Progress through Protest

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Burgum
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Social Model ◽  
The Face ◽  
Society Today

This chapter demonstrates how neoliberalism — a school of political and economic theory which argues that market competition, supported by the state, is the best way to organise the economy, government, and society — has become so taken for granted that it is no longer perceived as an alternative model, but instead as something closer to ‘common sense’. While many may intuit that society today is in some way ‘sick’, it may also be the case that most people are additionally unable to even imagine healthier forms of social organisation. The chapter aims to find the root causes of how such a market led social model has actually been maintained in the face of an economic crash, and how widespread protest against the system has failed to generate any kind of deep social change.

Neoliberalism and the commodification of identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalervo N. Gulson ◽  
P. Taylor Webb
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
African American ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Educational Choices ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Market Economics

*There is an extensive literature, over the course of 25 years, that identifies neoliberalism as a political-economic theory that utilises the efficiencies of market economics to develop and legitimate government priorities and practices. Neoliberalism also promotes forms of social organisation that emphasise individuals’ freedom of choice, and has emphasised ways to increase the educational choices of those who have been racialised as Black or African American. Neoliberalism calls for ‘freedom’, mostly understood in relation to the rights of the individual to market participation and of markets themselves to operate without interference from the state (...

Edmund Burke

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Face ◽  
Good Order ◽  
The French Revolution

Edmund Burke is considered the father of conservatism. With his ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’ (1790), Burke presented a work that was already controversial at the time of its publication. In Burke’s understanding, people and their social institutions are historical beings that are subject to change but unchanging in the face of all change. The central concept in Burke’s argument is heritage, which encompasses both collective, historical memory and social organisation, and specifically refers to constitutional traditions. Society is hierarchically structured and forms an organic unit based on a necessary balance between the principles of continuity and regeneration. According to Burke, the state is the coagulated historical rationality of people who must be taken at least as seriously as contemporaries in their efforts to shape a good order. With contributions by Michael Becker, Norbert Campagna, Oliver Hidalgo, Jürgen Kamm, Skadi Siiri Krause, Thomas Lau, Ulrich Niggemann, Henning Ottmann, Volker Reinhardt and Rüdiger Voigt.

scholarly journals Households and the Emergence of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Ur
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
State Level ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The State ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Ancient Mesopotamia ◽  
Metaphorical Extension ◽  
Historical Periods

The world's first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium bc. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptations to meet the goals of elite members of society, or society as a whole. This study proposes an alternative model. By reviewing indigenous terminology from later historical periods, it proposes that urbanism evolved in the context of a metaphorical extension of the household that represented a creative transformation of a familiar structure. The first cities were unintended consequences of this transformation, which may seem ‘revolutionary’ to archaeologists but did not to their inhabitants. This alternative model calls into question the applicability of terms like ‘urbanism’ and ‘the state’ for early Mesopotamian society.

A Realist Perspective on Contemporary "Economic Theory" (Foreword by O. Ananyin)

2006 ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Neoclassical Theory ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Realist Perspective

The author elaborates on methodological issues of current tendencies in neoclassical theory and demonstrates the necessity of an alternative model of science, which he calls "realist". According to this perspective, constant and regular conjunctions of economic life events should not be the main object of analysis. Rather, the author proposes to consider structures and mechanisms governing events in question. Instead of deductivism, which, as Lawson believes, is a fundamental feature of orthodox economics, the abductive method of economic explanation is proposed that entails investigation of major powers, on which any social phenomenon depends. Society is thereby regarded not as a closed, but rather as an open system.

Yu.F. Samarin’s Model of the National State: Between Archaic and Modern

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Alexey B. Panchenko
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
The State ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
National State ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
The Face ◽  
Identical Position ◽  
Ethnocultural Community ◽  
Communicative Space

Yu. F. Samarin’s works are traditionally viewed through the prism of his affiliation with Slavophilism. His view of the state is opposed to the idea of the complex empire based on unequal interaction of the central power with the elite of national districts. At the same time it was important for Samarin to see the nation not as an ethnocultural community, but as classless community of equal citizens, who were in identical position in the face of the emperor. Samarin’s attitude to religion and nationality had pragmatic character and were understood as means for the creation of the uniform communicative space inside the state. This position for the most part conformed with the framework of the national state basic model, however there still existed one fundamental difference. Samarin considered not an individual, but the rural community that owned the land, to be the basic unit of the national state. As the result the model of national state was viewed as the synthesis of modernistic (classlessness, pragmatism, equality) and archaic (communality) features.

The Prophetic Voice of the Church in a Democratic South Africa – A Theological Reflection

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

Bulgaria’s Economy 1989–2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-282
Author(s):  
Georgy Ganev
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
State Of The Economy ◽  
Degree Of Convergence

Based on an analytical narrative, and utilizing macroeconomic and new institutional economic theory, this exposition studies the Bulgarian economy during the decades after 1989. The three decades are placed in the context of the century-and-a-half-long Bulgarian development and convergence dynamic. They are then presented in terms of clearly defined sub-periods, and each sub-period is analyzed in detail. The analysis for each period focuses on three sets of issues: macroeconomic developments, microeconomic developments, and institutional changes. The exposition ends by applying the insights from the analysis to the question of whether the state of the economy in Bulgaria as of 2019 gives grounds for pessimism (Bulgaria will continue the cycles of unsuccessful convergence) or for optimism (Bulgaria will achieve an unprecedented degree of convergence in the coming decades). The answer is that at present both expectations can be supported by sets of serious arguments.

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