Material Interests Are Ambiguous, So Interaction Rituals Steer Political Movements

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Randall Collins
2017 ◽  
pp. 226-291
Author(s):  
O.V. Liubimova

On the basis of The Deeds of Divine Augustus or Res Gestae Divi Augusti (RGDA), the author analyses the significance of the legacy of populares, one of the main political movements in the Late Republic, in the politics of Emperor Augustus. The main features of this political movement, in the opinion of modern researchers, were their demagogic political style, their assertion of the sovereignty of Roman people and their protection of economic interests of the lower classes. In the RGDA there is no mention of the odious political methods of the populares that entailed conflicts and unrest but the text significantly dwells on the tribunician power granted to Augustus. In the Late Republic the tribunician power served as the basis of the populares political method. The ideology reflected in the RGDA entrusts the Roman people with an important role in the public administration and describes the Roman people as a fullfledged partner of the Senate, however it lacks the populares contraposition of the Roman people to the Senate (or to the oligarchy controlling the Senate). The populares legacy is particularly apparent in the RGDA chapters describing Augustus expenses in favor of the Roman people such as the organisation of various social measures, shows and public building. Augustus inherited from the populares of the Late Republic the idea of Roman plebs as a source of political power and of satisfaction of its interest as a mechanism of maintaining political stability, but discarded those of populares slogans and methods that had a conflict potential.На материале Деяний Божественного Августа (Res Gestae Divi Augusti) рассматривается вопрос о том, какое место занимало в политике Августа наследие популяров одного из двух основных политических течений Поздней республики. В качестве характерных черт этого движения исследователи выделяют демагогический политический стиль приверженность идеологии народного суверенитета защиту экономических интересов неимущих слоёв. В RGDA не упоминаются одиозные политические методы популяров, которые влекли за собой конфликты и беспорядки, но важное место занимает предоставленная Августу трибунская власть, которая в Республике служила основой популярского Modus Operandi. Идеология, выраженная в RGDA, отводит римскому народу важное место в управлении государством и представляет его равноправным партнёром сената однако в ней отсутствует характерное для популяров противопоставление народа сенату (или олигархии, контролирующей сенат). Наиболее очевидно наследие популяров в тех главах RGDA, где описываются расходы Августа в пользу римского народа: социальные мероприятия, организация зрелищ и строительство. Август заимствовал у позднереспубликанских популяров представление о том, что римский плебс может служить источником политической силы, и удовлетворение его интересов необходимо для поддержания политической стабильности, однако исключил из своего арсенала те политические лозунги и методы популяров, которые имели конфликтный потенциал.


This collection of essays examines the various ways in which the Homeric epics have been responded to, reworked, and rewritten by women writers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beginning in 1914 with the First World War, it charts this understudied strand of the history of Homeric reception over the subsequent century up to the present day, analysing the extraordinary responses to both the Odyssey and the Iliad by women from around the world. The backgrounds of these authors and the genres they employ—memoir, poetry, children’s literature, rap, novels—testify not only to the plasticity of Homeric epic, but also to the widening social classes to whom Homer appeals, and it is unsurprising to see the myriad ways in which women writers across the globe have played their part in the story of Homer’s afterlife. From surrealism to successive waves of feminism to creative futures, Homer’s footprint can be seen in a multitude of different literary and political movements, and the essays in this volume bring an array of critical approaches to bear on the work of authors ranging from H.D. and Simone Weil to Christa Wolf, Margaret Atwood, and Kate Tempest. Students and scholars of classics—as well as those in the fields of translation studies, comparative literature, and women’s writing—will find much to interest them, while the volume’s concluding reflections by Emily Wilson on her new translation of the Odyssey are an apt reminder to all of just how open a text can be, and of how great a difference can be made by a woman’s voice.


Author(s):  
Kristin A. Hancock ◽  
Douglas C. Haldeman

Psychology’s understanding of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people has evolved, become more refined, and impacted the lives of LGB people in profound ways. This chapter traces the history of LGB psychology from the nineteenth century to the present and focuses on major events and the intersections of theory, psychological science, politics, and activism in the history of this field. It explores various facets of cultural and psychological history that include the pathologizing of homosexuality, the rise of psychological science and the political movements in the mid-twentieth century, and the major shifts in policy that ensued. The toll of the AIDS epidemic on the field is discussed as is the impact of psychological research on national and international policy and legislation.


Author(s):  
Vijay Iyer

Improvisation has been construed as Western art music’s Other. This chapter urges music theorists to take the consequences of this configuration seriously. The decision to exclude improvisation as inherently unstable is not neutral, but is bound up with the endemic racism that has characterized social relations in the West and that is being brought to the fore in Black Lives Matter and other recent social and political movements. Traditional music theory is not immune from such institutional racism—its insistence on normative musical behaviors is founded on the (white) phallogocentrism of Western thought. Does the resurgent academic interest in improvisation offer a way out? No, at least not as it is currently studied. Even an apparently impartial approach such as cognitive science is not neutral; perception is colored by race. To get anywhere, this chapter argues, improvisation studies must take difference seriously. Important impetus for a more inclusive critical model comes from such fields as Black studies, Women’s studies, subaltern studies, queer studies, and disability studies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002204262098651
Author(s):  
Marit Edland-Gryt

Clubbing is an important part of the nighttime economy, and cocaine use is, for some young people, an essential part of this clubbing culture. However, the interaction rituals around the use of powder cocaine in this context remain understudied. This study is based on qualitative interviews with young adult recreational cocaine users ( n = 28) and explores how they use cocaine in club settings, in relation to rituals and drinking culture. The analysis identified three main explanations for using cocaine: (a) unity with friends because of shared transgression, (b) the high as a “collective effervescence,” and (c) the possibility to control, extend, and intensify drinking to intoxication. These three explanations illustrate how cocaine rituals were deeply integrated in drinking-to-intoxication rituals, and how the illegality of cocaine use reinforced feelings of unity with friends. In the nighttime economy, cocaine use and its related rituals are used to intensify and control alcohol-fuelled partying.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 2
Author(s):  
Igor R. Tantlevskij ◽  
Ekaterina V. Gromova ◽  
Dmitry Gromov

This paper presents an attempt to systematically describe and interpret the evolution of different religious and political movements in Judaea during the period of the Second Temple using the methods of the theory of social networks. We extensively analyzed the relationship between the main Jewish sects: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes (Qumranites), and later also Zealots. It is shown that the evolution of the relations between these sects agreed with the theory of social balance and their relations evolved toward more socially balanced structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-119
Author(s):  
Karol Franczak

Abstract One of the main goals of contemporary media, along with the experts and professionals, who speak in them, has been to explain complex issues and provide the audience with clear descriptions of social reality. This is mostly achieved by the production of ideologically useful interpretative schemes that facilitate understanding of the issues present on the media agenda. An important strategy of shaping the public opinion in the way in which public affairs and the activity of social life participants is framed. Analyses of such practices have been conducted for over thirty years within various research approaches collectively referred to as framing analysis. This research provides several arguments helping one to develop a more critical perspective on the representations of social phenomena dominant in the media and discourses of symbolic elites (e.g. opinion writers, academics, experts, journalists, politicians), along with the analyses of the origin of such phenomena, moral judgements and preferred "corrective policies". One of the phenomena defined by the media in Europe as the most important one for the past several years, is the so-called "New Right". The aim of the paper is to analyse the interpretative schemes used by the journalists of four Polish opinion-forming weeklies and to describe the activity of its German manifestation – the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (Pegida) social movement and the Alternative for Germany party (AfD).


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