Understanding Depressive Feelings as Situated Affections

2021 ◽  
pp. 175407392110578
Author(s):  
Güler Cansu Ağören

Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of social relations, but also arises from a socially impaired world. To pursue this goal, I will challenge the understanding of depression as an affective disorder blocking the affective communication between individual and environment. I will redefine feelings of depression as situated affections, and hence suggest that (1) they are products of the individual's situatedness in a depressogenic environment and (2) they function in initiating an active withdrawal from such environment.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Tsagas ◽  
Charlotte Villiers

AbstractCalls are repeatedly made on corporations to respond to the challenges facing the planet from a sustainable development perspective and governments take solace in the idea that corporations' transparency on their corporate activity in relation to sustainability through voluntary reporting is adequately addressing the problem. In practice, however, reporting is failing to deliver truly sustainable results. The article considers the following questions: how does the varied reporting landscape in the field of non-financial reporting impede the objectives of fostering corporations' sustainable practices and which initiative, among the options available, may best meet the sustainability objectives after a decluttering of the landscape takes place?The article argues that the varied corporate reporting landscape constitutes a key obstacle to fostering sustainable corporate behaviour, insofar as the flexible and please all approach followed in the context of corporate sustainability reporting offers little to no real incentive to companies to behave more sustainably and ultimately pleases none in the long run. The case made is that “less is more” in non-financial reporting initiatives and hence the article calls for a revision of key aspects of the European Non-Financial Reporting Directive, which, as is argued, is more likely to achieve the furtherance of sustainable corporate behaviour. Although the different reporting requirements offer the benefits of focussing on different corporate goals and activities, targeting different audiences and allowing for a level of flexibility that respects the individual risks to sustainability associated with each industry, the end result is a landscape that lacks overall consistency and comparability of measurements and accountabilities, making accountability more, rather than less, difficult to achieve.The article acknowledges the existence of several variances relating to the notion of sustainability per se, which continues to remain a contested concept and variances between companies and industries in relation to how each is operating sustainably or unsustainably respectively. Such variances have so far inhibited the legislator from easily outlining through tailored legislation the individual risks to global sustainability in an all-encompassing manner. The end product is a chaotic system of financial reporting, CSR reporting, non-financial reporting and integrated reporting and little progress to increase comparability and credibility in order for companies to be held accountable and to behave in ways that do not harm the planet. A “clean up” of the varied initiatives in the terrain of non-financial reporting is recommended.


Blood ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (25) ◽  
pp. 6499-6505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgardo D. Carosella ◽  
Silvia Gregori ◽  
Joel LeMaoult

Abstract Myeloid antigen-presenting cells (APCs), regulatory cells, and the HLA-G molecule are involved in modulating immune responses and promoting tolerance. APCs are known to induce regulatory cells and to express HLA-G as well as 2 of its receptors; regulatory T cells can express and act through HLA-G; and HLA-G has been directly involved in the generation of regulatory cells. Thus, interplay(s) among HLA-G, APCs, and regulatory cells can be easily envisaged. However, despite a large body of evidence on the tolerogenic properties of HLA-G, APCs, and regulatory cells, little is known on how these tolerogenic players cooperate. In this review, we first focus on key aspects of the individual relationships between HLA-G, myeloid APCs, and regulatory cells. In its second part, we highlight recent work that gathers individual effects and demonstrates how intertwined the HLA-G/myeloid APCs/regulatory cell relationship is.


While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Rwiza

Blackmore and Sachs’ (2007) opinion that “educational reform needs to be seen within a broader context of restructuring in economic and social relations among the individual, the state and new modes of governance” (p. 1) is relevant for expressing the essence and influence of the global decentralization policies in Tanzania and elsewhere. The 1995 decentralization of the management of primary schools in Tanzania was the outcome of the World Bank’s policies and the International Monetary Fund’s conditions following the economic instabilities of the 1980s. Assuming that public systems are inefficient, autonomy in decision-making and competition are seen as means of achieving high quality and efficiency (Bonal, 2002; Carnoy, 1995; Martinez & Garcia, 1996). The need for autonomy, external accountability and competition has created new managerial roles for school principals even though their core function is to lead instruction (Lingard & Christie, 2003; Reitzug, West, & Roma, 2008; Stewart, 2006). This study explores how principals in Tanzania are harmonizing these roles and is informed by political discourse analysis and decolonizing theories (Abdi & Shultz, 2012; Blackmore & Sachs, 2007; Dimmock & Walker, 2005; Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012; Nyerere, 1968; Wagenaar, 2011). Qualitative interpretive case study is also used to analyze the principals’ experiences. The implementation of a borrowed culture in new contexts creates tensions; thus, the adoption of new roles in the context of decentralization creates conflicts and imbalances. Given that education is a public good, educational policies should be decolonized and separated from market influences.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ambrish Gautam ◽  

Status is a position provided to the person of the concern society based on societal norms, values and customary practices. It is further being divided into two parts, first one is the Ascribed status, and another is Achieved status. The ascribed status is assigned to a person by the group or society, whereas achieved status is earned by the individual through his/her personal attributes and is taken note of by the people in and around his/her location. It is also evident that in majority of the cases, the ascribed status always determines the nature and extent of the achieved status. The ascribed status of the Dalits contributes or hinders in the formation of their achieved status. It also includes their social interaction and social relations with non-Dalits in the exiting local level social structure. This status is being characterized and specified by the process of Sanskritization, social and religious reforms, and the constitutional provisions in the formation of achieved status of Dalits in their different strata of life. The social status is the convergent form of both the ascribed and achieved statuses of a person in each society or social structure. In every circumstance, one’s higher ascribed status always contributes positively to his or her higher achieved status. Conversely, lower the ascribed status, lower is the achieved status though this may be other way round in the exceptional case. Anyway, the symmetrical or linear relationship between the lower ascribed and achieved statuses gets more crystallized, if the person comes from a group which remains socially excluded forever. But due to the prospects of Independence, Education, Constitutional safeguards and Modernisation several kinds of changes occurred in the status of Dalit’s in the society. Through this paper, I have tried to identify the process of social status formation among Dalits in Jharkhand.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ambrish Gautam ◽  

Status is a position provided to the person of the concern society based on societal norms, values and customary practices. It is further being divided into two parts, first one is the Ascribed status, and another is Achieved status. The ascribed status is assigned to a person by the group or society, whereas achieved status is earned by the individual through his/her personal attributes and is taken note of by the people in and around his/her location. It is also evident that in majority of the cases, the ascribed status always determines the nature and extent of the achieved status. The ascribed status of the Dalits contributes or hinders in the formation of their achieved status. It also includes their social interaction and social relations with non-Dalits in the exiting local level social structure. This status is being characterized and specified by the process of Sanskritization, social and religious reforms, and the constitutional provisions in the formation of achieved status of Dalits in their different strata of life. The social status is the convergent form of both the ascribed and achieved statuses of a person in each society or social structure. In every circumstance, one’s higher ascribed status always contributes positively to his or her higher achieved status. Conversely, lower the ascribed status, lower is the achieved status though this may be other way round in the exceptional case. Anyway, the symmetrical or linear relationship between the lower ascribed and achieved statuses gets more crystallized, if the person comes from a group which remains socially excluded forever. But due to the prospects of Independence, Education, Constitutional safeguards and Modernisation several kinds of changes occurred in the status of Dalit’s in the society. Through this paper, I have tried to identify the process of social status formation among Dalits in Jharkhand.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-365
Author(s):  
Evgeny I. Zelenev ◽  
Milana Iliushina

This article is devoted to the study of the development of the theory and practice of jihad during the rule of the Circassian sultans in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The purpose of the study is to trace the development of key aspects of jihad, to identify features of its perception in the Mamluk state. An essential feature of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period is the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-ʿayn (the individual duty of every Muslim). While studying the theory of jihad, the authors rely on a holistic and balanced approach justified in the papers of M. Bonner and D. Cook and their interpretation of the concept of jihad, which has a centuries-old history of development and a sophisticated, multi-layered set of meanings. Another methodological basis of the present paper was the concept of minimalism and maximalism, developed by Yusef Waghid. The source base for the study of jihad theory is the works of Ibn al-Nahhas (d. 1411), a prominent philosopher of the Mamluk era. The interpretation of jihad as an individual duty of every Muslim, substantiated by Ibn al-Nahhas, was the foundation of the volunteer movement that developed in Egypt and Syria in the 15th century. The doctrine of jihad where the concepts of justice (al-‘adl) and truth (al-ḥaqq) play a key role, was used by the Mamluks and then by the Ottomans as a powerful ideological tool to manipulate the minds of Muslims. The relevance of the study is that the findings are not only true for the Middle Ages but are directly related to the present.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Denis S. Andreyuk

Genome editing technologies make it important to look for genetic determinants that can influence the structure of society and basic social relations. This paper proposes to look for such determinants in the evolutionarily ancient mechanisms of group interaction, namely in the genes that determine the balance of cooperation and competition. The opposition of these two forces is thought to be the basis of the evolutionary development of intelligence in higher primates and humans. The article provides examples showing that individual characteristics such as extraversion/introversion as measured by the "Big Five" methodology, aggressiveness, which strongly associates with the risk taking, and the level of intelligence, all of these traits a) greatly influence the organization of social processes and b) are largely genetically determined. As a development of this approach of searching for socially significant genetic determinants, it is proposed to model genetic changes in sociality, aggressiveness and intelligence at the individual level, followed by an analysis of the resulting social changes.


Author(s):  
Vittorio Gallese

The chapter will address the notion of embodiment from a neuroscientific perspective, by emphasizing the crucial role played by bodily relations and sociality on the evolution and development of distinctive features of human cognition. The neurophysiological level of description is here accounted for in terms of bodily-formatted representations and discussed by replying to criticisms recently raised against this notion. The neuroscientific approach here proposed is critically framed and discussed against the background of the Evo-Devo focus on a little explored feature of human beings in relation to social cognition: their neotenic character. Neoteny refers to the slowed or delayed physiological and/or somatic development of an individual. Such development is largely dependent on the quantity and quality of interpersonal relationships the individual is able to establish with her/his adult peers. It is proposed that human neoteny further supports the crucial role played by embodiment, here spelled out by adopting the explanatory framework of embodied simulation, in allowing humans to engage in social relations, and make sense of others’ behaviors.This approach can fruitfully be used to shed new light onto non propositional forms of communication and social understanding and onto distinctive human forms of meaning making, like the experience of man-made fictional worlds.


Author(s):  
Ludovico Solima

Society is experiencing unprecedented changes, largely attributable to the evolution of communication technologies, which are steadily reframing our way of life, and the methods we use to establish and maintain social relations. Museums are therefore facing numerous challenges, in general as a result of these developments: apps, open content, and the Internet-of-things. A complex relationship can be created between visitors and the museum, and this also opens new unexplored opportunities for user involvement in the museum's activities, even during the course of the visit itself. It is worth taking care to identify all the variables involved in the museum-visitor-relationship, which also encompasses the social dimension. Both the museum and the individual are active participants in a gradually expanding relationship, namely the growth of the so-called Web 2.0 and social media. Therefore, we can assume the need for museums to develop a conscious strategy for their social media presence, a real social media strategy, which forms part of the museum's wider digital strategy. The increasingly pervasive spread of e-mobile technology is a foretaste of the moment when museumgoers will radically change both the way of establishing relations with these organisations and the actual ways of using museum services. This chapter focuses on digital resources and approaches adopted by user-centred museums, where there is an increasing impact from the internet and social media.


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