scholarly journals Theories of the Intellectual Commons

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-62
Author(s):  
Antonios Broumas
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Transition Plans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Normative Criteria ◽  
Rational Choice Theories ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Intellectual Commons

Noting the growth of academic interest in the concept of the commons this chapter introduces the main theoretical trends that have been formulated in relation to the analysis of the intellectual commons and their relation with capital. In this context, four families of theories are distinguished on the grounds of their epistemological foundations, their analytical tools with regard to social actors, social structures and the dynamics between them, their normative criteria and, finally, their perspectives on social change. Rational choice theories draw from the work of Elinor Ostrom offering a perspective of complementarity between commons and capital. Neoliberal theories elaborate on the profit-maximising opportunities of the intellectual commons and further highlight their capacities of acting as a fix to capital circulation/accumulation in intellectual property-enabled commodity markets. Social democratic theories propose the forging of a partnership between a transformed state and the communities of the commons and put forward specific transition plans for a commons-oriented society. Critical theories conceptualise the productive patterns encountered within intellectual commons as a proto-mode of production which is a direct expression of the advanced productive forces of the social intellect and has the potential to open up alternatives to capital. In the conclusion, of the chapter the four theoretical frameworks are compared, with the aim of formulating a strong theory of the intellectual commons evaluated from the standpoint of their approach to social change. Critical tenets from each theory are utilised as the bedrock for the moral justification of an intellectual commons law.

scholarly journals Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Antonios Broumas
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Peer Production ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Intellectual Commons

The intellectual commons exhibit propensities with a positive potential for society, bearing ethical substance but are in need of protection and advancement under the auspices of law. Theories of the intellectual commons provide substantial justifications for the promotion of commons-oriented institutions in contemporary societies. In this chapter the author details afresh the tendencies, manifestations and moral dimensions of the intellectual commons and how the social research in this book provides empirical evidence about the existence of distinct sequences and circuits of social value circulating. This leads directly to the justification of an Intellectual Commons Law. What might be the fundamentals of such a new body of law? The crucial first step, it is argued, would be the reconstitution of the public domain as a common space of sharing, collaboration, innovation, and freedom of expression through policies for its protection, expansion and enrichment. Secondly, a commons-oriented legal framework ought to unconditionally recognise and protect the creative practices within commons-based peer production and guarantee the characteristics of societal constitutionalism encountered in intellectual commons communities. Finally, commons-oriented legal institutions ought to introduce sets of extensive rights to access, work upon and transform information, knowledge and culture for non-commercial purposes. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future legal research focusing on particular fields within commons-oriented policymaking reimagining the commons-based elements already present within intellectual property law proposing their reconstruction in a novel and systematic way into an independent commons-oriented body of law.

Education and Social Change: A Critique of Contextualism

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Explanatory Adequacy ◽  
Education And Social Change

The concept ‘social context’ has become increasingly common in educational research. But unproblematic use of the concept has masked significant differences in its conceptualization. This paper examines the ‘social context’ and hence the trend to contextualism, as a locus of conceptual conflict. The origins of the concept are traced and competing contemporary conceptualizations are critically examined. The analysis indicates that different conceptualizations are underpinned by different philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks. These give rise to quite different analyses and understandings of educational phenomena. The paper argues that such conceptual conflict should not be ignored. The already valuable trend to contextualism would be enhanced by confronting and evaluating the competing conceptualizations. By highlighting the limitations and potential of different positions their explanatory adequacy would be revealed, thereby setting an agenda of necessary critical work for their advocates.

scholarly journals Talking to the Visuals: Exploring Ideology of Generations through Semiotic Landscape of Whatsapp Statuses

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Mehreen Zafar ◽  
Dr. Muhammad Ahsan ◽  
Muhammad Naeem
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Generation X ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Multimodal Discourse ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
The Social ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Study ◽  
Analytical Tools

Whatsapp statuses are an example of computer-mediated communication. The current qualitative and quantitative study aims to explore the ideology of Whatsapp users and highlight the differences among the generations through the semiotic landscape of Whatsapp statuses. The analytical tools of “David Machin and Andrea Mayr” (2012) and theoretical principles of “Kress and Leeuwen” (1996) helped to analyze the multimodal discourse of WhatsApp statuses. A survey was also conducted to know the stance of Whatsapp users. Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of 630 Whatsapp statuses of 90 participants in social semiotics represented Post-Millennials, Millennials, and Generation X with clear differences in their ideologies. The differences are louder for gaze, distance, iconography, colors, vector, angle, and frames. The results of the survey show that Post-Millennial give much value to Whatsapp statuses as 92% of them display statuses daily. All three generations have quite separate reasons to use Whatsapp statuses; only informing others is the common reason between Millennials and Generation X. Basically, the users of Whatsapp statuses are the social actors who represent their cognitive meanings socially.

scholarly journals Cultural Commons and the Law from the Renaissance to Postmodernity: A Case Study

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-87
Author(s):  
Antonios Broumas
Keyword(s):  
Positive Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
Copyright Laws ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Commons ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
Intellectual Commons

The fourth chapter of the book narrates the history of culture from the prism of the intellectual commons. It thus shifts the focus of analysis from the enclosures of intellectual property law to the significance of intellectual sharing and collaboration across history. Further developing arguments of legal historians over the evolution of copyright this chapter unfolds the argument that, despite their prominence, in recent historical periods socialised creativity and inventiveness have been framed by copyright laws in a way that has suppressed the social potential of the intellectual commons, instead of accommodating them. This theorisation of the intellectual commons across history examines the evolution of the regulation of cultural commons from the Renaissance to postmodernity. Its aim is to examine in parallel, on the one hand, the importance of the commons for art and culture and, on the other hand, the discrepancy of their treatment under positive law.

Time of Society and Time of Experience: Multiple Times and Social Change

KronoScope ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Leccardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Historical Times ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
Analytical Tools

Abstract J. T. Fraser highlighted the distinctive connections between the different levels of temporality that characterize the human timescape. In this context, he also demonstrated a clear awareness of the relationship between sociotemporality and the existential processing of time. Human experience, in its myriad expressions, bears the mark of the social processes and dynamics within which it takes shape. Analyzing this relationship, we can assert that identity itself is marked by the conception of time that characterizes a given historical period. Processes of social change, forms of experience, identities and expressions of subjectivity are therefore interwoven. The ways in which we experience and conceive of time should therefore also be interpreted in the light of this interconnection. In this particular period, information technologies appear to have the power to redefine the whole of human experience, including our experience of time. After analyzing the close relationship between time and identity, and the multiplicity of temporal dimensions it comprises, referencing social phenomenology, the paper explores the nature of the processes of change that characterize our era—starting from the crisis of the future and the dynamics connected to the acceleration of time. The general aim is to highlight the link between historical times, social times and individual times. It looks at the reflection formulated by J. T. Fraser on the multiplicity of times as it relates to the analytical tools developed by the sociology of time.

scholarly journals Two attempts at grounding social critique in „ordinary“ actors’ perspectives: The critical theories of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Marjan Ivkovic
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Axel Honneth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Criteria ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Normative Foundations

This paper analyzes two contemporary, ?third-generation? perspectives within critical theory - Nancy Fraser?s and Axel Honneth?s - with the aim of examining the degree to which the two authors succeed in grounding the normative criteria of social critique in the perspectives of ?ordinary? social actors, as opposed to speculative social theory. To that end, the author focuses on the influential debate between Fraser and Honneth Redistribution or Recognition? which concerns the appropriate normative foundations of a ?post-metaphysical? critical theory, and attempts to reconstruct the fundamental 29 disagreements between Fraser and Honneth over the meaning and tasks of critical theory. The author concludes that both critical theorists ultimately secure the normative foundations of critique through substantive theorizations of the social, which frame the two authors? ?reconstructions? of the normativity of everyday social action, but argues that post-metaphysical critical theory does not have to abandon comprehensive social theory in order to be epistmologically ?non-authoritarian?.

scholarly journals ‘Rewriting sociality’ – sociographicity as a concept for comprehending emancipatory practice and social change

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Pilch Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social World ◽  
Collective Modes ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Societal Learning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Emancipatory Practice

The aim of the paper is to highlight the capacity of social actors, groups and communities to critically reflect on sociality and the question of how the spaces we live in together are created and constructed. In doing so, the contribution explores the interplay between individual and collective modes of learning. The author argues in this context that theories dealing with the dialectical relationship between structures and subjects somewhat overlook the relevance of civil spheres. Drawing on empirical research of social movements, emancipatory practices and social change, the author developed a theoretical tool which allows mapping processes of ‘rewriting sociality’ and its relation to biographical learning as well as community and societal learning. The article reviews biographicity as a rich and generative concept and will pay particular attention to questions of intersubjectivity and the social world as a relational sphere. Finally, the paper focuses on aspects of social movement practices and questions concerning the reproduction and transformation of social conventions and normative assumptions.

Entanglements between Agency and Vulnerability in the Phenomenon of Birth. Reflections on Children’s Expressions about ‘Being Born’

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2-2020) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Catrin Heite ◽  
Veronika Magyar-Haas
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cultural Embeddedness

Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Germana
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial History ◽  
The Face

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist examines Ralph Ellison’s body of work as an extended and ever-evolving expression of the author’s philosophy of temporality—a philosophy synthesized from the writings of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche that anticipates the work of Gilles Deleuze. Taking the view that time is a multiplicity of dynamic processes, rather than a static container for the events of our lives, and an integral force of becoming, rather than a linear groove in which events take place, Ellison articulates a theory of temporality and social change throughout his corpus that flies in the face of all forms of linear causality and historical determinism. Integral to this theory is Ellison’s observation that the social, cultural, and legal processes constitutive of racial formation are embedded in static temporalities reiterated by historians and sociologists. In other words, Ellison’s critique of US racial history is, at bottom, a matter of time. This book reveals how, in his fiction, criticism, and photography, Ellison reclaims technologies through which static time and linear history are formalized in order to reveal intensities implicit in the present that, if actualized, could help us achieve Nietzsche’s goal of acting un-historically. The result is a wholesale reinterpretation of Ellison’s oeuvre, as well as an extension of Ellison’s ideas about the dynamism of becoming and the open-endedness of the future. It, like Ellison’s texts, affirms the chaos of possibility lurking beneath the patterns of living we mistake for enduring certainties.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.

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