Media Ethics, Moral Controversies, and the Sociology of Critique

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hove

Abstract Communication scholars have begun to investigate various links between empirical research and normative theory. In that vein, this article explores how Boltanski and Thévenot’s sociology of critique can enhance our empirical and normative understanding of controversies in media ethics. The sociology of critique and its justification model provide a comprehensive descriptive framework for studying practices of moral evaluation and the social goods at stake in them. First, I discuss some prevailing approaches in media ethics. Second, I explicate how the sociology of critique defines situations of normative justification and supplies a model of their basic requirements. Third, I show how this model can be used to analyze the social background of a media ethics controversy. Last, I suggest how the descriptive approach of the sociology of critique can identify conditions in morally pluralistic social settings that pose challenges to normative theories.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-515
Author(s):  
Rahmat Abd. Rahman

The fatwas or fiqh views of scholars in the past were basically born as a reaction to social phenomena that emerged in society. Not only looking at the problems of society in general, but it also responded to government’s or the caliph’s policies in their time. Imam Ahmad bin Hambal is one of the great scholars whose school of thought until this day has developed throughout the world. It is undeniable that the socio-political background was the forerunner of the growth and development of the Hambali School to the digital era today. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to determine the social background of the emergence of the Hambali School and the influence or correlation of social life at the time of Imam Ahmad bin Hambal with his views in the field of fiqh and ushul fiqh. The research method that used is qualitative descriptive approach with content analysis techniques and library research. Apart from that, essentially, this research applied historical and theological approaches. The results showed that social background seemed to influence the emergence of the Hambali School, among others; theological disputes, political conditions, and the development of sciences (dirasah Islamiyah) were quite rapid in his time, it indirectly had implications to his views in the field of fiqh and ushul fiqh. The implications of this research indicate that scholars should maintain the social conditions of their society, particularly in applying the syar'i> propositions, so that the fiqh opinions of Allah ﷻ scholar should not be seen only from a pure discussion of its syar'i> propositions.


1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.


This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.


2008 ◽  
Vol 149 (24) ◽  
pp. 1137-1142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helga Judit Feith ◽  
Zsuzsanna Soósné Kiss ◽  
Ágnes Kovácsné Tóth ◽  
Péter Balázs

Ismereteink szerint ez idáig nem történt olyan átfogó vizsgálat Magyarországon, amely egészségügyi felsőoktatásban tanuló hallgatók szociokulturális hátterét vizsgálta volna. Célkitűzés: Keresztmetszeti kutatásunk fő célkitűzése az volt, hogy megismerjük és elemezzük a leendő orvosnők, diplomás ápolónők és védőnők társadalmi hátterében megmutatkozó különbségeket. Módszer: Jelen kutatásunk orvostanhallgató-nők, valamint egészségügyi főiskolai karon tanuló hallgatónők között készült, a Semmelweis Egyetemen. Összesen 295 hallgatónőt vontunk be a kutatásba, értékelhető választ adott 68,08% ( n = 201). Az eredményeket az SPSS programcsomag segítségével elemeztük, leíró statisztikai megközelítésben. Eredmények: A felmérésben részt vevő hallgatónők számos szociodemográfiai jellemzőjében meghatározó különbséget tapasztaltunk. Az orvostanhallgató-nők nagyobb hányada diplomás szülők gyermeke, ugyanakkor a főiskolai szintű képzésben részt vevő hallgatónők esetében ennek jóval kisebb az esélye. Nem találtunk ugyan statisztikailag alátámasztható különbséget a három hallgatói csoport családi állapotában, de megállapítható, hogy kevesebb diplomásápoló-hallgatónő volt férjezett, illetve élt élettársi kapcsolatban. Következtetések: A főiskolai hallgatónők, valamint az orvostanhallgatók szociokulturális hátterében megmutatkozó különbségek, az ebből következő társadalmi hátrányok nagyobb mértékben sújtják az ápoló- és védőnőhallgatókat, mint az orvostanhallgató-nőket.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (8-9) ◽  
pp. 373-377
Author(s):  
Yuzo Akagawa ◽  
Yasutoshi Matsumoto ◽  
Mitsuyoshi Zaizen

This report describes runoff control facilities (five years after construction) which are basically an athletic field consisting of tennis courts, constructed in an area of about four hectares in Tokyo. The report is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the social background of the fact that the athletic field has come to have runoff control functions. The second part concerns the summary of these facilities, and then the last part relates to the effects of runoff control. Concerning the effects of the facilities, the return period of design rainfall for runoff control facilities is ten years, but stormwater has been stored on the tennis courts twice in five years after construction. Though these two cases of rainfall were very extraordinary, as the outcome of the inspection of the runoff control facilities we were able to confirm the effects of runoff control by means of simulating under the condition of those two cases of rainfall. In addition, we were able to confirm the effect of groundwater cultivation by means of researching the transition of the groundwater table.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Jiří Semrád ◽  
Milan Škrabal

The paper deals with issues connected with the motivation of high school students to participate in activities aimed at professional creative activity and, in this context, issues of environmental influences, especially from school and the family. It is responding to some of the growing efforts of neoliberalism to over individualize creative expression and activities and completely ignore social influences. It also takes into account the cultural legacy of past generations and the sources of creative power that have taken root in society and from which individuals draw and process their inspiration. Presented within are the results of an empirical probe focused on the influence of the social environment on the creative activity of teenagers. The paper follows the relations to the existing body of knowledge on the relationship between social environment and creativity, with an effort to capture the social conditionality of creative performances—to capture their roots. The results of the probe have confirmed the initial hypothesis that the creative efforts of secondary school students taking part in vocational training is based on the social background of the family and school. However, the family influence on the students’ creativity is not as significant as one would expect. It is the indirect effect of the family environment that has a larger influence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-525
Author(s):  
Dorothea Gädeke

Abstract Is normative theory grounded in ontology and if so, how? Taking a debate between Kwame Gyekye and Thaddeus Metz as my point of departure, my aim in this article is to show that something normative does indeed follow from ontological views: The social ontological, I maintain, circumscribes the normative without, however, fully determining its content. My argument proceeds in two steps: First, I argue that our social ontological position constrains what kind of normative theory we may plausibly defend. A relational ontology as defended by Gyekye entails a relational normative theory, whereas an atomist ontology calls for an individualist normative approach and a collectivist ontology for a strong communitarian one. Second, this link between the ontological and the normative has substantive implications for how to interpret the normative content of a theory; it entails interpreting normative values in light of the appropriate kind of normative thought. I illustrate the importance of this implication by showing that it suggests a decidedly relational reading of the core value of well-being in Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, that resolves the alleged tension between communal and individual values in his account.


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