanisms (suburban ways of living) are key concepts for observing these transformations, framed under the umbrella of the post-suburban theoretical framework. This paper relies on a post-suburban standpoint as it enables the complexity of the diverse transformations at the urban edges to be addressed. On such basis, this paper discusses the outcomes of a qualitative case study conducted on the most recently built neighbourhood of Fiano Romano, a suburb of Rome that has faced a number of socio-spatial transformations over the past two decades. The study illustrates the diverse complexities related to the provision of welfare services and public amenities such as water and social infrastructures. In so doing, the article unfolds the shape of a ‘new suburbia’ characterized by emerging socio-spatial changes that lie in processes of peripheralization, which characterize many contemporary post-Fordist suburban areas, especially at the present time of the coronavirus crisis. The article points out the centrality of suburban ways of living in studying issues involving both spatial planning and governance of welfare. Furthermore, the article highlights the idea that new inequalities and deprivations are taking place in diverse suburban areas, and that such aspects deserve further governance agendas able to meet the suburban social demands that differ from traditional urban vulnerabilities.

White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Peter Frost
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Selection Pressure ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
White Skin ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Preference ◽  
European Women ◽  
Modern Myth

Abstract European women dominate images of beauty, presumably because Europe has dominated the world for the past few centuries. Yet this presumed cause poorly explains “white slavery”—the commodification of European women for export at a time when their continent was much less dominant. Actually, there has long been a cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women, with the notable exception of modern Western culture. This cultural norm mirrors a physical norm: skin sexually differentiates at puberty, becoming fairer in girls, and browner and ruddier in boys. Europeans are also distinguished by a palette of hair and eye colors that likewise differs between the sexes, with women more often having the brighter hues. In general, the European phenotype, especially its brightly colored features, seems to be due to a selection pressure that targeted women, apparently sexual selection. Female beauty is thus a product of social relations, but not solely those of recent times.

Risking Debt for Honor

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Cash
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
The Republic

Research on godparenthood has traditionally emphasized its stabilizing effect on social structure. This article, however, focuses attention on how the practices and discourses associated with marital sponsorship in the Republic of Moldova ascribe value to the risks and uncertainties of social life. Moldova has experienced substantial economic, social, and political upheaval during the past two decades of postsocialism, following a longer period of Soviet-era modernization, secularization, and rural–urban migration. In this context, godparenthood has not contributed to the long-term stability of class structure or social relations, but people continue to seek honor and social respect by taking the social and economic risks involved in sponsoring new marriages.

scholarly journals On Time and Planning: Opening Futures by Cultivating a “Sense of Now”

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucie Laurian ◽  
Andy Inch
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Clock Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Improve Planning

Planning seeks to shape sociospatial outcomes but is also, by nature, future oriented. Yet, planning theory and practice have paid relatively little attention to ongoing debates about changing social relations to time. Building on a wide range of disciplines, we review the multiple temporalities through which lives are lived, the modern imposition of clock time, postmodern acceleration phenomena in the Anthropocene, and their implications for planning’s relationship to the past, present, and future and for planning theory. We discuss how thinking more and differently about time might challenge and improve planning by helping theory do better justice to the complexity of practice. We conclude by outlining eight propositions for rethinking planning’s relationship to time.

scholarly journals Lustration in Europe and Serbia: The motivation for passing the laws on lustration and their social functions

Sociologija ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-306
Author(s):  
Milan Cakic
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Opening Section

The main topic of this article are the motives that led to the adoption of lustration laws in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Serbia, and their social functions. In the opening section, lustration is placed in the wider framework of dealing with the past and two possible approaches to the phenomenon are discussed: to take it as part of the broader process of decommunization, or a measure of transitional justice. In the next section an attempt at defining the concept of lustration is made, with a view to eliminating some ambiguities surrounding it. Subsequently, two partially complementary theoretical models explaining the occurrence, form and severity of dealing with the past and lustration are presented. After that comes the description of the socio-political context at the time of the adoption of lustration laws in the three countries and identification of political and ideological forces that have supported or challenged it. Finally, the article attempts to answer the question whether lustration is a legitimate measure of settling historical justice, overcoming the legacies of socialism, a way to strengthen liberal democracy, or merely a tool in political struggles for power.

scholarly journals Psychotherapy in Siberia: prospection from the past

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-24
Author(s):  
V. Ya. Semke
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
East Region

In the article there are cited the historical data on psychotherapy development in the east region of the country, mentioned the main stages of psychotherapeutic service perfection in Siberia, outlined the ways of organizational, clinical-dynamic and preventive approaches for the nearest and further prospects of scientific and practical psychotherapy making as a base of creation of a healthy and harmonious individual and social relations.

scholarly journals Srebrenica is not a Metaphor

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Sarina Bakić
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
Further Development

The author will emphasize the importance of both the existence and the further development of the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center, in the context of the continued need to understand the genocide that took place in and around Srebrenica, from the aspect of building a culture of remembrance throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). This is necessary in order to continue fighting the ongoing genocide denial. At first glance, a culture of remembrance presupposes immobility and focus on the past to some, but it is essentially dynamic, and connects three temporal dimensions: it evokes the present, refers to the past but always deliberates over the future. In this paper, the emphasis is placed on the concept of the place of remembrance, the lieu de memoire as introduced by the historian Pierre Nora. In this sense, a place of remembrance such as the Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center is an expression of a process in which people are no longer just immersed in their past but read and analyze it in the present. Furthermore, looking to the future, they also become mediators of relations between people and communities, which in sociological theory is an important issue of social relations. The author of this paper emphasizes that collective memory in the specific case of genocide in and around Srebrenica is only possible when the social relations around the building (Srebrenica - Potočari Memorial Center) crystallize, which is then much more than just the content of the culture of remembrance.

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