scholarly journals Population Aging as the Social Body in Representation and Real Life

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Crampton
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social

This article uses three levels of body analysis as presented by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock to compare old age as a construct in population aging discourse with research on lived experience of people aging in the United States and Ghana. I first describe how demographers construct social bodies as becoming “gray” through population statistics and how policy makers then use dependency ratios to rationalize intervention on behalf of older adults in the body-politic.  The construction of old age within this discourse is then compared with ethnographic research that suggests this construct leaves out much of the lived experience familiar to anthropologists of aging.  Rather than debunk the old age construct, however, the purpose of this article is to argue for study of population aging discourse as constituting a social body reflecting cultural constructions of nature and society.  Moreover, this representation is made real through policy and social intervention work, and with very real effect on people’s lives. As such, an anthropology of aging bodies can include the social life of old age as a social construct.

Governing Homelessness through Running

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan C Clift
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit ◽  
Development Organizations ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site

In the context of social welfare austerity and non-state actors’ interventions into social life, an urban not-for-profit organization in the United States, Back on My Feet, uses the practice of running to engage those recovering from homelessness. Promoting messages of self-sufficiency, the organization centralizes the body as a site of investment and transformation. Doing so calls to the fore the social construction of ‘the homeless body’ and ‘the running body’. Within this ethnographic inquiry, participants in recovery who ran with the organization constructed moralized senses of self in relation to volunteers, organizers, and those who do not run, while in recovery. Their experiences compel consideration of how bodily constructions and practices reproduce morally underpinned, self-oriented associations with homeless and neoliberal discourses that obfuscate systemic causes of homelessness, pose challenges for well-intentioned voluntary or development organizations, and service the relief of the state from social responsibility.

The Forgotten Political Art Par Excellence? Architecture, Design and the Social Sculpting of the Body Politic

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Rockhill
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Relationship

With a few rare but important exceptions, it is arguable that major contemporary debates on the historical relationship between art and politics—from the work of Lukács and Adorno to that of Lyotard and Rancière—have generally favored the visual arts and literature over and against architecture and urban design. However, as a few thinkers like Benjamin and Foucault have recognized, if there is one art that appears to be prototypically political (in the sense that it is almost inevitably the site of collective decisions that directly shape the social body while simultaneously being subject to multifarious communal appropriations), it is surely architecture. This paradox leads to a question of central importance, which serves to guide the analysis in this final chapter: why have many of the foremost philosophic debates on the historical relation between art and politics sidelined what is perhaps the political art par excellence? This leads to a critical re-examination of the metaphilosophical assumptions undergirding many of the standard historical narratives regarding the development of art and its relationship to politics.

All Aboard the Louis Vuitton Train!

Pólemos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-195
Author(s):  
Leif Dahlberg
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
The Social ◽  
Continuous Running

Abstract The article discusses fashion advertising as a means to access and understand contemporary social imaginary significations of the body politic, focusing on an advertising for Louis Vuitton. The article suggest that one can read advertising as a form of continuous, running commentary that society makes of itself, and through which one can unearth the social imaginary. The article finds a plethora of meanings in the selected advertising for Louis Vuitton, but the central finding is that the fashion advertising represents community as an absence of community; in other words as a deficit that the brand somehow is able to rectify.

scholarly journals Body experience in the east-slavonic culture tradition

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Ye. I. Kirilenko
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
Culture Tradition

In the modern science, the body is an object of interest not only to the natural science and medicine, but also the humanities. Of special interest, in particular, for the medical discourse, is the ethnic body experience. The paper reveals features of the body experience in the east-slavonic culture from the analysis of the mythological tradition. This experience is characterized by the pronounced interest and ambivalent attitude to the body’s life, natural body standards; and emotional intensity. The experience of the social body is of highest priority in the culture.

The Japanese Village in the Seventeenth Century

1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Vital Function ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
The Middle Ages

As in the Middle Ages in the West, so in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) men were fond of explaining the hierarchical society in which they lived by comparing it to an organism. Social classes, Confucian scholars said, were like parts of the body: each had a vital function to perform, but their functions were essentially different and unequal in value. In this scheme the peasants were second in importance only to the ruling military class. Just as the samurai officials were the brains that guided other organs, so the peasants were the feet that held the social body erect. They were the “basis of the country,” the valued producers whose labor sustained all else. But, as a class, they tended innately to backsliding and extravagance. Left alone they would consume more than their share of the social income, ape the manners and tastes of their betters, and even encroach upon the functions of other classes to the perilous neglect of their own. Only the lash of necessity and the sharp eye of the official could hold them to their disagreeable role. They had to be bound to the land; social distinctions had to be thrown up around them like so many physical barriers; and, to remove all temptation to indolence and luxury, they had to be left only enough of what they produced to let them continue producing.

The Social Security Program of the United States

1936 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Social Security Program ◽  
Unemployment Compensation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Old Age Assistance ◽  
State Unemployment

The Federal Social Security Act, which may be regarded as the central core of the social security program, is an omnibus act, containing the following features: (1) a national, compulsory oldage insurance plan, covering all employees except certain exempted groups; (2) two measures designed to stimulate the states to enact state unemployment compensation laws, namely, (a) a uniform nation-wide tax upon employers, against which a credit is allowable for contributions made to approved state unemployment compensation plans, and (b) subsidies to the states to cover the administrative costs of unemployment compensation; and (3) grants-in-aid to the states for old-age assistance, pensions for the blind, aid to dependent children, child welfare, maternal and child health, vocational rehabilitation, and public health activities. It is estimated that each of the two forms of social insurance will apply to about 25,000,000 wage-earners, and, when the maximum rates become effective in 1949, will involve annual contributions of nearly $3,000,000,000. This amount is approximately equal to the normal annual expenditure of the federal government prior to 1930. In addition, the grants-in-aid to the states were estimated by the actuaries of the President's Committee on Economic Security to reach a total of a half-billion dollars annually within a few years.History of the Federal ActWhen, in a message to Congress on June 8, 1934, the President indicated that he would submit a program of social insurance for consideration at the following session, the Wagner-Lewis unemployment insurance bill and the Dill-Connery old-age assistance bill were pending. Shortly afterwards, the President, by executive order, created the Committee on Economic Security, consisting of the Secretaries of Labor (chairman), Treasury, and Agriculture, the Attorney-General, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administrator. This committee appointed Professor Edwin E. Witte, of the University of Wisconsin, as executive director, and proceeded to build up a staff of actuaries and experts to study the whole problem of economic insecurity, and to prepare recommendations.

Local emergency management social media use during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Sean Hildebrand, PhD ◽  
Brandon Waite, PhD
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Disaster Preparedness ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Times

The purpose of this special issue of the Journal of Emergency Management is to assess the state of disaster preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article adds to this discussion by examining the results of a national survey of emergency managers in the United States regarding the social media platforms they use to communicate information related to the COVID-19 pandemic, how proficient they feel using them, and what value they see in these technologies during the times of crisis. The authors’ findings help make sense of government responses to the pandemic, as well as contribute to the body of literature on communication and emergency management more broadly. Furthermore, their findings have important implications for emergency management practitioners and educators. 

Features of behavior of Russian and American students on social network Facebook

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-123
Author(s):  
M.I. Krishtal ◽  
◽  
A.V. Shchekoturov
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Student Behavior ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Students ◽  
Making Friends

Presented is the analysis of peculiarities of behavior of Russian and American students in the social network Facebook. The focus of the study is on what activities students of the two countries are most often engaged in, as well as on what motives they motivate when adding users to the personal list of friends. The main method of research is a formalized interview (N = 266). Students of two higher educational institutions located in Kaliningrad (Russia) and Philadelphia (USA) were interviewed. In anticipation of the analysis, according to the functionality, the types of activities on Facebook were highlighted, i.e. social, functional and cognitive. Also forms of activity were divided into public and private according to the nature of their manifestation (open or hidden). The motives for making friends were typologized according to the user’s orientation towards the development of “binding” or “connecting” social capital. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that students from the United States are more likely to engage in public activities on Facebook than students from Russia, which is expressed in more active commenting on posts, publishing content on their personal page and friends’ pages. Russian students prefer private activities (chat and viewing other people’s pages). The functional type of activity, expressed in the use of gaming and non-gaming applications, turned out to be the most unpopular form of pastime on Facebook among students in both countries. It was also found that students at two universities are more focused on the development of “connecting” social capital. At the same time, for Russian students the dating factor in real life does not act as an important motive for adding friends to the list as for American ones. It is suggested that the basis for the differences discovered are the features of the cultural environments in which students live. The Russian environment involves more cautious participation in public life, the American stimulates social activism. Significant gender differences in peculiarities of student behavior in Facebook network could not be identified.

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