scholarly journals Ecology and Science Fiction. Managing Imagination in the Age of the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Grażyna Gajewska
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Disaster Science

When formulating proecological strategies, social imagination is devoted relatively little attention. Contribution of the humanities to the management in the age of the Anthropocene is most often perceived as explaining threats that we and the future human and non-human beings will have to face as a result of irresponsible environmental policies. Hence, the presumed task of the humanities (and social science) consists primarily in analyzing and presenting the causes and the processes which culminated in the climate crisis and the decline of biodiversity. However, such an approach does not allow this knowledge to be actively engaged in constructing alternative, proecological attitudes. Consequently, I argue in this paper that in order for the state of affairs to change one requires not only new scientific tools (methodology, language), but also new sensitivity and aesthetics. The author argues that the challenges of the current times, resulting from environmental change, destruction of habitats and ecological disasters, direct our sensibilities and aesthetics ever more tangibly towards the fantastic: horror, science fiction, or fantasy. However, while ecohorror mainly exposes the negative aftermath of the Anthropocene – culminating in the inevitable disaster – science fiction offers leeway for a more speculative approach, enabling one to construct such visions of reality in which multispecies justice will be observed and cultivated. It is therefore suggested that there is much need for a science fiction aesthetic and narration that would be capable of guiding us out of the anthropocentric entanglement and the Anthropocene into the Chthulucene (as conceived by Haraway).

Measuring World Development

1975 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Galtung ◽  
A. Guha ◽  
A. Wirak ◽  
S. Sjlie ◽  
M. Cifuentes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Radical Content ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
World Development ◽  
Selection Of

The purpose of this article is to discuss how the old and rather technocratic idea of expressing the state of affairs in a society in numbers, by means of social indicatros, can be given a more radical content. One idea is to measure not only how good a society is to its own citizens, but also how good or bad it is to the rest of the world. A second idea is to avoid abstractions like GNP and averages and try to develop measures that reflect the state of affairs at the level of human beings. A third idea is to find ways of developing indicators that would give less power to experts and more to people themselves. The article starts by giving the outline of a basic discussion on indicators, proceeds with a discussion of the basic values guiding the selection of indicators and ends with a presentation of the indicators.

scholarly journals The Future of Electricity and Electricity as the Future: The Sociotechnical Imagination of Russian Electrical Engineers in the 19th Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
Natalia Nikiforova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Electrical Engineering ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
The Future ◽  
Electrical Engineers ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Working Device ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article examines Russian engineers’ social imagination about the future through the professional discussions held at the electrotechnical congresses in the nineteenth century. Formulating the prospective future of the industry, the state and society was a collective endeavor, a process in which the identity and mission of engineers were crystallized. Through envisioning the future of technology and its role in the society, engineers revealed their cultural role as mediators between technological innovation, and both the wider public and the state. In order to better understand the manifestations of the shared cultural understandings of a desirable future and social order, the article resorts to Sheila Jasanoff’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). The engineering community’s sociotechnical imagination about electricity was shaped around the transformative possibilities of this technology. It was believed that electrical engineering was able not only to accelerate industrial production, but also to solve social, medical and cultural problems, thereby uniting the Russian Empire. Descriptions of the rational, comfortable and beautiful world of the electrified future overlapped in engineering discussions, journalism and science fiction. Positive scenarios emphasized the advantages of electrical engineering and bypassed the problems associated with electrification, constructing an idea of its inevitability. The electrical engineer became a kind of a new cultural hero, who knew how to make a working device or system, and also filled the task of linking the development of technology to the development of society.

Social Science in Brown’s Path: Social Contact and Integration Revisited,

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Minow
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Research Field ◽  
The State ◽  
Racial Relations ◽  
Social Opportunities ◽  
State Of Affairs

The architects of Brown v. Board of Education soldiered through long struggles and many obstacles, but even they would probably be surprised by the state of affairs emerging half a century following the decision. Brown influenced expanding use of social sciences by lawyers pursuing social change and especially educational reforms. The state of racial integration in education might be stunningly disappointing, but Brown has also produced unexpected dividends addressing historic educational disadvantages based on gender, disability, language, immigrant status, poverty, sexual orientation, and religion. This dual legacy of disappointment and promise raises profound questions about the priority the nation gives not just to equal opportunity but also to social integration, the movement of individuals from previously excluded or subordinated groups into the social mainstream where they can join others in pursuing opportunities and enriching society. Because this aspiration gained support from social science evidence in the Brown litigation itself, this chapter considers the strengths and limitations of social science research on social integration, including research launched in the wake of the Brown litigation. The boost Brown gave to the field of social psychology to advance racial equality has some irony, given the reliance by defenders of racial segregation on eugenics and other “scientific” theories of their day. The contribution of social psychology to the cause of racial justice is particularly contested, as many critics have contended that its use contributed to narrowing policy debates to a focus on psychological damage rather than structures of racial oppression and the role of community supports in academic success. It might even be fair to conclude that when it comes to racial relations in the United States, there is more success in the growth of the research field studying social integration than there is success in actual social integration. Hence, paying attention to contemporary social science in assessing how social integration affects academic achievement, social cohesion, individual development, economic and social opportunities, and civic engagement and democracy means remaining mindful of the limitations of research and continuing to subject its assumptions to scrutiny.

scholarly journals Between the World Ship and the Spaceship

Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-234
Author(s):  
Zhuoyi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The State ◽  
Important Case ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Environmental Deterioration ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Forms

Abstract Planetarianism, proposed by Masao Miyoshi for literature and literary studies, calls for a new sense and organization of human totality truly inclusive of all and against neoliberal division, exclusion, repression, and egocentric consumption. Ironically, it is also the global neoliberal economy that lays the only realistic foundation for such a totality, albeit under negative circumstances. This economy has caused a rapid environmental deterioration that involves everyone on the planet, regardless of identity. Human beings are left with just two choices: either collectively forge new relationships among ourselves and with the planet or perish in the environmental devastation wrought by our continuous consumption, exploitation, division, and conflict. Imagining a totalizing environmental disaster and a global unity fighting for the survival of humanity and Earth, the 2019 Chinese sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth is an important case for illustrating what complex forms the idea of planetarianism may take in a concrete ideological and creative context. The author argues that the film's future imagination bears laudable potential to promote a turn from exclusionist individualism, represented by the Hollywood science fiction model, to inclusive planetarianism. However, the film's persuasiveness is significantly limited by the double-layered restraint imposed on it by the state and the market. This article traces the turn and the restraint to their historical sources, closely analyzes where the film succeeds and fails in moving beyond the Hollywood vision of the planet's future, and thereby enriches our understanding of the cinematic imagination of planetarianism.

scholarly journals Przez fantastykę do ekokrytyki. Zwrot ku science fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 311-330
Author(s):  
Grażyna Gajewska
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
New Realism ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Disaster Science

The author puts forward the thesis that the challenges of the current times resulting from environmental change, the destruction of habitats and ecological disasters direct our sensibilities and aesthetics ever more tangibly towards the fantastic or ecofiction: (eco)horror, (eco)science fiction, or (eco)fantasy. However, while ecohorror mainly exposes the negative aftermath of the Anthropocene, culminating in inevitable disaster, science fiction offers leeway for a more speculative approach, enabling one to construct such visions of reality in which multispecies justice will be observed and cultivated. The author follows K.S. Robinson’s line of thinking that “science fiction is a new realism”, A. Ghosh’s analysis of the relationship between literature and ecology, and D. Haraway’s research on new ways of understanding the relationships between people and non-humans using the speculative potential of sci-fi. It is therefore suggested that there is a great need for a science fiction vision, aesthetic and narration that would be capable of guiding us out of the anthropocentric entanglement and the Anthropocene/Capitalocene into the Chthulucene (as conceived by Haraway).

The state as person in international theory

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Wendt
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Failed States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Important State

To say that states are ‘actors’ or ‘persons’ is to attribute to them properties we associate first with human beings – rationality, identities, interests, beliefs, and so on. Such attributions pervade social science and International Relations (IR) scholarship in particular. They are found in the work of realists, liberals, institutionalists, Marxists, constructivists, behaviouralists, feminists, postmodernists, international lawyers, and almost everyone in between. To be sure, scholars disagree about which properties of persons should be ascribed to states, how important state persons are relative to other corporate persons like MNCs or NGOs, whether state persons are a good thing, and whether ‘failed’ states can or should be persons at all. But all this discussion assumes that the idea of state personhood is meaningful and at some fundamental level makes sense. In a field in which almost everything is contested, this seems to be one thing on which almost all of us agree.

A Better Solution to the General Problem of Creation

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Jeremy W. Skrzypek
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
General Problem ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Better Than

It is often suggested that, since the state of affairs in which God creates a good universe is better than the state of affairs in which He creates nothing, a perfectly good God would have to create that good universe. Making use of recent work by Christine Korgaard on the relational nature of the good, I argue that the state of affairs in which God creates is actually not better, due to the fact that it is not better for anyone or anything in particular. Hence, even a perfectly good God would not be compelled to create a good universe.

A model of the analysis of the dynamics and structure of socio-economic development (an example of the set of the largest Polish cities in the years 1998–2015)

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Lidia Mierzejewska ◽  
Jerzy Parysek
Keyword(s):  
Principal Component Analysis ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
The State ◽  
Geographical Research ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Socio Economic Development ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
State Of Affairs

Abstract The complexity of the reality studied by geographical research requires applying such methods which allow describing the state of affairs and ongoing changes in the best possible way. This study aims to present a model of research on selected aspects of the dynamics and structure of socio-economic development. The idea was to determine whether we deal with the process of reducing or widening the differences in terms of individual features. The article primarily pursues a methodological goal, and to a lesser extent an empirical one. The methodological objective of the paper was to propose and verify a multi-aspect approach to the study of development processes. The analyses carried out reveal that in terms of the features taken into account in the set of 24 of the largest Polish cities the dominating processes are those increasing differences between cities, which are unfavourable in the context of the adopted development policies aiming at reducing the existing disparities. In relation to the methodological objective, the results of the conducted research confirm the rationale of the application of the measures of dynamics and the feature variance to determine the character (dynamics and structure) of the socio-economic development process of cities. Comparatively less effective, especially for interpretation, is the application of principal component analysis and a multivariate classification, which is mainly the result of differences in the variance of particular features.

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