Melodrama's Modern

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-179
Author(s):  
Christine Gledhill
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
The Social

Confronting the paradox of melodrama as an apparently outdated Victorian stage form now argued as the overarching modality of modern screen fiction, this essay rethinks the nature of melodrama's 'modern' as an aesthetic modality capable of channelling the social through individual protagonists. Devising staging and plotting that foregrounds emotional and moral consequences of actions, and drawing on musicalisation of performance and word to embody feeling, the melodramatic mode creates haptic connection with audiences, inviting empathy with the sensations and 'human interest' of other's experiences, while it discursively binds the social into the personal in the acculturated images, turns of speech, and cultural references through which its characters' emotions and actions are expressed. Arguing shifting criteria of verisimilitude under pressure of changing social conditions and emergence of new technologies, the essay shows how melodrama's personalisation of the social evolves in modern screen media through the resources of cinematography.

The Social Construction of a Perfect Market: The Strawberry Auction at Fontaines-en-Sologne

2010 ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
M.-F. Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se

The article examines social conditions and mechanisms of the emergence in 1982 of a «Dutch» strawberry auction in Fontaines-en-Sologne, France. Empirical study of this case shows that perfect market does not arise per se due to an «invisible hand». It is a social construction, which could only be put into effect by a hard struggle between stakeholders and large investments of different forms of capital. Ordinary practices of the market dont differ from the predictions of economic theory, which is explained by the fact that economic theory served as a frame of reference for the designers of the auction. Technological and spatial organization as well as principal rules of trade was elaborated in line with economic views of perfect market resulting in the correspondence between theory and reality.

Perspectives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Augmentation ◽  
Public Imagination

This chapter introduces the “Perspectives” section of the Handbook of Living Machines offering an overview of the different contributions gathered here that consider how biomimetic and biohybrid systems will transform our personal lives and social organizations, and how we might respond to the challenges that these transformations will inevitably pose to our ‘posthuman’ worlds. The authors in this section see it as essential that those who aspire to create living machines engage with the public to confront misconceptions, deep anxieties, and unrealistic aspirations that presently dominate the cultural imagination, and to include potential users in questions of design and utility as new technologies are being developed. Human augmentation and enhancement are other important themes addressed, raising important questions about what it means fundamentally to be ‘human’. These questions and challenges are addressed through the lens of the social and personal impacts of new technologies on human selves, the public imagination, ethics, and human relationships.

The politics of welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110080
Author(s):  
Lois McNay
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Argument ◽  
Collective Activism ◽  
Historical Model ◽  
Valuable Role

Steven Klein’s excellent new book The Work of Politics is an innovative, insightful and original argument about the valuable role that welfare institutions may play in democratic movements for change. In place of a one-sided Weberian view of welfare institutions as bureaucratic instruments of social control, Klein recasts them in Arendtian terms as ‘worldly mediators’ or participatory mechanisms that act as channels for a radical politics of democratic world making. Although Klein is careful to modulate this utopian vision through a developed account of power and domination, I question the relevance of this largely historical model of world-building activism for the contemporary world of welfare. I point to the way that decades of neoliberal social policy have arguably eroded many of the social conditions and relations of solidarity that are vital prerequisites for collective activism around welfare.

A syndemics approach to exercise is medicine

2021 ◽  
pp. 136345932110214
Author(s):  
Caitlin Vitosky Clarke ◽  
Brynn C Adamson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Exercise Interventions ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
The Social ◽  
Exercise Promotion ◽  
The Impact

This paper offers new insights into the promotion of the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) framework for mental illness and chronic disease. Utilising the Syndemics Framework, which posits mental health conditions as corollaries of social conditions, we argue that medicalized exercise promotion paradigms both ignore the social conditions that can contribute to mental illness and can contribute to mental illness via discrimination and worsening self-concept based on disability. We first address the ways in which the current EIM framework may be too narrow in scope in considering the impact of social factors as determinants of health. We then consider how this narrow scope in combination with the emphasis on independence and individual prescriptions may serve to reinforce stigma and shame associated with both chronic disease and mental illness. We draw on examples from two distinct research projects, one on exercise interventions for depression and one on exercise interventions for multiple sclerosis (MS), in order to consider ways to improve the approach to exercise promotion for these and other, related populations.

scholarly journals Nurses and the acceptance of innovations in technology-intensive contexts: the need for tailored management strategies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Barchielli ◽  
Cristina Marullo ◽  
Manila Bonciani ◽  
Milena Vainieri
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Utaut Model ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Facilitating Conditions

Abstract Background Several technological innovations have been introduced in healthcare over the years, and their implementation proved crucial in addressing challenges of modern health. Healthcare workers have frequently been called upon to become familiar with technological innovations that pervade every aspect of their profession, changing their working schedule, habits, and daily actions. Purpose An in-depth analysis of the paths towards the acceptance and use of technology may facilitate the crafting and adoption of specific personnel policies taking into consideration definite levers, which appear to be different in relation to the age of nurses. Approach The strength of this study is the application of UTAUT model to analyse the acceptance of innovations by nurses in technology-intensive healthcare contexts. Multidimensional Item Response Theory is applied to identify the main dimensions characterizing the UTAUT model. Paths are tested through two stage regression models and validated using a SEM covariance analysis. Results The age is a moderator for the social influence: social influence, or peer opinion, matters more for young nurse. Conclusion The use of MIRT to identify the most important items for each construct of UTAUT model and an in-depth path analysis helps to identify which factors should be considered a leverage to foster nurses’ acceptance and intention to use new technologies (o technology-intensive devices). Practical implications Young nurses may benefit from the structuring of shifts with the most passionate colleagues (thus exploiting the social influence), the participation in ad hoc training courses (thus exploiting the facilitating conditions), while other nurses could benefit from policies that rely on the stressing of the perception of their expectations or the downsizing of their expectancy of the effort in using new technologies.

scholarly journals Linguistic drivers of misinformation diffusion on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Textual Cues ◽  
Twitter Users

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.

scholarly journals An apple a day – how the platform economy impacts value creation in the healthcare market

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Gleiss ◽  
Marco Kohlhagen ◽  
Key Pousttchi
Keyword(s):  
Value Creation ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Healthcare Industry ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Value Network ◽  
Healthcare Market ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Platform Economy

AbstractThe healthcare industry has been slow to adopt new technologies and practices. However, digital and data-enabled innovations diffuse the market, and the COVID-19 pandemic has recently emphasized the necessity of a fundamental digital transformation. Available research indicates the relevance of digital platforms in this process but has not studied their economic impact to date. In view of this research gap and the social and economic relevance of healthcare, we explore how digital platforms might affect value creation in this market with a particular focus on Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM). We rely on value network analyses to examine how GAFAM platforms introduce new value-creating roles and mechanisms in healthcare through their manifold products and services. Hereupon, we examine the GAFAM-impact on healthcare by scrutinizing the facilitators, activities, and effects. Our analyses show how GAFAM platforms multifacetedly untie conventional relationships and transform value creation structures in the healthcare market.

A collective ethnographer: fieldwork experience in the Brazilian Northeast

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lygia Sigaud
Keyword(s):  
Research Group ◽  
Seasonal Variations ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Fieldwork Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Brazilian Northeast ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines a 30-year experience of collective ethnography in the sugarcane plantations of Brazil's Northeast. Over this period, the research group has worked in different temporal and spatial contexts, continually exchanging its findings. The author draws on her experience as part of the research group in order to focus on the conditions of entering the field, the seasonal variations and geographic displacements, the research group's morphology and the overall implications for anthropological knowledge. Debates over ethnography have neglected the relationship between the social conditions in which anthropologists carry out their work and what they are able to write about the social world. This article sets out to fill this gap.

Ethnography, Data Transparency, and the Information Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra K. Murphy ◽  
Colin Jerolmack ◽  
DeAnna Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Information Age ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Share Data ◽  
Replication Crisis ◽  
Data Transparency

The conventions ethnographers follow to gather, write about, and store their data are increasingly out of sync with contemporary research expectations and social life. Despite technological advancements that allow ethnographers to observe their subjects digitally and record interactions, few follow subjects online and many still reconstruct quotes from memory. Amid calls for data transparency, ethnographers continue to conceal subjects’ identities and keep fieldnotes private. But things are changing. We review debates, dilemmas, and innovations in ethnography that have arisen over the past two decades in response to new technologies and calls for transparency. We focus on emerging conversations around how ethnographers record, collect, anonymize, verify, and share data. Considering the replication crisis in the social sciences, we ask how ethnographers can enable others to reanalyze their findings. We address ethical implications and offer suggestions for how ethnographers can develop standards for transparency that are consistent with their commitment to their subjects and interpretive scholarship. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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