scholarly journals Evolutionary Thermodynamics and Theory of Social Quality as Links between Physics, Biology, and the Human Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
Jaap Westbroek ◽  
Harry Nijhuis ◽  
Laurent van der Maesen

This article seeks to open a dialogue between physics, other natural sciences, and the human sciences. Part 1 questions time reversibility as a fundament of physics. This runs counter to the discourses of all other sciences, which do presume the irreversibility of time and the evolution of phenomena. Characteristics of evolution (time irreversibility, chance, evolvement of higher levels of organization) are explained according to the laws of thermodynamics. Evolutionary thermodynamics (ET) is launched as a new connecting concept. Part 2 explores interpretation of the human sciences in analogy with ET. Dialectical interaction between levels of organizational complexity is seen as a driving force in the evolution of nature, humans, and societies. The theory of social quality and the social quality approach (SQA) imply ontological (and epistemological) features with close affinity to elements of ET. Therefore, the SQA carries potentialities to stimulate border-crossing dialogue between the sciences.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeriy Heyets

Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the “welfare state” will also be discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Varhese Joy

This is a review of the concept corporate sustainability. Being the most widely discussed and deliberated topic in the management and corporate literature, this concept has been defined by many academic scholars with their own specific approach. This article makes an attempt to review these approaches and will examine them in the context of the principles of the social quality approach (SQA). The progress and relevance of the United Nation’s 2030 sustainable development is also reviewed. The conceptual and methodological redefinition given by SQA scholars and the reasons for their rejection of the tripartite approach to defining sustainability provided in the UN Brundtland Report is also discussed in order to provide a basis for further research into the issue of sustainability and how it relates to the SQA.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 111-142

This article analyzes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of the Amazonian populations of Brazil. Following the social quality approach, it inquires into how COVID-19 intertwined with and reinforced underlying trends and inequalities in different life domains expressed in long-term societal complexities, urban–rural dynamics, and environmental transformations. The article finds that the pandemic, following coloniality of power patterns, has been instrumentalized as a necropolitical tool, and has disproportionately impacted certain peoples and territories based on ethnoracial bias. The collapse of the local health system in the State of Amazonas is a systemic burden, not serendipity. A dialogue is proposed between decolonial and social quality approaches to analyze, unveil, and denounce the interplay between the coloniality of power patterns in non-Western contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. v-xv
Author(s):  
Laurent J.G. van der Maesen

This issue is dedicated to two general topics that play a central role in social quality thinking and its policy application. The first is how to sharpen the social quality approach (SQA) as an intellectual instrument to understand the nature and rationale of political/legal, economic, cultural, and environmental processes in societies that aim to cope with their interpretations of mainstream contemporary challenges. The distinction between these processes concerns the main subject of the procedural framework of the SQA (IASQ 2019). The second is how to use social quality indicators for conceiving of the consequences of these processes in communities and cities. This concerns a main subject of the analytical framework of SQA. The connection of these main themes of the SQA is increasingly becoming the crucial challenge for, in particular, the theoretical reflection on thinking and acting for the increase of social quality in communities, cities, and countries. Instead of old and new ideas about individual happiness, the crucial challenge is inspired by ideas about “a good society,” as discussed by antique Greek philosophers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-30

The present article makes use of aspects of social quality theory and the social quality approach to assess the impact of the Italian government’s efforts to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government has a critical role in mitigating the effects of the pandemic; however, the scope and efficacy of its interventions depend on the interplay of processes in four main dimensions: (1) sociopolitical and legal; (2) socioeconomic and financial; (3) sociocultural and welfare; and (4) socioenvironmental and ecological. By analyzing relevant processes in these four dimensions, I aim to understand whether the social quality in Italy has increased or decreased due to the pandemic. The fragmentation in the labor market, in healthcare governance, as well as in societal protection have strongly constrained the government interventions, leaving intact and crystallizing existing societal inequalities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Valeriy HEYETS ◽  

Self-realization of the individual in the conditions of using the policy of “social quality” as a modern tool of public administration in a transitional society is largely related to overcoming the existing limitations of the individual in acting in such a society and economy transitioning to a market character. Given that, in particular, in Ukraine the market is hybrid (and this is especially important), the existing limitations in self-realization of the individual must be overcome, including, and perhaps primarily, through transformations in the processes of socialization, which differ from European practices and institutions that ensure its implementation. Thus, it is a matter of overcoming not only and not so much the natural selfish interests of the individual, but the existing gap in skills, which are an invisible asset to ensure the endogenous nature of economic growth. It is shown that there is an inverse relationship between the formation of socialization and the policy of “social quality”, which is characterized by the dialectic of interaction between the individual and the group and which is a process of increasing the degree of socialization. The latter, due to interdependence, will serve to increase the effectiveness of interaction between the individual and the group, which expands the possibilities of self-realization of the individual in terms of European policy of “social quality” as a tool of public administration, whose successful application causes new challenges and content of the so-called secondary sociology. The logic of Ukraine's current development shows that new approaches are needed to achieve the social development goals set out in the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union and to minimize the potential risks and threats that accompany current reforms in Ukrainian society. They should introduce new forms of public administration to create policy interrelationships of all dimensions, as proposed, in particular, by the social quality approach to socialization, the nature of which has been revealed in the author's previous publications. As a result, the socio-cultural (social) dimension will fundamentally change, the structure of which must include the transformational processes of socialization of a person, thanks to which they will learn the basics of life in the new social reality and intensify their social and economic interaction on the basis of self-realization, thereby contributing to the success of state policy of social quality and achieving stable socio-economic development.


Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner ◽  
Andrew F. Herrmann

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.


Author(s):  
Alexander A. Somkin

Introduction. The paper analyzes the specificity of the dialectical development of the integrated social systems of such a personality and society. The presence of positive (natural) contradictions is recognized as a necessary and creative factor in social practice. Under the influence of this type of contradiction, the old, outdated forms of social structure (individual components of the social system) are denied and transformed to new, more perfect ones occurs as a result of their successful resolution. Methods. In the analysis, the author relied on a system-holistic approach, traditional general philosophical methods: induction and deduction, theoretical analysis and synthesis, extrapolation, etc. Discussion. The social system as an integrated unity goes through a number of stages from inception, formation and maturity to the transition to a qualitatively new state. Accordingly, the process of the emergence and development of dialectical contradictions also has several stages: from insignificant differences between opposite sides at the beginning of the emergence of the system to their strengthening and exacerbation. The nature of the contradictions depends on the specifics of the opposing sides, as well as on the conditions in which their interaction unfolds. The determining factor here, in the opinion of the author, is the positive (natural) direction of social opposition, under the influence of which the essence of the contradictions themselves is formed. Conclusion. According to the dialectical approach, the source of social development is the unity and struggle of opposites within the social system. However, the presence of opposite sides is a necessary but insufficient condition for development. They create the preconditions for it, but do not act as its driving force. Only a change in one opposition relative to another creates alternative tension, giving rise to a dialectical contradiction. Therefore, the antagonistic or non-antagonistic character of the latter is due to the positive (natural) or negative character of the social opposition itself.


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