scholarly journals Ethnisierung als Ressource und Praxis

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (120) ◽  
pp. 399-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Scherr

Forms of doing ethnicity question an understanding of modern society as a society of free and equal individuals as well as the idea, that membership of social class determines social identities. What kind of a challenge the obversation of processes of ethnicitation represents in regard of the theories of contemporary society should discuss more precisely. In front of this background it is supposed to see ethnicitation as an indeterminate collective name for intern heterogene social practices of social construction of collective identities. It is argued, that even so processes of ethnicitation often indicate conflicts between majorities and minorities and the structural and manifested discrimination of the latter, it can not be sufficiently and exclusively explained in this way.

Geografie ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Pitoňák

The relevance and importance of sexualities as a geographical issue is yet to be recognized in Czechia, wherefore the main purpose of this article is to give spark to momentum to Czech geographies of sexualities. Consecutively, understandings of the issue produced from outside of the ‘West’ may contribute to our general knowledge about diverse spatialities of sexualities. For the sake of coherence, I narrow my discussion to urban geographies of sexualities and their various epistemologies. I begin with presenting evidence which suggests that sexualities have already been considered to be an important geographical subject in most Anglophone countries over the past 20 years. For this reason, the article is focused mostly on an Anglo-Saxon literature review figuring sexualities as being either social relations, axis of difference, social identities or categories not less important than gender, race and social class. I highlight the importance of discourse and its role in the social construction of sexualities. Finally, I provide a possible course for the study and production of geographies of sexualities in Czechia.


1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Coleman

AbstractModern society has undergone a fundamental change to a society built around purposively established organizations. Social theory in this context can be a guide to social construction. Foundations of Social Theory is dedicated to this aim. Being oriented towards the design of social institutions it has to choose a voluntaristic, purposive theory of action and must make the behavior of social systems explainable in terms of the combination of individual actions. It has to deal with the emergence and maintenance of norms and rights, the concepts of authority, trust, law and legitimacy, the viability of organizations and the efficiency of social systems. But more important than the specific points is the vision of a new role for social theory in an increasingly constructed social environment. This vision is the motivation behind Foundations of Social Theory.


Al-Ulum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Nawir ◽  
Sam'un Mukramin ◽  
Lukman Ismail ◽  
Maemunah Maemunah ◽  
Irma Rachmawati

This paper focuses on the conflict of radicalism and anarchism in contemporary society. This research is qualitative with a literature review. The literature collected comes from several national and international articles, proceedings, books, and other references related to the issue of radicalism and anarchism in a global society. The data analysis is carried out by reviewing related references and looking for unique points to find findings in the study. This study finds that a strong ideology influences society, so understanding the conflict between radicalism and anarchism in modern society also develops.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-435
Author(s):  
Snjezana Prijic-Samarzija

I am referring to social engagement as a value-based choice to actively intervene in social reality in order to modify existing collective identities and social practices with the goal of realizing the public good. The very term ?engagement?, necessarily involves the starting awareness of a social deficit or flaw and presupposes a critical attitude towards social reality. In this article, I will attempt to provide arguments in favour of the thesis about the possibility (and, later, necessity) of institutional engagement, critical action and even institutional protest, basing this view on the thesis that institutions are fundamentally collective or social agents whose actions must be guided by ethical and epistemic virtues.


2009 ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
Marco Cremaschi

- The research on public space is characterized by four different concepts: first, the equivalence between public space and public sphere, directly impinging upon politics; second, the history and construction of social identities, where memory plays a central role; third, the encounter with strangers that should educate to tolerance; fourth, the practice of living together, at the foundation both of urbanity and civil respect. The first three concepts state that public space is eroded, due to the privatization of the public sphere. The last one criticizes this belief, and suggests instead investigating the field of practices that combine resistance to urban change, and the experimentation of new forms of urbanity.Key words: public space, urbanity, planning, social practices, cities, inclusion.Parole chiave: housing, planning, abitare, pratiche sociali, istituzionalizzazione, cornici cognitive.


2013 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Enrique Leff

Renovating our thinking as humankind (rethinking nature, culture and development) is an imperative to approach the challenges of environmental crisis and to orient the social construction of a sustainable world. If environmental crisis is a predicament of knowledge, beyond the task of reinventing science, innovating technology and managing information, we must face the challenge of inventing new ways of thinking, organizing and acting in the world; of reorienting our ethical principles, modes of production and social practices for the construction of a sustainable civilization. Innovation for sustainability is drawn by alternative rationalities. I will argue that rationality of modernity has limited capacities to reestablish the ecological balance of the planet, while environmental rationality opens new perspectives to sustainability: the construction of a new economic paradigm based on neguentropic productivity, a politics of difference and an ethic of otherness. Paramount to this purpose is the contribution of Latin American Environmental Thinking.


Author(s):  
Florian Coulmas

Social identity is to do with membership in groups that are horizontally and vertically structured, internally and in relation to each other. Taken together these groupings constitute a society. ‘ “Your station in life”: social identities in our time’ explains how with the growth of the service sector, class divisions started to become less distinct and were supplemented by ethnic divisions. Consequently, the general understanding of social class is changing and, as economic inequality rises, the issue of social stratification and identity remains topical. Group identities are relational, resulting from the inclusion of peers and the exclusion of others. Reducing individuals to a single identity as members of a group amounts to discrimination and stigmatization.


Author(s):  
Raymond Geuss ◽  
J. M. Bernstein

The term ‘critical theory’ designates the approach to the study of society developed between 1930 and 1970 by the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’. A group of theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, the School was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. The three most important philosophers belonging to it were Max Horkheimer, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. The project was renewed by the second- and third-generation critical theorists, most notably, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse feared that modern Western societies were turning into closed, totalitarian systems in which all individual autonomy was eliminated. In their earliest writings from the 1930s they presented this tendency towards totalitarianism as one result of the capitalist mode of production. In later accounts they give more prominence to the role of science and technology in modern society, and to the concomitant, purely ‘instrumental’, conception of reason. This conception of reason denies that there can be any such thing as inherently rational ends or goals for human action and asserts that reason is concerned exclusively with the choice of effective instruments or means for attaining arbitrary ends. ‘Critical theory’ was to be a form of resistance to contemporary society; its basic method was to be that of ‘internal’ or ‘immanent’ criticism. Every society, it was claimed, must be seen as making a tacit claim to substantive (and not merely instrumental) rationality; that is, making the claim that it allows its members to lead a good life. This claim gives critical theory a standard for criticism which is internal to the society being criticized. Critical theory demonstrates in what ways contemporary society fails to live up to its own claims. The conception of the good life to which each society makes tacit appeal in legitimizing itself will usually not be fully propositionally explicit, so any critical theory will have to begin by extracting a tacit conception of the good life from the beliefs, cultural artefacts and forms of experience present in the society in question. One of the particular difficulties confronting a critical theory of contemporary society is the disappearance of traditional substantive conceptions of the good life that could serve as a basis for internal criticism, and their replacement with the view that modern society needs no legitimation beyond simple reference to its actual efficient functioning, to its ‘instrumental’ rationality. The ideology of ‘instrumental rationality’ thus itself becomes a major target for critical theory.


Author(s):  
Raymond Geuss

The term ‘critical theory’ designates the approach to the study of society developed between 1930 and 1970 by the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’. A group of theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research, the School was founded in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923. The three most important philosophers belonging to it were Max Horkheimer, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse feared that modern Western societies were turning into closed, totalitarian systems in which all individual autonomy was eliminated. In their earliest writings from the 1930s they presented this tendency towards totalitarianism as one result of the capitalist mode of production. In later accounts they give more prominence to the role of science and technology in modern society, and to the concomitant, purely ‘instrumental’, conception of reason. This conception of reason denies that there can be any such thing as inherently rational ends or goals for human action and asserts that reason is concerned exclusively with the choice of effective instruments or means for attaining arbitrary ends. ‘Critical theory’ was to be a form of resistance to contemporary society; its basic method was to be that of ‘internal’ or ‘immanent’ criticism. Every society, it was claimed, must be seen as making a tacit claim to substantive (and not merely instrumental) rationality; that is, making the claim that it allows its members to lead a good life. This claim gives critical theory a standard for criticism which is internal to the society being criticized. Critical theory demonstrates in what ways contemporary society fails to live up to its own claims. The conception of the good life to which each society makes tacit appeal in legitimizing itself will usually not be fully propositionally explicit, so any critical theory will have to begin by extracting a tacit conception of the good life from the beliefs, cultural artefacts and forms of experience present in the society in question. One of the particular difficulties confronting a critical theory of contemporary society is the disappearance of traditional substantive conceptions of the good life that could serve as a basis for internal criticism, and their replacement with the view that modern society needs no legitimation beyond simple reference to its actual efficient functioning, to its ‘instrumental’ rationality. The ideology of ‘instrumental rationality’ thus itself becomes a major target for critical theory.


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