scholarly journals On Cynicism: Activist and Artistic Responses to Corruption in Ghana

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Girish Daswani
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social

By considering how Ghanaian activists and artists engage with different forms of cynicism in their attempts to fight corruption, this article reflects on two kinds of activist orientations: one located in future-oriented projects of political change, and another embracing contradiction by poking fun at the duplicity of politics. I argue that while the cynicism of other middle-class Ghanaians served as an important catalyst for activist action, it is important to look at cynicism and its politics from the perspective of Ghanaians who become disappointed and skeptical about change and artists who are concerned with embracing contradictions and making fun of the present through satire. By attending to the social actions and experiences that characterize these two groups, I ask what it means to take cynicism, and activism against and despite cynicism, as one’s ethnographic object. Abstract Dis paper na about de two different way aluta and jolly-jolly people for Ghana dey show say dem “disappoint and lose hope” when dem dey fight magomago: one way na to struggle and believe say tomorrow go betta, and de oder way na to join yabis, abuse and comedy to fight wayo politics. My own argument here be say, even when e be true say many ordinary people for Ghana join aluta because dem don disappoint and lose hope for how magomago don spoil tings, e make big sense also to put eye for how aluta people for Ghana wey disappoint for sake of magomago come lose hope so tey dem no believe tings fit change for betta again and dose jolly-jolly people wey join yabis togeda with abuse now to fight magomago. When I put eye for dis two different way people dey behave when dem dey fight magomago, my plan na to show wetin dey happen when person wey don lose hope and disappoint come join aluta struggle with am to show how people dey behave.

Commitment to pro- versus counter-attitudinal behavior and the dynamics of social representations

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tafani ◽  
Lionel Souchet
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Cognitive Restructuring ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Two Dimensional Model ◽  
Students Attitudes

This research uses the counter-attitudinal essay paradigm ( Janis & King, 1954 ) to test the effects of social actions on social representations. Thus, students wrote either a pro- or a counter-attitudinal essay on Higher Education. Three forms of counter-attitudinal essays were manipulated countering respectively a) students’ attitudes towards higher education; b) peripheral beliefs or c) central beliefs associated with this representation object. After writing the essay, students expressed their attitudes towards higher education and evaluated different beliefs associated with it. The structural status of these beliefs was also assessed by a “calling into question” test ( Flament, 1994a ). Results show that behavior challenging either an attitude or peripheral beliefs induces a rationalization process, giving rise to minor modifications of the representational field. These modifications are only on the social evaluative dimension of the social representation. On the other hand, when the behavior challenges central beliefs, the same rationalization process induces a cognitive restructuring of the representational field, i.e., a structural change in the representation. These results and their implications for the experimental study of representational dynamics are discussed with regard to the two-dimensional model of social representations ( Moliner, 1994 ) and rationalization theory ( Beauvois & Joule, 1996 ).

Multiple-source Record Linkage in a Rural Industrial Community, 1680–1820

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Multiple Source ◽  
Demographic Analysis ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Outline

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.

MENELUSURI JEJAK DAN KIPRAH KIAI MOHAMMAD HASAN GENGGONG; DALAM MEMBANGUN KEPEMIMPINAN SPRITUAL-TRANSFORMATIF

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fauzi ◽  
Chusnul Muali
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
Transformative Leadership ◽  
Social Recognition ◽  
School Students ◽  
Value System ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Science

Pesantren and social value system is the result of constructing kiai's thoughts and social actions as an inseparable entity. This study aims to interpret the role and social action of kiai Moh Hasan, both as a fighter (al-haiah al-jihaadi li'izzi al-Islaami wal muslimin) in the community as well as guidance and guidance for the community (al-haiah al ta 'awuny wa al takafuly wal al ittijaahi) and teaching in educational institutions (al-haiah al ta'lim wa al-tarbiyah), significantly contributes greatly to the social realities of society in Indonesia. Portrait of central figure kiai Moh Hasan can not be separated from the depth of his field of Islamic science, simplicity, kezuhudan, struggle, sincerity and generosity. This view, not only recognized among the people around the boarding school, students and colleagues, but also spread in some areas in Indonesia. The fame of kiai Moh Hasan among scholars, habaib and society has many karamah and some other privileges, not even a few from the social recognition of kiai Moh Hasan Genggong, because the kiai are believed to have closeness with God, thus perceived as auliya'Allah. Thus the role and social actions of the kiai above, gave birth to the value system, so as to influence and move the social action of other individuals. The internalization of the aforementioned values becomes social capital in building a spiritual-based transformative leadership, as a strong leadership model and conducts various changes in the social field, by transforming the value of the ethical values.

Ethical criteria of civilization choice

2019 ◽  
pp. 92-113
Author(s):  
Mykhaylo Loshchinin ◽  
Yurii Privalov ◽  
Yuriy Sapelkin
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethical Criteria

The article discusses the understanding of civilizational choice as a sequence of political, social, cultural and other historical events. An assessment is made of the scale of social actions aimed at the civilizational reversal of society. The authors attempted to assess the risks of civilizational choice along the social vertical, using previously developed theoretical models of social risks for a socially heterogeneous society. In the course of the study, different phenomena related to the solution of the problem of ethics of civilizational choice were considered.

СОВРЕМЕННОЕ РОССИЙСКОЕ ОБЩЕСТВО КАК ПРОСТРАНСТВО КОНФЛИКТА

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
V. V. Gorshkova ◽  
A. A. Melnikova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Russian

The article considers the contradictions and conflicts that are characteristic of modern Russian society. The processes of social disintegration are analyzed and interpreted as a result of fundamental social and economic transformations. The problems of economic inequality are presented in the historical perspective in close connection with the previous stages of Russia's socioeconomic development. Significant polarization of the population is one of the most significant conflict factors in modern society, which leads to an increase in protest moods and may in the long term threaten social upheavals. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction with the socio-economic situation does not lead to ideas of the unification and consolidation of society, but find expression in social conflicts. The emergence and development of social conflicts is influenced by a number of factors: economic, ethnic, religious. One of the most important characteristics of society is its social structure. After the collapse of the USSR, the previous social structure was abolished, and a new social reality was formed in Russia. When considering the stratification structure of society, most attention is paid to the middle class, which is considered the backbone of a stable society. The middle class in Russia is in the stage of formation, it is hardly possible to speak of a complete analogy with the middle class of Western society. The share of middle class in society can be estimated in different ways depending on the methodological approaches used by researchers. An important consequence of the transformation of the social structure was the problem of marginalization, since the dismantling of the old social structure and the slow formation of the new one put the social status and place in the division of labor system of many individuals into question. The sharp impoverishment of representatives of prestigious professions led to a reassessment of their situation, especially for the younger generation. When analyzing the origins of social conflicts in modern Russian society, it is necessary to consider the issue of the attitude of the broad masses of the population to power and national elites. It should be noted that power in Russia historically takes shape around specific leaders and does not have an institutional character. The most significant factor shaping the attitude towards the authorities and the elite in general in Russian society are the economic results of the market reforms that have taken place. Only a small part of the population believes that they won as a result of the changes that have taken place, the natural consequence of which is the population's distrust of the authorities and, in general, political institutions.

Who is Rational?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ben Prestel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Dynamic Transformation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Emergence

Beginning around 1860, authors in the Egyptian capital portrayed Cairo’s changing cityscape and the recent emergence of local newspapers in terms of their impact on rationality (‘aql). In their descriptions, these contemporaries depicted rationality as an education of the heart that especially enabled men from the middle class to control their bodies and passions. The chapter shows that Cairo’s transformation was, however, not always associated with rising rationality by drawing on a different set of sources. Police and court records from the 1860s and 1870s demonstrate that contemporaries also described processes of urban change as a danger to the “honor” of lower-class women. Like the debates in Berlin, emotional practices in Cairo thus served as a way to address the social formation of the Egyptian capital during a time of dynamic transformation.

Charles Dickens and the Properties of Fiction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Dense Network ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Domestic Ideology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Literary Collaboration ◽  
Economic Relationship

This book explores the significance of rental culture in Charles Dickens’s fiction and journalism. It reveals tenancy, or the leasing of real estate in exchange for money, to be a governing force in everyday life in the nineteenth century. It casts a light into back attics and landladies’ parlours, and follows a host of characters—from slum landlords exploiting their tenants, to pairs of friends deciding to live together and share the rent. In this period, tenancy shaped individuals, structured communities, and fascinated writers. The vast majority of London’s population had an immediate economic relationship with the houses and rooms they inhabited, and Dickens was highly attuned to the social, psychological, and imaginative corollaries of this phenomenon. He may have been read as an overwhelming proponent of middle-class domestic ideology, but if we look closely, we see that his fictional universe is a dense network of rented spaces. He is comfortable in what he calls the ‘lodger world’, and he locates versions of home in a multitude of unlikely places. These are not mere settings, waiting to be recreated faithfully; rented space does not simply provide a backdrop for incident in the nineteenth-century novel. Instead, it plays an important part in influencing what takes place. For Dickens, to write about tenancy can often mean to write about writing—character, authorship, and literary collaboration. More than anything, he celebrates the fact that unassuming houses brim with narrative potential: comedies, romances, mysteries, and comings-of-age take place behind their doors.

Realism and the Middle-Class Balancing Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 463-483
Author(s):  
Patrick Chura
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Social Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Subject

This chapter looks at the effects of capitalism and social stratification on notions of class identity in two groups of American realist novels. First, it analyzes a pair of literary responses by William Dean Howells to the 1886 Chicago Haymarket bombing as the lead-in to a discussion of realist works about voluntary downward class mobility or “vital contact.” With Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes as a reference point and paradigm, the chapter also explores the ideologies implicit in several novels about upward social mobility, noting how both groups of texts are ultimately guided by a genteel perspective positioned between dominant and subordinate classes. In similar ways, the novels treated in the chapter balance middle-class loyalties against identities from higher and lower on the social scale while sending messages of both complicity and subversion on the subject of capitalist class relations.

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