On Technology, Magic and Changing the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Kravets
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

Robert Lusch (2015) astutely observes that humans are “massive creators of tools and we need to start understanding that.” In my commentary, I seek to complicate and extend this statement on tools or technology by drawing attention to the magic of technology, and how it simultaneously obscures the view of things and invites a fetishistic belief in technological efficacy to change the world. I argue that we must deepen our discussion of technology and start questioning the many ways that today’s technology orders the social world and humans.

The Future of the Social Sciences: Between Empiricism and Normativity

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (03) ◽  
pp. 343-360
Author(s):  
Andrew Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Social World ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many

This article takes a processualist position to identify the current forces conducive to rapid change in the social sciences, of which the most important is the divergence between their empirical and normative dimensions. It argues that this gap between the many and various empirical ontologies we typically use and the much more restricted normative ontology on which we base our moral judgments is problematic. In fact, the majority of social science depends on a “normative contractarianism.” While this ontology is the most widely used basis for normative judgments in the social sciences, it is not really effective when it comes to capturing the normative problems raised by the particularity and historicity of the social process, nor the astonishing diversity of values in the world. The article closes with a call to establish a truly processual foundation for our analysis of the social world, which must move away from contractualism and imagine new ways of founding the human normative project.

Europa 51: The Face of the Star in Neorealisms Urban Landscape

Film Studies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Ora Gelley
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Social World ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Roberto Rossellini ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classical Style

Although Europa 51 (1952) was the most commercially successful of the films Roberto Rossellini made with the Hollywood star, Ingrid Bergman, the reception by the Italian press was largely negative. Many critics focussed on what they saw to be the ‘unreal’ or abstract quality of the films portrayal of the postwar urban milieu and on the Bergman character‘s isolation from the social world. This article looks at how certain structures of seeing that are associated in the classical style with the woman as star or spectacle - e.g., the repetitious return to her fixed image, the resistance to pulling back from the figure of the woman in order to situate her within a determinate location and set of relationships between characters and objects - are no longer restricted to her image but in fact bleed into or “contaminate” the depiction of the world she inhabits. In other words, whereas the compulsive return to the fixed image of the woman tends to be contained or neutralised by the narrative economy and editing patterns (ordered by sexual difference) of the classical style, in Rossellini‘s work this ‘insistent’ even aberrant framing in relation to the woman becomes a part of the (female) characters and the cameras vision of the ‘pathology’ of the urban landscape in the aftermath of the war.

INCLUSION, SOCIALISATION AND INTEGRATION OF THE CHILD WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN A KINDERGARTEN GROUP

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-384
Author(s):  
Rumyana Pantaleeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Special Needs ◽  
Social World ◽  
Educational Needs ◽  
Special Educational Needs ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right

The process of socialisation and integration represents unity, and at the same time – a continuous controversy between two aspects: socialisation and individuality. Due to this, the process is a single upside stream – the entry of a child into the world of adults, in the social world. Every child is a unique personality with its individual qualities, interests, abilities and educational needs. Every child with special educational needs has the right to be taught on an individual schedule with content, matching its own necessities and capacity. The general education kindergarten, in which the authors work and teach pupils with special educational needs has established a tolerant community and guarantees schooling, tutoring and mentorship for everybody.

scholarly journals How origin stories shape children's social reasoning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Foster-Hanson ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Social Reasoning ◽  
Common Mechanism ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Explicit Information ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many

How do we explain the behavior of the many people we meet throughout our lives? Children and adults sometimes consider other people in terms of their social category memberships (e.g., assuming that a girl likes pink because she is a girl), but people view some categories as more informative than others, and which people think of as informative varies across cultural contexts. One type of culturally-embedded knowledge that appears to shape whether people view particular categories as providing explanations for behavior are beliefs about how the category came to be. In the current studies with 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 206), we ask how learning about quasi-scientific or supernatural causal origins of a category shapes young children’s use of categories to predict and explain what category members are like. In Study 1, children more often used a category to explain behavior when they heard the category described as intentionally created by a powerful being than when they heard no explicit information about its origins. In Studies 2 and 3, learning about both quasi-scientific and supernatural causal origins shaped children’s social category beliefs via a common mechanism: by signaling that the category marked a non-arbitrary way of dividing up the social world.

Abstract Right: Natural Immediacy within the Matrices of Personhood

2018 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Wes Furlotte
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social World ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Opening Section

Chapter ten, therefore, examines the opening section of Hegel’s Rechtphilosophie, “Abstract Right,” in order develop a ‘preliminary sketch’ of the concepts of right and juridical personhood. The chapter historically contextualizes Hegel in relation to the mechanical deterministic conception of the individual (Hobbes) and abstract, though free, conceptions (Rousseau, Kant, Fichte). The chapter then moves to point out Hegel’s uniqueness in this context. Synthesizing Hobbesian and Fichtean standpoints, Hegel argues that the natural dimension of the individual (impulse, drive, and whim) is crucial to the genesis of actual freedom in the social world. Reconstructing Hegel’s analysis, the chapter shows that freedom is not undermined by acting out on one’s desires, impulses etc. but is brought into the world by these very drives. Although these drives are historically and socially conditioned they are, nevertheless, immediate and therefore constitutive of the basal level of juridical personhood. Thereby the chapter argues that a new sense of nature arises within Hegel’s political philosophy. The task, then, is to pursue what nature must mean within the fields constituting the socio-political.

The Credulity of Conspiracy Theorists

2018 ◽  
pp. 422-431
Author(s):  
Brian L. Keeley
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the Internet, say. In addition to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into clearer focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices.

Stress and Anxiety in the Digital Age

2022 ◽  
pp. 118-123
Author(s):  
Humera Waseem Khan ◽  
Arti Jain
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social World ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
High Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Mental Fitness ◽  
Digital Stress

While digitalization undoubtedly has improved the access to information and communication with the world, increased cases of cyberbullying, harassment, cyber abuse, and suicide numbers have also surfaced among teens. The hype of the online world, the celebrity culture, and their high status seldom generate the fear of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, and isolation which ultimately aggravate the feeling of anxiety and depression. This chapter will underline the causes of the digital stress and technology-related anxiety among adolescents, their deteriorating psychophysical behavior, factors disintegrating their mental fitness and physical well-being, and most importantly, the answer to the problem. Various small steps can be taken to avoid serious problems such as talking with your family and friends. Some other approaches include cutting off from the negative digital surroundings, limiting the watch time, etc. With the growing online world, there is an urgent need to control the exposure one gives to the social world.

The Sea and the World of the Mutasaddi: A profile of port officials from Mughal Gujarat (c. 1600–1650)

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE FLORES
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social World ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
Business Politics ◽  
The World

AbstractThis article seeks to trace the profile of the governors (mutasaddis) of the main port-cities (especially Surat and, to a lesser extent, Cambay) of the Mughal province of Gujarat in the first half of the seventeenth century. My research on the careers of individual mutasaddis – based mainly (but not exclusively) on existent Portuguese materials – allows us to better understand the social world of those occupying key positions in the ‘waterfront’ of the Mughal Empire and its dealings extensively with the European powers (Portuguese, Dutch and English). Hence, the analysis of the professional and personal trajectories of the Indian Muslim doctor Muqarrab Khan and the Persian Mir Musa Mu'izzul Mulk presented here demonstrate how far business, politics and cultural patronage were often entangled in the career of a Mughal mutasaddi of Gujarat.

If...Then

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taina Bucher
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social World ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Ranking Data ◽  
Relational Agency ◽  
Multiple Realities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Definition Of

IF … THEN provides an account of power and politics in the algorithmic media landscape that pays attention to the multiple realities of algorithms, and how these relate and coexist. The argument is made that algorithms do not merely have power and politics; they help to produce certain forms of acting and knowing in the world. In processing, classifying, sorting, and ranking data, algorithms are political in that they help to make the world appear in certain ways rather than others. Analyzing Facebook’s news feed, social media user’s everyday encounters with algorithmic systems, and the discourses and work practices of news professionals, the book makes a case for going beyond the narrow, technical definition of algorithms as step-by-step procedures for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. Drawing on a process-relational theoretical framework and empirical data from field observations and fifty-five interviews, the author demonstrates how algorithms exist in multiple ways beyond code. The analysis is concerned with the world-making capacities of algorithms, questioning how algorithmic systems shape encounters and orientations of different kinds, and how these systems are endowed with diffused personhood and relational agency. IF … THEN argues that algorithmic power and politics is neither about algorithms determining how the social world is fabricated nor about what algorithms do per se. Rather it is about how and when different aspects of algorithms and the algorithmic become available to specific actors, under what circumstance, and who or what gets to be part of how algorithms are defined.

Habitus and Field

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Leander
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
International Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Heuristic Devices

The terms habitus and field are useful heuristic devices for thinking about power relations in international studies. Habitus refers to a person’s taken-for-granted, unreflected—hence largely habitual—way of thinking and acting. The habitus is a “structuring structure” shaping understandings, attitudes, behavior, and the body. It is formed through the accumulated experience of people in different fields. Using fields to study the social world is to acknowledge that social life is highly differentiated. A field can be exceedingly varied in scope and scale. A family, a village, a market, an organization, or a profession may be conceptualized as a field provided it develops its own organizing logic around a stake at stake. Each field is marked by its own taken-for-granted understanding of the world, implicit and explicit rules of behavior, and valuation of what confers power onto someone: that is, what counts as “capital.” The analysis of power through the habitus/field makes it possible to transcend the distinctions between the material and the “ideational” as well as between the individual and the structural. Moreover, working with habitus/field in international studies problematizes the role played by central organizing divides, such as the inside/outside and the public/private; and can uncover politics not primarily structured by these divides. Developing research drawing on habitus/field in international studies will be worthwhile for international studies scholars wishing to raise and answer questions about symbolic power/violence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document