The Decline of the Social

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-474
Author(s):  
Alain Touraine

It is impossible to define sociology other than by reference to ill-defined entities like society or the social. Nevertheless, it seems necessary nowadays to ask the question explicitly, whether these referents have relevant meaningful contents. The idea of society has been profoundly reformist or reforming. Wherever the political system has become open and more complex, and state intervention in economic life has expanded, the field of sociology itself has expanded to the point where we can speak of the triumph of a sociological vision of the world. Industrial society was a complete historical construction, defined by a morality, a philosophy of history and various forms of solidarity. The idea of society was never more closely associated with those of production and social justice. Now, we no longer live our collective life in purely “social” terms nor expect social answers to our problems. The decomposition of the idea of society, set off by the fragmentation of the world in which that idea developed, got worse. The current predominance of the theme of globalization has been accelerating the decline of the “social” representation of public life. The time has come to reconstruct sociology, no longer on the basis of what we thought was a definition of the social and of society, but on the basis of the explosion of those ensembles which had been thought to be solid, and of the attempts to reconstruct the space in which subjects can reconstitute a fabric of consensus, compromise and conflict.

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (16) ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Piwnicki

It is recognized that politics is a part of social life, that is why it is also a part of culture. In this the political culture became in the second half of the twentieth century the subject of analyzes of the political scientists in the world and in Poland. In connection with this, political culture was perceived as a component of culture in the literal sense through the prism of all material and non-material creations of the social life. It has become an incentive to expand the definition of the political culture with such components as the political institutions and the system of socialization and political education. The aim of this was to strengthen the democratic political system by shifting from individual to general social elements.


Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. von Lazar

This article examines the relationship between the semantics of ideology and political practice under the pressure of socio-economic change in Hungary of the early 1960s, especially 1962-63. The events of 1956 forced the Communist Party elite to recognize the imperative need for internal social change and for control over its dynamics. Manipulation of social forces and ideological currents became a day-to-day concern as soon as it was realized that the political system must rely to an increasing extent upon the introduction of policies which induced support for the system itself—a need undoubtedly arising out of the social transformation that accompanies a developing and modernizing industrial society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-198
Author(s):  
Lidiia Kostetska

Transformational changes have been taking place in the political systems in many countries of the world over the last few decades. This issue arouses the great interest of scientists and researchers. In the article, I pay particular attention to the study of the “traditional” and “new” party systems and their role in the country’s contemporary political life. Given the challenge of the day, I see populism as a problem with its impact on democracy along with such issues as the role of populist parties and the citizens’ attitude to them; the analysis of problems developing in the political process, particularly, in parties and movements of the populist type; the formation and development of multi-party systems and democracy as a whole.Populism is considered in the article as a political ideology. This phenomenon is investigated as a component of the political parties’ activities, especially, of the Ukrainian parties. A comparative analysis of populist parties in the European Union and Ukraine has been carried out.I analyze the main factors of populism’s influence on the party-political system on the examples of the European countries and Ukraine. I also prove that populism has always occupied a special place in the implementation of programs of political leaders and parties. It is noted that populism remains the current day phenomenon of both the party-political system and the socio-economic life of the countries in the world. Having a considerable influence over the politics of the countries, where functioning of democratic institutions is relatively inexperienced, populism has a rather clear manifestation in the modern political space and the “old” democracies. There is a clear link between increasing populism and exacerbating socio-economic problems. The inability of the political establishment, including the democratic one, to respond effectively to new problems and challenges is an important factor contributing to the emergence and growth of populist influence.The in-depth analysis of the populist rhetorical and political effects on the development of modern democracy is particularly important, i. e. the margins between the reality and virtuality, truth and falsehood are leveling; facts lose their value; deconstruction of truth takes place; traditional ideologies are destroyed; moral relativism, hypocrisy and  double standards are spreading out.


1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-438
Author(s):  
Duncan Macrae

The social indicator movement has always faced in two directions—toward academic disciplines that provide quality control and estimate causal relations, and toward the political system that chooses and uses indicator statistics. At worst, the movement has risked appearing to be peripheral to both theoretical social science and policy choice; such perceptions may have contributed to the movement's weakening. The use of noneconomic time series of data to guide the definition of public problems, however, did not and will not die away.


1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Balfour

ABSTRACTThe crisis of legitimacy following Spain's loss of empire in 1898 combined with the effects of a longer-term crisis of modernization to undermine efforts to reform the political system and regenerate the social and economic life of Spain. Rising social agitation, middle-class movements for national regeneration, Catalan bourgeois nationalism and military reaction all interacted to block the development of a modernizing alternative to the Restoration regime. As a result, the gap between the established order and society grew wider and the potential for peaceful change diminished. Events in the first decade of the century thus established the pattern of conflict that was to dominate Spanish politics until the Civil War.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


Author(s):  
Hallie M. Franks

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium—the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation—was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter of the andron, symposiasts looked inward to the room’s center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the specter of Dionysos, the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. This book takes as its subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, it argues that the andron’s mosaic imagery actively contributed to a complex, metaphorical experience of the symposium. In combination with the ritualized circling of the wine cup from couch to couch around the room and the physiological reaction to wine, the images of mosaic floors called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and, in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event—a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


1983 ◽  
Vol 31 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Morgan

Patricia Morgan's paper describes what happens when the state intervenes in the social problem of wife-battering. Her analysis refers to the United States, but there are clear implications for other countries, including Britain. The author argues that the state, through its social problem apparatus, manages the image of the problem by a process of bureaucratization, professionalization and individualization. This serves to narrow the definition of the problem, and to depoliticize it by removing it from its class context and viewing it in terms of individual pathology rather than structure. Thus refuges were initially run by small feminist collectives which had a dual objective of providing a service and promoting among the women an understanding of their structural position in society. The need for funds forced the groups to turn to the state for financial aid. This was given, but at the cost to the refuges of losing their political aims. Many refuges became larger, much more service-orientated and more diversified in providing therapy for the batterers and dealing with other problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse. This transformed not only the refuges but also the image of the problem of wife-battering.


1944 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 10-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Walbank

In one of the most popular anthology passages in Latin, Servius Sulpicius, writing to console Cicero for his daughter's death, describes how, as he reached Greek waters, sailing from Asia, he began to look about him at the ruins of Greece. ‘Behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, on the right the Piraeus, on the left Corinth, cities which had once been prosperous, but now lay shattered ruins before my sight.’ Oppidum cadavera he goes on to call them—corpses of cities! The picture, it will probably be objected, is overdrawn; certainly the ruin of Greece was, by Cicero's time, already a rhetorical commonplace, to be echoed by Horace, Ovid and Seneca in turn. But it was based upon an essential truth. The Saronic Gulf, once the centre of the world, was now, for all that Greece meant, a dead lake lapping about the foundations of dead cities. In that tragic decay—which was not confined to mainland Greece—we are confronted with one of the most urgent problems of ancient history, and one with a special significance for our generation, who were already living in an age of economic, political and spiritual upheaval, even before the bombs began to turn our own cities into shattered ruins.This, then, is my reason for reopening a subject on which there is scope for such diverse opinion: adeo maxima quaeque ambigua sunt. If any further justification is required, then I will only add that the recent publication of Professor Michael Rostovtzeff's classic study of the social and economic life of the Hellenistic Age is at once an invitation and a challenge.


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