scholarly journals A Commentary on Ambedkar’s Posthumously Published “Philosophy of Hinduism”

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Intrinsic Dimension ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Critical Commentary

This paper offers a critical commentary of Ambedkar's posthumously published "The Philosophy of Hinduism," which was discovered shortly after his death.  Given previous, considerable contributions in the fields of law, economics, political and social theory, the work appears to be the beginnings of what remains an incomplete treatise on a new area of investigation for Ambedkar.  In this work, Ambedkar tackles the murky and opaque sub-field of philosophy, namely the philosophy of religion.  This paper unpacks some of Ambedkar's key insights on the nature of the philosophy of religion to test what elements - considered from a philosophical point view - constitute a religion.  Furthermore, given the historical paradigmatic shifts in the nature of religion from antiquity to modernity, Ambedkar identifies two conceptual revolutions from which he will introduce two criteria - utility and justice - to evaluate the nature of Hinduism as a religion.  Given his life-long quest to understand Hinduism and caste, ultimately, Ambedkar's goal to overcome what he says is the systemic and structural inequality of caste in the Indian social order leads him to certain negative conclusions: namely whether Hinduism can be characterized as a religion if in fact modern religions must have a foundation in some intrinsic dimension of social justice.  This paper constitutes Part I of a longer commentary.  The aspiration is that a longer Part II will ultimately extend Ambedkar's philosophical investigation into new domains for which he did not have the opportunity to explore.

The development of Garfinkel’s ‘Trust’ argument from 1947 to 1967: Demonstrating how inequality disrupts sense and self-making

2020 ◽  
pp. 1468795X1989442
Author(s):  
Jason Turowetz ◽  
Anne Warfield Rawls
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Transgender Identity ◽  
Du Bois

Garfinkel began developing his famous Trust argument, that a minimum of equality and reciprocity he called ‘Trust Conditions’ is a prerequisite for sense-making in interaction, while working with Parsons from 1946 to 1952. The argument grounds a social justice approach to social order and meaning with affinities to Durkheim’s ‘implicit conditions of contract’ and Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’. Tracing the development of the Trust argument, we examine 14 unpublished PhD proposals from 1948 in which Garfinkel formulated his approach through studies of Jewish identity that, with his earlier research on Race and subsequent studies of the ‘pre-medical candidate’ and transgender identity, demonstrate how inequality disrupts normal ordinary practices of sense and self-making. As a social theory, Garfinkel’s position builds on approaches to social action, interaction and language by Parsons, Schutz and Wittgenstein. As a systematic research programme, however, Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology charted new territory. Inspired by his own experiences as a Jewish man, he was the first to focus on how interactional troubles reveal the ‘hidden’ taken-for-granted details of how social objects and identities are cooperatively achieved in interaction and document how inequality interferes with that achievement.

Social workers, critical theory and the political sphere: addressing political misrecognition and marginalisation in the Republic of Ireland

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Electoral Representation ◽  
Irish Politics

Despite the traditional social justice mandate of social work, and critical and radical theoretical traditions that pursue egalitarian and just societies, the engagement of the social work academy with Irish politics has been underwhelming at best. While there are abstract analyses that address sociopolitical theory and ideological wrongdoings related to neoliberalist rationality, attention in social work academia to the nuts and bolts of everyday political life in Ireland, such as democratic party politics and electoral representation, leaves much to the imagination. This article therefore pursues a more grounded reading of social justice in Irish politics for social workers. The supporting proposition is that to effectively interject in political misrecognition and marginalisation, social workers must understand the present political state of play. Towards achieving this, Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition aids thematic critical commentary on the literature.

Imaginary and Rational: From Social Theory to Social Order

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4-1) ◽  
pp. 168-179
Author(s):  
Elena Erokhina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Public Expectations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
New Research

The article is devoted to the analysis of imagination as a philosophical and sociological concept that played a significant role in the development of social theory in the middle of the 20th century. Exploring the premises of the contradictory relationship between science and society, it is easy to find a connection between the development of science and social change. Currently, it is generally accepted that scientific, including social theories, through the transfer of ideas, transform the social order and, on the contrary, social practices transform knowledge about the world. The article proves that imagination plays a key role in this process. An excursion into the theory of ideas reveals the connection between imagination and irrational and experiential knowledge. The author of the article refers to the works of P. Berger and T. Luckmann, C. Castoriadis and C. Taylor, who showed a direct connection between theoretical ideas and the world of "social imaginary", collective imaginary and social changes. For the first time in the history of mankind, thanks to imagination, society does not see the social order as something immutable. Methodological cases are presented that illustrate the specific role of the concept of imagination as a source of the formation of new research strategies that allow for a new look at the problem of nationalism (social constructivism) and the study of public expectations from the implementation of technological innovations (STS). For decades, Benedict Anderson's work “Imagined Communities” predetermined the interest of researchers of nationalism in social imagination and the collective ideas based on it about the national identity of modern societies, their history and geography. The research of Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim has formed a new track for the study of science as a collective product of public expectations of an imaginary social order, embodied in technological projects. The conclusion is made about the contradictory nature of social expectations based on collective imagination: on the one hand, they strengthen the authority of science in society, on the other hand, they provoke the growth of negative expectations from the introduction of scientific discoveries. The article substantiates the opinion that imagination is an effective tool for assessing the risks of introducing innovations.

Toward a More Youthful Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Richard P. Hiskes
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
Children’S Rights ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Rights Issues

This concluding chapter begins with a discussion of how the global coronavirus pandemic called attention to children’s rights issues, specifically in how children were not allowed to participate in decisions directly affecting their “best interests,” as required by CRC. Granting children human rights will fundamentally alter the nature of both democracy and human rights. Giving children citizenship rights will renew democracy, as past enfranchisements have, but also will push democracies to resemble less Western, liberal models. Group rights will predominate in democracies where children are full citizens. Also, the human rights agendas of child-incorporating democracies will be dominated by social and economic rights issues, since children’s rights of protection and provision will be given priority. Finally, children’s participation rights will emerge as crucial in diminishing structural inequality in democratic societies, providing a pathway to a fuller form of social justice predicated on the human rights of children.

scholarly journals Die Idee einer Hegelianischen ,Wissenschaft‘ der Gesellschaft

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Neuhouser
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Normative Commitment ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Senses ◽  
State Form

AbstractThis paper sets out the kind of intellectual enterprise Hegel’s science of society is by explaining its aim (reconciliation) and the method it employs to achieve that aim. It argues that Hegel’s science of society, similar to Smith’s and Marx’s, offers an account of the good social order that is grounded in both an empirical understanding of existing institutions and a normative commitment to a certain vision of the good life. It spells out the criteria Hegel appeals to in his judgment that the modern social order is fundamentally good and worthy of affirmation, namely, that its three principal institutions−the family, civil society, and the constitutional state−form a coherent and harmonious whole that promotes the basic interests of all its members in a way that also realizes freedom in all three of the senses relevant to social theory: personal, moral, and social freedom.

Intimate with your junk! A waste management experiment for a material world

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Callén Moreu ◽  
Daniel López Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Waste Management ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Material Turn

The material turn in social theory has put the study of objects at the centre of any attempt to comprehend the production of social order, but only recently has their affectivity become an important issue. Even in Science and Technology Studies (STS) where objects have been approached as ‘actants’ that actively participate in the material composition and decomposition of various socio-natural orderings, their affectivity has seldom been explored. Diverse scholars from feminist and STS areas stand out for bringing to the fore the affective entanglements between humans and non-humans as constitutive of various ecologies of knowledge production. Our contribution here aims to pursue this further in relation to practices of maintenance, conservation of, and the discarding of everyday objects. We propose the notion of ‘intimate entanglements’ to explore how objects come to matter to us, what makes us care for them, and how they might become companions and our mutual interdependent supporters. Through an artistic research project called ‘Objections’, we asked participants to donate discarded everyday objects and interrogated them about their reasons for keeping, and the conditions under which they chose to keep and maintain, certain objects, while discarding others. We hoped that the notion of intimate entanglements would enable us to approach various ‘objectual’ biographies as stories of companionship and becoming with these objects, where the self is accounted for as a figure that holds and is affected by encounters with the multiple. The consequences that this material shift may have for the political ecology of waste and maintenance studies will be explored in this article, which promises to elucidate some of the ways that waste management systems operate today and perhaps suggest some alternatives.

scholarly journals Recovering critique in an age of datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1151
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

‘Framing figures’ and the campaign for sex purchase criminalisation in Ireland: A Lakoffian analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-332
Author(s):  
Eilís Ward
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Red Light ◽  
The State ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Reform

If the concept of social justice posits equality and fairness between subjects in the social order, then the presence of those subjects within that order must first and foremost be acknowledged. In Ireland’s recent reform of prostitution law contained in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, the presence of the sex worker as a rights-bearing subject or citizen, with access to justice in that capacity, was denied. In this article I focus on the use of data by the neo-abolitionist ‘Turn off the Red Light’ campaign to ‘flatten out’ the complexity of sex workers lives and present the figure of the ‘vulnerable prostituted woman’ and the ‘trafficking victim’: tragic, abject, a necessarily violated person and in need of ‘protection’ from the state. I argue that this data, entering public and political discourse as uncontestable truth, constituted what I call, ‘framing figures’, framing an inevitable outcome and precluding certain subjects from the status of equality and fairness. The data allowed campaigners for the Sex Purchase Ban (SPB), and, in turn the state, to eclipse a social justice approach to sex work, such as proposed by the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland and other actors.

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