Whether Mahatma Gandhi Was Misinterpreted Through the Dilemma of Irrelevant and Relevant Philosophies?

2021 ◽  
pp. 0972558X2110571
Author(s):  
Mithun Sikdar
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Mahatma Gandhi ◽  
Current Anthropology ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Life History Study

In one of the articles published in Current Anthropology way back in 1973, David G. Mandelbaum talked about two approaches to understand the life of an individual. For him, to observe the lifestyle of a person or gain the knowledge about a lifestyle of a person, social scientists always succumb to two main approaches: life passage studies and life history studies. Life passage studies understand the contribution of society about the socialization and enculturation of their young ones, whereas life history studies emphasize the personified experiences and requirements of the individuals and how the individual copes up with the society. Here I have adopted the means of life history study to see some of the facets of Gandhiji’s life and its influence in the society. I shall do it by looking at some of his philosophies on health, food, sexual life, rather than going into the details of his whole life history. I shall do it without perplexing my own way of understanding “Mahatma” and linking sometimes my own life experiences that had been influenced by the philosophies of Gandhiji. I shall be carrying out an autoethnography by perceiving the virtues of Gandhiji in my own life. Nevertheless, it will rather be a futile exercise to describe his philosophies in a single paper and that too with a minimum experience on his whole life.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

Queering Gender Identity Work: A Life History of a Black Transgender Woman

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.

A Life History Study on Middle-aged Women Experiencing Insomnia

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunghee Kwak ◽  
◽  
Moungil Jin ◽  
Seokbong Woo ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Life History Study

scholarly journals Phenomenological approaches to personal identity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Čapek ◽  
Sophie Loidolt
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
The Self ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Continental Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Temporal Becoming

AbstractThis special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question (as suggested by thinkers such as MacIntyre, Ricœur and Taylor). These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: (a) debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; (b) questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and (c) the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective.

scholarly journals Phenotypic plasticity of labile traits in the wild

2013 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon E. Brommer
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Phenotypic Plasticity ◽  
Statistical Approach ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Quantitative Genetic ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Quantitative Genetic Parameters

Abstract Individual-based studies allow quantification of phenotypic plasticity in behavioural, life-history and other labile traits. The study of phenotypic plasticity in the wild can shed new light on the ultimate objectives (1) whether plasticity itself can evolve or is constrained by its genetic architecture, and (2) whether plasticity is associated to other traits, including fitness (selection). I describe the main statistical approach for how repeated records of individuals and a description of the environment (E) allow quantification of variation in plasticity across individuals (IxE) and genotypes (GxE) in wild populations. Based on a literature review of life-history and behavioural studies on plasticity in the wild, I discuss the present state of the two objectives listed above. Few studies have quantified GxE of labile traits in wild populations, and it is likely that power to detect statistically significant GxE is lacking. Apart from the issue of whether it is heritable, plasticity tends to correlate with average trait expression (not fully supported by the few genetic estimates available) and may thus be evolutionary constrained in this way. Individual-specific estimates of plasticity tend to be related to other traits of the individual (including fitness), but these analyses may be anti-conservative because they predominantly concern stats-on-stats. Despite the increased interest in plasticity in wild populations, the putative lack of power to detect GxE in such populations hinders achieving general insights. I discuss possible steps to invigorate the field by moving away from simply testing for presence of GxE to analyses that ‘scale up’ to population level processes and by the development of new behavioural theory to identify quantitative genetic parameters which can be estimated.

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