scholarly journals Utopia without us?

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (46) ◽  
pp. 377-389
Author(s):  
Zoltán Boldizsár Simon

As the prospect of self-authored human extinction increasingly appears as a plausible scenario of human futures, a growing number of efforts aim at comprehending it as the prospect of the world without us. Patrícia Vieira convincingly shows in her essay on utopia and dystopia in the Anthropocene that utopianism has become a prominent interpretive strategy to render the possibility of human extinction meaningful. This brief reflection argues against the feasibility of considering the world without us in utopian terms. It identifies three tacit assumptions in utopian interpretations of our disappearance: they (1) take for granted that prospects of human extinction and post-apocalyptic themes are of the same kind; (2) presume that the biological character of human extinction needs no special attention when situating it with the social character of utopian thinking; and (3) remain committed to an anthropocentric view in assuming that we are the ones to attribute meaning even to the world defined by our absence. In challenging these assumptions, the essay develops three theses on the relation of utopia and the prospect of the world without us.

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (122) ◽  
pp. 123-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Schöller

It will be presented the German Bertelsmann-Foundation which belongs to one of the world-wide biggest media companies. The enterprise-foundation exerts an important influence on several social reform movements in Germany. Doing this, the Bertelsmann-Foundation succeeds in integrating associations, parties and personalities representing nearly the entire range of society. This raises the question, weather the foundation is a political neutral institution as it claims to be. By having a critical look at the foundation-project „intellectual orientation“ the social character of production of ideas by the Bertelsmann-Foundation will be demonstrated. It can be shown, the role of the Bertelsmann-Foundation is that of a mediator, transforming different interests into a new kind of social corporatism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-275
Author(s):  
Alejandro M Peña

Abstract Against current developments in the sociology of IR, from new systemic theorizations of world society to Bourdieusian approaches to the practices of IR scholars, this article claims that relevant problems remain regarding how IR theorizes its social location and reconciles the social character of the world it observes with the social character of its observations. To reformulate these problems, the article draws from an underused paradigm of social system theorizing, sociocybernetics, offering a radical constructivist treatment of the problem of observation and reflexivity. Elaborating the notion of second-order cybernetics and Niklas Luhmann's take on the reproduction of observing social systems, the article argues that IR can be conceived as an observing social system that adapts by altering and subdividing the semantic boundaries of its systemic communications, that is, IR theories. This socio-heuristic process structures both the first-order observations IR makes about the world, as well as second-order observations of itself. In this manner, the article argues that sociocybernetics-informed sociology of IR communications can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of IR as a social system that observes society from society.


1997 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Borys Lobovyk

An important problem of religious studies, the history of religion as a branch of knowledge is the periodization process of the development of religious phenomenon. It is precisely here, as in focus, that the question of the essence and meaning of the religious development of the human being of the world, the origin of beliefs and cult, the reasons for the changes in them, the place and role of religion in the social and spiritual process, etc., are converging.


Author(s):  
Melanie SARANTOU ◽  
Satu MIETTINEN

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.


Author(s):  
Sanjay Chhataru Gupta

Popularity of the social media and the amount of importance given by an individual to social media has significantly increased in last few years. As more and more people become part of the social networks like Twitter, Facebook, information which flows through the social network, can potentially give us good understanding about what is happening around in our locality, state, nation or even in the world. The conceptual motive behind the project is to develop a system which analyses about a topic searched on Twitter. It is designed to assist Information Analysts in understanding and exploring complex events as they unfold in the world. The system tracks changes in emotions over events, signalling possible flashpoints or abatement. For each trending topic, the system also shows a sentiment graph showing how positive and negative sentiments are trending as the topic is getting trended.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-206
Author(s):  
SAJITHA M

Food is one of the main requirements of human being. It is flattering for the preservation of wellbeing and nourishment of the body.  The food of a society exposes its custom, prosperity, status, habits as well as it help to develop a culture. Food is one of the most important social indicators of a society. History of food carries a dynamic character in the socio- economic, political, and cultural realm of a society. The food is one of the obligatory components in our daily life. It occupied an obvious atmosphere for the augmentation of healthy life and anticipation against the diseases.  The food also shows a significant character in establishing cultural distinctiveness, and it reflects who we are. Food also reflected as the symbol of individuality, generosity, social status and religious believes etc in a civilized society. Food is not a discriminating aspect. It is the part of a culture, habits, addiction, and identity of a civilization.Food plays a symbolic role in the social activities the world over. It’s a universal sign of hospitality.[1]


Author(s):  
Nur Amiratun Nazihah Roslan ◽  
Hairulnizam Mahdin ◽  
Shahreen Kasim

With the rise of social networking approach, there has been a surge of users generated content all over the world and with that in an era where technology advancement are up to the level where it could put us in a step ahead of pathogens and germination of diseases, we couldn’t help but to take advantage of that advancement and provide an early precaution measures to overcome it. Twitter on the other hand are one of the social media platform that provides access towards a huge data availability. To manipulate those data and transform it into an important information that could be used in many different scope that could help improve people’s life for the better. In this paper, we gather all algorithm that are available inside Meta Classifier to compare between them on which algorithm suited the most with the dengue fever dataset. This research are using WEKA as the data mining tool for data analyzation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Noyes ◽  
Frank Keil ◽  
Yarrow Dunham

Institutions make new forms of acting possible: Signing executive orders, scoring goals, and officiating weddings are only possible because of the U.S. government, the rules of soccer, and the institution of marriage. Thus, when an individual occupies a particular social role (President, soccer player, and officiator) they acquire new ways of acting on the world. The present studies investigated children’s beliefs about institutional actions, and in particular whether children understand that individuals can only perform institutional actions when their community recognizes them as occupying the appropriate social role. Two studies (Study 1, N = 120 children, 4-11; Study 2, N = 90 children, 4-9) compared institutional actions to standard actions that do not depend on institutional recognition. In both studies, 4- to 5-year-old children believed all actions were possible regardless of whether an individual was recognized as occupying the social role. In contrast, 8- to 9-year-old children robustly distinguished between institutional and standard actions; they understood that institutional actions depend on collective recognition by a community.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Lisa Guenther

In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry analyzes the structure of torture as an unmaking of the world in which the tools that ought to support a person’s embodied capacities are used as weapons to break them down. The Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison functions as a weaponized architecture of torture in precisely this sense; but in recent years, prisoners in the Pelican Bay Short Corridor have re-purposed this weaponized architecture as a tool for remaking the world through collective resistance. This resistance took the form of a hunger strike in which prisoners exposed themselves to the possibility of biological death in order to contest the social and civil death of solitary confinement. By collectively refusing food, and by articulating the meaning and motivation of this refusal in articles, interviews, artwork, and legal documents, prisoners reclaimed and expanded their perceptual, cognitive, and expressive capacities for world-making, even in a space of systematic torture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-240
Author(s):  
Stefania Pontrandolfo ◽  
Marco Solimene

This article reflects on the conceptual debt that anthropology has developed towards the peoples it studies, by exploring the case-study of Gypsy/Roma anthropology. We argue that ethnographically-grounded research has enabled anthropologists to access and incorporate Gypsy/Roma visions and practices of the world. The flexible Gypsy epistemologies, which Gypsies/ Roma use in the social and cultural construction of particular forms of identity and mobility, have thus translated into a specific practice of theory, which has provided more adequate tools for grasping the complexity of reality and contributed to a decolonialisation of anthropological thought.


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