scholarly journals Commoning beyond ‘commons’: The case of the Russian ‘obshcheye’

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-340
Author(s):  
Liubov Chernysheva ◽  
Olga Sezneva
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Network ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons

How do the semantic logics that different words accommodate in different languages map onto studies of social realities internationally and interdisciplinarily? This article is an ethnographic study of obshcheye – a corpus of phenomena pertaining to communal life in Russia. Similar to the English term ‘commons’, it marks the zone of the public – that which is shared and collective. In contrast to the commons, it displays greater semantic polyphony, bringing together social, discursive and affective qualities. Our analysis demonstrates that various semantic subsets of obshcheye sensitize research differently from the commons by indexing different societal concerns. They tune us into a wide set of concerns – with time (not wanting to be ‘Soviet’), ownership (worrying about what is ‘no one’s’), affective connectivity (one sits and waits for a conversation), and the act of caring for people and for spaces. Each word and each relationship in the semantic network reflects what is important to social actors as they go about ordering their lives together. The article concludes that obshcheye is so definitively a semantic network that expunging its conceptual heterogeneity and narrowing the multiple logics to encompass one in particular would amount to analytical reductionism and the impoverishment of social analysis.

Komunistki

2020 ◽  
pp. 671-692
Author(s):  
Aga Skrodzka
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
Status Of Women

This article argues for the importance of preserving the visual memory of female communist agency in today’s Poland, at the time when the nation’s relationship to its communist past is being forcefully rearticulated with the help of the controversial Decommunization Act, which affects the public space of the commons. The wholesale criminalization of communism by the ruling conservative forces spurred a wave of historical and symbolic revisions that undermine the legacy of the communist women’s movement, contributing to the continued erosion of women’s rights in Poland. By looking at recent cinema and its treatment of female communists as well as the newly published accounts of the communist women’s movement provided by feminist historians and sociologists, the project sheds light on current cultural debates that address the status of women in postcommunist Poland and the role of leftist legacy in such debates.

scholarly journals Re-defining gender as a heinous crime: A case study from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097721
Author(s):  
Janaina Negreiros Persson
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Public Hearing ◽  
Rhetorical Invention ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core

In this article, we explore how the discourses around gender are evolving at the core of Brazilian politics. Our focus lies on the discourses at the public hearing on the bill 3.492/19, which aimed at including “gender ideology” on the list of heinous crimes. We aim to identify the deputies’ linguistic representation of social actors as pertaining to in- and outgroups. In addition, the article analyzes through Critical Discourse Analysis how the terminology gender is represented in this particular hearing. The analysis shows how some of the conservative parliamentarians give a clearly negative meaning to the term gender, by labeling it “gender ideology” and additionally connecting it with heinous crimes. We propose that the re-signification of “gender ideology,” from rhetorical invention to heinous crime, is not only an attempt to undermine scientific gender studies but also a way for conservative deputies to gain more political power.

Inside Trending Topic Algorithm: How Do Human Interactions Drive Public Opinion in an Artificial Environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932110415
Author(s):  
Vanessa Russo ◽  
Emiliano del Gobbo
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Opinion Leader ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Process Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Artificial Environment

The object of this research is to exploit the algorithm of Twitter’s trending topic (TT) and identify the elements capable of guiding public opinion in the Italian panorama. The underlying hypotheses that guide the whole article, confirmed by the research results, concern the existence of (a) a limited number of elements at the base of each popular hashtag with very high viral power and (b) hashtags transversal to the themes detected by the Twitter algorithm that define specific opinion polls. Through computational techniques, it was possible to extract and process data sets from six specific hashtags highlighted by TT. In a first step through social network analysis, we analyzed the hashtag semantic network to identify the hashtags transversal to the six TTs. Subsequently, we selected for each data set the contents with high sharing power and created a “potential opinion leader” index to identify users with influencer characteristics. Finally, a cross section of social actors able to guide public opinion in the Twittersphere emerged from the intersection between potentially influential users and the viral contents.

scholarly journals Staphylococcus aureuscoagulases are exploitable yet stable public goods in clinically relevant conditions

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (50) ◽  
pp. E11771-E11779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urvish Trivedi ◽  
Jonas S. Madsen ◽  
Jake Everett ◽  
Cody Fell ◽  
Jakob Russel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Defense Mechanism ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Coagulation Cascade ◽  
The Public ◽  
Innate Defense ◽  
The Commons

Coagulation is an innate defense mechanism intended to limit blood loss and trap invading pathogens during infection. However,Staphylococcus aureushas the ability to hijack the coagulation cascade and generate clots via secretion of coagulases. Although manyS. aureushave this characteristic, some do not. The population dynamics regarding this defining trait have yet to be explored. We report here that coagulases are public goods that confer protection against antimicrobials and immune factors within a local population or community, thus promoting growth and virulence. By utilizing variants of a methicillin-resistantS. aureuswe infer that the secretion of coagulases is a cooperative trait, which is subject to exploitation by invading mutants that do not produce the public goods themselves. However, overexploitation, “tragedy of the commons,” does not occur at clinically relevant conditions. Our micrographs indicate this is due to spatial segregation and population viscosity. These findings emphasize the critical role of coagulases in a social evolution context and provide a possible explanation as to why the secretion of these public goods is maintained in mixedS. aureuscommunities.

scholarly journals Confronting the digital mob: Press coverage of online justice seeking

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 597-612
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Press ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Uk

This article offers an exploratory account of press coverage of digitally mediated vigilantism. It considers how the UK press renders these events visible in a sustained and meaningful way. News reports and editorials add visibility to these events, and also make them more tangible when integrating content from social media platforms. In doing so, this coverage directs attention to a range of social actors, who may be perceived as responsible for these kinds of developments. In considering how other social actors are presented in relation to digital vigilantism, this study focusses on press accounts of those either initiating or being targeted by online denunciations, and also on a broader and often amorphous range of spectators to such events, often referred to as ‘internet mobs’. Relatedly, this article explores how specific practices related to digital vigilantism such as denunciation are expressed in press coverage, as well as coverage of motivations by the public to either participate or facilitate such practices. Reflecting on how the press represent mediated denunciation will illustrate not only how tabloids and broadsheets frame such practices, but also how they take advantage of connective and data-generating affordances associated with social platforms.

scholarly journals Where the Sidewalk Ends: Automobility and Shame in Tbilisi, Georgia

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Maxfield Waldman Sherouse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Urban Public Space ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

In recent years, cars have steadily colonized the sidewalks in downtown Tbilisi. By driving and parking on sidewalks, vehicles have reshaped public space and placed pedestrian life at risk. A variety of social actors coordinate sidewalk affairs in the city, including the local government, a private company called CT Park, and a fleet of self-appointed st’aianshik’ebi (parking attendants) who direct drivers into parking spots for spare change. Pedestrian activists have challenged the automotive conquest of footpaths in innovative ways, including art installations, social media protests, and the fashioning of ad hoc physical barriers. By safeguarding sidewalks against cars, activists assert ideals for public space that are predicated on sharp boundaries between sidewalk and street, pedestrian and machine, citizen and commodity. Politicians and activists alike connect the sharpness of such boundaries to an imagined Europe. Georgia’s parking culture thus reflects not only local configurations of power among the many interests clamoring for the space of the sidewalk, but also global hierarchies of value that form meaningful distinctions and aspirational horizons in debates over urban public space. Against the dismal frictions of an expanding car system, social actors mobilize the idioms of freedom and shame to reinterpret and repartition the public/private distinction.

scholarly journals Balancing Memory and Material at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Gabrielle A. Berlinger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
Time Capsule ◽  
A Site

Abstract: Founded in a nationally landmarked apartment building on the ever-gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is an historic site of immigrant social history and material culture. Constructed in 1864 and occupied by over 7,000 immigrants until its closing in 1935, this building has withstood constantly rising visitorship each year since its opening as a museum in 1988. With apartment spaces restored for the public to explore without roped-off restriction, this time capsule of domestic immigrant life requires continual maintenance to preserve its historic physical fabric. Through interviews with the Museum staff and the Preservation Advisory Committee (conservators, architectural historians, curators), as well as documentation of technical processes carried out in the preservation process, this ethnographic study investigates the questions and compromises that arise in the preservation of the tangible and intangible heritage contained within an historic structure in constant use. Which narratives are reconstructed through the Museum’s decisions to restore certain material features of the building while allowing others to decay? What are best practices for interpretation and preservation when a museum’s success results in the gradual destruction of its main artifact (the building) through use? This study explores the intersection of museum mission and practice, heritage construction, and historic preservation at a site both sustained and destroyed by its increasing success.

scholarly journals TACTICS OF BORDER CROSSING MOVEMENT: EXPLORING THE MOBILITY OF BRAZILIANS THROUGH THE SCHENGEN AND UK AIRSPACE

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Dias
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Research Orientation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Embodied Practice

This paper addresses the relations between migrants, mobility, tactics, negotiation, and the contemporary definition of borders in the aftermath of 9/11.The empirical focus of this paper is how Brazilians from Alto Paranaiba journey through airports located in the Schengen area and in the British territory to London. As a main research orientation, I use the notion of journey as approached by mobility studies, where actions and skills remain an important link between the wayfarer and the social space in which s/he moves through, the embodied practice to how we grasp the world. Migrants deal and struggle against border regime, but they are not powerless social actors. They rather produce creative resistance to reinvent their journey through the surveillance apparatus, which manage and delimit places with targets and threats. In this process, I explore the notion of border crossing movement as a tactical mobility developed by migrants to overcome the border control imposed by governments in airports. The article was drawn through fieldwork conducted initially in London, between 2009 and 2013, and afterwards in Alto Paranaiba, during 2013. The ethnographic study consisted in semi-structured interviews, participant observation through snowball technique, which enabled me to access a considerable number of participants in these two regions explored. The argument that I develop is that migrants as social actors are part important in the dialogue produced between border crossing and border reinforcement.

scholarly journals Invisible Roots of Knowledge Production and their Role in Resistance to the Marketisation of Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-140
Author(s):  
Heather McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Pension Scheme ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The University

Recent, highly visible, struggles in Higher Education in the UK, such as the pensions strike, have aimed to recast such protests as part of a bigger struggle to maintain the public university. Viewing the shared pension scheme as one of the last defining features of a public institution. However, Federici in her recent book Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons warns us if we wish to change the university in line with the public construction of a ‘knowledge commons’ that there is a need to question “the material conditions of the production of the university, its history and its relation to the surrounding communities” (Federici, 2019) and not just the academics within it. There is a need to consider how debate on knowledge production is insulated from the invisible work that sustains academic life including cleaners, cafeteria workers and groundkeepers, as well as to consider the potential colonisation of land institutions are built upon (Federici, 2019). Narratives of resistance to marketisation in Higher Education, while well meaning, still create disproportionate invisibility on the grounds of gender, race and socio-economic status, ignoring the material and intellectual value of such contributions. This paper considers how Federici’s approach to the politics of the commons discredit, deconstruct and potentially transform approaches to resistance to marketisation in education. It argues that struggles against marketisation, or for academic freedom, should be seen in the broader scope of access to education for all, and a continuum of co-dependant knowledge production. It will consider how different structures of privilege and oppression structure what is represented, resisted and fought for within and by the institution. Issues that are seen as marginal or controversial can be avoided in increasingly legislated upon, and therefore risk averse, students’ unions and trade unions. Which in turn reproduces a student and staff body that similarly continue to propagate such damaging structures both within and out with the institution. A rethinking around who the knowledge producers are, can help us restructure the university as a commons that resists the violence of capitalist logic, rather than one that upholds it. Thus problematising and reconstructing how we view the idea of a future university commons, in a way that recognises intersectional oppression and a misuse of certain bodies as a commons in and off themselves.

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