The birth and evolution of American elitology in the XX — early XXI century

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
A.P. Khlynin ◽  

This study analyzed in details the genesis of American school of study of elites in the period from the middle of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century. In this case the author makes an attempt to classify the main phases of American elitology from the 40s of the 20th century. Based on an analysis of papers of well-known American sociologists and political scientists who study elites, the author states the main approaches in relation to the study of elites. Thus, in the 1940s, the dominant approach to understanding elites was the liberal-democratic, according to which access to the elites is open for everyone who has extra skills in different spheres of society. At the same time stands a technocratic approach, which define elite as a group of professional managers who form a new class of technocracy. In 50s–60s liberal-democratic approach has been criticized by left-wing approach. From this point, elite was defined as a narrow layer of financiers and persons, who are close to the president, and this layer is closed. In the 60s–70s, the most popular approach of studying elites was pluralism. According to which, elite has no monolithic origin — it is a complex of interconnected independent elites. From the beginning of the 70s, the basic principles of pluralism have been criticized by neoelitism, according to which the most elite representatives included in most elite groups simultaneously. The late 20th — early 21st century can be characterized in two ways: dispute between pluralists and neoelitists and attempts to operationalize the concept of elite.

Author(s):  
Lev Zaks ◽  

The article offers a culturological vision of publicity, and partly correlative privacy as universal aspects of the joint existence of people. The analysis methodology is based on the perception of culture as a universal specific way of existence of people and society; the perception of society as a sociocultural system; the perception of the evolution of society and all areas of its existence as a result of their holistic sociocultural determination. Publicity is considered in terms of its characterisation as a sociocultural phenomenon (space-time, socioanthropological, functional, communicative, discursive), and then the evolution of publicity as a function and the product of the cultural system is outlined. The main (and diverse) sociocultural influential factors having determined substantial changes in features of publicity (and its relationship with privacy) as from the second half of the 20th century to the present day are analysed: left-wing influence and democratisation of societies after World War Two; rising prosperity of citizens; origination of consumer society; release of public psychology from some conventional cultural taboos including as a result of secularisation and the sexual revolution; widespread and influential mass-media; informational revolution (information society). Critical effects of these factors in respect of publicity and its evolution have been shown. The information revolution of the second half of the 20th century to the early 21st Century is considered as the crucial factor of the radical qualitive transformation of social life, processes of its institutionalisation and with it, public and private spheres. Peculiarities of contemporary online publicness and its relationship with online privacy are addressed. Axiological problems of online publicness are highlighted.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Meis ◽  
J.M. Tyree

Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorgen Segerlund Frederiksen ◽  
Stacey Lee Osbrough

Abstract. Systematic changes, since the beginning of the 20th century, in average and extreme Australian rainfall and temperatures indicate that Southern Australian climate has undergone regime transitions into a drier and warmer state. South-west Western Australia (SWWA) experienced the most dramatic drying trend with average streamflow into Perth dams, in the last decade, just 20 % of that before the 1960s and extreme, decile 10, rainfall reduced to near zero. In south-eastern Australia (SEA) systematic decreases in average and extreme cool season rainfall became evident in the late 1990s with a halving of the area experiencing average decile 10 rainfall in the early 21st century compared with that for the 20th century. The shift in annual surface temperatures over SWWA and SEA, and indeed for Australia as a whole, has occurred primarily over the last 20 years with the percentage area experiencing extreme maximum temperatures in decile 10 increasing to an average of more than 45 % since the start of the 21st century compared with less than 3 % for the 20th century mean. Average maximum temperatures have also increased by circa 1 °C for SWWA and SEA over the last 20 years. The climate changes are associated with atmospheric circulation shifts and are indicative of second order regime transitions, apart from extreme temperatures for which the dramatic increases are suggestive of first order transitions.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2094325
Author(s):  
Dr. Carol Harrington

Coined in late 20th-century men’s movements, “toxic masculinity” spread to therapeutic and social policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia, and men’s violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context. However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term’s origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualizing discourses that have historically targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender hierarchies and individualize responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.


Author(s):  
Anton Franks

As ways of making meaning in drama strongly resemble the ways that meanings are made in everyday social life, forms of drama learn from everyday life and, at a societal level, people in everyday life learn from drama. Through history, from the emergence of drama in Western culture, the learning that results at a societal level from the interactions of everyday social life and drama have been noted by scholars. In contemporary culture, electronic and digitized forms of mediation and communication have diversified its content and massively expanded its audiences. Although there are reciprocal relations between everyday life and drama, aspects of everyday life are selected and shaped into the various cultural forms of drama. Processes of selection and shaping crystallize significant aspects of everyday social relations, allowing audiences of and participants in drama to learn and to reflect critically on particular facets of social life. In the 20th century, psychological theories of learning have been developed, taking note of the sociocultural relationships between drama, play, and learning. Learning in and through drama is seen as being socially organized, whole person learning that mobilizes and integrates the bodies and minds of learners. Making signs and meanings through various forms of drama, it is interactive, experiential learning that is semiotically mediated via physical activity. Alongside the various forms of drama that circulate in wider culture, sociocultural theories of learning have also influenced drama pedagogies in schools. In the later part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, drama practices have diversified and been applied as a means of learning in a range of community- and theater-based contexts outside of schooling. Practices in drama education and applied drama and theater, particularly since the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, have been increasingly supported by research employing a range of methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Thuy Trung Luu

In the history of Vietnamese drama, Saigon was one of the places absorbing Western drama from the early time. Although drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City didn’t develop in a smooth and straight way, it was a continuous and unbroken process. This process brought in strong development of drama in Ho Chi Minh city in two decades of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. However, in recent years, drama in Ho Chi Minh City seems to proceed slowly, which reflects some irrational aspects from drama script, performance art to performance operation. Therefore, it’s high time to review the whole history of drama in Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City to collect experiences for the steady development of drama in this City in the future.


Author(s):  
Iryna Mishchenko

The purpose of this article is to consider the peculiarities of the reflection of the city – its architecture and inhabitants – in the works of Chernivtsi artists of the 20th and early 21st century, to analyze the differences between their views on the reproduction of urban motifs. The methodology consists in the application of the historical-chronological method, art analysis, and generalization, comparative and systematic approach. The scientific novelty lies in the introduction into scientific circulation of works by artists of the specified time, in understanding the evolution in the reflection of the city in the works of authors with various artistic orientations. Conclusions. In the paintings and graphics of the 20th – 21st centuries, several options for solving urban landscapes can be defined, among which the most common is a careful reflection of existing architectural monuments. In the 19th century in European art, in particular in Impressionist painting, the desire to convey not only the appearance but above all the spirit of the city became noticeable, depicting the townspeople, emphasizing the bustle or poetry of squares and streets. At the turn of the 20th-21st centuries the artists are no longer limited to the usual fixation of what is seen, but try to create a conceptual image of the city, to tell a story through iconic images and symbols, reveal their own position in particular and to preserve the authenticity of an object or the city in general. Such a variety of approaches for creating an urban landscape is partly due to differences in preferences formed during studies in art institutions and is also characteristic for the art of Chernivtsi – a city where people of many nationalities with different cultural traditions have lived side by side for centuries. Ultimately, the artists who worked here in the 20th century were often graduates not only of Ukrainian schools or universities, but also of well-known European institutions, including Vienna, Munich, Florentine, Berlin, Kraków, or Bucharest academies. While in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century the city often appears as the sum of certain architectural structures in the works of artists of Bukovina and visiting masters (F. Emery, R. Bernt, J. Shubirs), in the second half of the 19th – first third of the 20th century the artists mostly try to recreate the dynamics of urban life instead, sometimes depicted with a touch of irony, using the grotesque in the image of the inhabitants (lithography and watercolors by F.-K. Knapp, O. Laske and G. Löwendal). Subsequently, we meet emphasized mood images, in which the author's subjective perception of a particular motive, which he seeks to reproduce in a work full of emotions, is important (L. Kopelman, G. Gorbaty). A peculiar historical retrospection is present in the exquisite graphics of O. Kryvoruchko and in the distilled-finished sheets of O. Lyubkivsky, and the lyrical watercolors and sketches of N. Yarmolchuk represent the non-festive side of the city center. In O. Litvinov's paintings Chernivtsi surprises with desolation and restraint, and in M. Rybachuk's paintings it is distinguished by an unexpected riot of colors. Therefore, each of the artists creates his own image of Chernivtsi, which landscapes often become only a stimulus for the author's imagination, allowing him to depict a completely individual sense of space and life of the city.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Natalia Dyadyk ◽  

Introduction. The article is focused on studying the area of intersection of contemporary art and philosophy, it is a continuation of the research project on conceptual art and its intersection with philosophy, which we started earlier. By conceptual art, we mean art aimed at intellectual comprehension of what has been seen, art that appeals to thinking and generates philosophical meanings. But if earlier we explored conceptual cinema and mainly visual art of the early 20th century, then in this article we want to turn to the visual art of the second half of the 20th century — the beginning of the 21st century, which is also called contemporary art by art critics. The empirical material of the study was the works of such contemporary artists as E. Warhol, D. Koons, D. Hirst, J. Ono, F. Bacon, I. Kabakov, D. Kossuth, the movement of “new realists” and photorealists, the movement of Moscow conceptualists and etc. Contemporary art is one of the ways of understanding the world, visual philosophy, which is of interest for philosophical understanding. The purpose of the article is to conduct a philosophical analysis of visual art of the second half of the 20th — early 21st I centuries in order to identify its philosophical sources and content. Methods. The author uses the following general scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, induction, deduction, abstraction. When analyzing works of conceptual art, we use hermeneutic and phenomenological methods, a semiotic approach. We also use the symbolic-contextual method of analyzing exhibition concepts, which is based on identifying the philosophical meanings and ideas of exhibitions of contemporary art. Scientific novelty of the study. We regard contemporary art as a visual philosophy. Philosophizing, in our opinion, can exist in various forms and forms from everyday practical (the so-called naive philosophizing) to artistic-figurative, that is, visual. Philosophical ideas or concepts are born not only from professional thinkers, but also from artists. The artistic concepts of contemporary artists are similar to the concepts of philosophers, since the goal of both is to cognize the world and grasp being. We find and describe the area of intersection of modern philosophy and contemporary art, each of which is in a situation of crisis separately and continuous dialogue together. Results. In the course of our research, we identify and describe the philosophical origins of visual art in the second half of the twentieth century - early twenty-first century: postmodern philosophical consciousness, conceptualism, the idea of “death of the author” and “death of art”, simulacrum, kitsch and camp, the method of deconstruction and its application in modern art. Conclusions. Visual art of the second half of the 20th century — early 21st century is a visual form of philosophical questioning about the essence of art itself, about the existence of a person and being in general. The works of contemporary artists are based on philosophical problems: meaning, speech and meaning, the ratio of the rational and the irrational, the problem of abandonment and loneliness of a person, the problem of the “death of the author” and the alienation of the creator from his work, the idea of the impossibility of objective knowledge of reality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-95
Author(s):  
Gražina Daunoravičienė

Against the background of the Lithuanian professional music modernisation over the late Soviet period through to the early 21st century, the study focuses on the theoretical-compositional system of dodecatonics by the most consistent Lithuanian modernist Osvaldas Balakauskas (b. 1937). Based on it, the conceptualisation of the composer’s creative process, the modern expression construing specificity, the socio-political and cultural context, and the aesthetic value will be revealed. By interpreting the process of modernisation from the viewpoint of parataxical comparativism, the relationship between the dodecatonics and other 20th century ­stheoretical-compositional systems as well as the theoretical tradition will be examined. The issues of individualisation of the 12-tone technique and the implementation of the principles of the Dodecatonics in Balakauskas’’ compositions will be discussed. The system is contextualised in the milieu of the inculcation of “formalistic” modernist doctrines in Lithuania and the USSR and of the updating of composing systems and the development of new ones.


Author(s):  
John Giblin

This article outlines historical and ongoing uses of the past and academic heritage research into those activities within eastern Africa. The use of the past will be discussed as a deep historical practice in the area that is the EAC in the 21st century, demonstrating how political elites have constructed versions of the past to suit contemporary and future aims for hundreds of years. Then there is an outline of the colonial introduction of formalized Western heritage institutions and legislation in the early 20th century, the subsequent nationalization of these in the mid-20th century, and the late-20th- and early-21st-century internationalization of heritage. These overviews are followed by a discussion of different approaches to heritage research including early studies of museums, traditions, heritage management, archaeological introspections, and more recent “critical heritage studies,” which interrogate the use of the past as a form of cultural production.


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