scholarly journals Bringing agency back in: the missing link between identity, knowledge, and mediated discourse

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Tschötschel ◽  
Thomas Jacovs
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Knowledge Claims

In an era often characterised by the notions of “post-truth” and “identity politics”, the nexus between communication, knowledge, and identity forms a crucial realm for social-scientific analysis. However, existing approaches, inspired by content, frame, and discourse analysis often rest on a limited conceptualisation of the agency exercised by those appearing in mediated discourse as speakers or subjects. To remedy this, we argue for an intervention inspired by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and propose a framework combining ANT and poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT). Building on a discussion of the theoretical similarities between the two, our core proposal is to study the associations between identity markers and knowledge claims at the sentence level to make transparent how and by whom they are articulated. The nuance gained deepens our understanding of the discursive construction of identity and knowledge, shedding light on the links between identity polarisation and the politicisation of facts.

Old Media, New Gigs: The Discursive Construction of the Gig Economy in Australian News Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110346
Author(s):  
Luci Pangrazio ◽  
Cameron Bishop ◽  
Fiona Lee
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
Short Term Contract ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Work And Life

This article analyses the representation of the gig economy in three Australian newspapers from 2014 to 2019. ‘Gig work’ is defined as short term, contract or freelance employment and is seen by many social institutions as the future of work. Drawing on a corpus of 426 articles, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is used to examine the construction of the ‘gig economy’ in the cultural imaginary. Five key elements emerge, including: demographics of workers; working conditions; workers’ rights; resistance and regulation; and change and disruption. Despite multiple competing discourses evident across the newspapers, each constructs the gig economy as an inexorable phase in the evolution of the relationship between capital and the worker. The article critically analyses the construction of the discourse, including the difficulties of regulating gig economy platforms and the narrative of inevitability used to describe changes to work and life brought about by technology.

Social Scientific Analysis of Nuclear Weapons

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (9) ◽  
pp. 1853-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gartzke ◽  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Social Scientific

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Durba Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

This introductory chapter traces the history of the concept of the sexually deviant female in colonial India. It first takes a look at how the figure of the prostitute appears across different archives from colonial India and within analyses of Indian social life. The chapter then shows how colonial studies on the nature of Indian society were to become the empirical basis for universalist theories of comparative societies. Indeed, the colonial state in India was, at its inception, an experiment in new forms of scientific and social scientific practices that were to influence state practices and the formation of disciplinary knowledge in the colony and metropole. At the heart of these sciences of society was a concern about structuring, tracing, and mapping the social world of colonial India through the assessment of women's sexuality. These histories reveal the way key debates about gender, caste, communal difference, and social hierarchy in India became objects of social scientific analysis through the description and evaluation of female sexuality. And, as the chapter shows, this social scientific imaginary had extraordinary reach.

scholarly journals J H J A Greyvenstein en A S Geyser se teologiese denke oor die volkskerkgedagte

1995 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
Social Scientific

The theological thoughts of J H J A Greyvenstein and A S Geyser on the concept 'people's church'. This paper - in two parts - aims to participate in the current debate regarding the writing of a new church order for the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika, concentrating on Article III of the current church order. As a debate within the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, the first article tra"ces the thoughts of two previous professors in New Testament Studies, J H J A Greyvenstein and A S Geyser, on the concept 'people's church' ('volkskerk'). In the following article Greyvenstein and Geyser's understanding of the Hervormde Kerk as 'peoples church' ('volkskerk') will critically be evaluated by means of a social-scientific analysis of meals as ceremonies in Mark's gospel. Sonder om die tradisie van die vadere uitgesproke met goddelike gesag te beklee, redeneer die ideoloog graag dat die vaders tog nie verkeerd kon wees in hulle verstaan van die Woord nie en origens gee hy in die praktyk, so nie in beginsel nie, aan die tradisie in elk geval dieseifde geldigheid as aan die Woord. (Geyser 1960/1961b:304) Eintlik het die Kerk geen ander bestaansrede nie as om te getuig dat Jesus die Christus die openbaring van Gods liefde is nie....Want die Kerk het tot enige ell enigste taak om die Evangelie te verkondig tydig en ontydig, op aile plekke aan aile mense en instansies onder aile omstandigheide. As hy daaraan nie voldoen nie of nie kan voldoen nie, kom die Kerk as Kerk in gedrang.(Geyser 1951:9; 1960:18)

Modernization and Medical Care

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene B. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Modern Health Care ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Clinical Benefits ◽  
Developing Societies ◽  
Social Scientific

The introduction of modern medicine into developing societies is an important topic for social-scientific analysis. Here I draw upon modernization theory to illuminate this topic. Using Peter Berger's notion of “carriers of modernity,” I discuss health care as such a carrier. Compared with premodern modes of health care, modern health care has a calculable, “commodity” character. Its production has become a major and increasingly systematized sector of the economy. In addition to its manifest clinical benefits, health care conveys the symbolic meanings of modernity. It participates in the broad though uneven passage of technology and values from Western societies to metropolitan areas in developing societies and thence to the hinterland. Health care as the focus of demodernization strains is also examined, through case examples drawn from Amish and Islamic contexts.

scholarly journals Who Tweets in the United Kingdom? Profiling the Twitter Population Using the British Social Attitudes Survey 2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511769898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Ground Truth ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
National Statistics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Social Scientific

The headache any researcher faces while using Twitter data for social scientific analysis is that we do not know who tweets. In this article, we report on results from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) 2015 on Twitter use. We focus on associations between using Twitter and three demographic characteristics—age, sex, and class (defined here as National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification [NS-SEC]). In addition to this, we compare findings from BSA 2015, treated as ground truth (known characteristics), with previous attempts to map the demographic nature of UK Twitter users using computational methods resulting in demographic proxies. Where appropriate, the datasets are compared with UK Census 2011 data to illustrate that Twitter users are not representative of the wider population. We find that there are a disproportionate number of male Twitter users, in relation to both the Census 2011 and previous proxy estimates; that Twitter users are predominantly young, but there are more older users than previously estimated; and that there are strong class effects associated with Twitter use.

scholarly journals Social Currents in North Africa

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
North African ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
Working Group Meeting ◽  
Ongoing Project

Social Currents in North Africa offers multidisciplinary analyses of social phenomena unfolding in the Maghreb today. The contributors analyze the genealogies of contemporary North African behavioral and ideological norms, and offer insights into post-Arab Spring governance and today's social and political trends. The book situates regional developments within broader international currents, without forgoing the distinct features of each socio-historical context. With its common historical, cultural, and socioeconomic foundations, the Maghreb is a cohesive area of study that allows for greater understanding of domestic developments from both single-country and comparative perspectives. This volume refines the geo-historical unity of the Maghreb by accounting for social connections, both within the nation-state and across political boundaries and historical eras. It illustrates that non-institutional phenomena are equally formative to the ongoing project of postcolonial sovereignty, to social construction and deployments of state power, and to local outlooks on social equity, economic prospects, and cultural identity. Scholars in the field of North African and Maghrebi studies were invited to working group meeting held by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), Georgetown University in Qatar, to reflect on their specialized disciplinary or methodological approaches to the region, and to comment on the overall validity of North Africa as a cohesive geo-historical unit for social scientific analysis.

scholarly journals Who Will Be the Members of Society 5.0? Towards an Anthropology of Technologically Posthumanized Future Societies

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Gladden
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
Social Robots ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Technological Processes ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Government ◽  
Social Scientific

The Government of Japan’s “Society 5.0” initiative aims to create a cyber-physical society in which (among other things) citizens’ daily lives will be enhanced through increasingly close collaboration with artificially intelligent systems. However, an apparent paradox lies at the heart of efforts to create a more “human-centered” society in which human beings will live alongside a proliferating array of increasingly autonomous social robots and embodied AI. This study seeks to investigate the presumed human-centeredness of Society 5.0 by comparing its makeup with that of earlier societies. By distinguishing “technological” and “non-technological” processes of posthumanization and applying a phenomenological anthropological model, this study demonstrates: (1) how the diverse types of human and non-human members expected to participate in Society 5.0 differ qualitatively from one another; (2) how the dynamics that will shape the membership of Society 5.0 can be conceptualized; and (3) how the anticipated membership of Society 5.0 differs from that of Societies 1.0 through 4.0. This study describes six categories of prospective human and non-human members of Society 5.0 and shows that all six have analogues in earlier societies, which suggests that social scientific analysis of past societies may shed unexpected light on the nature of Society 5.0.

‘Those people who chose us’: Discursive construction of identity and belonging in the context of Quebec’s 2018 provincial elections

2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097038
Author(s):  
Yulia Bosworth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
French Language ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Run Up

In the climate of the growing diversification of the ethnocultural landscape, Quebecers of French-Canadian background, often viewed as mistrustful of ethnic minorities, have been faced with the challenge of renegotiating the symbolic boundaries of what it means to be a Quebecer. This study investigates discursive construction of identity and belonging in a multi-text body of discourse generated in the context of the French-language party leader debates in the run-up to Quebec’s 2018 provincial elections, which brought to power the center-right Coalition Avenir Québec. A close textual analysis of discourse produced by the party leaders and by debate viewers commenting on the Facebook page of Radio-Canada during the debates’ live stream, following the research program of Critical Discourse Analysis, demonstrates an enduring ethnic bias in the conceptualization of Quebec identity by the dominant ingroup – Francophone Quebecers of French-Canadian origin – one that puts in jeopardy the inclusive, civic Quebec identity promoted in official discourse of the Quebec government.

scholarly journals Social Scientific Analysis of Human-Animal Sexual Interactions

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1780
Author(s):  
José María Valcuende del Río ◽  
Rafael Cáceres-Feria
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Ontological Shift ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Medical Perspective

An ontological shift has led to a revitalisation of the research area that, within the social sciences, deals with the interactions between humans and animals. However, there are topics which are still taboo: interspecies sexuality. Sexual practices between humans and animals have been fundamentally analysed from a medical perspective, failing to consider the influence of cultural context. Departing from a thorough bibliographical revision, here we revise the approaches that, both from sociology and anthropology, have been used to analyse this phenomenon from different perspectives, including bestiality, zoophilia, and zoosexuality.

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