“Race” to the Finish Line

Author(s):  
John H. McClendon

The image of the black athlete looms large on the landscape of communications media and cultural outlets. And a certain kind of sports ethos, intimately linked to African American sports figures, permeates mass and popular culture. Questions are raised: How does this importance of sports regarding black people affect race as a dynamic social category? If “race matters” in society, can sports tell us in what way? Does the notion of racial progress apply to the status of African Americans in contemporary sports? How would we measure and define the progress of the black race in sports? Does progress in sports signal advancement in other areas of social life?

Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


Author(s):  
Vu Kha Thap

Entering the XXI century and especially in the period of the industrial revolution has entered the era of IT with the knowledge economy in the trend of globalization. The 4.0 mankind development of ICT, especially the Internet has had a strong impact and make changes to all activities profound social life of every country in the world. Through surveys in six high School, interviewed 85 managers and teachers on the status of the management of information technology application in teaching, author of the article used the SWOT method to distribute surface strength, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges from which to export 7 management measures consistent with reality. 7 measures have been conducting trials and the results showed that 07 measures of necessary and feasible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawen Fu

Since the birth of 5G, it has attracted much attention from all countries in the world. The development of 5G industry is particularly important for domestic economic development. 4G changes life, 5G changes society. 5G will not only accelerate the speed of people surfing the Internet, but also bring revolutionary changes to all aspects of social life, making people's lives, work and entertainment more convenient and diverse. The economic impact of the development of the 5G industry on China cannot be underestimated. Nowadays, information and communication technology has increasingly become a new driving force for economic development. 5G technology has already become a key technology pursuit for countries to compete for the status of world power, and it has also become an indispensable part of contemporary economic and social development. We should give full play to the government's guiding role, and work with network giants to build a new platform for cooperation, promote coordinated industrial development, achieve win-win results, and promote economic and social prosperity and development.


Sports ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Christoffer Nyborg ◽  
Helene Støle Melsom ◽  
Martin Bonnevie-Svendsen ◽  
Jørgen Melau ◽  
Ingebjørg Seljeflot ◽  
...  

We assessed endothelial function by flow-mediated dilatation (FMD), levels of the NO-precursor L-arginine, and markers of endothelial inflammation before, at the finish line, and one week after the Norseman Xtreme triathlon. The race is an Ironman distance triathlon with a total elevation of 5200 m. Nine male participants were included. They completed the race in 14.5 (13.4–15.3) h. FMD was significantly reduced to 3.1 (2.1–5.0)% dilatation compared to 8.7 (8.2–9.3)% dilatation before the race (p < 0.05) and was normalized one week after the race. L-arginine showed significantly reduced levels at the finish line (p < 0.05) but was normalized one week after the race. Markers of endothelial inflammation E-Selectin, VCAM-1, and ICAM-1 all showed a pattern with increased values at the finish line compared to before the race (all p < 0.05), with normalization one week after the race. In conclusion, we found acutely reduced FMD with reduced L-arginine levels and increased E-Selectin, VCAM-1, and ICAM-1 immediately after the Norseman Xtreme triathlon. Our findings indicate a transient reduced endothelial function, measured by the FMD-response, after prolonged strenuous exercise that could be explained by reduced NO-precursor L-arginine levels and increased endothelial inflammation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-789
Author(s):  
N. V. Goncharov

Abstact. The article considers consumerism as embracing virtually all areas of social life and creating persistent structural algorithms of consumption, which are efficiently integrated by the market into contemporary societal systems. By exploiting and distorting the true humanistic principles, commercialization of social structure, which is determined by the market relations liberalization, raises capitalist values to the highest rank of the axiological hierarchy and contributes to strengthening of social and individual consumerism. The article emphasizes significance and consequences of the commodity worlds dazzle, because dominant consumer values acquired the status of global social trends that determine the structural-essential elements of socialization. Contemporary advertising technologies based on behavioral concepts expand limits of consuming goods and services and successfully form customer needs by verbal and non-verbal semantic speculations that support the desire to consume. The author emphasizes that today the commodity consumption is not just purchase and use of goods but rather a commercial ritual designed by marketers to make people follow certain consumer standards regardless of their social-economic status. The consequences of the internalized consumerism are obvious: first, consumerism contributes to the transformation of personal communication by making goods and services mediators of relationships; second, the permanent development of consumer values contributes to axiological transformations, especially to commodification of the moral component of social reality.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Jackson

A new kind of gender equality ideology is rising in popularity in Western societies. While emphasising gender equality for the next generation, this new ideology sees feminism in a pragmatic and simplistic way, as nonthreatening to the status quo, in politics, popular culture, and economy. In the economic sphere, Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” has become well known for aiming to guide women to succeed alongside men in the workplace by changing their behaviours and attitudes. Its recommendations for women have impacted perspectives in the non- rofit and start-up worlds, arts, and more. However, there are some limitations to the kind of feminist thinking exemplified by Lean In. This article critically examines Lean In as a discourse or ideology in relation to higher education within and outside Western societies. I argue first that such ideology employs a deficiency model of gender equality that makes women accountable for sexism by focusing on internal rather than external change. Second, I argue that such discourses essentialize gender. Third, I argue that it is not easy to translate the advice given to women across international contexts, as Lean In reflects cultural conceptions of the workplace.


2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Andrea Dos Santos Soares

This article experiments with collage to explore the visual representation of black people in Brazilian media, popular culture and politics, examining how these representations constitute statements regarding dynamics of racial domination. The work proposes that the introduction of disruptive elements into the very images that objectify the black body could create the necessary conditions for a valuable criticism of how blackness is disposed within the nation’s formation. The articulation with black studies in visual culture and performance, black feminism, African diaspora and post-colonial theories intends to develop analytical frames to examine the interconnection between the representational process of ‘stereotyping’, symbolic violence and anti-black ideologies in the context of the national formation narratives. Methodologically, the articulation of these fields of inquiry intends to provide tools able to highlight and disrupt the regimes of racial representation circulating in Brazilian popular culture.


Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-313
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Zonca

In the second half of 19th century, newborn Italy was invaded by innovative ideas supported by democratic, liberal, and socialist intellectuals who wanted to renew social life, economy, and moral values by spreading their ideas both in politics and in everyday life. Right-wing reaction used the same methods of communication and persuasion: the publication of journals and books and their promotion in reading cabinets and public libraries. Maria and Antonia Ponti, two upper-middle-class sisters who married into aristocracy, used their influence and resources to advance the status of women in society. They founded associations and libraries (in Ravenna, Imola, and Bergamo) with the theoretical support of a network of Italian intellectuals, including Cor-rado Ricci, Vilfredo Pareto, and Maffeo Pantaleoni. The philanthropic actions of the sisters, who combined their Catholic and conservative point of view with the improvement of the condition of women, have handed down a remarkable legacy in the form of books and a collection of laces.


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