scholarly journals Winds of Change: The Later Wittgenstein’s Conception of the Dynamics of Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Explanatory Theory ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Do So ◽  
Developing Strategies

The theme of change is one of the most prominent traits of Wittgenstein’s later work, and his writings have inspired many contemporary thinkers’ discussions of changes in e.g. concepts, ‘aspect-seeing’, practices, worldviews, and forms of life. However, Wittgenstein’s conception of the dynamics of change has not been investigated in its own right. The aim of this paper is to investigate which understanding of the dynamics of changes can be found in the later Wittgenstein’s work. I will argue that what emerges is a rich and complex picture that has the potential to aid our thinking in politics and elsewhere when developing strategies for creating changes. It can do so both as source of inspiration and by countering tempting, yet ultimately problematic ways of conceptualizing change like the hope for transforming harmful traditions and social practices with the help of a general explanatory theory of the fundamental dynamics of changes.

scholarly journals Practices of Piety: An Alternative Approach to the Study of Islamic Movements

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 520
Author(s):  
Aaron Rock-Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Gender Segregation ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Do So

This article challenges the dominant organization-centered focus of the study of Islamic movements, and argues for a turn towards social practice. To do so, it traces the rise and spread of Egypt’s leading Salafi movement, Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya (e. 1926) and its role in popularizing a series of distinct practices between 1940 and 1990. Based on the full run of this movement’s magazine, al-Hadi al-Nabawi (the Prophetic Guide, 1936–66) and al-Tawhid (Monolatry, 1973–93), the article explores the conditions in which practices such as praying in shoes and bareheaded, gender segregation and the cultivation of a fist-length beard were both politically viable and strategically advantageous. In doing so, it not only casts light on the trajectory of this movement, but also shows how and why the articulation and performance of distinct social practices are central to how Islamic movements shape society.

Social Activism in the ‘Blackosphere’

2011 ◽  
pp. 2286-2399
Author(s):  
Lynette Kvasny ◽  
Fay Cobb Payton ◽  
Kayla D. Hales
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Activism ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Underserved Groups ◽  
Do So

Using Denning’s model of Internet activism as a sensitizing framework, this chapter describes the manner in which Black bloggers (referred to as the ‘Blackosphere’) express and negotiate their ethnic identity online. We analyze discussions in the Blackosphere in response to the Jena 6 case to illustrate how the Internet has empowered Black people, changed media publicity, and served as a means of collaborative activities that support social activism. It is our hope that this chapter will encourage researchers to explore further how and why historically underserved groups engage in social activism on the Internet, and the various technologies and social practices they use to do so.

To Sue or Not to Sue: How Afghan Merchants Strategically Choose to Use or Avoid Courts

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-244
Author(s):  
Haroun RAHIMI
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Formal Property ◽  
Business Climate ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
The Common ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article explores how and why Afghan merchants choose to use courts or informal dispute resolution methods. It goes beyond the common corruption and inefficiency arguments, which maintain that Afghans do not use courts because they are corrupt and inefficient. It leverages rich, original data on variation of dispute resolution practices across provinces and types of disputes to gain insights into Afghan merchants’ dispute resolution decisions. In so doing, I reveal a more complex picture of commercial dispute resolution in Afghanistan. In this article, I demonstrate that Afghan merchants do choose courts when courts enforce the parties’ expectations and courts’ judgments are necessary and effective. Moreover, while Afghan merchants do prefer informal dispute resolution methods, they do so because informal methods hold important advantages over courts in the context of Afghanistan where the formal property rights system is a failure, and the business climate is highly volatile.

scholarly journals Slow emergencies: Temporality and the racialized biopolitics of emergency governance

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Anderson ◽  
Kevin Grove ◽  
Lauren Rickards ◽  
Matthew Kearnes
Keyword(s):  
Critical Issue ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Do So

How lives are governed through emergency is a critical issue for our time. In this paper, we build on scholarship on this issue by developing the concept of ‘slow emergencies’. We do so to attune to situations of harm that call into question what forms of life can and should be secured by apparatuses of emergency governance. Through drawing together work on emergency and on racialization, we define ‘slow emergencies’ as situations marked by a) attritional lethality; b) imperceptibility; c) the foreclosure of the capacity to become otherwise; d) emergency claims. We conclude with a call to reclaim ‘emergency’.

scholarly journals Conceptualising flexibility: Challenging representations of time and society in the energy sector*

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-944 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Blue ◽  
Elizabeth Shove ◽  
Peter Forman
Keyword(s):  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Energy Sector ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Broad Agreement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Rhythms ◽  
Sector Work ◽  
Do So

There is broad agreement that the need to decarbonise and make better use of renewable and more intermittent sources of power will require increased flexibility in energy systems. However, organisations involved in the energy sector work with very different interpretations of what this might involve. In describing how the notion of flexibility is reified, commodified, and operationalised in sometimes disparate and sometimes connected ways, we show that matters of time and timing are routinely abstracted from the social practices and forms of provision on which the rhythms of supply and demand depend. We argue that these forms of abstraction have the ironic effect of stabilising interpretations of need and demand, and of limiting rather than enabling the emergence of new practices and patterns of demand alongside, and as part of, a radically decarbonised energy system. One way out of this impasse is to conceptualise flexibility as an emergent outcome of the sequencing and synchronisation of social practices. To do so requires a more integrated and historical account of how supply and demand constitute each other and how both are implicated in the temporal organisation of everyday life. It follows that efforts to promote flexibility in the energy sector need to look beyond systems of provision, price, technology, and demand-side management narrowly defined, and instead focus on the social rhythms and the timing of what people do.

scholarly journals Fire normativities: environmental conservation and quilombola forms of life in the Brazilian savanna

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Moura Fagundes
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Brazilian Savanna ◽  
Brazilian Savannah ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Normative Criteria ◽  
Modes Of Existence ◽  
Do So

Abstract The article seeks to shift away from the centrality attributed to the idea of ‘control’ in the debate on participatory fire management. To do so, it addresses three modes of existence of the phenomenon in the Brazilian savannah - queimada (burned place), fogos gerais (fire that spreads or general fires) and fogo fora do tempo (fire out of time) - aiming to explore the perceptual disparities between wanted and unwanted fires with quilombolas and environmental managers in the Jalapão region (Tocantins, Brazil). This problem is discussed in light of the concept of normativity formulated by the epistemologist George Canguilhem in dialogue with the anthropology of techniques. The goal is to contribute to a research agenda in which the distinction between ‘good fire’ and ‘bad fire’ is thematized in specific ethnographic contexts rather than from pre-given normative criteria. I conclude by arguing that the current fire management policies concern not only the legal protocol of fire authorization, but also the modulation of technical and vital processes.

The Noble

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
John Casey
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So

We can try to imagine a people who in circumstances of hardship and danger—in hunting and warfare, for instance—show endurance, persistence, indifference to pain, and an unflinching readiness to accept death. Yet it may be that these qualities do not have any important place in their picture of themselves. Their courage is simply something they take for granted and it does not go with any practice of praise and blame. They are not proud of themselves when they act bravely, nor ashamed of themselves if they fail to do so. This would be a courage that would be independent of the social practices of praise and blame, admiration and contempt, pride and shame. It would be a courage that did not fit into a scheme of values. This raises the question whether it could properly be regarded as an ethical quality, as a virtue.

Social Activism in the ‘Blackosphere'

2010 ◽  
pp. 18-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynette Kvasny ◽  
Fay Cobb Payton ◽  
Kayla D. Hales
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Activism ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Underserved Groups ◽  
Do So

Using Denning’s model of Internet activism as a sensitizing framework, this chapter describes the manner in which Black bloggers (referred to as the ‘Blackosphere’) express and negotiate their ethnic identity online. We analyze discussions in the Blackosphere in response to the Jena 6 case to illustrate how the Internet has empowered Black people, changed media publicity, and served as a means of collaborative activities that support social activism. It is our hope that this chapter will encourage researchers to explore further how and why historically underserved groups engage in social activism on the Internet, and the various technologies and social practices they use to do so.

A Theory of the Calculus of Voting

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Riker ◽  
Peter C. Ordeshook
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Explanatory Theory ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Do So ◽  
As If

Much recent theorizing about the utility of voting concludes that voting is an irrational act in that it usually costs more to vote than one can expect to get in return.1 This conclusion is doubtless disconcerting ideologically to democrats; but ideological embarrassment is not our interest here. Rather we are concerned with an apparent paradox in the theory. The writers who constructed these analyses were engaged in an endeavor to explain political behavior with a calculus of rational choice; yet they were led by their argument to the conclusion that voting, the fundamental political act, is typically irrational. We find this conflict between purpose and conclusion bizarre but not nearly so bizarre as a non-explanatory theory: The function of theory is to explain behavior and it is certainly no explanation to assign a sizeable part of politics to the mysterious and inexplicable world of the irrational.2 This essay is, therefore, an effort to reinterpret the voting calculus so that it can fit comfortably into a rationalistic theory of political behavior. We describe a calculus of voting from which one infers that it is reasonable for those who vote to do so and also that it is equally reasonable for those who do not vote not to do so. Furthermore we present empirical evidence that citizens actually behave as if they employed this calculus.3

Winch and Romanticism

Philosophy ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
D. Z. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Do So

Philosophical romanticism is the view that, in maintaining out forms of life, we are engaged in the endless task of “acknowledging the human” in reading and being read by others. Winch's discussions of “human nature” and the principle of universalizability in ethics should discourage us from imputing such romanticism to his work. On the other hand, his discussions of generality in “the human” and the human neighbourhood might tempt one to do so. Winch's contemplative conception of philosophy should, in the end, count against this temptation. His work is a passionate example of doing conceptual justice to different readings of “the human”.

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