The social practice of psychology and the social sciences in a liberal democratic society: An analysis of employment trends

2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wilson ◽  
L. Richter ◽  
K. Durrheim ◽  
N. Surendorf ◽  
L. Asafo-Agei
Author(s):  
Frank Serafini

Visual literacy was originally defined as a set of visual competencies or cognitive skills and strategies one needs to make sense of visual images. These visual competencies were seen as universal cognitive abilities that were used for understanding visual images regardless of the contexts of production, reception, and dissemination. More contemporary definitions suggest visual literacy is a contextualized, social practice as much as an individualized, cognitively based set of competencies. Visual literacy is more aptly defined as a process of generating meanings in transaction with multimodal ensembles that include written text, visual images, and design elements from a variety of perspectives to meet the requirements of particular social contexts. Theories of visual literacy and associated research and pedagogy draw from a wide range of disciplines including art history, semiotics, media and cultural studies, communication studies, visual ethnography and anthropology, social semiotics, new literacies studies, cognitive psychology, and critical theory. Understanding the various theories, research methodologies, and pedagogical approaches to visual literacy requires an investigation into how the various paradigm shifts that have occurred in the social sciences have affected this field of study. Cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, multimodal, and postmodern “turns” in the social sciences each bring different theories, perspectives, and approaches to the field of visual literacy. Visual literacy now incorporates sociocultural, semiotic, critical, and multimodal perspectives to understand the meaning potential of the visual and verbal ensembles encountered in social environments.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-224
Author(s):  
Gilbert Meilaender

In this article Gilbert Meilaender responds to nine scholars whose papers (collected in this issue) analyze and interact with a variety of theological and ethical themes that emerge in his writing. Among those themes are the moral limits grounded in our embodied nature, the freedom to transcend those limits, the perfection of that nature by divine grace, the relation between political progress toward a common good and the kingdom of God, the place of religious beliefs in public discourse within a liberal democratic society, the meaning and scope of our responsibility to care for human persons at the beginning and end of life, and the meaning of our creaturely longing to rest in God.


Diacrítica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Thais De Freitas Mondini Belletti

The concept of ‘jeitinho’ is present in a series of discourses that express a set of values that Brazilians perceive as their own. Thus, a foreigner in the process of learning Portuguese FL/2L will eventually come into contact with this style of Brazilian social practice. The concept of ‘jeitinho’, however, shows different forms of representation in discourse. Our aim with this work is to approach such concept from a more accurate analysis that moves away from a simplistic discourse, which associates the jeitinho to the image of a Brazilian who seeks to take advantage of everything. In this process, we reviewed the literature that approaches this concept based on analyzes from the Social Sciences, with emphasis on the studies of Barbosa (2006) and Borges (2006). As a possible material to be inserted in a context of teaching Portuguese for foreigners, we chose the reading and analysis of the Brazilian literary chronicle “Dar um jeitinho”. The analysis of chronicles was carried out from the perspective of discursive semiotics, aiming to search for meanings that are related to the concept of jeitinho.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Silbey

In this Essay, I review and elaborate on Dan's Burk's On the Sociology of Patenting with three "heuristic interventions" for the study of intellectual property law. These interventions derive from sociology and anthropology, and to some extent also from critical literary theory. Unoriginal in the social sciences, these heuristic interventions remain largely original to the study of law within law schools and traditional legal scholarship (as opposed to the study of law from within the social sciences and humanities). Burk joins a small but growing group of legal scholars, reaching beyond legal doctrinal analysis and the economic analysis of law to explain intellectual property law as a social practice. The interventions he begins and this essay explains in further depth reframe the understanding or analysis of intellectual property (1) from individuals to institutions, (2) from causation to explanation and (3) in the context of the domestication of IP in contemporary social and political culture. In this way, Burk's Article and this essay demonstrate how law (not only intellectual property or patent law) is a social practice both reflecting and forming social structures, the understanding of which requires attention to organization and culture as much or more than statutes, cases, administrative filings, and economic theory.


Author(s):  
Laia Coma ◽  
Concha Fuentes ◽  
Lydia Sánchez

The objective of this chapter is to reflect on the importance of the construction of the concept of democratic citizenship in the secondary education classrooms in Spain through heritage education in both formal and non-formal educational contexts. The authors approach this question from different perspectives that somehow reflect the interdisciplinarity proper to this topic. The reflections and educational proposals collected are articulated through two educational scenarios: the school and the city, taken as environments with great educational potential. Beyond the issue of the setting, this chapter also discusses how and with what instruments civic competence should be worked with students. In this sense, heritage is presented as an excellent learning tool for the construction of a democratic society as well as identitary wealth.


Author(s):  
Olga N. Shadrina ◽  

The article is devoted to the philosophical understanding of faith in the post-secu­lar world in the context of the phenomenon of interfaith pilgrimage: from the hu­manism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment (Goethe) to the religion of the laity and religious consumerism in the philosophy of postmodernism. Goethe’s model of individual religiosity in the face of challenges to traditional faiths (migration crisis) and the spread of post-secular, poor theology on a global scale as the world­view of a liberal democratic society (exotic churches, evangelics, charismatics, etc.), and also the process of psychologization, even the mythologization of tradi­tional religions, the movement towards a “religion without grace” can be the sought-after alternative, which is a balance between tradition and innovation; and the reli­gious and philosophical worldview of Goethe, conceptually meaningful, is the new horizon of philosophizing after the post-philosophy.


John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
Jon Mandle

Rawls argues that the public reason of a liberal democratic society should aim to include—and therefore tolerate—all reasonable persons. But the public reason that he defends for the Society of Peoples (globally) is considerably more inclusive. Rawls argues for the toleration of “decent” societies that are not liberal democracies. Critics have charged that such toleration, while perhaps pragmatic, is unprincipled. But a careful examination of Rawls’s criteria for “decency” reveals a defense of Rawls’s position that is grounded in the institutional requirements for a society to be able to make its own legitimate political decisions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly Crawford Ames

Liberal democracy is in decline across the globe. Why? The literature provides many answers, i.e., a decline in the power and gatekeeping role of political parties (Lavinsky and Ziblatt), the role of intellectuals (Applebaum), changes in political campaign financing (Balkin), the anti-liberal influence of Donald Trump (Kendzior), the flaws of “democracy” itself (Mounk), to name just a few. Most scholars, however, neglect the underlying causes of these proximate phenomena. In this essay I take a sociological and social-psychological approach to explore the underlying causes. I focus on liberal democracy’s decline in the Industrial West, particularly the United States. I argue that this decline can be partly attributed to the inherent weaknesses/limitations of liberalism, exacerbated in the 21st century by neo-liberal economic forces and digital technology. I contend that liberal values of equality, tolerance, the rule of law, and rational debate chafe against the sacrosanct entrenchment of the neo-liberal free market and its laissez-faire ideology, as well as the inherent liberal neglect of the human need for status, community, heroes, and the impulse to unleash passionate grievances. This chafing has now opened lesions in liberal institutions, exacerbated by widespread disinformation and obscene inequality, I offer three suggestions to strengthen 21st century liberalism: government regulation of social media to censure hate speech and disinformation, new taxes on wealth to reduce economic inequality, and an expansion of the public realm—parks, libraries, beaches, public schools, etc., where “money doesn’t matter.” This last suggestion is crucial. Because economic inequality and precarity will persist in a liberal democratic society even when taxation is more equitable, expansion of the public realm is needed to reduce the impact of inequality in liberal democratic society.


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