scholarly journals The social construction of the value of wildlife: A green cultural criminological perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daan P van Uhm
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Wildlife Trade ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Exotic Animals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Elites ◽  
Criminological Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Demand Patterns ◽  
Near Future

The trade in wildlife is not a new phenomenon. The earliest civilizations were linked to the trade in live animals and parts thereof, from the Egyptian pharaohs to aristocrats in the modern era. This article focuses on the history of the wildlife trade in order to understand the social construction of the value of wildlife. In dynamic social and cultural contexts, the meaning of wildlife changes. Historically, exotic animals and the products thereof were associated with social elites, but today, wildlife attracts people from all walks of life and a wide variety of live animals and products thereof are traded for functional, symbolic and social purposes. Increasing ecocentric and biocentric values in contemporary western society, however, may influence constructed demand patterns for wildlife in the near future. By integrating cultural criminological concepts with the social construction of green crimes, this article aims to understand constructed wildlife consumerism through the ages.

scholarly journals “Wir Arme Leut”: Undignified Death and Madness in Berg’s Wozzeck

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Meaghan Parker
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Tragic Hero ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Death Experience ◽  
History Of

Images in Western art of the tragic hero meeting his end typically conjure Romantic topics of honour, stoicism, and transcendence, yet it is questionable whether these projections of artistic death translate to the lived experiences of the dying. The titular protagonist of Alban Berg’s 1922 opera, Wozzeck, experiences death in a way that starkly contrasts Romantic ideals. Wozzeck does not die the honourable, ‘masculine’ death that might be expected from a tragic hero; rather, he capitulates to madness, misery, and poverty. Spurned by those who socially outrank him, Wozzeck is condemned to a shameful death, his fate sealed by his destitution and the sanctimonious prejudice against his ‘immoral’ life. These considerations provide a fascinating starting point for an examination of Berg’s poignant representation of Wozzeck’s death — a death that reflects early twentieth century attitudes that shaped and stigmatized the death experience. In this article I will frame my discussion of Wozzeck by considering the history of death in Western society, particularly the stigmas surrounding the gender and class of the dying individual. This history will inform my analysis of the symbolism in Berg’s music. Detailed analysis of Wozzeck sheds a critical light on the social stigma and class structure mapped onto the suffering, madness, and death of Wozzeck and his lover Marie.

The History of Unreason

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Samuel Teague ◽  
Peter Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of

This chapter reflects on the importance of the historical narrative of mental illness, arguing that Western countries have sought new ways to confine the mentally ill in the post-asylum era, namely through the effects of stigma and medicalization. The walls are invisible, when once they were physical. The chapter outlines how health and illness can be understood as socially constructed illustrating how mental health has been constructed uniquely across cultures and over time. To understand this process more fully, it is necessary to consider the history of madness, a story of numerous social flashpoints. The trajectories of two primary mental health narratives are charted in this chapter. The authors argue that these narratives have played, and continue to play, an important role in the social construction of mental illness. These narratives are “confinement” and “individual responsibility.” Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Roy Porter, the authors describe how Western culture has come to consider the mentally ill as a distinct, abnormal other.

scholarly journals The Social Construction of Historical Traumas: The Polish Experience of the Uses of History in an Intelligentsia-dominated Polity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 911-931
Author(s):  
Tomasz Zarycki ◽  
Tomasz Warczok
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The West ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Identity ◽  
And Control

The article argues that Poland’s mainstream national historical narrative, at least as far as the last two centuries of history of the country is concerned, is full of ‘traumatic’ motives which are regularly used and developed in diverse current political and intellectual contexts. Polish history is imagined to a large extent as an endless chain of 200 years of suffering, caused, among other things, by occupations, wars and exploitation, which are usually seen as not fully recognized in other countries, in particular in the West. The article attempts first of all to explain this specific nature of Poland’s historical identity by the privileged role of the intelligentsia, understood as a specific type of elite based on possession and control of cultural capital. It reconstructs the historical rise of the intelligentsia and its impact on the mainstream narrative in question, pointing to a selective choice of potential ‘traumas’ which are assigned a national status. They may be seen as tools to build positions in what can be called the Polish ‘field of power’, to use the notion coined by Pierre Bourdieu. The particular configuration and recent history of the field of power in Poland is reconstructed in order to explain different strategies of what can be called the social and political construction of historical traumas in Poland.

scholarly journals Os Jovens e o Imaginário da Aids: notas para uma construção social do risco

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Jeolás
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Individual Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Symbolism ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
Social Construction Of Risk ◽  
The Way

Este artigo, baseado em pesquisa sobre o imaginário da aids entre jovens, busca compreender a noção de risco como uma categoria sociocultural, cujos significados se acumulam nos conceitos de várias áreas do conhecimento e nos usos de senso comum. O perigo, o mal e o infortúnio sempre foram moralizados e politizados nas diversas culturas humanas e a história da aids não poderia ser diferente. Os simbolismos culturais sobre contágio, doenças transmitidas pelo sexo e pelo sangue e os valores atuais da sexualidade, incluindo as relações de gênero, estão presentes na forma como os jovens representam o risco do HIV. Além disso, não se pode desconsiderar a ambivalência que os riscos assumem atualmente para os jovens: alguns negados e afastados, outros aceitos e valorizados. No caso da aids, a busca pela vertigem e pelo êxtase, componentes do sexo e das drogas, distancia o discurso dos jovens sobre risco do discurso preventivo, baseado na racionalidade do comportamento individual, assumindo valores distintos ligados a experiências cotidianas. Youngsters and the imagery of AIDS: notes for the social construction of risk This article, based on research about the imagery of AIDS among youth, aims to understand the notion of risk as a social-cultural category, whose meanings are piled upon concepts of several areas of both knowledge and common sense usages. Danger, evil and misfortune have always been moralized and politicized in the different human cultures and it could not be different in the history of aids. Cultural symbolism about infection, sexually and blood transmitted diseases, as well as sexuality’s current values, including here gender relations, are present in the way the youth represents HIV´s risks. Besides, the ambivalence these risks assume for the youth nowadays cannot be disregarded: some are denied and put aside, others are accepted and valorized. In the case of AIDS, the search for vertigo and ecstasy, components of sex and drugs, distances the youth’s discourse about risk from the preventive discourse, based on the rationality of individual behavior, assuming distinct values linked to everyday experiences.

Art and its Objects: William Ivins and the Reproduction of Art

1987 ◽  
Vol 35 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 65-98
Author(s):  
Gordon Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social History ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Photographic Reproduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Art Reproduction ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is a critique of the contribution of William Ivins's Prints and Visual Communication (1953) to an understanding of the meaning of fine art reproductions. Ivins showed that photographic reproduction was constructed in relation to, and displaced, older ways of reproducing art which were carried out by handicraft engravers. His analysis alerts us to the fact that ambiguity characterized art reproduction before photographs. Art reproductions, then, were interpretations in line based on conventional modes of representation – what Ivins calls a visual syntax. In this respect he enhances our understanding of the social construction of the artist. For Ivins the social history of reproduction seems to end with the camera. This completed an individuation of creativity ushered in with the Renaissance, but which was always qualified by the interfering visual syntax of craftsmen-interpreters. It is argued that the value of Ivins's account resides in its reconstruction of the relationship between handicraft engraving, fine art reproduction and aesthetic objects that have long since slipped from our consciousness.

scholarly journals Energy and Culture, The Social Construction of the Myanmar-China Pipelines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jeremy Todd
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Resource Ownership ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
Shed Light

<p>Transnational oil and gas pipelines have a troublesome history of disagreements and disputes that in many cases have led to a cessation of supply. While geopolitics and weak international institutions are often pointed to as explanations, considering pipelines as social as well as material constructs can also shed light on why disputes emerge. This paper will consider the social construction of the Myanmar-China pipelines. In China, the pipelines are seen as the solution to China’s ‘Malacca dilemma’. In Myanmar, the changing political situation has allowed new actors to contest the military junta’s narrative of economic development and the pipelines have become a lightning rod for national conversations about local resource ownership, social and environmental norms and Chinese exploitation of Myanmar’s energy resources.</p>

Constructionist Organizational Data Mining

2011 ◽  
pp. 696-700
Author(s):  
Isabel Ramos ◽  
João Álvaro Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organizational Knowledge Creation ◽  
Technology Applications ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adequate Representation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Objective Existence ◽  
Objective Study

Scientific or organizational knowledge creation has been addressed from different perspectives along the history of science and, in particular, of social sciences. The process is guided by the set of values, beliefs, and norms shared by the members of the community to which the creator of this knowledge belongs, that is, it is guided by the adopted paradigm (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). The adopted paradigm determines how the nature of the studied reality is understood, the criteria that will be used to assess the validity of the created knowledge, and the construction and selection of methods, techniques, and tools to structure and support the creation of knowledge. This set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions that characterize the paradigm one implicitly or explicitly uses to make sense of the surrounding reality is the cultural root of the intellectual enterprises. Those assumptions constrain the accomplishment of activities such as construction of theories, definition of inquiry strategies, interpretation of perceived phenomena, and dissemination of knowledge (Schwandt, 2000). Traditionally, social realities such as organizations have been assumed to have an objective nature. Assuming this viewpoint, the knowledge we possess about things, processes, or events that occur regularly under definite circumstances, should be an adequate representation of them. Knowledge is the result of a meticulous, quantitative, and objective study of the phenomenon of interest. Its aim is to understand the phenomenon in order to be able to anticipate its occurrence and to control it. Organizations can instead be understood as socially constructed realities. As such, they are subjective in nature since they do not exist apart from the organizational actors and other stakeholders. The stable patterns of action and interaction occurring internally and with the exterior of the organization are responsible for the impression of an objective existence. The adoption of information technology applications can reinforce or disrupt those patterns of action and interaction, thus becoming key elements in the social construction of organizational realities (Lilley, Lightfoot, & Amaral, 2004; Vaast & Walsham, 2005).

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