Emotionalising the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: on the civil society engagements of Israeli mental health professionals in response to the Palestinian uprisings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Brunner ◽  
Galia Plotkin Amrami
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Intifada ◽  
The Individual

This article explores how Israeli mental health practitioners emotionalised the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by intervening in the public sphere. Based on a close reading of texts produced by two Israeli civil society associations of psy-professionals – Imut and Natal – we analyse and compare two languages of emotion that they developed in response to two Palestinian uprisings, the First Intifada of 1987–93 and the Al Aqsa Intifada of 2000–05. This allows us to point to differences and similarities in the ways these two associations articulated, conceptualised and represented emotions that they attributed to the Israeli-Jewish collective. Imut voiced a critical and openly political response to the outbreak of the First Intifada, while Natal adopted an ostensibly apolitical position that affirmed mainstream Israeli politics in response to the Al Aqsa Intifada. Though they differed in their politics, both Imut and Natal emotionalised the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in a dual fashion. They depicted emotions as forces (a) whose dynamics have to be understood in order to grapple with the conflict, and (b) whose detrimental effects have to be controlled through proper management. Thus, both associations portrayed emotions as an instrument for understanding the political situation and as a powerful tool to achieve social and political aims. Though both Imut and Natal emotionalised the conflict in their civil society interventions, neither of them depoliticised it. Rather, they transposed the psychological from the individual to the social level, thus embedding it in a dialectic in which the politicisation of the psychological leads to a non-reductionist emotionalisation of the political.

Violence Risk Assessment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Piel ◽  
Ronald Schouten
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Clinical Settings ◽  
Violence Risk ◽  
Mental Health Clinicians ◽  
The Public ◽  
Core Skill ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
Single Standard

The problem of violence in our society has received increasing attention from the public and mental health professions in recent years, and assessing the risk of violence has become a core skill for mental health clinicians and forensic specialists alike. In fact, mental health practitioners in all clinical settings are tasked with assessing and managing their patients’ risk of violence. Although research on the nature of violence and factors that increase the likelihood that a person will commit violent acts has grown in the past several decades, there is no single standard protocol or tool for assessing the risk of violence. This chapter reviews the key risk factors for violence that are supported by research, examines the relationship between mental disorders and violence, and describes approaches that mental health professionals can use to assess the risk of violence.

scholarly journals Social Media as Valuable Anti-Corruption Assets in the Public Sphere in Nigeria

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
B. Babasanya ◽  
L. Ganiyu ◽  
U. F. Yahaya ◽  
O. E. Olagunju ◽  
S. O. Olafemi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual

The issue of corruption in Nigeria has assumed a monumental dimension in such a way that it has become a household song and practice. Thus, adopting a rhetoric definition may not be appropriate instead a succinct description will suffice. The dimension of corruption is monumental because it started from pre-independence in the First republic with the first major political figure found culpable and investigated in 1944 and reach its peak recently with the evolvement of ‘godfatherism’ in the political landscape of the country. Therefore, corruption in Nigeria is more or less a household name. Using Social Responsibility Media Theory as a guide, this paper undertakes an examination of the right of the media to inform the public, serve the political system by making information, discussion and consideration of public affairs generally accessible, and to protect the rights of the individual by acting as watchdog over the governments. This discourse analysis is backed up with the presentation of documented materials on tracking corruption through the use of social media. Since the use of mainstream media only is disadvantageous owing to its demand-driven nature, social media stands as a veritable and result-orientated asset in tracking corruption across the public sphere. This paper found that complimented with mainstream media, social media and civic journalism have exposed corrupt tendencies of contractors and public office holders including the political class in the provision and handling of infrastructural development projects thereby make public officials accountable and create an open access to good governance.

Media and Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 416-432
Author(s):  
Thomas Olesen
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media System ◽  
Professional Authority ◽  
System P ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere

The chapter’s premise is the social contract between media and democracy, which features strongly in the professional values of Danish journalists. Media have become so central to the political process that many refer to a mediatization of politics. At the same time, research points to a crisis of journalism with declining readership, trust, and professional authority. These challenges have been set in motion at least partly by new media consumption and production patterns. The crisis of journalism prompts two questions: is it reversing the process of mediatization, and does it erode journalism’s role as democratic watchdogs in Denmark? The chapter shows that the crisis of journalism must be considered in a comparative perspective and that the Danish media system demonstrates a degree of resilience to it. It also notes, however, that traditional media have indeed lost their privileged position as organizers of the public sphere. Rather than seeing a reversal of mediatization, it makes more sense to speak of a mediatization 2.0, and rather than identifying an erosion of the media’s watchdog role, it is more accurate to say that they now share it with a host of other agents in the current hybridized media system.

The "Secular" as a Tragic Category: On Talal Asad, Religion and Representation

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Craig Brittain
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual

AbstractAmong current efforts to deconstruct the category "religion" is a tendency to problematize the secular/sacred distinction with the argument that it is simply the product of the distinctive history of post-Reformation Western Europe. The "secular," it is claimed, is a category employed to legitimize the modern state by establishing a boundary between the authority of the public sphere, in opposition to the privatized sphere of the individual religious practitioner. This paper analyses this argument as it is developed by Talal Asad and contrasts his "genealogy" of the secular with Dominique Colas' genealogy of the concept of "civil society". This comparison raises pragmatic and political concerns about Asad's perspective, and problematizes his description of Islamic subjectivity. The paper concludes by furthering Asad's reading of Walter Benjamin's understanding of allegory, in order to argue for the secular as a tragic category that continues to represent a vital theoretical and political concept.

scholarly journals Editorial: political abuse of psychiatry in authoritarian systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-102
Author(s):  
J. P. Tobin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Political System ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Diagnostic Categories ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual

We are painfully aware: Psychiatry in some states of the international community is often used to subvert the political and legal guarantees of the freedom of the individual and to violate seriously his human and legal rights (Daes,1986).ObjectiveIt can be politically convenient to incarcerate political opponents in a psychiatric hospital. It saves any potential political embarrassment that a judicial trial may present. It also undermines the credibility of opponents by labelling them with the stigma of being mentally insane. For this to occur, there has to be the acquiescence of mental health professionals and a subservient legal system.MethodThis article examines the abuse of psychiatry in two authoritarian systems, Russia and China.ResultNew diagnostic categories such as sluggish schizophrenia were created to facilitate the silencing of dissenters and were a source of self-deception for psychiatrist to placate their consciences as they operated as a tool of oppression on behalf of a political system.ConclusionIf we do not know the past, we will be condemned to repeat it.

scholarly journals Performative trolling: Szubanski, Gillard, Dawson and the nature of the utterance

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Caroline Morrissey ◽  
Susan Yell
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Medium ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Performative Utterance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual

In 2012 the Australian public witnessed three important examples of trolling play out in the public sphere that are the focus of this paper: the trolling of Julia Gillard’s Facebook page when she attempted to discuss education policy, the anonymous trolling of Charlotte Dawson’s Twitter page, and the trolling of Magda Szubanski on YouTube after she came out on The Project. These attacks may seem similar in that a public persona has been ridiculed and denigrated in flamboyant onslaughts. However, we will argue that there are important differences in the effects of these attacks, and that underpinning these are differences relating to the individual persona, the social medium and the nature of the utterance. The attacks on Gillard and Szubanski are primarily descriptive attacks on a deliberate and somewhat stage-managed public performance of identity, not a call to action. On the other hand, the anonymous trolling of Charlotte Dawson, which led directly to her attempted suicide, is clearly a performative utterance from the start, meant to have consequences on the object of attack. In Dawson’s case, the separation between her public persona and her private self is far less distinct than in the case of Gillard or Szubanski. These instances demonstrate that trolling exists on a performative continuum, engaging in constant disruption, but also lending itself to the production of social action. The kind of impact trolling will have depends, thus, on the affordances of social media, the persona under attack, and on the very nature of the utterance itself.

scholarly journals PRAGMATICS OF LANGUAGE AND VALUES IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE: TOWARDS AN EXPANSIVE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO THE USED DISCOURSE

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (04) ◽  
pp. 221-231
Author(s):  
Youness HABBACH
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Sphere

This research aims at analysing the pragmatic prominent discourse in the public sphere, the digital sphere in particular, that reflects special changes in the society. The meant discourse has not been investigated adequately and sufficiently namely the social, the political and the digital virtual discourses which bear an effective semantic and pragmatic power on the public space and at the same time incorporate strong transformations in the values patterns. This study utilizes a pragmatic approach, since the pragmatics is a study of using language in communication, and works on analysing daily discourses using a journalistic editorial. So, what are the changes reflected by this discourse? And what are the values represented and expressed by the prevailing discourses in the public sphere?

scholarly journals The principle of exclusive citizenship and a foreigner's status

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Predrag Terzić
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Public Sphere

The process of creating a modern state and forming political institutions corresponds to the process of transforming the subjects of the past into a community constituted on the principle of citizenship. The citizen becomes the foundation of the political community and the subject, which in interaction with other citizens, forms the public sphere. However, this does not mean that all members of the community have the same rights and obligations contained in the status of a citizen. Excluding certain categories of residents from the principle of citizenship raises a number of issues that delegitimize the existing order by colliding with the ideas of justice, freedom and equality. The aim of this short research is to clarify the principle of citizenship, its main manifestations and excluded subjects, as well as the causes that are at the root of the concept of exclusive citizenship. A brief presentation of the idea of multiculturalism does not intend to fully analytically explain this concept, but only to present in outline one of the ways of overcoming the issue of exclusive citizenship. In order to determine the social significance of the topic, a part of the text is dedicated to the ideas that form the basis of an exclusive understanding of citizenship, the reasons for its application and the far-reaching consequences of social tensions and unrest, which cannot be ignored.

Daenerys Targaryen Will Save Spain:Game of Thrones, Politics, and the Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 423-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Concepción Cascajosa Virino ◽  
Vicente Rodríguez Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Bottom To Top ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article deals with the use of the American television series Game of Thrones (HBO: 2011–) as part of the political discourse of the emerging political party Podemos in Spain. First, we focus on Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, who, in 2014, edited a book devoted to analyzing this series from a political science viewpoint. We then move on to study ideologically charged symbolic gestures and the detailed analysis of the parallelisms between Daenerys Targaryen’s revolutionary enterprise and Podemos’s bottom-to-top quest to seize power. We then scrutinize how emergent political forces that threaten the enduring hegemony of traditional parties use popular cultural artifacts to intervene in the social fabric and how they attempt to tune in with the Internet-dedicated, socially networked younger classes. This article, thus, analyzes how the relationship between politics and serialized TV fiction has morphed within the Spanish mediascape, paying special attention to the impact of participatory culture.

Empiricism’s Secret History: Fleetwood and Rousseau

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Sentimental Fiction ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Secret History

Criticism often organizes Godwin’s career by genre, suggesting that Godwin progressed from political theory to sentimental fiction. Instead this chapter argues that Godwin follows Rousseau in writing literature to ‘judge’ his own philosophy. In Enquiry Concerning Political Justice Godwin posits society as prior to the individual. He regards the general good as mandatory rather than voluntary. Godwin’s novels examine the struggles of individuals in conforming to his model of compulsory sociability. In Fleetwood and Mandeville Godwin explores the shortcomings of Rousseau’s theory of individualist education. He fictionalizes Rousseau, Hume, Wollstonecraft, and the First Earl of Shaftesbury, exploring the shortcomings of their theories. In Fleetwood Godwin uses elements of the genre of the secret history to explore political theory’s failure to validate women within the public sphere. Deloraine extends Godwin’s criticism of the social contract tradition for being inherently patriarchal. In Godwin’s writings Rousseau eclipses Aristotle as the founding theorist of sociability.

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