scholarly journals “Nutella versus Church”. Worship, Need, and Social Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-314
Author(s):  
Konrad Müller
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Attendance Rates ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Direct Competition

Abstract The following essay argues that worship attendance rates stand in direct competition with current social developments at all times. The author bases his arguments upon the empirical research results found in the sociological study by Martin Engelbrecht “Human–Routine–Worship”, which determined criteria for church attendance. He discovered that people are motivated to participate in routines or rituals based on needs. These needs can be described in the following seven categories: pleasure; self-determination; self-care; locality; sense of purpose; structure and orientation; and aesthetics. Müller focuses more closely on four of these needs and explores how 1) each of these needs is influenced by social change, and 2) how this can affect the decision to participate in worship. Müller emerges with the axiom: these needs describe a person's inner demand on his or her outer world. And while religious worship addresses these inner needs and fulfils them (or not), each and every social (outer) change will correspondingly influence a person's decision to attend worship (or not). The trajectory of worship is always two-way: worship is certainly the product of social change, yet worship can also effect change in society because of its transformative power.

Building hydrosocialism in Czechoslovakia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 610-633
Author(s):  
Jiří Janáč
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
The West ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
The 1960S

Throughout the period of state socialism, water was viewed as an instrument of immense transformative power and water experts were seen as guardians of such transformation, a transformation for which we coin the term 'hydrosocialism'. A reconfiguration of water, a scarce and vital natural resource, was to a great extent identified with social change and envisioned transition to socialist and eventually communist society. While in the West, hydraulic experts (hydrocrats) and the vision of a 'civilising mission' of water management (hydraulic mission) gradually faded away with the arrival of reflexive modernity from the 1960s, in socialist Czechoslovakia the situation was different. Despite the fact they faced analogous challenges (environmental issues, economisation), the technocratic character of state socialism enabled socialist hydraulic engineers to secure their position and belief in transformative powers of water.

The Ruse of Repair

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Stuelke
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

Since the 1990s, literary and queer studies scholars have eschewed Marxist and Foucauldian critique and hailed the reparative mode of criticism as a more humane and humble way of approaching literature and culture. The reparative turn has traveled far beyond the academy, influencing how people imagine justice, solidarity, and social change. In The Ruse of Repair, Patricia Stuelke locates the reparative turn's hidden history in the failed struggle against US empire and neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s. She shows how feminist, antiracist, and anti-imperialist liberation movements' visions of connection across difference, practices of self care, and other reparative modes of artistic and cultural production have unintentionally reinforced forms of neoliberal governance. At the same time, the US government and military, universities, and other institutions have appropriated and depoliticized these same techniques to sidestep addressing structural racism and imperialism in more substantive ways. In tracing the reparative turn's complicated and fraught genealogy, Stuelke questions reparative criticism's efficacy in ways that will prompt critics to reevaluate their own reading practices.

scholarly journals Cyclical theories of social change: Spengler and Toynbee

Sociologija ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-312
Author(s):  
Dragoljub Kaurin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
The West ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Historical Cycles ◽  
Proper Unit ◽  
Oswald Spengler

This paper is centrally concerned with discussing critically and rethinking the theoretical concepts put forward by Oswald Spengler in Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History. It focuses on the theoretical, heuristic and epistemological value of these theories in the era of renaissance of philosophic history in some quarters (see for example Graham, 2002) and cooperation between social sciences. Spengler is credited with the idea of historical cycles, rethinking of the progressivist view and discovering a radically different approach to the study of the human past, which is embodied in his idea of culture as the proper unit for historical and sociological study. However, some of his views proved to be intrinsically intellectually dubious, but on the whole, his was a major contribution to the study of social change. Arnold Toynbee on the other hand was more empirically and sociologically oriented, while Spengler?s views are more heavily philosophical. Toynbee partly developed his ideas rather consistently, but at the same time included many unclear and inaccurate points in his theory. Both authors can be rightfully considered to be classical authors in this field and both provided incentive for studies that cross-cut social sciences (philosophy, history, sociology). Moreover, Decline of the West and A Study of History are truly post-disciplinary works.

scholarly journals “Just Existing Is Activism”: Transgender Experiences in Martial Arts

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Anna Kavoura ◽  
Alex Channon ◽  
Marja Kokkonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Diversity Education ◽  
Change Strategies ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Context Specific

This study focuses on transgender experiences in martial arts. Interviews with three Finnish and two British transgender martial artists were thematically analyzed, and findings were interpreted through the lens of queer theory. Two themes were identified related to the ways that transgender martial artists experience their sporting contexts, namely martial arts as an empowering and inclusive context and the challenges related to being transgender in martial arts. Two themes were also identified when it comes to participants’ strategies for coping with cis-/heteronormativity in martial arts. Whenever possible, participants employed social change strategies, whereas other times, they drew on self-care strategies. Following this, we suggest a need for context-specific, protective policies; nonbinary means of organizing sport; and gender diversity education for instructors to better cater for the specific needs of transgender people in sport.

I Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale. Una proposta solida nella societŕ liquida

2009 ◽  
pp. 95-122
Author(s):  
Letizia Carrera
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Economic Model ◽  
Illusion Of Control ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Political Impact

- In the currently liquid and uncertain world, purchasing represents a dimension where individuals live the illusion of control over their own lives. Solidarity Purchasing Groups (or GAS, an Italian acronym for Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale) aree an attempt to reverse this model, and to build relationships not despite but through the market and purchasing. They choose products and producers on the basis of respect for the environment and solidarity between the members of the groups, traders, and producers. GAS aree rooted in a critical approach to today's global economic model and lifestyle of consumerism; individuals that feel the unfairness in this model and who aree searching for a practical alternative can find reciprocal aid and advice by joining solidarity purchasing groups. They aree a catalyst of political and social change. Empirical research, which completes these reflections, points out two very different ways to live this experience: "health cares" ("salutisti") and "critical protester" ("contestatori critici"). Only the second one is characterized by a strong, albeit scarcely perceptible, political impact.Keywords: Solidarity Purchasing Groups, Purchase, Market, Civicness, Political Participation.

scholarly journals A Critique of the Concepts of “Youth” and “Generation” as Applied in Empirical Research in Contemporary Tunisia

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 881-908
Author(s):  
Jonas Roellin
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Mobilization ◽  
Reference Category ◽  
Age Cohort

Abstract In this paper, I argue that both concepts of “youth” (arabic “šabāb”) and “generation” (arabic “ğīl”) are in different ways misleading and problematic when applied in empirical research on Tunisians of lower age. While they are not affirmatively used and partly even rejected by the latter, they also appear inadequate when employed as analytical categories. Instead, as I will suggest, (historical) “age cohort” is an adequate reference category that can be qualitatively described according to the shared perceptions and actions of its respective members. Thereby, the focus on self-concepts and self-narratives appears to be particularly helpful in understanding the contemporary condition of Tunisians of lower age and their social mobilization practices. It reveals, among other findings, that their movements are not primarily directed at political and social change, though conventionally assumed, but rather express a search for greater possibilities of mobility and autonomy beyond both state and societal boundaries.

scholarly journals The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology

1980 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria E. Bonnell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Important Place ◽  
American Sociology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sociological Tradition

The sociological study of history has only recently achieved recognition in American sociology. Although historical research occupied an important place in the nineteenth-century European sociological tradition, American scholars long accepted a disciplinary division relegating the study of the past to historians, while reserving contemporary subjects for sociological investigation. The field of historical sociology first witnessed a revival in the 1950s with the publication of Reinhard Bendix's Work and Authority in Industry (1956) and Neil Smelser's Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (1959). During these years, a small chorus of voices called for a more historical approach to sociological problems and closer cooperation between the two disciplines.

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