Relationality, Place, and Absence: A Three-Dimensional Perspective on Social Memory

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathrine Degnen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
War Memorials ◽  
The North ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Social

This article builds on recent work on memory and place in the social sciences. One emphasis in the literature on ‘Western’ forms of social memory has been on official, intentional sites of commemoration, such as war memorials and monuments. Based on fieldwork in the north of England with older residents of a former coal mining village, I approach social memory from a different perspective, emphasising the work of memory and its complex interactions with place, absence, social relations and social rupture. Like Village on the Border, this research has taken place in a setting that has undergone significant socio-economic change: the closure of the South Yorkshire coalfields. The embeddedness of local knowledge in social relations emerge in both Ronnie Frankenberg's work and my own and I explore these topics here in connection with what I term a ‘three-dimensionality of memory’.

Rural migrants in villages-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China: Multi-positionality and negotiated living strategies

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 2245-2260 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Chung
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper investigates rural Chinese migrants’ agency through their multi-positionality and negotiated living strategies. The idea of ‘multi-positionality’ conceptualises a migrant’s mobility between physical locations and shifting social positions. Through individual migrants’ multi-positionality, this study discusses their place-specific social relations and thereby the diverse way to negotiate a living in villages-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. These strategies include simple approaches such as facilitating physical movements between different locations and more sophisticated ones which develop multiple roles with outsiders and native villagers in different localities. While the former allows individual migrants to use their local knowledge to make a living in the context of institutional exclusion and discrimination, the latter further cultivates changes and an upgrade in social relations. Rural migrants' everyday stories are used to unfold an individual’s particular people–place relationship and how he/she has tapped into a place-specific resource to make a living. It does not aim to generalise rural migrants’ experience; rather it seeks to show diversity and complexity. Migrants’ stories are collected through extensive research in a village-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. Through these stories, not only does this paper articulate the social relations which underlie individual migrants’ shifting positions, but also extends translocal studies on migrants beyond the narrative of physical locations.

The Death of Caucasus Philology: Towards a Discipline Beyond Areal Divides

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-293
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gould
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Academy ◽  
North American ◽  
Institutional Capacity ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
The Cold War

This essay investigates the challenges facing Caucasus philology, by which I mean the institutional capacity to conduct deep research into the literary cultures of Azerbaijan Republic, Georgia, Daghestan, and Chechnya. I argue that the philological approach to the literary cultures of the Caucasus has been a casualty of the rise of areas studies in the North American academy during the Cold War, and that Cold War legacies continue to shape Caucasus Studies to this day. I conclude by offering three proposals for opening exchanges between the humanities and the social sciences within Caucasus Studies. More broadly, this essay argues for a rapprochement between the social sciences and philological inquiry vis-à-vis the Caucasus.

Sociality, Spirituality, and Meaning Making: Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Cacioppo ◽  
Louise C. Hawkley ◽  
Edith M. Rickett ◽  
Christopher M. Masi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Aging

Scientific theories in the natural sciences posit invisible forces operating with measurable effects on physical bodies, but the scientific study of invisible forces acting on human bodies has made limited progress. The topics of sociality, spirituality, and meaning making are cases in point. The authors discuss some of the possible reasons for this as well as contemporary developments in the social sciences and neurosciences that may make such study possible and productive.

Bargaining in a Three-Person Game

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 642-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Riker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Interaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Person Game ◽  
Components Of Behavior ◽  
Fundamental Forces

Games are paradigms of many political events, especially those that involve partial or complete conflicts of interest among the participants. As paradigms, they display in relatively simple social interaction the same fundamental forces found in the more complex interactions of the grander political events whose structure they share. This is the feature of games that makes them attractive vehicles for both theorizing and experimentation in the social sciences. The scientific expectation is that, by studying the quasi-political interaction of games—where the variations among institutional, psychological, and ideological components of behavior are minimized—one will be able to understand more profoundly the basic political activities of bargaining, forming coalitions, and choosing strategies. This more profound understanding is a consequence of obtaining answers to the following questions:(1) What is the mathematical solution, that is, what amount of utility can players be expected to obtain, when it is assumed that players are rational and wish to maximize utility?(2) What is the strategy (or method of playing) that will ensure players of achieving the solution?An answer to the first question indicates what may be anticipated as the outcome of political events. If we know it, then, if also we can assume players are rational maximizers of utility, we can predict the political future with some confidence. An answer to the second question (about strategies) permits political engineers to give advice to politicians about how to behave successfully.

A Critical Evaluation of the Commodification Thesis

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Structural Shifts

A recurring theme across the social sciences is that non-capitalist production is disappearing albeit slowly and unevenly, and is being replaced by a commodified economy in which goods and services are produced by capitalist firms for a profit under conditions of market exchange. In this paper, however, I evaluate critically this commodification thesis. Even in the heartland of commoditisation – the advanced economies. Large economic spaces are identified where alternative economic relations and motives prevail. Rather than view them as leftovers of pre-capitalist formations, this paper argues that they are the result of both the contradictions inherent in the structural shifts associated with the pursuit of commodification as well as the existence of ‘cultures of resistance’, As such, they are viewed as ‘spaces of hope’ which highlight the demonstrable construction and practice of alternative social relations and logic's of work outside profit-motivated market-oriented exchange.

scholarly journals Notes from a field: A qualitative exploration of human-animal relations in a volunteer shepherding project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Adams ◽  
James Ormrod ◽  
Sarah Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Animal Interaction ◽  
Qualitative Exploration

There is a burgeoning interest in human–animal relations across the social sciences and humanities, accompanied by an acceptance that nonhuman animals are active participants in countless social relations, worthy of serious and considered empirical exploration. This article, the first of its kind as far as the authors are aware, reports on an ongoing qualitative exploration of an example of contemporary human–animal interaction on the fringes of a British city: volunteer shepherding (‘lookering’). Participants are part of a conservation grazing scheme, a growing phenomenon in recent years that relies on increasingly popular volunteer programmes. The primary volunteer role in such schemes is to spend time outdoors checking the welfare of livestock. The first section of the article summarises developments in more-than-human and multispecies research methodologies, and how the challenges of exploring the non- and more-than-human in particular are being addressed. In the second section, we frame our own approach to a human–animal relation against this emerging literature and detail the practicalities of the methods we used. The third section details some of our findings specifically in terms of what was derived from the peculiarities of our method. A final discussion offers a reflection on some of the methodological and ethical implications of our research, in terms of the question of who benefits and how from this specific instance of human–animal relations, and for the development of methods attuned to human–animal and multispecies relations more generally.

scholarly journals Tramandare la memoria sociale del Novecento

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Heritage Preservation ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Of Florence

The volume contains the proceedings of the conference Tramandare la memoria sociale del Novecento (Florence, 11.21.2019), on the occasion of presenting Gino Cerrito’s archive. owned at present by the Social sciences library, University of Florence. Cerrito papers represent a primary source to investigate social movements in the XX century, especially anarchism, with particular reference to the War of Spain and to anarchical syndacalism between the two world wars. The project gave the opportunity to focus on the main issues concerning the preservation of the social memory of the XX century among experts and professionals. Historians, archivists, librarians, professors, association members and officers of the heritage preservation institutions discuss the problems and strategies confronting its conservation and enhancement. Investigate recent past requires a molteplicity of sources, beyond paper and through a great variety of expressions and media. And movements and their archives present peculiarities. Technical and political issues are considered, and a variety of cases and initiatives relating to archives dedicated to social movements and associations.

scholarly journals POWER THROUGH LINGUISTIC MODALITIES IN INDONESIAN PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Rosyida Ekawati
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Expert Power ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
The Social

Language plays a crucial role in political speech. The use of a particular language canreflect or be influenced by the speaker’s ideology, power, cultural/social background, region, or social status. This paper is concerned with the relationship between language and power, specifically as manifested in the language used by an Indonesian president in international forums. It aims to uncover the power relations that were projected through the linguistic features of the president’s speech texts, particularly the use of modal verbs. Data for this paper are the speeches on the topics of peace and climate change delivered by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) in international forums during his first and second presidential terms. This paper’s analysis of linguistic modalities uses Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to answer its research questions. The results show that, in projecting his power, SBY used several linguistic modal verbs. From the context of the modality used it can be understood that the president conveyed his strategic desire to be himself as he tried to relate to the audience (as he assumed it to be) and construct an image of himself, of his audience, and of their relationship. The president produced discourse that embodied assumptions about the social relations between his leadership and the audience and asserted both his legitimate power as president and his expert power. Through the language used, SBY created, sustained, and replicated the fundamental inequalities and asymmetries in the forums he attended.

The Two Faces of Debt

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Stefan Nygård
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North

This introductory chapter surveys the notoriously ambivalent concept of debt. It connects different approaches to debt in social theory and anthropology to the book’s focus on how past debts are mobilised in political debates in the present, and how the ‘North’ has been portrayed as indebted to the ‘South’ for its development, and vice versa. Both questions are framed by the way in which understandings of debt tend to gravitate towards reciprocity or domination. In view of its fundamental ambiguity, debt thus underpins both social cohesion and fragmentation. While it 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. A tension between debt as the glue of social bonds and debt as hierarchy consequently runs through the social history of the concept. Applied to regional and global North-South relations, discussions on debt have often centred on the question of retribution, involving difficult disputes over possible ways of settling debts in the present for injustices incurred in the past.

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