The Network Society

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-253
Author(s):  
Gilbert Germain
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Ultimate Concern ◽  
The Status ◽  
Organizational Principle ◽  
New Social Order

The Network Society, Darin Barney, London: Polity, 2004, pp. 198In The Network Society, Darin Barney investigates the claim that “the spirit of our age is the spirit of the network” (2). This claim, the so-called “network society thesis,” announces the birth of a new social order in which “identity, politics, and economy are structured, and operate, as networks” (2). The argument that networks form the organizational principle of social, political, and economic configurations is a direct consequence, we are told, of the communication and management technologies that mediate virtually all contemporary societal practices. This being said, Barney sets out to assess the status of the network society thesis as a truth claim: Does the thesis in fact describe the arrival of a new societal order or does it merely provide a script for its possible realization? Although he concludes the rhetoric of the network society serves both functions, Barney's ultimate concern is that its prescriptive capacity is sufficiently powerful that the political will to offset the further advance of the network society is fast disappearing.

scholarly journals Readapting Pandemic Premediation and Propaganda: Soderbergh’s Contagion amid COVID-19

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Kevin C. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Original Film ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Streaming Services ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
New Social Order

Steven Soderbergh’s pandemic thriller Contagion (2011) was trending strongly on streaming services in the US in the early days of COVID-19 restrictions, where the fiction took on an unforeseen afterlife amid a real pandemic. In this new context, many viewers and critics reported that the film seemed “uncanny,” if not prophetic. Frameworks such as Priscilla Wald’s notion of the “outbreak narrative,” as well Richard Grusin’s “premediation,” may help to theorize this affective experience on the part of viewers. Yet the film was also designed as a public health propaganda film to make people fear and better prepare for pandemics, and the present account works to recover this history. Although the film takes liberties with reality, in particular by proposing an unlikely vaccine-development narrative, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns consulted prominent scientists and policymakers as they wrote the film, in particular Larry Brilliant and Ian Lipkin. These same scientists were consulted again in March 2020, when an effort spearheaded by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public health reunited the star-studded cast of Contagion, who created at home a series of public health announcement videos that might be thought of as a kind of re-adaptation of the film for the COVID-19 era. These public service announcements touch on key aspects of pandemic experience premediated by the original film, such as social distancing and vaccine development. Yet their very production as “work-from-home” illustrates how the film neglected to address the status of work during a pandemic. Recovering this history via Contagion allows us to rethink the film as a cultural placeholder marking a shift from post-9/11 security politics to the pandemic moment. It also becomes possible to map the cultural meaning of the technologies and practices that have facilitated the pandemic, which shape a new social order dictated by the fears and desires of an emerging work-from-home class.

Pentecostal Theology, Identity Politics, and Racialized Xenophobia: Claiming A New Social Order

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 299-327
Author(s):  
Elina Hankela
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Urban South ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
Societal Actors ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
Positive Confession ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
Made In

Abstract Applying the methodological lens of ethnographic theology, the article argues that grounded Pentecostal theologies participate in reimagining a new social order, particularly in relation to racialized xenophobia. This argument is made in the specific context of two Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg, South Africa, both led and frequented by people who have come to Johannesburg from other parts of the African continent. The argument is outlined by unpacking three theological themes prominent in the collected ethnographic data: positive confession, Word-centred ecclesiology, and Christlike lifestyle. Taken together, these themes highlight a social conscience that other societal actors would do well to take seriously when considering combatting xenophobia. Overall, the article challenges the scholarly emphasis on Pentecostal theologies as uninterested in life-affirming structural change, building on Nimi Wariboko’s formulation of blackness, chosenness, and Nigerian Pentecostalism ‘that reads against the existing social order’ within the particular context of xenophobia in urban South Africa.

scholarly journals Fighting for the Nusayrī Soul: State, Protestant Missionaries and the 'Alawīs in the Late Ottoman Empire

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Necati Alkan
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractBased on their writings, the religious beliefs of the Nusayrīs have been studied since the 19th century. But historical knowledge and information about them in the 19th century, based on Ottoman sources has been rather meager. Only in recent years this kind of research intensified. In the Ottoman Empire real interest in the Nusayrīs started during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909). Due to fear of infiltration of heterodox Muslims by foreigners, especially by American and English Protestant missionaries, the Sultan was pressed to attract them to the Hanafī-Sunnī school. In this process, the status of the Nusayrīs underwent changes. After summarizing the attitude of the provincial Syrian administration and of Istanbul toward the Nusayrīs in the first decades of the 19th century, the article will give an overview of the developments regarding the Nusayrīs during the Tanzimat and the Hamidian era until roughly the Young Turk revolution. The following questions will be asked: How did Protestant missionaries integrate the Nusayrīs into their millenarian belief in a new social order? By what means did the Ottoman pacifying or "civilizing" mission attempt to integrate the Nusayrīs? And how did the Nusayrīs respond to the efforts of the Christian missionaries and the Ottoman state? The article will also challenge the view that the name "'Alawī" was only used after 1920.

Blackism and Pan-Africanism in Post-Colonial African Literature: A Reading of Femi Osofisan’s Plays

Imbizo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Olujide Ajidahun
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Black People ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
New Social Order

This article is a thematic study of Femi Osofisan’s plays that explicitly capture the essence of blackism, nationalism and pan-Africanism as a depiction of the playwright’s ideology and his total commitment to the evolution of a new social order for black people. The article critically discusses the concepts of blackism and pan-Africanism as impelling revolutionary tools that seek to re-establish and reaffirm the primacy, identity, and personality of black people in Africa and in the diaspora. It also discusses blackism as an African renaissance ideology that campaigns for the total emancipation of black people and a convulsive rejection of all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, Eurocentrism, nepotism and ethnic chauvinism, while advocating an acceptance of Afrocentrism, unity and oneness of blacks as indispensable tools needed for the dethronement of all forms of racism, discrimination, oppression and dehumanisation of black people. The article hinges the underdevelopment of the black continent on the deliberate attempt of the imperialists and their black cronies who rule with iron hands to keep blacks in perpetual slavery. It countenances Femi Osofisan’s call for unity and solidarity among all blacks as central to the upliftment of Africans. The article recognises Femi Osofisan as a strong, committed and formidable African playwright who utilises theatre as a veritable and radical platform to fight and advocate for the liberation of black people by arousing their revolutionary consciousness and by calling on them to hold their destinies in their hands if they are to be emancipated from the shackles of oppression.

Conclusion: Rethinking Punishment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Fassin
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ideal Language ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Ideal

If punishment is not what we say it is, if it is not justified by the reasons we invoke, if it facilitates repeat offenses instead of preventing them, if it punishes in excess of the seriousness of the act, if it sanctions according to the status of the offender rather than to the gravity of the offense, if it targets social groups defined beforehand as punishable, and if it contributes to producing and reproducing disparities, then does it not itself precisely undermine the social order? And must we not start to rethink punishment, not only in the ideal language of philosophy and law but also in the uncomfortable reality of social inequality and political violence?

Scriptural Battlefields: The Old Testament, Legal Culture, and the Polemics of the Spanish New World Empire, 1492–1821

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra ◽  
Adrian Masters
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Group Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Social Order

Scholars have barely begun to explore the role of the Old Testament in the history of the Spanish New World. And yet this text was central for the Empire’s legal thought, playing a role in its legislation, adjudication, and understandings of group status. Institutions like the Council of the Indies, the Inquisition, and the monarchy itself invited countless parallels to ancient Hebrew justice. Scripture influenced how subjects understood and valued imperial space as well as theories about Paradise or King Solomon’s mines of Ophir. Scripture shaped debates about the nature of the New World past, the legitimacy of the conquest, and the questions of mining, taxation, and other major issues. In the world of privilege and status, conquerors and pessimists could depict the New World and its peoples as the antithesis of Israel and the Israelites, while activists, patriots, and women flipped the script with aplomb. In the readings of Indians, American-born Spaniards, nuns, and others, the correct interpretation of the Old Testament justified a new social order where these groups’ supposed demerits were in reality their virtues. Indeed, vassals and royal officials’ interpretations of the Old Testament are as diverse as the Spanish Empire itself. Scripture even outlasted the Empire. As republicans defeated royalists in the nineteenth century, divergent readings of the book, variously supporting the Israelite monarchy or the Hebrew republic, had their day on the battlefield itself.

Perceived Social Mobility and Political Trust in China

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenhua Su ◽  
Yang Cao ◽  
Jingkai He ◽  
Waibin Huang
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Control

Existing studies have traced China’s high political trust to three sources: traditional culture, the state’s success in fostering economic growth, and ideological propaganda. We identify a fourth source: perceived social mobility. We argue that when people perceive a reasonable chance for upward mobility based on personal initiatives and efforts, the status quo becomes more justifiable because individuals are responsible for their own successes and failures. Perceived social mobility thus instills a sense of optimism and fairness and exonerates the regime from many blames, thereby enhancing political trust. Regression analysis of the China portion of the 2007 World Values Survey data shows that respondents who saw themselves as having choices and control in life were indeed more likely to trust the ruling communist party. The respondents’ overall level of perceived social mobility is also high, which is consistent with the massive shake-up of the preexisting social order in China’s reform era.

Delegitimizing al-Qaida: Defeating an “Army Whose Men Love Death”

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Mark Long ◽  
Alex S. Wilner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recruitment Tool ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
New Social Order

Deterring terrorism is no longer a provocative idea, but missing from the contemporary theoretical investigation is a discussion of how delegitimization might be used to manipulate and shape militant behavior. Delegitimization suggests that states and substate actors can use the religious or ideological rationale that informs terrorist behavior to influence it. In the case of al-Qaida, the organization has carefully elaborated a robust metanarrative that has proved to be remarkably successful as a recruitment tool, in identity formation for adherents, as public apologia and hermeneutic, and as a weapon of war—the so-called media jihad. In the wake of the upheaval of the Arab Spring, al-Qaida and its adherents have redeployed the narrative, promising a new social order to replace the region's anciens régimes. Delegitimization would have the United States and its friends and allies use al-Qaida's own narrative against it by targeting and degrading the ideological motivation that guides support for and participation in terrorism.

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