scholarly journals SUSTAINABILITY IN ANTHROPOCENIC TIMES: A DIDACTIC PROPOSAL FOR A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL APPROACH OF PROBLEMS OF SUSTAINABILITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 200-220
Author(s):  
Thomas Block ◽  
Erik Paredis ◽  
Peter Van Aert
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
The Political ◽  
Classroom Setting ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Debate ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Didactic Material ◽  
Political Character

COVID-19 reaffirms that we are living out the consequences of the Anthropocene. In terms of education this affirmation has considerable implications: we must overcome the profound divisions between the fields of Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences while at the same time recognizing the political character of educational and scientific practices.Sustainability is an idea that potentially embodies the elements that respond to these two challenges, but only distancing ourselves from a technocratic-instrumental approximation and assuming a political approach to the idea. Post-normal science provides an adequate framework for this because the emerging problems present democratic challenges that demand other academic and educational treatment.Our intention with this text is to contribute didactic material that incentivizes the introduction of this conceptual debate into the classroom setting. Far from proposing a confrontation between the dominant mode of thought, in this paper we propose an argument that seeks to untangle the basic components of our thesis and show the arbitrariness of all the theoretical constructions that result from that. We hope, in this way, to contribute to a transdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education that consists in uncovering the political dimension of this issue, to repoliticize education, transcend the division between relativism and objectivism and, encourage theoretical positioning without determinisms. 

The Rockefeller Foundation, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the Cold War

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim B. Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Western Government ◽  
The Cold War

This article surveys the activities and funding priorities of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) during the first two decades of the Cold War, from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. Drawing on documents from the RF's own archive as well as Western government repositories, the article focuses on the foundation's support for research in the social sciences and the humanities. The article first gives an overview of RF policies and grants during the early Cold War and then discusses the political dimension of the foundation's philanthropic practices. The main part of the article looks in detail at two specific RF projects in the humanities and social sciences that exemplify the political and intellectual features of the early Cold War. The final section considers the nature of modernity, modernization, and the Cold War.

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

The Distribution of Emotions: Affective Politics of Emancipation

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Bargetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well‐known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics.

The Mathematics of Society: Variation and Error in Quetelet's Statistics

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social

“Let us apply to the political and moral sciences the method founded upon observation and upon calculus, the method which has served us so well in the natural sciences.” The social sciences have known no truer follower of Laplace's dictum than Adolphe Quetelet. His mécanique sociale, later physique sociale, was conceived as the social analogue to Laplace's mecanique celeste, and embodied the results of an unswerving commitment not only to the presumed method of celestial physics, but even to its concepts and vocabulary. It is too weak to say that Quetelet's goal was the transmission of the achievements of celestial physics into the social sphere. He aspired to nothing less than imitation.

scholarly journals O tempo, dentro e fora dos espetáculos: trabalho e ócio na Carta a d’Alembert [The time, inside and outside the spectacles: labor and idleness in the Letter to d'Alembert]

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (45) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Thiago Vargas
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Social Reading

Retomando uma leitura política e social da Carta a d’Alembert proposta por Bento Prado Jr. e Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes, este artigo busca estender e desdobrar algumas importantes implicações desta tradição de leitura: investigar uma reflexão econômica e os desenvolvimentos de uma economia política associada aos espetáculos, conforme apresentada na Carta. Afinal, contestando uma específica concepção de espetáculo defendida pelos enciclopedistas, Rousseau, sublinhando o caráter político presente nos debates sobre a atividade teatral, incessantemente se atenta para o contexto social e econômico no qual uma peça se insere. Neste contexto, considerando-se ainda a oposição que a Carta apresenta contra etnocentrismo dos philosophes, pretendemos analisar como então é desenvolvida uma crítica à ociosidade – ou uma apologia ao trabalho – que tem em vista fortalecer os argumentos dirigidos contra o teatro parisiense. Exploraremos, portanto, os aspectos de economia política que compõem a argumentação de Rousseau ao longo do texto. [Resuming a political and social reading on the Letter to d’Alembert proposed by Bento Prado Jr. and Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes, this paper aims to further important consequences carried out by this tradition: to analyze an economic reflection and the developments of political economy thoughts associated with the theatre, as presented in Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert. Challenging a specific conception of spectacles advocated by the encyclopedists, Rousseau, highlighting the political character present in the discussions on the theatrical activity, draws attention to the social context in which a play takes place. In this context, and considering the opposition that the Letter presents against the philosophes’ ethnocentrism, we aim to analyze how a critique of idleness – or a praise of labor – is developed, with a view to strengthen the arguments pointed against the Parisian theatre. Most of all, we will seek to highlight the political and economic aspects that make up Rousseau’s arguments.]

scholarly journals Wacana Kepemimpinan Perempuan Dalam Film ‘Opera Jawa’ Karya Garin Nugroho

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Toni
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strategic Role ◽  
Political Agents

The paper discusses the film by Garin Nugroho based on a discourse analysis developed by Fairclough. The film titled “Javanese Opera” directed by Garin became one of the films that raised the theme of Javanese women in domestic and political space. How Garin in the discourse of Javanese women became interesting because his works were widely recognized as coloring the development of national films and his works were recognized internationally. The research method used a qualitative approach, while the analysis used was Fairclough’s discourse analysis. The gender leadership discourse in Indonesia is represented by Garin Nugroho as a dynamic discourse relating to the sociopolitical context and power based on the national philosophy, culture and values of pluralism adopted by the Indonesian people. The socio-political context in this film is how women’s perspectives are represented as social agents and political agents in looking at the leadership leadership in Indonesia. In the social dimension, Javanese women are represented as the center of male spiritual power which has a strategic role in shaping male leadership character. In the political dimension, Javanese women are represented as agents of public space in the political contestation of power which is realized by various strategic steps in conducting global political competition.

scholarly journals Making Home(s) in Displacement

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilde Heynen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Practice ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Architectural Perspective ◽  
The Relationship

Making Home(s) in Displacement critically rethinks the relationship between home and displacement from a spatial, material, and architectural perspective. Recent scholarship in the social sciences has investigated how migrants and refugees create and reproduce home under new conditions, thereby unpacking the seemingly contradictory positions of making a home and overcoming its loss. Yet, making home(s) in displacement is also a spatial practice, one which intrinsically relates to the fabrication of the built environment worldwide. Conceptually the book is divided along four spatial sites, referred to as camp, shelter, city, and house, which are approached with a multitude of perspectives ranging from urban planning and architecture to anthropology, geography, philosophy, gender studies, and urban history, all with a common focus on space and spatiality. By articulating everyday homemaking experiences of migrants and refugees as spatial practices in a variety of geopolitical and historical contexts, this edited volume adds a novel perspective to the existing interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of home and displacement. It equally intends to broaden the canon of architectural histories and theories by including migrants' and refugees' spatial agencies and place-making practices to its annals. By highlighting the political in the spatial, and vice versa, this volume sets out to decentralise and decolonise current definitions of home and displacement, striving for a more pluralistic outlook on the idea of home.

“The Burdens of Urban History”: Comment

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 30-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Katznelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social History ◽  
Urban History ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The City

How, if at all, can studies of the city help us understand the distinctive qualities of the American regime? In “The Burdens of Urban History,” which refines and elaborates his earlier paper “The Problem of the Political in Recent American Urban History,” Terrence McDonald, a historian who has written on urban fiscal policy and conflict, argues that students of the city have focused their work too narrowly on bosses and machines, patronage and pluralism. In so doing, they have obscured other bases of politics and conflict, and, trapped by liberal categories of analysis, they have perpetuated a self-satisfied, even celebratory, portrait of American politics and society. This unfortunate directionality to urban research in some measure has been unwitting because historians and social scientists have been unreflective about the genealogies, and mutual borrowings, of their disciplines. Even recent critical scholarship in the new social history and in the social sciences under the banner of “bringing the state back in” suffers from these defects. As a result, these treatments of state and society relationships, and of the themes that appear under the rubric of American “exceptionalism,” are characterized by an epistemological mish-mash, a contraction of analytical vision, and an unintended acquiescence in the self-satisfied cheerleading of the academy that began in the postwar years.

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