scholarly journals 1487Biopolitics and Epidemiology during COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawel Zagozdzon
Keyword(s):  
Online Education ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Risk Benefit Analysis

Abstract Focus of Presentation During pandemic the social life has been transformed by new regimes of social distancing, face masks, and altered online education. The aim of this presentation is to review the recent philosophical concepts of biopolitics that bring an additional perspective to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings The most important critical response was brought from the philosopher and cultural theorist Giorgio Agamben who in the book entitled “Where are we now? Epidemic as politics” evoked again, known from his previous writings, the figure of bare life. The epidemic restrictions have shown, that humanity no longer believes in anything but bare existence, to be preserved as such at any cost. There were no reliable risk-benefit analysis that took into account all other aspects of human condition except statistical data on positive test results or “asymptomatic illness”. The concepts of another Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito became more than relevant during pandemic. In his book entitled “Immmunitas: the Protection and Negation of Life” he assumes that the more we feel at risk of being infiltrated and infected by foreign elements, the more the life of the individual and society closes off within its protective boundaries, reminding us of the situations during lockdowns. Conclusions/Implications According to biopolitical interpretation of epidemic, the risk of infection can be considered as a “pretext” for ramping up political control on citizens. Key messages Epidemiologists should be aware what are the consequences of the decisions they recommended for governments when the social relations and the power structure are affected.

scholarly journals ALIENATION FROM ITSELF AS A BREAK OF TIES WITH THE WORLD

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Yulia Brodetska
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Internal Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Individual ◽  
External Forces ◽  
Spiritual Potential ◽  
The Relationship

The study analysis focuses on one of the main existential problems of the individual and social life development, namely the problem of alienation. As a phenomenon that describes the ontological situation of violation or rupture of the individual's ties with the common being, alienation is a condition of non-acquisition or loss of meaning in life. Reproduced genetically in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the alienation phenomenon characterizes the situation of connection loss of the individual with his spiritual potential. That is, we are talking about the non-disclosure of the inner potential of human. Therefore, it is noted that as a result, a person refuses to take responsibility for his life. In this situation, internal resources are directed not to the development of the soul potential, but to the achievement of material goods. The latter are presented by the modern socio-political system as markers of "success". Thus, a person betrays himself. It, therefore, subordinates its life to the power of external forces, alien, inherent in its nature. This leads to a gap between essence and existence, the formation of dissatisfaction feelings, helplessness, inadequacy. The author focuses on the fact that integrity, co-existence, co-involvement, demand for personality are born in the relationship. Therefore, any violation, deformation or simulation of these spiritual connections causes problems of both individual and social development. The modern relations space, in which "distant connections" predominate, only states the actualization of the individual alienation problem, which is transmitted from the individual space to all types of social relations. The solution to the problem, according to the author, lies in the space of existential issues, overcoming tendencies to self-alienation of the individual. It is this perspective of the study of the social and individual problems development and requires the development of a methodology for studying the issue.

scholarly journals The lived experiences of the African middle classes Introduction

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Mercer ◽  
Charlotte Lemanski
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

What are the experiences of the African middle classes, and what do their experiences tell us about social change on the continent? While there have been ample attempts to demarcate the parameters of this social group, the necessary work of tracing the social life and social relations of the middle classes is just beginning. The articles in this special issue provide compelling accounts of the ways in which the middle classes are as much made through their social relations and social practices as they are (if indeed they are) identifiable through aggregate snapshots of income, consumption habits and voting behaviours. Rachel Spronk (2018: 316) has argued that ‘the middle class is not a clear object in the sense of an existing group that can be clearly delineated; rather, it is a classification-in-the-making’. We agree, and our aim in bringing these contributions together in this special issue is to develop our understanding of how this process is emerging in different contexts across Africa. In her opening contribution, Carola Lentz suggests that we need more research on ‘the social dynamics of “doing being middle-class”’, or what we term here ‘middle-classness’, which attends to this ‘classification-in-the-making’ through urban–rural changes over intergenerational life courses, multi-class households, kinship and social relations. Such an agenda has recently been opened up by two edited volumes on the African middle classes (Melber 2016; Kroeker et al. 2018). We further develop this agenda here through a series of empirically rich articles by scholars in African studies, anthropology, literature and sociology that explicitly address the question of the lived experiences of the middle classes. Echoing Spronk's unease with taking ‘the middle class’ as an already constituted social group, what emerges across the articles is rather the unstable, tenuous and context-specific nature of middle-class prosperity in contemporary Africa. Social positions shift – or are questioned – as one moves from the suburb to the township (Ndlovu on South Africa) or into state-subsidized high-rise apartments (Gastrow on Angola). Stability gives way over time to precarity (Southall on Zimbabwe). Wealth is not tied to the individual but circulates more widely through social relations. Should one invest in the nuclear or the extended family (Hull on South Africa; Spronk on Ghana)? In a house or a car (Durham on Botswana)? And why does it matter – for the individual, the household, the family, the city, the nation and the continent? To grasp what it means to be middle-class in Africa today necessarily requires an understanding of the historical, social and spatial embeddedness of lived experiences at multiple scales.

scholarly journals Embodiment of Ancestral Spirits, the Social Interface, and Ritual Ceremonies: Construction of the Shamanic Landscape among the Daur in North China

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 567
Author(s):  
Feng Qu
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Northeast China ◽  
North China ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Interface ◽  
Human Construction ◽  
Human Social Life

The case study in this paper is on the Daur (as well as the Evenki, Buriat, and Bargu Mongols) in Hulun Buir, Northeast China. The aim of this research is to examine how shamanic rituals function as a conduit to actualize communications between the clan members and their shaman ancestors. Through examinations and observations of Daur and other Indigenous shamanic rituals in Northeast China, this paper argues that the human construction of the shamanic landscape brings humans, other-than-humans, and things together into social relations in shamanic ontologies. Inter-human metamorphosis is crucial to Indigenous self-conceptualization and identity. Through rituals, ancestor spirits are active actors involved in almost every aspect of modern human social life among these Indigenous peoples.

Class Formation and Ideological Practice: A Case from Sri Lanka

1981 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Brow
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adequate Understanding

An adequate understanding of the complex connections between changes in the social relations of production and changes in the bases of group formation demands an historical approach in which consciousness and its ideological products are viewed dynamically, not as the mechanically determined superstructural reflections of material relations but as an active and constituent components of everyday social life. The concepts required for such an analysis are developed here, drawing on the seminal work of both Marx and Weber, as well as on more recent scholarship, and are applied to recent changes in agrarian relations and ideological practice in Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

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 SAMFUND? Durkheim revisited i Amazonas og videre

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Veber
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
Structured Systems ◽  
The Social ◽  
Functionalist Theory ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Objective Structures

“Society” appears a difficult notion. We use it all the time. But is it any good as an analytical concept? Sociologists seem to agree it is not. Few societies have the empirical characteristics of the bounded entity that structural-functionalist theory assumed. Constructivist notions of society as “imagined community” appear to be tied up with the existence of the State or with the spread of information technology. This leaves contemporary anthropology with “society” as a residue, the left-over from culture’s gluttonous theoretical supper. Still, social science aims to explain or understand social relations, interactions, and the processes by which structures and functions are worked into social systems as implied by the notion of society. The notion of society allows us to assume the existence of objective structures of order in the social life of people. Unlike the notion of culture, however, the notion of society has not been critically scrutinized by anthropologists. In contemporary Danish anthropology with its focus on culture and cultural representations, writers tend to simply take society for granted as the intrinsic empirical context of culture. From the perspective of Durkheimian notions of “the social”, the paper provides a brief review of interpretations that retrospectively have appeared analytical dead-ends. The author goes on to suggest that the notion of “symbolically generalized media of communication” may offer a productive opening that embraces both sides of the culture/society dichotomy in the search for structured systems of social existence whether subjectively or objectively conceived. The idea of “symbolically generalized media or communication” was originally formulated by Talcott Parsons and subsequently reworked by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Rather than an interrelated series of parts that make up a whole plus something else in the classic Durkheimian sense, society from this perspective appears in the form of structured sets of actions oriented by a horizon of possibilities and expectations, symbolically constituted, yet always provisional and emergent. Inspired by analyses of two different cases in Amazonian research the paper offers a brief hint at how the notion may be employed in anthropology.

scholarly journals KONVERSI KEAGAMAAN PASCA 1965, MENGURAI DAMPAK SOSIAL BUDAYA DAN HUBUNGAN ISLAM KRISTEN DI PEDESAAN JAWA

Harmoni ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-240
Author(s):  
M. Alie Humaedi
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Heating Up ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Islam and Christianity in various regions is often confronted with situations caused by external factors. They no longer debate the theological aspect, but are based on the political economy and social culture aspects. In the Dieng village, the economic resources are mostly dominated by Christians as early Christianized product as the process of Kiai Sadrach's chronicle. Economic mastery was not originally as the main trigger of the conflict. However, as the political map post 1965, in which many Muslims affiliated to the Indonesian Communist Party convert to Christianity, the relationship between Islam and Christianity is heating up. The question of the dominance of political economic resources of Christians is questionable. This research to explore the socio cultural and religious impact of the conversion of PKI to Christian in rural Dieng and Slamet Pekalongan and Banjarnegara. This qualitative research data was extracted by in-depth interviews, observations and supported by data from Dutch archives, National Archives and Christian Synod of Salatiga. Research has found the conversion of the PKI to Christianity has sparked hostility and deepened the social relations of Muslims and Christians in Kasimpar, Petungkriono and Karangkobar. The culprit widened by involving the network of Wonopringgo Islamic Boarding. It is often seen that existing conflicts are no longer latent, but lead to a form of manifest conflict that decomposes in the practice of social life.

Youth Sports awareness and culture in contemporary society

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 93-146
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sport Culture ◽  
Culture And Health ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Research Show ◽  
The Way

Culture and awareness are two flexible concepts that are related to the social nature and its development, and the creative and scientific activities of humans since time immemorial. Awareness is developed by humans living their social life, the way they react towards their environment that consists of people, the average of their knowledge and the way they react to the things around them. What distinguishing the individual self-awareness is the human's ability to make any decision and their knowledge of their general behavior. in the light of taking what we need of the information, data, properties and characteristics, we give the youth their needs of activities, movement, awareness and culture through setting codified thoughtful programs. Therefore, we need to know the following: Are the attitudes of the males differ from the attitudes of the females of practicing sports? The importance of the research lies in the fact that it is one of the few studies that takes into consideration sport culture and health of an important segment, which is the youth. One of the results of the research is that the physical activity that the youth do in sports centers (gyms) that brings important benefits like prevention of diseases. The research was conducted on (202) of males which is 63.3% and (98) females which is (32.7). The results of the research show that most of those whom the research was conducted on were from the age of 18 to 25, which makes 47% of the study sample.

Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Carville
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Street Photography

Justin Carville draws on recent debates in relation to photography and the everyday in order to examine the role of street-photography in the cultural politics of religion as it was played out in the quotidian moments of social relations within Dublin’s urban and suburban spaces during the 1980s and 90s. The essay argues that photography was important in giving visual expression to the social contradictions within the relations between religion and the transformation of Irish social life, not through the dramatic and traumatic experiences that defined the nation’s increased secularism, but in the quiet, humdrum and sometimes monotonous routines of religious ceremonies and everyday social relations.

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