scholarly journals The Social Oikos

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Michael Lee Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Core Points

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.

Where Spirituality Ebbs and Flows: Religion and Diasporic Alienation in Ask the Dust

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-57
Author(s):  
Suzanne Manizza Roszak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
John Fante ◽  
White Majority ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Ebb And Flow

In recent scholarship on the work of John Fante, issues of spirituality and the sacred have not been a popular emphasis. Yet in Ask the Dust spirituality is intrinsically tied to representations of the Italian diasporic experience in the United States, including social alienation and selective accommodation, two key concepts in diaspora theory. Despite his self-professed Americanism, Fante’s protagonist Arturo Bandini faces alienation by members of Los Angeles’s white majority, and he hesitates to adopt entirely the social mores of this culture into which he has thrust himself. The ensuing ebb and flow of his spirituality becomes a barometer of both of these experiences. Bandini’s skepticism about organized religion and even the existence of God marks his attempts to shake off his Italian cultural inheritance and accommodate the norms of secular, consumerist America. At the same time, he exhibits almost violent bursts of investment and pride in Catholic doctrine and culture that indicate the depth of his alienation in 1930s Los Angeles. Tracing this ebb and flow of investment in the sacred allows us to reach a more nuanced understanding of both the novel and the Italian diasporic experience in the United States.

A Lack of Language – Waging War or Combatting Crime? The Blurred Rule of International Law in the Face of the Attacks of September 11, 2001

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Binder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations

After the terrorists' attacks of September 11, 2001, a lot of war rhetoric came out of the public and private sphere within the United States of America. On October 7, 2001, however, the rhetoric turned into reality as President George W. Bush countered the terrorist attacks and the threat of future terrorism with military means. While waging that new war U.S. governmental officials constantly make one important point, and that is that the United States are just exercising their right of self-defense. Moreover, on the day after the attacks, the Security Council of the United Nations unanimously reaffirmed the inherent right of self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations. Does that mean that international law is just that clear?

“Imagined Territory: The Republic of China’s 1955 Veto of Mongolian Membership in the United Nations”

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-295
Author(s):  
Keith Allan Clark II
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Republic

In 1955, Jiang Tingfu, representing the Republic of China (roc), vetoed Mongolia’s entry into the United Nations. In the 26 years the roc represented China in the United Nations, it only cast this one veto. The roc’s veto was a contentious move because Taipei had recognized Mongolia as a sovereign state in 1946. A majority of the world body, including the United States, favored Mongolia’s admission as part of a deal to end the international organization’s deadlocked-admissions problem. The roc’s veto placed it not only in opposition to the United Nations but also its primary benefactor. This article describes the public and private discourse surrounding this event to analyze how roc representatives portrayed the veto and what they thought Mongolian admission to the United Nations represented. It also examines international reactions to Taipei’s claims and veto. It argues that in 1955 Mongolia became a synecdoche for all of China that Taipei claimed to represent, and therefore roc representatives could not acknowledge it as a sovereign state.

scholarly journals Contraction and Expansion: The Divergence of Private Sector and Public Sector Unionism in the United States

1988 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Union Status ◽  
Contraction And Expansion ◽  
Public Sector Unionism

The institutional structure of the American labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s. What explains the decline in union representation of private wage and salary workers? Why have unions expanded in the public sector while contracting in the private sector? Is the economy-wide fall in density a phenomenon common to developed capitalist economies, or is it unique to the United States? To what extent should economists alter their views about what unions do to the economy in light of the fact that they increasingly do it in the public sector? To answer these questions I examine a wide variety of evidence on the union status of public and private workers. I contrast trends in unionization in the United States with trends in other developed countries, particularly Canada, and use these contrasts and the divergence between unions in the public and private sectors of the United States to evaluate proposed explanations.

scholarly journals The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 205943642110467
Author(s):  
Ngai Keung Chan ◽  
Chi Kwok
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Behavioral Predictions

This article uses a comparative case study of two ride-hailing platforms—DiDi Chuxing in China and Uber in the United States—to explore the comparative politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism is an emerging economic system that translates human experiences into surveillance assets for behavioral predictions and modifications. Through this comparative study, we demonstrate how DiDi and Uber articulate their operational legitimacy for advancing their corporate interests and visions of datafication in the face of legal uncertainty. Although DiDi and Uber are both “sectoral platforms” in urban mobility with similar visions of datafication and infrastructuralization, we highlight that they deploy different discursive legitimation strategies. Our study shows that Uber adopts a “confrontational” strategy, while DiDi employs a “collaborative” strategy when they need to legitimize their data and business practices to the public and regulatory authorities. This study offers a comparative lens to examine the social and political dynamics of platform firms based in China and the United States and, therefore, contributes to understanding the various aspirational logic of platform thinking in different political contexts.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-46
Author(s):  
Marc DiPaolo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Anxieties ◽  
Contemporary Context

Examines case studies of fictional heroes as analogues of real-life working-class figures to encourage greater empathy between members of different classes. Doing so will help scholar, undergraduate, and fan readers understand the very contemporary context of America through the lens of fictional characters who are understandably resonant with a broad swath of the public during this politically divided time. The essays in this anthology contemplate the social anxieties that attend class conflict in the United States and Great Britain, and consider how fictional comic book narratives depict these cultural anxieties.

Introduction

1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nasaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
The Public ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Colleges And Universities

A history of American public schooling reduced to graphs would tell a simple story of almost continuous growth. In every category, the graphs would incline upwards, recording a steady rise in the number of students in school, the time they spent there, the teachers who taught them, the schools that housed them, and the dollars expended. The upward trend would continue unbroken from the 1820s until the 1970s. We cannot, at this time, chart the downward course that has commenced (if only temporarily) in the mid-1970s. We know only that that part of the American public that votes on school bond issues and makes its opinions known to professional pollsters is no longer willing to spend as much money or place as much trust in public schooling as it once was. It is too soon to predict the future course of public schooling in America, but a good time to reconsider the past. To understand why Americans have grown disillusioned with their public schools we must look beyond the immediate present to the larger history of the United States and its public schools. The public schools of this country—elementary, secondary, and higher—were not conceived full-blown. They have a history, and it is the social history of the United States. This essay will not attempt to present that history in its entirety but will focus instead on three specific periods decisive for the social history of this society and its public schools: the decades before the Civil War, in which the elementary or “common schools” were reformed; the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, in which the secondary schools “welcomed” the “children of the plain people”; and the post-World War II decades, which found the public colleges and universities “overwhelmed” by a “tidal wave” of “non-traditional” students— those traditionally excluded from higher education by sex, race, and class. In each of these periods, the quantitative expansion of the student population was matched by a qualitative transformation of the enlarged institutions.

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