scholarly journals Concepts Creep to the Left and the Right

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A. Harper ◽  
Harry Robert McSweeney Purser ◽  
Thom Baguley
Keyword(s):  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Sexual Deviance ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Right ◽  
New Phenomena

In a target article in 2017, social psychologist Nick Haslam proposed that concept creep explains how established social concepts expand to incorporate new phenomena, with such expansions fundamentally changing conceptual definitions and contributing to a loss of a shared social understanding. However, Haslam’s piece (along with several commentaries) focused on concept creep in relation to a small number of categories (e.g., prejudice, bullying, trauma) that are typically more salient for those on the political left. In this work, we examined whether concept creep is a uniquely leftist phenomenon, or whether we can observe the same conceptual expansion for categories typically salient for conservatives. We found evidence for such symmetry when considering categories such as sexual deviance, terrorism, and personal responsibility – with some nuanced exceptions. We discuss our findings in relation to growing political polarization, intergroup relations, and the study of partisan differences using a variety of politically salient stimuli.

Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber: Is Intellectual Humility Associated with Less Political Myside Bias?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shauna Marie Bowes ◽  
Thomas H Costello ◽  
Caroline Lee ◽  
Stacey McElroy-Heltzel ◽  
Don E. Davis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Salient Feature ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Myside Bias ◽  
Psychological Features

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is associated with less bias in two community samples (N1 = 498; N2 = 477). In line with our expectations, measures of IH were negatively correlated with political myside bias across paradigms, political topics, and samples. These relations were robust to controlling for humility. We also examined ideological asymmetries in the relations between IH and political myside bias, finding that IH-bias relations were statistically equivalent in members of the political left and right. Notwithstanding important limitations and caveats, these data establish IH as one of a small handful psychological features known to predict less political myside bias.

Low-Income Housing in Crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-57
Author(s):  
Benjamin Holtzman
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Real Estate Market ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
The Political ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Political Left ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Right ◽  
Low Income Housing

During the late 1960s and 1970s, extensive disinvestment and an eviscerated real estate market led landlords of low-income housing to walk away from their real estate holdings, leaving thousands of buildings unoccupied and often city-owned due to nonpayment of taxes. In response, Latinx, African American, and some white residents protested the blight these buildings brought to their neighborhoods by directly occupying and seeking ownership of abandoned buildings through a process they called urban homesteading. Activists framed homesteading as a self-help initiative, often emphasizing their own ingenuity over state resources as the key to solving the problems of low-income urban neighborhoods. Such framing was understandable given the unstable economic terrain of the 1970s and won activists support not just from the political left, but also the right. But it also positioned homesteading as demonstrating the superiority of private-citizen and private sector–led revitalization in ways that left homesteading projects vulnerable as it became clear how necessary government resources would be to their success.

Righteousness or the right to drink? The debate on the ration book in Sweden and Finland during the 1950s

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-370
Author(s):  
Matti Peltonen
Keyword(s):  
Control Policy ◽  
Alcohol Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Swedish Version ◽  
Alcohol Control ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

Sweden and Finland reviewed their alcohol control policies in the 1950s at more or less the same time. Sweden abolished its ration book system and lifted restrictions on the sale of medium strength beer, Finland in turn revised its mechanisms for controlling the purchase of alcohol, a version of the Bratt system. In Sweden, alcohol consumption increased sharply and the number of drunkenness offences doubled. In Finland, by contrast, nothing happened. Why? History provides one possible source of explanation. The Swedish version of the Bratt system was much stricter (with monthly rations allocated on the basis of social class and sex) and therefore there was greater pressure towards a liberalisation of alcohol policy than was the case in Finland. During the war and in the post-war years Finland had a strong labour movement, which was keen to underline and demonstrate that the working class were in every respect decent and upright people. The debate that was touched off by the General Strike in 1956 is particularly interesting. On the political right, workers were frequently portrayed as heavy drinkers; the political left worked hard to fend off this propaganda attack. In this kind of atmosphere it was impossible to seriously call for a liberalisation of alcohol control policy in Finland.

III. The Loyalist Association Movement of 1792–93 and British Public Opinion

1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E. Ginter
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Late Spring ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Prosecution ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Scene

In November 1792 John Reeves, with the explicit approval and active sup-port of both the government and the Windhamite Whigs, and with the countenance of the duke of Portland and his friends, instituted a movement of loyalist associations which quickly spread throughout the country. The movement was founded in reaction to an enthusiastic resurgence of British radical activity which followed the defeat of the combined armies under the duke of Brunswick, and it rallied a now militant conservative sentiment in favour of detecting and suppressing by intimidation and public prosecution all allegedly seditious activities. This crisis in public opinion, which was at once the parent and the offspring of the loyalist association movement, was not the first to have occurred in 1792. An earlier crisis occurred in favour of the political left during the late spring of 1792 and was followed by a relatively mild reaction to the right. It seems clear that, during the earlier months of 1792 at least, there were considerable bodies of both conservative and liberal opinion of various shades in the country. But by the beginning of the following year the complexity and ferment of the political scene had become so great that it is not at all clear to what extent or how rapidly liberal opinion had been supplanted in the country by conservative sentiment. The purpose of this paper is to reassess the nature, effect and significance of the loyalist association movement by undertaking a more careful examination of the phraseology of many of its addresses and declarations as well as of the proceedings and circumstances peculiar to the meetings in which they were approved.

scholarly journals Dialektyka „swój”–„obcy” w prawicowej filozofii politycznej 1789– –1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Adam Wielomski
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The 19Th Century

DIALECTICS ‘WE’–‘ALIENS’ IN RIGHT-WING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 1789–1945 The aim of the author of this text is to polemicize with the stereotype according to which nationalism is a synonym of the “extreme right.” For this purpose the method of historical exemplification was used. Part I of this text is devoted to defining the concept of the “right” and to present the supporters of the French Revolution and other 19th-century revolutions, their idea of nationalism, the nation-state and sovereignty of the nation. This presentation shows that up to 1890 nationalism is located in the revolutionary left. The first nationalists are Jacobins. The counter-revolutionary right is opposed to nationalism. For this right, nationalism is combined with the idea of empowering nations to the rights of self-determination, which is closely connected with the idea of people’s sovereignty. This situation persists until 1870–1914, when the ideas of national sovereignty are implemented in the politics of the modern states. However, the liberal state does not meet the expectations of nationalists, because it neglects the interests of the nation as the highest value. That is the cause for them moving from the political left to the right part of the political scene, replacing the legitimist right. The latter is annihilated with the decline of aristocracy. In the 19th century, the left is nationalistic and xenophobic. We find clear racist sympathies on the left. The political right does not recognize the right of nations to self-determination, the idea of ethnic boundaries. It is cosmopolitan.

scholarly journals The Value of Work and the Future of the Left

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Campbell Jones
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Future Of Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right

This paper arises from a request to report to the Future of Work Commission on the question of the value of work in the past, present, and future politics of the Left. This task is complicated, however, by the complexity of the meaning of the terms Left and Right. It is only when we are clear about the meanings of Left and Right that we can be clear about the very different kinds of politics that will result from taking a Left position on work. This paper seeks to clarify what a Left politics of work might look like today. This requires in the first place an analysis of the respective value of work to the political Left and Right, to which end I argue that what distinguishes the Left and the Right regarding the value of work is not simply the quantity of value or dignity that is attributed to work. Rather, Left and Right depart in a fundamental ontological confrontation regarding the nature of what work is and the existence of the bodies from which work issues. This analysis therefore raises deeper questions regarding the very distinction between the Left and the Right.  

How to Mobilize the Polish Nation

2018 ◽  
pp. 33-58
Author(s):  
Jochen Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Great War ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Organic Change

Chapter 2 highlights the fragmentation within Polish society in partition times, during the Great War, and in its after-battles. While the political left prior to 1914 prepared for armed struggle, the right preferred a tactic of “organic change.” During the Great War, genuine Polish military formations became the incarnation of Polish independence. But they formed on opposing sides of the frontline, and were, in terms of numbers, insignificant, while most Polish soldiers served as cannon fodder in the ranks of the imperial armies. Following independence in late 1918, most peasants—80 percent of the Polish-speaking population in Central Europe—mistrusted the “national project” and did not follow the call to arms voluntarily. The Polish Army from the start had to struggle with a serious shortage of soldiers, armament, and provisions. A functioning united national army and chain of command needed years to materialize.

Pegasus and Insurrection. Die Linkskurve and Its Heritage

1968 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner T. Angress
Keyword(s):  
Public Support ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
German State ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Right

A Literature designed to express discontent with political or social conditions, rally public support, and sometimes threaten revolution has as much of a tradition in Germany as in other countries, and it was not the German authors' fault that their efforts remained on the whole without decisive achievements. Until 1918, this genre of literature had been nearly exclusively the preserve of what may loosely be called the political Left. But with the establishment of the republic the forces of the Right appropriated to themselves this time-honored intellectual weapon in their efforts to destroy the hated "Weimar System." Under these circumstances, no responsible independent left-wing journal could afford to do more than criticize the new German state for its shortcomings, and while in this respect some of them were less restrained than others, all of them wanted to reform and strengthen, not overthrow, the republic.

Passing on the Right: Conservative Bioethics is Closer Than it Appears

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Alta Charo
Keyword(s):  
Stem Cell ◽  
The Political ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Funding Policy ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Leon Kass ◽  
The Right ◽  
President Bush

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. We re not going to adopt either . We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service.

The Sensitive Left and the Impervious Right

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 564-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Anderson ◽  
Matthew M. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political System ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Political Left ◽  
People’S Attitudes ◽  
The Right

Recent years have seen increased attention to integrating what we know about individual citizens with what we know about macro-level contexts that vary across countries. This article discusses the growing literature on how people's interpretations, opinions, and actions are shaped by variable contextual parameters and provides a novel substantive application. Using surveys conducted in 20 European democracies, the authors examine the effect of income inequality on people's attitudes about the functioning of the political system and trust in public institutions. They find that citizens in countries with higher levels of income inequality express more negative attitudes toward public institutions. Moreover, they show that the negative effect of inequality on attitudes toward the political system is particularly powerful among individuals on the political left. In contrast, inequality's negative effect on people's faith in the system is muted among those on the right.

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