scholarly journals Imagining the future: Social struggles, the post-national domain and major contemporary social transformations

2020 ◽  
pp. 144078332096986
Author(s):  
Gerard Delanty
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Normative Conception ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Radical Uncertainty ◽  
National Domain

The question this article seeks to answer is what are the major social transformations going on in contemporary society that will shape the future? The argument is that the analysis of the future requires a clearer perspective on social struggles and major social transformations in societal structures including structures of consciousness. The future is thus both actuality and possibility; it is of the present but also beckons beyond the present. Or, in the terms of Koselleck (2004 [1976/1979]), it opens up the space of expectations beyond the horizons of the present. The radical uncertainty of the future has opened it up to imaginary significations of all kinds. Yet many such projections of the future lack a normative orientation and also do not provide a satisfactory connection with actuality, namely the world as it exists. This is to the detriment of a perspective on possibility. The future is created in moments of transformation when radically new interpretations of the present take root. The article discusses the fate of the post-national domain in the context of societal struggles in which new visions of the future are created and which play out in three major social transformations of the present. The argument in this article places more emphasis on a normative conception of a cosmopolitan future that identifies links between the social and the ecological as well as widening the notion of justice to include a broader sphere of issues than those that have traditionally been the concern of the left.

Re-visioning obscure spaces

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Jowel Canuday
Keyword(s):  
Social Spaces ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

In popular imagery, the littorals of Sulu and Zamboanga conjure visions of pirates, terrorists, and bandits marauding its rough seas, open shores, and rugged mountains. These bleak accounts render the region nothing but a violent and peripheral southern Philippine backdoor inconspicuous to the sophisticated constituencies of the world’s metropolitan centres. Obscured from these imageries are the lasting cosmopolitan traits of openness, flexibility, and reception of local folk to trans-local cultural streams that marked Sulu and Zamboanga as a globalised space across the ages and oceans. The distinctive features of these cosmopolitan sensibilities are strikingly discernible in inter-generationally shared narratives, artefacts, and performances that were continually renewed from the days when Sulu and Zamboanga served as a borderless trading and cultural enclave nestled at the crossroads of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. These enduring cosmopolitan sensibilities are embodied in the blending, among others, of the time-honoured dance of pangalay and the pop-musical dance genre celebrated on actual, analogue, and digitally-mediated spaces of the contemporary world. Furthermore, these embodied sensibilities are evident in song compositions that proclaim the humanistic themes of hope, peace, and prosperity to their place and the world in ways that exemplify the local people’s broader sense of connections beyond the narrow association of family, community, ethnicity, religion, and identity. This mixed bag of age-old and recent imaginaries and cultural traffic evoke a sociality that link the social spaces of the troubled but once and current globalised region to continuing acts of transcendence in history, memory, and visions of the future. In these marginalized places, we can see an unyielding tradition of cultural re-adaptation and creativity made up of myriad everyday acts that are down-to-earth, pragmatic, interstitial, and practical cosmopolitanism.

The Image of the Future in the Situation of the Decline of Culture: Contemporary Russia from the Perspective of O. Spengle

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Conservative Values ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Images Of The Future

The concept of O. Spengler suggests that the history of any culture goes through certain stages of development, the last of which is civilization. During this period creative activity in culture is replaced by mechanical imitation and lost connection with the culture formed by the «pra-phenomenon». The author correlates Spengler’s postulates with the processes of actual social reality and comes to the conclusion that contemporary Russia is going through the stage of civilization. The article raises the question of how the future is seen in this situation. The author uses the term “image of the future”, introduced by F. Polak to understand the disinterest of modern post-war Europe in its future. Thus, the lack of interest in the future can be recognized as another characteristic of the state of civilization. The existence in contemporary Russia of distinct images of the future is an open question. Using the methods of content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that in Russian contemporary society there exists a retrospective image of the future, focused on conservative values, hierarchy of society and its closed nature to the world. Thus, it is concluded that it is wrong to talk about complete absence of images of the future in contemporary Russia. But the nature and content of these images demonstrate the low level of interest in the future, which also indicates the transition of Russian culture to civilization.

scholarly journals Przestrogi dla utopistów. Wizje optimum dóbr w historii idei w książce Andrzeja Waśkiewicza

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Sokół
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Social Orders

The subject of this essay is Andrzej Waśkiewicz’s book Ludzie – rzeczy – ludzie. O porządkach społecznych, gdzie rzeczy łączą, nie dzielą (People–Things–People: On Social Orders Where Things Connect Rather Than Divide People). The book is the work of a historian of ideas and concerns contemporary searches for alternatives to capitalism: the review presents the book’s overview of visions of society in which the market, property, inequality, or profit do not play significant roles. Such visions reach back to Western utopian social and political thought, from Plato to the nineteenth century. In comparing these ideas with contemporary visions of the world of post-capitalism, the author of the book proposes a general typology of such images. Ultimately, in reference to Simmel, he takes a critical stance toward the proposals, recognizing the exchange of goods to be a fundamental and indispensable element of social life. The author of the review raises two issues that came to mind while reading the book. First, the juxtaposition of texts of a very different nature within the uniform category of “utopia” causes us to question the role and status of reflections regarding the future and of speculative theory in contemporary social thought; second, such a juxtaposition suggests that reflecting on the social “optimal good” requires a much more precise and complex conception of a “thing,” for instance, as is proposed by new materialism or anthropological studies of objects and value as such.

scholarly journals IDEOLOGICAL INVOLUTION OF THE ISLAMISTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fawaizul Umam
Keyword(s):  
Early Warning System ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
National Context ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Single System ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Islamic Values

Islamism as one of transnational political Islam ideologies continues to spread throughout the world. Many researchers read the phenomenon of strengthening Islamism solely as part of the Islamic social movements. This article looks at it further as a threat to the social cohesiveness of contemporary society. It intends to describe the Islamism from (1) its genealogy to ideological ideas about the unification of dîn (religion) and dawlah (state) and (2) measuring how relevant that idea is realized in a global and national context and (3) proposing a counter-ideology as a solution. Genealogically, Islamism ideology shows the tendency of revivalism and even fundamentalism, which tries to set Islam as a single system in society life. For contemporary Indonesia concept, the ideology is not only realistic, but is also potentially destructive to the unity, the country-nation awareness, the democracy, and Islam’s mission as raḥmat li al-‘âlamîn. Its deployment can be forestalled by revitalizing an alternative strategic discourse containing Islamic values into every dimension of life in this country. Based on the documentary review, its research findings are expected to enrich the discourse as well as an early warning system for national solidity and religious solidarity, especially in Indonesia.

Paradigm Shift for the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-201
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Way

Through case studies of incidents around the world where the social media platforms have been used and abused for ulterior purposes, Chapter 6 highlights the lessons that can be learned. For good or for ill, the author elaborates on the way social media has been used as an arbiter to inflict various forms of political influence and how we may have become desensitized due to the popularity of the social media platforms themselves. A searching view is provided that there is now a propensity by foreign states to use social media to influence the user base of sovereign countries during key political events. This type of activity now justifies a paradigm shift in relation to our perception and utilization of computerized devices for the future.

H. G. Wells

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-216
Author(s):  
Charlotte Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Social Problem Novel ◽  
Symbolic World ◽  
Socialist Politics

This chapter shifts attention from reference in space to reference in time, in order to extend the argument about realism and metaphysics to a consideration of genres as ideological formations which must both engage with recognizable circumstances and possess an innate desire to defamiliarize, even contravene, the givens of the cultural symbolic world. The social problem novel highlights this paradox, because it can only imagine possible futures through extrapolation from present conditions. The future acts as another boundless context against which realist representation must be pivoted. Chapter 4 explores this temporal paradox in the novels of H. G. Wells, whose background in evolutionary biology and investment in performative socialist politics means he depicts contemporary society as already, in a sense, prescient. The conclusions drawn about the operation of temporality in Wells’s fiction—particularly his use of tenses and the odd, recurrent topos of metanarrative intrusion—are used to think through some of the implications for ‘condition of England’ writing as an oracular and dialectical tradition within realism.

scholarly journals Debt and sad affects in the society of control

Conatus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Iwona Młoźniak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Society Of Control ◽  
Sociological Interpretation

The article presents an analysis of the notion of debt in the context of Deleuzean philosophy of affect. The interpretation presented on the following pages is “indebted” to Lazzarato’s conception of the notion of debt as a figure of subjectivity typical for capitalism. Debt is understood as an assemblage of sad passions and considered in relation to social transformations, that have led to contemporary societies of control.  The article shows the connection between the concept of debt and the process of individualization characteristic for contemporary society. Firstly, the concepts of control, debt and affect in the philosophy of Deleuze are put into consideration. Secondly, their relation to the forces and assemblages typical for contemporary societies is discussed. In order to grasp the social significance of the philosophical analysis, the article involves a sociological excursion that demonstrates sociological interpretation of the processes that were described in terms of philosophical analysis in the main body of the text.

scholarly journals Perspective sur la prospective

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-342
Author(s):  
Jean-Luc Migué
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Adaptation Mechanisms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Physical Variables ◽  
Long Term Forecasting ◽  
World Output

Long term forecasting, as popularized by some recent models of the world, appears to be a-scientific from the standpoint of the social scientists. The basis for this radical judgment is threefold: First, structural relations incorporated into these models of the world seldom go further than stating rigid relations between some physical variables and world output. Second, the factual basis on which these relations are built is often not validated by past trends. Finally, the framework within which these models are cast rules out all possibly for the social sciences to contribute to our understanding of the future. Political and economic adaptation mechanisms are excluded. Futurology as developed by some models is based on poor measurement and poor theory.

scholarly journals AN IDEOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE TO THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-58
Author(s):  
Mziya Jemalovna Kuparashvili
Keyword(s):  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Humanitarian Space ◽  
Technological Singularity

Thinking about the future of man and humanity against the background of rapidly develop-ing technologies is full of fears and fears. Many of the key provisions proposed by technol-ogy and the financial and economic orders of the society, fall on the poorly prepared con-sciousness and, due to the transience of events, do not leave time for thoughtful analysis. New concepts or their new meanings are taken for granted and become frightening phan-toms that define the chaos of our ideas about the world. One such phantom is the concept of singularity, which in the social and humanitarian space brings only confusion in the minds.

scholarly journals Factors Responsible for Promoting Religious Extremism in Pakistan: A Case of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (II) ◽  
pp. 50-56
Author(s):  
Surat Khan
Keyword(s):  
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ◽  
World Community ◽  
Religious Extremism ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Religious extremism is related to religion and sensation and has become a global issue, but since long, Pakistan has been considered among those countries that have been the Centre of it. Pakistan has been considered by the world community, as the cause as well as the victim of terrorism and extremism. It is a complicated phenomenon and needs exploring all the social, religious, economic, political and sectarian factors behind it. There are different reasons, causes, sources and factors of extremism and terrorism in the region in general and in Pakistan in particular. Explanation of all these factors is primarily important for understanding this evil in Pakistan and the region. The researcher has tried to find briefly those factors that promoted religious extremism in the society in Pakistan in generally and Pashtun community specifically. The researcher has tried to find out a solution to these factors to combat it in the future.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document