Counter/Infections: Dis/abling Spaces and Cultures

2020 ◽  
pp. 120633122094128
Author(s):  
Michael Schillmeier
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Embodied Interaction ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Learning Situation ◽  
Georges Canguilhem ◽  
Living Well ◽  
The Social ◽  
Central Mode ◽  
Lived Spaces

With COVID-19 we experience the dramatic effects of a cosmopolitical event by which a non-human actor politicizes, i.e. unbuttons the normalcy of the ‘cosmos’ of shared lived spaces, what we take for granted as and what we expect from a globalized life-world. The dynamics of infection unfold an existential learning situation not only of how we live and how we wish to live, but also how we may compose modes of counterinfections to become better ‘equipped’ to keep living well with others. Thinking with Hannah Arendt, Georg Simmel, Georges Canguilhem, Alfred North Whitehead and others, the first part of the paper unfolds a conceptual framework for inquiries into the social complexity of lived embodied spaces and cultures. The idea of counter/infection alludes to the central mode of the social that can be understood as a process of creating and transforming the differences of value relations that may allow or endanger, enable or disable, enrich or limit embodied interaction. With this in mind, the second part of the paper reflects on how issues of dis/abling experiences as they have been portrayed in Space and Culture can be rethought and re-presented as social processes of dis/abling counter/infections.

scholarly journals Por Uma Leitura Corsária de os “Pobres” de Georg Simmel

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 57-75
Author(s):  
Rafael Marques ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Welfare State ◽  
Definition Of

In this text we propose an allegoric reading of Georg Simmel’s text “The Poor”, concentrating our analysis in the interactional, dialogical and reciprocal dimensions that constitute the poor as a social category and impose certain character traits and social roles to them. Signaling the continuities between alms giving and the modern Welfare State, we propose a cynical look at the social processes that defined the poor as a non-existence or as a pretext for a moral enrichment of the givers and helpers. We mark a long process that started with the definition of poverty as pathology and culminated in the buildup of an identity of the poor according to statistical categories and rational classificatory systems. The poor is characterized as a combinatorial type, receiving its meaning from the association with other concepts and as an absence of a value in itself.

Sustainable Illegality: Gagauz Women in Istanbul

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayram Unal
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
National Group ◽  
Turkish Migrants ◽  
Illegal Migrants ◽  
Sociological Inquiry ◽  
The Social

This study deals with survival strategies of illegal migrants in Turkey. It aims to provide an explanation for the efforts to keep illegality sustainable for one specific ethnic/national group—that is, the Gagauz of Moldova, who are of Turkish ethnic origin. In order to explicate the advantages of Turkish ethnic origin, I will focus on their preferential treatment at state-law level and in terms of the implementation of the law by police officers. In a remarkable way, the juridical framework has introduced legal ways of dealing with the illegality of ethnically Turkish migrants. From the viewpoint of migration, the presence of strategic tools of illegality forces us to ask not so much law-related questions, but to turn to a sociological inquiry of how and why they overstay their visas. Therefore, this study concludes that it is the social processes behind their illegality, rather than its form, that is more important for our understanding of the migrants’ survival strategies in destination countries.

Das Ende der Kultur: Wie Georg Simmel den Begriff der Kultur soziologisch dekonstruiert

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Fellmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Social ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The Way

In this paper I claim that the metaphysical concept of culture has come to an end. Among the European authors Georg Simmel is the foremost who has deconstructed the myth of culture as a substantial totality beyond relations or prior to them. Two tenets of research have prepared the end of all-inclusive culture: First, Simmel’s formal access that considers society as the modality of interactions and relations between individuals, thus overcoming the social evolutionism of Auguste Comte; second, his critical exegesis of idealistic philosophy of history, thus leaving behind the Hegelian tradition. Although Simmel adheres in some statements to the out-dated idea of morphological unity, his sociological and epistemological thinking paved the way for the concept of social identity as a network of series connected loosely by contiguity. This type of connection is confirmed by the present feeling of life as individual self-invention according to changing situations.

Living Paradox in Riverine Bangladesh: Whiteheadian Perspectives on Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir

1969 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naveeda Khan
Keyword(s):  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Physical Entity ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Changing Climate ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many

We begin with the words of rural and riverine women from Bangladesh recalling the events of their children's deaths by drowning. These events are cast as the work of supernatural beings, specifically Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir, who compel the mothers into forgetfulness and entice the children to the water. Is this a disavowal of loss and responsibility? This article considers that the women, specifically those from northern Bangladesh, assert not only their understanding of the losses that they have suffered but also their changing relationship to the river and its changing nature through their evocations of mythological figures. Alongside the many experiences of the river, the article takes note of its experience as paradoxical, with paradoxicality serving as the occasion for the coming together of the mythological, the material, and the social. The article draws upon Alfred North Whitehead to interrelate the strata of myths and their permutations, with the women's experiences of the river, and the river as a physical entity, allowing us to explore how the women's expressions portend the changing climate.

Betwixt and Between

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenique S. Thomas ◽  
Johnna Christian
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Ethnic Minority Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Racial And Ethnic Minority

This chapter draws from a qualitative study of incarcerated men to investigate the social processes and interactions between both correctional authorities and family members that inform their sense of belonging and legitimacy. It reveals that prison visitation rooms present a complex environment in which incarcerated men have access to discreet periods of visibility and relevance to their family members and the broader community. There are, however, several precarious aspects to these processes. The family members who are central to enhancing men’s visibility and legitimacy are primarily women from economically disadvantaged, racial, and ethnic minority groups, resulting in their own marginalization, which is compounded within prison spaces. By illuminating both the challenges and opportunities of familial connections, this chapter informs a social justice framework for understanding the experiences of both incarcerated men and their family members.

scholarly journals Extending Geodemographics Using Data Primitives: A Review and a Methodological Proposal

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 386
Author(s):  
Jennie Gray ◽  
Lisa Buckner ◽  
Alexis Comber
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Feature Space ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Multiple Time ◽  
Current State ◽  
Cluster Label ◽  
Static Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Using Data

This paper reviews geodemographic classifications and developments in contemporary classifications. It develops a critique of current approaches and identifiea a number of key limitations. These include the problems associated with the geodemographic cluster label (few cluster members are typical or have the same properties as the cluster centre) and the failure of the static label to describe anything about the underlying neighbourhood processes and dynamics. To address these limitations, this paper proposed a data primitives approach. Data primitives are the fundamental dimensions or measurements that capture the processes of interest. They can be used to describe the current state of an area in a multivariate feature space, and states can be compared over multiple time periods for which data are available, through for example a change vector approach. In this way, emergent social processes, which may be too weak to result in a change in a cluster label, but are nonetheless important signals, can be captured. As states are updated (for example, as new data become available), inferences about different social processes can be made, as well as classification updates if required. State changes can also be used to determine neighbourhood trajectories and to predict or infer future states. A list of data primitives was suggested from a review of the mechanisms driving a number of neighbourhood-level social processes, with the aim of improving the wider understanding of the interaction of complex neighbourhood processes and their effects. A small case study was provided to illustrate the approach. In this way, the methods outlined in this paper suggest a more nuanced approach to geodemographic research, away from a focus on classifications and static data, towards approaches that capture the social dynamics experienced by neighbourhoods.

Modernity/art and Marketing/aesthetics—a Note on the Social Aesthetics of Georg Simmel

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux ◽  
Antonio Strati
Keyword(s):  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Aesthetics

scholarly journals Specialist Knowledge Practices of Craftsmen and Clerics in Senegal

Africa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Dilley
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Specialized Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
Relations Of Power

This article examines the specialized knowledge practices of two sets of culturally recognized ‘experts’ in Senegal: Islamic clerics and craftsmen. Their respective bodies of knowledge are often regarded as being in opposition, and in some respects antithetical, to one another. The aim of this article is to examine this claim by means of an investigation of how knowledge is conceived by each party. The analysis attempts to expose local epistemologies, which are deduced from an investigation of ‘expert’ knowledge practices and indigenous claims to knowledge. The social processes of knowledge acquisition and transmission are also examined with reference to the idea of initiatory learning. It is in these areas that commonalities between the bodies of knowledge and sets of knowledge practices are to be found. Yet, despite parallels between the epistemologies of both bodies of expertise and between their respective modes of knowledge transmission, the social consequences of ‘expertise’ are different in each case. The hierarchical relations of power that inform the articulation of the dominant clerics with marginalized craftsmen groups serve to profile ‘expertise’ in different ways, each one implying its own sense of authority and social range of legitimacy.

scholarly journals Composing Individuals: Ethnographic Reflections on Success and Prestige in the British New Music Network

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
HETTIE MALCOMSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
New Music ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Art Worlds ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scant Attention

AbstractIn contrast to established musicians, lesser-known composers have received scant attention in art music scholarship. This article, based on an ethnographic study, considers how a group of British composers construed ideas of success and prestige, which I analyse in terms of anthropological writings on exchange, Bourdieusian symbolic economies, and Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power. Prestige was ascribed to composers who created ‘interesting’ music, a category that eclipsed novelty as an aim. Individuality, enacted within a context of individualism, was key to assessing whether music was interesting. This individuality had to be tempered, structured, and embedded in the social norms of this and related ‘art worlds’. The article examines the social processes involved in creating this individuality, musical personality, and music considered interesting.

Dangerous vulnerability: Simultaneous prohibition and coercion in Palestinian-Israeli single mothers’ relationships with men

2021 ◽  
pp. 026540752110514
Author(s):  
Einat Lavee ◽  
Tal Meler ◽  
Madlen Shamshoum
Keyword(s):  
Single Mothers ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Women Migrants ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
Depth Interviews

The objective of this study is to broaden understanding of how vulnerability is shaped more by social, cultural, and religious institutions than by individual life circumstances, exploring the case of Palestinian-Israeli single mothers’ relationships with men. Research often determines the vulnerability of a group, such as women migrants from an ethnic minority, by specific demographic characteristics. This common assumption has been challenged by calls to understand vulnerability as social processes intersecting with the action of the state and other social institutions. The study provides a nuanced examination of the social processes through which Palestinian-Israeli single mothers are simultaneously forbidden from and coerced into having relationships with men, drawing on a systematic analysis of data from semi-structured, in-depth interviews of 36 Palestinian-Israeli single mothers. The analysis exposed several mechanisms which forbid single mothers from having relationships with men, alongside mechanisms that permit, often even coerce, such relationships. These mechanisms are embedded in interrelated structural factors—massive differences in gender power relations, vast gender economic disparities, inability of most single mothers to support their families independently, and state policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs of ethnic minorities, and create a state of “dangerous vulnerability.”

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