scholarly journals From «Revolution» to «Transformations» and «Changes»? Development of Discourses of Analysis Qualitative Social Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Yury Latov
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Russian Scientific ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The One

The popular condemnation of «revolutionaryism» in post-Soviet Russia is seen as contradicting the global trends in scientific analysis of the role of revolutions in the development of society, according to which it is the revolutionary institutional changes that are most important for social progress. These ideas were first comprehensively expressed by the founders of Marxism, and in the twentieth century. in Western sociological thought «completed», on the one hand, with the theories of the scientific and technological revolution, on the other hand, with the concepts of the sociology of revolution. The desire of Russian social scientists to overcome the legacy of Soviet «forced Marxism» led to a conscious alienation from the post-Marxist sociology of revolution. In Russian scientific discourse in the 1990s–2000s. there was a displacement of the discussion of revolutionary changes by using less specific concepts of «social transformation» and «change», and in the 2010s. it joined with the government’s policy of a fundamental rejection of any revolutionary changes. As a result, Russian sociologists lose the ability to distinguish between revolutionary and evolutionary shifts in the development of Russian society, focusing mainly on their traumatic nature.

Imagining Social Transformations: Territory Making and the Project of Radical Pragmatism

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-381
Author(s):  
Philipp Dorstewitz
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Hull House ◽  
Social Scientific

Saskia Sassen today and Jane Adams more than 100 years ago are both social scientists and public philosophers of reconstruction. Both offer defining contributions to a philosophical tradition that will be identified here as “radical pragmatism”. Sassen’s theoretical stance “before method” serves as a key to understand Addams’s locally embedded urban activist projects as a form of social scientific inquiry. Sassen introduces the concept of “territory making” as a spark of hope against rampant and destructive global trends of “expulsions”, which her approach reveals. In this article this concept of “territory making” will be explored in various contexts and with particular attention to Addams’s Hull house project. It will be shown how a pragmatist brand of human imagination is critical in “territory making”. This leads to reconsidering the role of art in social transformation projects.

scholarly journals Nikolai Berdyaev about Lenin as a politician: between pragmatism, amoralism and fanatism

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
A. Lyisyuk
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Political Skills ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Party Building ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Analytical Argument ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The One

In the article, with references to various researches and politicians, is indicated, on the one hand, contradictory attitude to Lenin's personality and practice, presented in scientific and political-ideological discourse, on the other – enormous role of the communist leader with regard to the transformation of political image of the world of XX century. In addition, the concept of Leninism still keeps its influence on political processes in the post-Soviet space.In the text, using Berdyaev’s analytical argument presented in his different works, is studied set of Lenin’s personal and political skills and features which enabled him to get political victory: a) energetically strong motive of power inherent to him and fanatism; b) usage of any means to achieve revolution goals; c) reproduction of traditional for Russia model of government; d) transformation of communist doctrine into a kind of religious (totalitarian) study; e) vast usage of coercion and violence while neglecting value and freedoms of individual; f) reflection in politics historical and cultural standards which dominated in the country, what stipulated Lenin’s image compliance with the parameters of a “typically Russian man”; g) creative attitude towards Marxism ideology, which made it possible to formulate doctrine on the possibility of a socialist revolution in one country; h) institutional basis development of party building in Russia; i) creative combination of revolutionary (destroyer) and statesman features; j) political despotism and others. Berdyaev indicates on unresolved tasks of socialist construction in Soviet Russia, as after the revolution a new privileged elite appeared in the country, far from the interests of the people, and the phenomenon of social exclusion was not overcome. Defined political technologies developed by Lenin, which can be used in modern politics

Idrīs’ Libya and the Role of Islam: International Confrontation and Social Transformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio M. Morone
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
External Interference ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Internal Instability ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Cultural Reality

The formation of the Libyan state had an atypical chronology and history. It was not until the 1940s that the construction of the state and the formation of the Libyan nation took place, during the death throes of Italian colonial rule. The arrival of Idrīs on the throne was a compromise: although on the one hand it was the return to a pre-colonial and pre-modern political leadership, on the other this leadership lay within a modern institutional framework, derived from European constitutionalism. In the process of renewal of the tradition linked to the figure of Idrīs, the leader of the al-Sanūsiyyah, the Islam has been inestimably important. At the point of independence, the task was to transform Libya from an artifice of colonialism into a shared political and cultural reality; it was Islam, much more than Arabism, that was identified as the lowest common denominator. The twenty years of rule by Idrīs, from his appointment as Amīr of an autonomous Cyrenaica on 1 July 1949 to the revolution of 1 September 1969, can be summarized as a continual attempt at the opening-up and controlled reform of a strongly conservative political system, which, in view of a rapidly changing society, sought to move from a fragmented political perspective to a truly national one, without any conclusive success. Internal instability became increasingly related to external interference, not just by former colonial countries or the superpowers but also by other Arab countries such as Egypt, who were the purveyors of a project of militant nationalism: Libya became a zone of political and ideological conflict between the West and the Third World.

scholarly journals An Unattainable Ideal: Youth and Patriotism in Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-149
Author(s):  
Jussi Lassila
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Patriotic Education ◽  
The One

The chapter discusses patriotism’s role and future prospects in Russia in relation to its principal target, Russia’s youth. Beneath the overall conformism with the Kremlin’s patriotic policies, youth’s relatively marginal engagement with any fixed patriotic identity is to be found among a variety of patriotic activists who prefer a distinct patriotic position to the state and the rest of society. In generational terms, Russia is witnessing a deepening gap between the policymakers of patriotism and the youth. On the one hand, the state repeatedly attempts to strengthen patriotism as an ideological tool in controlling societal and cultural processes, while, on the other hand, youth’s departing views from Soviet-like modes of patriotic education ignite demands to increase the role of patriotism further. Over the course of the next 10–15 years, it is very likely that an change in the balance between Soviet-era and post-Soviet cohorts of policymakers and conductors of patriotic policies will have a significant impact on the role and meaning of patriotism in Russian society.

scholarly journals Feminism for the 99% or Solidarity in the House of Difference? Intersectionality and Social Reproduction Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-2021) ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Abibi Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Seamless Integration ◽  
Social Reproduction Theory ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The One

Intersectionality is often understood to exist primarily as a corrective to other emancipatory theories rather than as a theory in its own right. Social reproduction theory (SRT), a strain of Marxist feminism exemplified in this article by contributors to the volume Social Reproduction Theory – Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression published in 2017, is characterized by a self-understanding that involves incorporating intersectional insights as a reaction to Black feminist interventions. In this narrative, intersectionality itself becomes obsolete, serving first and foremost as a step on SRT’s dialectical journey to becoming a better theory. Allegedly undertheorized intersectional frameworks constitute an ever-present foil for SRT’s self-image as an emancipatory theory of the capitalist social whole. This narrative is problematized on multiple levels in this article. SRT and its depiction of intersectionality are summarized in the first part of the paper. The second part demonstrates, on the one hand, that a historicization of intersectionality as ‘intervening’ into Marxist feminist theories, adding an intersectional perspective to feminist analysis of capitalism, ignores the formative role of analyses of Black women’s position as working subjects within overarching capitalist structures in intersectional thought. On the other hand, SRT's narrative occludes practical and theoretical implications of a framework that explicitly theorizes resistance from the margins. Building on this critique of SRT’s understanding of intersectionality, the third part develops an intersectional notion of solidarity, thus showing that the ostensibly seamless integration of intersectional insights into SRT obfuscates a potentially fruitful tension between the two frameworks pertaining to their respective understandings of solidarity and social transformation.

Acorn and Oak

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The North ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

To Parse The Subtle Distinctions between Europe and America must strike observers from other parts of the globe as an exercise in the narcissism of minor differences. Like twins keen to differentiate themselves, some nations eagerly distinguish among countries that are, seen globally, much of a muchness. During the cold war, the unity of the North Atlantic nations against the Soviet empire was obvious. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, new antagonisms emerged. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Israel: these are the immediate bones of contention. The larger issue has been the role of the United States, the one remaining superpower, as its regnum is tested by Middle Eastern wars, Russian saber rattling, and Chinese aspirations to great power status. Perhaps, as some Europeans argue, the United States has become a rogue state, unilaterally exempting itself from the strictures of mutual dependence in an increasingly interwoven world. Perhaps, as some Americans reply, Europeans live in a cloud-cuckoo land where conflict is considered ultimately to be based on misunderstandings, not real differences, and talk can therefore replace guns. These are geopolitical debates we need not enter into here. We are concerned, however, with the geopoliticians’ frequent and facile elisions between internal and external politics. Because Americans own guns, they like to go to war. Because they drive big cars, they need to secure oil supplies in the Middle East. Because they are religious, they see themselves as crusaders. Because continental Europeans do not have functioning armies and refuse to pay for any, they turn foreign policy into a talking shop. Because they spend their money on social benefits, they cannot afford to defend themselves and must therefore appease the aggressors. Because of their own traumatic past, they refuse to acknowledge the continuing reality of evil in the world. In this book, I have shown that, in almost every quantifiable respect, the United States and Western Europe approximate each other. Earlier, I have accounted for some of the ways that social scientists have tried, and failed, to typologize differences between Europe and America.

Stephen Wise and Americanism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi Storch
Keyword(s):  
Business Leaders ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Municipal Politics ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Public ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The One ◽  
Global War ◽  
Labor Leaders

Over the first half of the 20th century, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (1874–1949) devoted himself to solving the most controversial social and political problems of his day: corruption in municipal politics, abuse of industrial workers, women’s second-class citizenship, nativism and racism, and global war. He considered his activities an effort to define “Americanism” and apply its principles toward humanity’s improvement. On the one hand, Wise joined a long tradition of American Christian liberals committed to seeing their fellow citizens as their equals and to grounding this egalitarianism in their religious beliefs. On the other hand, he was in the vanguard of the Jewish Reform, or what he referred to as the Liberal Judaism movement, with its commitment to apply Jewish moral teachings to improve the world. His life’s work demonstrated that the two—liberal democracy and Liberal Judaism—went hand in hand. And while concerned with equality and justice, Wise’s Americanism had a democratic elitist character. His advocacy to engage the public on the meaning of citizenship and the role of the state relied on his own Jewish, male, and economically privileged perspective as well as those of an elite circle of political and business leaders, intellectual trendsetters, social scientists, philanthropists, labor leaders, and university faculty. In doing so, Wise drew upon on Jewish liberal teachings, transformed America’s liberal tradition, and helped to remake American’s national understanding of itself.

On the question of the ambivalent nature of "Protestant ethics"

2021 ◽  
Vol - (1) ◽  
pp. 116-134
Author(s):  
Anton Finko
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The One

The article emphasises that Max Weber’s works, counselled by Bohdan Kistiakivskyi and dedicated to the analyses of revolutionary events of 1905 in the Russian Empire, contain somewhat controversial conclusions. On the one hand, a prominent German thinker believed that Russian social-reformist liberal democracy has embarked on the path of self-renunciation by virtue of the fact that its only historical chance laid within the system of zemstvo and under the conditions of the implementation of a way more moderate agricultural programme than the one advocated by cadet liberalism. On the other hand, he substantiated a view that Russian society turned to the Western European model, renouncing patriarchal “agrarian communism” and narodnichestvo (Russian populism). The comparison between Weber’s and Kistiakivskyi’s standpoints is then made, as of thinkers who, together with Simmel and Sombart, considered social relations in terms of social rationalisation. The convergence of views of these theorists is demonstrated through a deliberately positive attitude to anti-centralism of Mykhailo Drahomanov, criticism of the democratic intelligentsia radicalisation, and condemnation of its pan-moralism (focus on the total struggle for “truth”; non-recognition of ethical neutrality in assessments; assumption that human consciousness is focalised around ethics). The difference is said to be particularly demonstrated by the fact that Bohdan Kistiakivskyi was much less concerned with the role of the Protestant-Reformation factor in the genesis of liberal ideology. The article instantiates that sectarian Protestant puritanism, especially the heterodoxy of Protestant ethics of the Reformation, can be characterised as a phenomenon with a fundamentally dual and ambivalent nature. The aforementioned phenomenon formed a dual causal connection with both the “spirit of capitalism” and the “spirit of agrarian communism” condemned by Weber. That is the worldview of the bourgeois-liberal social class as well as the socially disadvantaged groups of the peasantry. Some of Weber’s references to Müntzer (f.e., that peasant riots headed by Thomas Müntzer had a decisive influence on the evolution of Luther’s views) allow us to believe that Weber himself understood the full extent of the ideological ambiguity of the Protestant phenomenon.

scholarly journals Pro/Con: Are Schools Limiting the Development of Creativity

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-316
Author(s):  
Džejla Idrizović
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
Education School ◽  
The One ◽  
Pedagogical Literature

Due to its comprehensiveness and extreme complexity, the phenomenon of creativity has always attracted the attention of researchers, but only with the rapid development of science, technique, and technology, more intensive studies of this phenomenon began in the early 1990s. The importance of creativity is pointed out by numerous theorists, emphasizing the importance of this phenomenon on an individual, social and global level. Creativity plays a major role in creating individual meaningful works that contribute to wider social progress. The rapid progress of science and technology requires new and unusual reactions, and consequently, modern society is looking for young inspiring, talented, inspired, creative and innovative people who will be able to respond to the challenges they face every day. Education plays a key role in preparing them for life in modern society, but critics of modern education question the role of the school in encouraging and developing creativity. On the one hand, the school is an institution that cultivates creativity and creative activities, but on the other hand, as many say, the school kills and suffocates everything that young people would have and could show. This paper discusses the concept of creativity, as well as the role of education, school, and teachers in encouraging and awakening creativity in young people. The analysis of relevant and recent pedagogical literature seeks to answer the question of whether and in what way the school is limiting the development of creativity, what are the obstacles and blockers of creativity in school, and how to eliminate them.

scholarly journals A semiotic interpretation of national typology: the English, the Boers and ... the Russians (Ivan Goncharov’s Frigate Pallas)

Literator ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
H. Mondry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Dual Model ◽  
Cultural Model ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

This article examines the text of renowned nineteenth century Russian travellers notes, The Frigate Pallada, by Ivan Goncharov, the author of Oblomov. Using the teachings of Victor Shklovsky, Yurij Tynianov and Yurij Lotman on the role of the genre of travellers notes in the history of Russian literature, the author examines the chapter on the Cape Province. She demonstrates that in his descriptions of the two nations of the Cape Province - the English and the Boers - Goncharov is applying that which is known to him - his own cultural model of the Russian society of the mid-nineteenth century. In his examination of differences between the English and the Boers Goncharov applies the ideological dichotomy between the Slavophiles and the Westernisers. Goncharov, by "inverting" the "dual model of Russian culture" (Lotman & Uspensky, 1984a) draws comparisons between the Russians of the Oblomov Slavophile type on the one hand, and the English on the other hand as the model for the improvement of the industry of the economically backward Russian nation. To Goncharov the Boers resemble the Oblomov, old world side of dichotomy, which by inversions of the dual model can fluctuate between "the good" and "the bad" categories.

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