Children as Victims

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Fassin
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the politics of childhood in the context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. It employs the concept of “moral economy” to address the ways in which the tragedy of orphanhood became crystallized as a notion; the constellation of moral sentiments within which it has become entangled; the political debates in which orphanhood has been deployed and transformed; and the interventions that have relied on it as an orienting principle. It proposes to consider moral economies as “the production, distribution, circulation, and utilization of moral sentiments, emotions and values, norms and obligations in the social space.” Understood in this way, moral economy is constructed around social issues, such as immigration, violence, poverty—and childhood—in particular historical contexts. The chapter explores the interface between the global circulation and utilization of moral sentiments with regard to children, and their local production and distribution, as part of a larger project of a moral history of the present focused on “humanitarian reason.” The politics of childhood is particularly relevant to our understanding of humanitarianism—its aspirations and its contradictions.

The Social Space of Terror: Towards a Civil Interpretation of Total War

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
K Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Urban Places ◽  
Second World

In the paper I seek to interpret modern warfare from the perspective of civil society and its geography. I emphasize the predicament of civilians who are subject to direct and deliberate armed assaults. Particular attention is given to enforced uprooting or removals of population, and to annihilation of urban places with weapons of mass destruction. Two case histories are explored, both taken from the last months of the Second World War. They are, the expulsion of German civilians from Eastern Europe, and the firebombing of Japanese cities, especially Tokyo. Damages and casualties are detailed. However, the main concern is to establish the composition, plight, and responses of civilian populations, and this includes their relation to national war efforts. It is concluded that the vast majority, because of gender, age, health, occupation, and class, were essentially marginal to, and little involved in, the war efforts of their respective states. This contrasts sharply with the assumptions or rhetoric of the theory of ‘total war’, and the practice of targetting civilians and nonmilitary areas. It is suggested that the majority of home populations remain civilians in the fullest sense of the term, even in wartime. From this it follows that assaults upon them by military forces are primarily strategies of terror, and that the ‘social space’ attacked is essentially civilian. Such uprootings and mass destruction of human settlements have, however, become an ever larger part of the war strategies, and the history of warfare, of most powers since 1945.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'S COMMENTAIRE

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIANNA ENGLERT
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Elements ◽  
Liberal Thought

As part of Benjamin Constant's academic “revival,” scholars have revisited the political and religious elements of his thought, but conclude that he remained uninterested in the nineteenth century's major social and economic questions. This article examines Constant's response to what would later become known as “the social question” in his Commentary on Filangieri's Work, and argues that his claims about poverty and its alleviation highlight central elements of his political liberalism, especially on the practice of citizenship in the modern age. By interpreting social issues through his original political lens of “usurpation,” Constant encouraged skepticism of social legislation and identified the political implications of a “disinherited” poor class. The lens of usurpation ultimately limited the scope of Constant's solutions to poverty. But his attention to social and economic issues prompts us to reexamine the category of “the social” and its uses in the history of liberal thought, particularly the place of class concerns in the French liberal tradition.

Revisiting the History of Socio-professional Classification in France

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (04) ◽  
pp. 697-732
Author(s):  
Thomas Amossé
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Statistical Tool ◽  
Subsequent Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pragmatic Sociology

The result of a process begun in the nineteenth century, the French system of socio-professional classification (code des catégories socio-professionnelles) was drawn up between 1951 and 1954 and has only been slightly modified since. With no strong theoretical framework and conceived according to a realist approach, it gave substance to social classes in the description of postwar society. During a period of “reworking” (1978-1981), it became an exciting topic of sociological exploration, furnishing a representation of Pierre Bourdieu’s two-dimensional social space and serving as a laboratory for the pragmatic sociology of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. In a subsequent period of “updating” (1995-2001), administrative caution regarding changes contrasted with the evolution of categories used in labor law and the goal of analytical purity underpinned by econometrics. The history of this classification details the peculiar position of a statistical tool for representing the social world, ostensibly static amidst constant changes to the institution that managed it, the actors who used it, the social categories—everyday or legal—to which it referred, and, finally, the sociological theories that gave it a conceptual grounding.

Social entrepreneurship: answering “the call of nature”

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Ogbechie
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Credit Card ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social

Subject area The case concerns sustainability and social entrepreneurship. Study level/applicability The case is relevant for teaching sustainability and social entrepreneurship to MBA students as well as for executive training programmes for middle- and senior-level employees. Case overview The Dignified Mobile Toilets (DMT) case describes how the innovative idea of Isaac Durojaiye, popularly known as Otunba Gadaffi, yielded a lot of socioeconomic and environmental impact and changed the face of sanitary health in Nigeria as well as glamorized what he called “shit business.” The case gives an account of how Isaac Durojaiye – a graphic artist and a credit card fraud investigator – conceived and built the first mobile toilet in Nigeria by using a 40-feet container. Initially, he had to battle with the lack of patronage, as not a single order came in for the first four years that the wagon toilet was displayed. But Durojaiye was not discouraged because he was involved in security consulting along with the sanitary job. The case recounts how the Founder/CEO of DMT mobile toilets identified social issues (lack of public toilet facilities, poverty, disease, unemployment, crime and so on) in the society and turned it into business success; his efforts helped the development of the social sector in Nigeria. The case also narrates the growth of the mobile toilet market in Nigeria and DMT's market share of this sector. This case also describes the poor state of public toilet facilities in Nigeria, which forced people to answer the call of nature in open places, thereby polluting the environment and jeopardizing public health. The DMT marketing strategy and how the company made proper use of the area boys and widows to franchise their toilets was stated. The case also highlights the social and environmental impact of DMT toilets and the company's future direction. Expected learning outcomes The case will help student see opportunities in the social space and understand that there are business models that provide both social and economic benefits simultaneously. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email: [email protected] to request teaching notes.

URBAN FOOTBALL PERFORMANCES: PLAYING FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD IN SENEGAL, 1950s–2000s

Africa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susann Baller
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Social Space ◽  
National Football League ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The State ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

ABSTRACTIn Senegal, neighbourhood football teams are more popular than teams in the national football league. The so-called navétanes teams were first created in the 1950s. Since the early 1970s, they have competed in local, regional and national neighbourhood championships. This article considers the history of these clubs and their championships by focusing on the city of Dakar and its fast-growing suburbs, Pikine and Guédiawaye. Research on the navétanes allows an exploration of the social and cultural history of the neighbourhoods from the actor-centred perspective of urban youth. The history of the navétanes reflects the complex interrelations between young people, the city and the state. The performative act of football – on and beyond the pitch, by players, fans and organizers – constitutes the neighbourhood as a social space in a context where the state fails to provide sufficient infrastructure and is often contested. The navétanes clubs and championships demonstrate how young people have experienced and imagined their neighbourhoods in different local-level ways, while at the same time interconnecting them with other social spaces, such as the ‘city’, the ‘nation’ and ‘the world’.

scholarly journals POWER AND PUNISHMENT IN M. FOUCAULT’S GENEALOGICAL PROJECT

2019 ◽  
pp. 158-168
Author(s):  
Ivan V. Ryazanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
Object Description ◽  
Visual Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analytical Reconstruction

The article proposes analytical reconstruction of the French philosopher and historian M. Foucault’s interpretation strategy related to the genealogical project The History of Punishment. The object of cognition marginalization is content moment of this reconstruction, as contributing to both the transformation of the research subject field and the genealogical identification of the object. There are defined the rules of reconstruction, contributing to the diffusion of the methodological approach to power in the genealogy of M. Foucault. The article substantiates the position that the use of some individual rules of reconstruction cannot lead to methodological unity in the genealogical project due to the marginal-positive identification of the object and the structure of The History of Punishment. Comparison of J. Deleuze’s functional analysis and M. Foucault’s genealogical approach to the problem of power points to the diffusion of the method, which is unable to localize its object in the social space. In many ways, this will be facilitated by the use of the visual model as an epistemological one, which is traditional for Foucault’s research. All the dynamic and structural characteristics that are used in Foucault’s genealogy to analyze the concept of Microphysics of power will be reduced to marginal anthropology. In the genealogical period of the French thinker’s work, marginal anthropology is regarded as a way of constructing genealogical reality. Genealogical description as a method of a marginal object description is viewed as a consequence of methodological diffusion. The phenomenon of disciplinary power is considered as a marginal construction, deriving the concept of normal-abnormal from the totality of disciplinary practices, structuring the European society. M. Foucault’s focus on marginal anthropology will serves as a basis for the transition to The History of Sexuality project.

The Two Faces of Debt

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Stefan Nygård
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North

This introductory chapter surveys the notoriously ambivalent concept of debt. It connects different approaches to debt in social theory and anthropology to the book’s focus on how past debts are mobilised in political debates in the present, and how the ‘North’ has been portrayed as indebted to the ‘South’ for its development, and vice versa. Both questions are framed by the way in which understandings of debt tend to gravitate towards reciprocity or domination. In view of its fundamental ambiguity, debt thus underpins both social cohesion and fragmentation. While it has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. A tension between debt as the glue of social bonds and debt as hierarchy consequently runs through the social history of the concept. Applied to regional and global North-South relations, discussions on debt have often centred on the question of retribution, involving difficult disputes over possible ways of settling debts in the present for injustices incurred in the past.

SIM’s Directions: “Back to the Future”

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (7) ◽  
pp. 1418-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin M. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Service Award ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

This essay addresses directions for the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division from the perspective of “Back to the Future.” The author was chair of the SIM Division in 1983 to 1984 and the 1989 recipient of the SIM Division’s Sumner Marcus Distinguished Service Award. The essay reviews the general history of SIM during the 1960s and 1970s in which the University of California, Berkeley, played a key role in organizing conferences. The author explains his approach as an applied empiricist to research concerning SIM. The essentials are power, legitimacy, responsibility, rationality, and values, and understanding how they impact the ongoing day-to-day interactions within, between, and among business organizations, their leadership, and other sectors of society. SIM is a field of diverse inquiry which has been the recipient of perspectives and persons drawn not only from multiple disciplines, particularly from the social sciences, law, and management, but also from the humanities and sciences. SIM is patently multi- and inter-disciplinary.

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