scholarly journals What Have We Done? Law, Responsibility and Technologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Richard Mohr
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Judgment ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The West ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Probative Value ◽  
Technological Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Culture Technology

The relationship between humans and the environment is becoming unsustainable. Technologies mediate this relationship. In turn, technology is a product of dense cultural phenomena, from research institutions to capitalism, from ethics to cosmology. This paper investigates the ‘cosmotechnics’ of technical interactions with the environment and explores the sources of these social, ethical and environmental problems. The disconnect between humans and nature is traced to the roots of Western culture, while alternative views have emerged within the West and through its awareness of other cultures. Technology in the West betrays a titanic urge to overcome nature. Since all technologies mesh with their immediate and global environment, invention arises from the interaction between assemblages of humans, machines and the environment. All contribute incrementally to new developments, which are not conscious projects fulfilling specific intentions, but evolving scenarios. Without any clear intentional drive determining technological developments—nor any clear distinction between intended and unintended consequences—the concept of intention has little probative value. Instead, we approach the ethical judgment of outcomes from the viewpoint of responsibility. The social milieu and its actors are to be held to account for the consequences, regardless of intentions. The paper identifies a malaise arising when the products of labour are split from an awareness of agency. This alienation opens up a misrecognition basic to unsustainable technologies. It operates at three discernible levels: technology split from culture; technology split from ethics and values; and theory split from technological practice. Solutions are sought through overcoming each of these gaps.

scholarly journals Takis Zenetos’s Electronic Urbanism and Tele-Activities: Minimizing Transportation as Social Aspiration

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Home Office ◽  
The Social ◽  
Residential Units ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Takis Zenetos was enthusiastic about the idea of working from home, and believed that both architecture and urban planning should be reshaped in order to respond to this. He supported the design of special public spaces in residential units, aiming to accommodate the inhabitants during working hours. This article argues that Zenetos’s design for “Electronic Urbanism” was more prophetic, and more pragmatic, than his peers such as Archigram and Constant Nieuwenhuys. Despite the fact that they shared an optimism towards technological developments and megastructure, a main difference between Zenetos’s view and the perspectives of his peers is his rejection of a generalised enthusiasm concerning increasing mobility of people. In opposition with Archigram, Zenetos insisted in minimizing citizens’ mobility and supported the replacement of daily transport with the use advanced information technologies, using terms such as “tele-activity”. Zenetos was convinced that “Electronic Urbanism” would help citizens save the time that they normally used to commute to work, and would allow them to spend this time on more creative activities, at or near their homes. The main interest of “Electronic Urbanism” lies in the fact that it not only constitutes an artistic contribution to experimental architecture, but is also characterized by a new social vision, promising to resynchronize practices of daily life. An aspect that is also examined is the relationship of Zenetos’s ideas and those of the so-called Metabolists in the 1960s in Japan, including Kenzo Tange’s conception of megastructures. Zenetos’s thought is very topical considering the ongoing debates about the advanced information society, especially regarding the social concerns of surveillance, governance, and sovereignty within the context of Big Data. His conception of “tele-activities” provides a fertile terrain for reflecting on potential implications and insights concerning home-office conditions not only within the context of the current pandemic situation but beyond it as well.

O początkach wychowania seksualnego w Polsce i kontestacji młodzieżowej na Zachodzie – zapis ostatniego wywiadu z Profesorem Andrzejem Jaczewskim

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-205
Author(s):  
Julia Stępniewska ◽  
Piotr Zańko ◽  
Adam Fijałkowski
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Auxiliary Function ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Sexual Education ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

In this text, we ask about the relationship between sexual education in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s with the cultural contestation and the moral (including sexual) revolution in the West as seen through the eyes of Prof. Andrzej Jaczewski (1929–2020) – educationalist, who for many years in 1970s and 1980s conducted seminars at the University of Cologne, pediatrician, sexologist, one of the pioneers of sexual education in Poland. The movie “Sztuka kochania. Historia Michaliny Wisłockiej” (“The Art of Love. The Story of Michalina Wisłocka” [1921–2005]), directed in 2017 by Maria Sadowska, was the impulse for our interview. After watching it, we discovered that the counter-cultural background of the West in the 1960s and 1970s was completely absent both in the aforementioned film and in the discourse of Polish sex education at that time. Moreover, Andrzej Jaczewski’s statement (July 2020) indicates that the Polish concept of sexual education in the 1960s and 1970s did not arise under the influence of the social and moral revolution in the West at the same time, and its originality lay in the fact that it was dealt with by professional doctors-specialists. We put Andrzej Jaczewski’s voice in the spotlight. Our voice is usually muted in this text, it is more of an auxiliary function (Chase, 2009). Each of the readers may impose their own interpretative filter on the story presented here.

scholarly journals Liberal Globalization and Peripheral Justice

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weigang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Full Explanation ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Marxist Tradition

The increasing salience of cultural conflicts in the post-Cold War era brings the problem of peripheral justice, defined as the equal attainment of social justice, to the center of current debates on globalization. Specifically, they force us to directly confront the toughest challenge posed by the Weberian tradition: If the principles of justice and equality are beyond the peculiarity of the Occidental civilization, how then may we give a full explanation as to why in the West-and only in the West-the ideal of public reasoning by private people has been materialized? The present study seeks to address this fundamental challenge by drawing on the Marxist tradition of public hegemony developed by Confucian Marxists and Gramsci. I argue that at the core of the problem of peripheral justice is an intrinsic linkage between Eurocentricism and the liberal paradigm of "civil society." The prospect of equal justice, therefore, hinges on the development of a new conception of the "social" that reverses the liberal interpretation of the relationship between bourgeois subjectivity and the "social" and derives from the primacy of the ethical life for social formation.

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 660-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

In the second half of the eighteenth century the leavening effects of the Enlightenment began to be felt among the Rumanians of Transylvania. The Enlightenment in Transylvania—and in Eastern Europe generally —was a curious blend of natural law, rationalism, and optimism, drawn from the West, and nationalism, a response to local conditions. It is no coincidence that the first tangible signs of national awakening among the Rumanians manifested themselves at this time. In the thought of the Enlightenment they discovered new justification for their claims to equality with their Magyar, Saxon, and Szekler neighbors. For example, they applied the notion of “natural” civil equality between individuals to the relationship between whole peoples, and they accepted wholeheartedly the myth of the social contract as the foundation of society and as the guarantee of the rights of all those who composed it.

scholarly journals The Relationship Between Social Capital and Physical Activity Participation Motivation in the Elderly

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Baladastian ◽  
◽  
Sara Janmohammadi ◽  
Shima Haghani ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Physical Activity Participation ◽  
Activity Participation ◽  
The West ◽  
Participation Motivation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Background: In recent years, social capital, and especially its importance among the elderly has attracted the attention of researchers. Moreover, it was suggested that older adults lack sufficient physical activity that may be due to the lack of motivation. Accordingly, this study was conducted to determine the relationship between social capital and physical activity participation motivation among the elderly living in the west of Tehran City, Iran, in 2020. Methods: This was a descriptive correlational study. The research population consisted of aged individuals present in the public areas of the west of Tehran City, Iran (districts 5, 9, 21, & 22 of Tehran Municipality), such as sidewalks and passages, shopping centers, parks, mosques, and so on. In total, 400 subjects were recruited by the multistage sampling method. The Abbreviated Mental Test (AMT), Participation Motivation Questionnaire for Older Adults (PMQOA), and Onyx and Bullen social capital scale were used to gather the required data. The obtained data were analyzed by Pearson’s correlation coefficient, Independent Samples t-test, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) in SPSS at the significance level of P<0.05. Results: The Mean±SD social capital of the study subjects was equal to 86.27±23.3. The fitness and social factors of activity participation motives had the highest (49.72±19.34) and lowest (18.97±15.96) Mean±SD values (based on an index of 0-100). Social capital was significantly associated with physical activity participation motivators (except fitness & medical subscales) (P<0.05). Social capital was also associated with occupational status, the number of children, house size, and the economic status of the research subjects (P<0.05). Conclusion: According to the obtained results, the social capital of the elderly participating in this study was pretty low. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between social capital and the motivators of physical activity participation (apart from fitness & medical); this result signifies the necessity of attention to the social capital of the elderly.

scholarly journals Breves reflexões sobre as (res)significações do trabalho nas sociedades ocidentais e a ciência administrativa

Revista Foco ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Raphaela Reis Castro Silva ◽  
Isabela Grossi Amaral
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Administrative Theory ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Administrative Science

Qual é a relação entre o conceito de trabalho e a ciência administrativa? Ou melhor, qual é sentido do trabalho na (ou para) sociedade atual? Essas são as questões que orientam esse ensaio teórico. Essa reflexão nos parece fundamental para a formação do administrador, a fim de que seja possível compreender a função social da ciência da administração no contexto atual da sociedade contemporânea, e principalmente sua atuação crítica e cidadã. O ensaio busca construir pontes entre o surgimento da Teoria Administrativa, a ideia do trabalho nas várias etapas da evolução do ocidente e o conceito atual do trabalho, objetivando promover e estimular um pensamento crítico acerca do sistema das relações de trabalho ao longo do tempo situando historicamente as perspectivas que a ciência da administração sobre, como forma de compreensão dos fenômenos existentes na sociedade e nas organizações. Nesse movimento, percebe-se que a conjuntura atual do trabalho vem se caracterizando pela precarização, informalidade, sobretrabalho, entre outros problemas que aumentam a exclusão social e fazem dos trabalhadores suas principais vítimas, tendo como aporte conhecimentos desenvolvidos dentro da área de administração. Essas transformações significativas apontam para ressignificações dos sentidos do trabalho na (ou para) sociedade atual influenciando nas relações concretas das formas de ser, nas identidades dos sujeitos incluídos e excluídos desse sistema, e também nas formas de ensino e formação desses profissionais, sempre permeadas por discursos ideológicos em consonância com sua época e com a classe que detém, de certa forma, o poder vigente. What is the relationship between the concept of work and administrative science? Or rather, what is the meaning of the work in (or for) the current society? These are the questions that guide this theoretical essay. This reflection seems to us fundamental for the formation of the administrator, so that it is possible to understand the social function of the science of administration in the current context of contemporary society, and especially its critical and citizen performance. The essay seeks to build bridges between the emergence of the Administrative Theory, the idea of work in the various stages of the evolution of the West and the current concept of work, aiming to promote and stimulate a critical thinking about the system of labor relations over time historically the perspectives that the science of the administration on as a way of understanding the phenomena existing in society and in organizations. In this movement, one can perceive that the current situation of work is characterized by precariousness, informality, overwork, among other problems that increase social exclusion and make the workers their main victims, having as contribution knowledge developed within the area of administration. These significant transformations point to the re-signification of the meanings of work in (or for) society influencing the concrete relationships of the forms of being, the identities of the subjects included and excluded from this system, and also in the forms of education and formation of these professionals, always permeated by ideological discourses in line with their times and with the class that holds, in a certain way, the prevailing power.

scholarly journals Toleransi Antar Umat Beragama dalam Film “?” (Tanda Tanya) dan Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zaini
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This paper aims to find out the discourse of tolerance among religious people featured in the film “?” (Tanda Tanya) and Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2. Both are viewed from the level of the text, the level of social cognition, and the level of social context. The research method used is qualitative analysis with Teun van Dijk's theoretical approach, namely data analysis at the level of text, social cognition and social context. The results showed that; First, the discourse of tolerance at the text level in the film “?” (Tanda Tanya) is related to various themes, both about harmony among religious communities, cultural diversity and about tolerance. Likewise the film Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2 also tells the story of religious life in European countries. Second, the discourse of tolerance between religious communities is seen from the level of social cognition. In the film “?” (Tanda Tanya), both the screenwriter and director want to explain the reality of the diversity of religions, cultures and customs that exist in Indonesia. He wants to explain the relationship between religious people in a vulgar way. In contrast to the more refined Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2 movie. Third, the discourse of tolerance between religious communities in terms of the level of social context. The film “?” (Tanda Tanya) is motivated by the number of bombings that occurred at the house of worship three or four years before. At the level of the social context of this film as a sequel to the previous Ayat-Ayat Cinta movie. The background of making this film is because it wants to illustrate that Islam can be used as a way of life wherever we live, including life in the West though.   Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui wacana toleransi antar umat beragama yang ditampilkan dalam film “?” (Tanda Tanya) dan Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2. Keduanya ditinjau dari level teks, level kognisi sosial, dan level konteks sosial. Metode riset yang digunakan adalah analisis kualitatif dengan pendekatan teori Teun van Dijk, yaitu analisis data pada level teks, kognisi sosial dan konteks sosial. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa; pertama, wacana toleransi pada level teks dalam film “?” (Tanda Tanya) berkaitan dengan tema yang beragam, baik itu tentang kerukunan antar umat beragama, keragaman budaya maupun tentang toleransi. Demikian halnya film Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2 juga mengkisahkan tentang kehidupan umat beragama di negara Eropa. Kedua, wacana toleransi antar umat beragama ditinjau dari level kognisi sosial. Dalam film “?” (Tanda Tanya) sang penulis skenario maupun sutradara ingin memaparkan realitas tentang keragaman agama, budaya, adat istiadat yang ada di Indonesia. Ia ingin memaparkan hubungan antar umat beragama secara vulgar. Berbeda dengan film Ayat-Ayat Cinta 2 yang lebih halus. Ketiga, wacana toleransi antar umat beragama ditinjau dari level konteks sosial. Film “?” (Tanda Tanya) dilatarbelakangi banyaknya kejadian bom yang melanda rumah ibadah pada tiga atau empat tahun sebelumnya. Pada level konteks sosial film ini sebagai sekuel film Ayat-Ayat Cinta sebelumnya. Latar belakang pembuatan film ini karena ingin menggambarkan bahwa Islam dapat dijadikan pedoman hidup dimanapun kita tinggal, termasuk hidup di negeri Barat sekalipun.

The Unity and Diversity of Pentecostal Theology

Ecclesiology ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-100
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Vondey
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Christianity ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

Pentecostal theology is marked by an inherent struggle for self-realization as well as unity and ecumenical integration. A realistic portrayal of worldwide Pentecostalism is confronted with homogeneous and romanticized depictions or false stereotypes. Global Pentecostalism and Pentecostalism in the West are intertwined in a significant theological and ecumenical manner that allows an ecumenical perspective focused on the West to shed light on the unity of Pentecostal theology, the relationship of Pentecostal theology to the ecumenical traditions, and the integration of Pentecostal theology in broader Christian commitments to social justice, peace, and the conservation of the creation. A particular point of convergence exists between Western and worldwide Pentecostal theology in the social activism of the movement. Contemporary Pentecostalism is in transition towards becoming a diversified contributor to the shape of global Christianity and the renewal of the theological agenda.

From Solution to Problem

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-193
Author(s):  
Peter C. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Western World ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Welfare State

The 1970s and 1980s saw two important changes in the West German discussion of the welfare state. First, global trade put direct economic pressure on expensive welfare states in the western world. Second, the social science discussion of the welfare state shifted to a language of systems, which no longer viewed the welfare state as a tool of state or society, but asked about how systems of social policy could have unintended consequences—how social solutions could pose their own problems. Young Marxists, breaking with the SPD, questioned the possibility of a welfare state that could aid workers under capitalism; conservative state theorists questioned whether democracy, with its demands for state solutions, could paralyze the state. The result was a more complex reading of how the modern word created complex challenges for individuals and states alike, especially well articulated in the work of Kaufmann and Luhmann.

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