scholarly journals The threat of surveillance capitalism

Teknokultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276
Author(s):  
Chris H. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
The Early 21St Century

Using Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the essay explores this latest form of capitalism and Zuboff’s claims about its organization. Her arguments are compared and contrasted with David Eggers novel, and the movie that came out of it, called The Circle, as well as other perspectives on capitalism (Marx, Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger) and the current dominance of social media companies (especially Alphabet/Google, Facebook, and Amazon) from Evgeny Morozov, Natasa Dow Schüll, Zeynep Tufekci, Steve Mann and Tim Wu. Zuboff’s description and critique of Surveillance Capitalism is a convincing and important addition to our understanding of the political economy of the early 21st Century and the role of giant monopolistic social media companies in shaping it.

scholarly journals Supernatural Characters in the Quasi-Historical Discourse of Modern Ukrainian Literature: Specificity and Functions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Oleksandra Nikolova ◽  
Kateryna Vasylyna
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Global Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
The Early 21St Century

: The article is aimed at the study of Ukrainian quasi-historical novels of the early 21st century, characterized by the renunciation of “objectivity” of the narrative and emphasized the role of imagination. These are the pieces by Bakalets and Yarish (“From the Seventh Bottom”), Vynnychuk (“The Pharmacist”, “Lutetia”), and by Yatsenko (“Nechui. Nemov. Nebach”). The study reveals the features and functions of fantastic characters in the abovementioned novels. These fictional images of modern Ukrainian quasihistorical literary discourse are characterized by infernality, grotesque anthropomorphism, destruction of traditional antinomy “otherworldly– earthly/human”, philosophical and ironic coloring. Interpreting the fantasy in quasi-historical novels is expedient in the context of the global problem of perception of historical past by people of the 21st Century, with an emphasis on significant changes in public consciousness motivating writers to “Re-write/Reimagine the past”. The spread of this phenomenon reveals public distrust of the authorities, offering “correct” answers to the questions about past events, protest against permanent manipulation of historical facts (the tendency of growing consciousness and intellectualization of society).

China: Party–Army Relations Past and Present

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia K. Ledberg
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
The Military

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a key political actor in the Chinese state. Together with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese state institutions, it makes up the political foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the early years after the founding of the PRC in 1949, the military played an important role in state consolidation and the management of domestic state affairs, as is expected in a state founded on Leninist principles of organization. Since the reform process, which was initiated in the late 1970s, the political role of the PLA has changed considerably. It has become less involved in domestic politics and increased attention has been directed toward military modernization. Consequently, in the early 21st century, the Chinese military shares many characteristics with the armed forces in noncommunist states. At the same time, the organizational structures, such as the party committee system, the system of political leaders, and political organs, have remained in place. In other words, the politicized structures that were put in place to facilitate the role of the military as a domestic political tool of the CCP, across many sectors of society, are expected to also accommodate modernization, professionalization, and cooperation with foreign militaries on the international arena in postreform China. This points to an interesting discrepancy between form and purpose of the PLA. The role of the military in Chinese politics has thus shifted over the years, and its relationship with the CCP has generally been interpreted as having developed from one marked by symbiosis to one of greater institutional autonomy and independence. Yet these developments should not necessarily be seen as linear or irreversible. Indeed, China of the Xi Jinping era has shown an increased focus on ideology, centralization, and personalized leadership, which already has had consequences for the political control of the Chinese armed forces. Chances are that these trends will affect the role of the PLA in politics even further in the early decades of the 21st century.

scholarly journals Emotion, interaction and the structure-agency problem: Building on the sociology of Randall Collins

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 154 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Anthony King
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Agency Problem ◽  
Typical Feature ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Interaction Ritual ◽  
Ritual Theory ◽  
Collective Goods ◽  
The Early 21St Century

Sociology today faces a number of serious challenges to its integrity as a discipline. As a synthesis of Weberian and Durkheimian traditions, the work of Randall Collins represents an innovative vindication of sociology in the early 21st century. This article explores Collins’s interaction ritual theory to demonstrate its contemporary utility. However, to highlight the importance of Collins’s work, it seeks to advance and refine it theoretically. Specifically, it seeks to develop Collins’s argument about the role of emotions and, specifically, effervescence, in rituals. This paper argues that, while important, effervescence alone cannot be sufficient to ensure the conformity which is a typical feature of interaction and essential to explaining social order. Drawing on Goffman, Asch and Scheff, the paper argues that effervescence is underpinned by more robust mechanisms of honour and shame, themselves immediately connected to access to collective goods. In this way, the paper affirms the importance of Randall Collins’s work for sociology today.

scholarly journals The role of “Siberian Jerusalem” s metaphor in journalistic discourse of the early 21st century (based on the regional and city press of Kainsk and Yeniseisk)

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Shapovalov ◽  
Eliza R. Grigoryan
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Early 21St Century

Nowadays they build “Siberian Jerusalems” on the territory of Trans-Ural: Yeniseisk, Barguzin, Birobidzhan, Blagoveshchensk and Kainsk. Moreover in different times social and scientific discourse of Siberia (and Russia) already knew “Siberian Jerusalems”: Tobolsk, Kainsk. Researchers focus not only on the process of generating and existence of the phenomenon “Siberian Jerusalem”, but also on the issue of the very transferring process of the idea of Jerusalem to Siberia, spatial and semiotic introduction into the sacred space of Siberian cities. The authors pay special attention to the concept of “Siberian Jerusalem” as applied to the cities of Kainsk and Yeniseisk. Are there common qualities of two metaphoric “Siberian Jerusalem” and can we argue that these concepts are identical? Basing on these metaphors the study helps to figure out the genesis and essence of these constructs “Kainsk — Siberian Jerusalem” and “Yeniseisk — Siberian Jerusalem”, where they are implemented. In methodological terms the paper uses developments in the field of cultural-sematic transfer (S. S. Avanesov) and linguistic studies of metaphor as a language unit and mechanisms of its generation (N. D. Arutyunova, V. P. Moskvin). The authors conclude that while syntactic structure of the metaphor “Kainsk — “Siberian Jerusalem” and” “Yeniseisk — “Siberian Jerusalem” coincided they denote non-identical meanings.

Posthuman Dystopia: Animal Surrealism and Permanent Crisis in Contemporary British Theatre

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-312
Author(s):  
Eckart Voigts ◽  
Merle Tönnies
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The Early 21St Century

AbstractThe paper situates current developments in British theatre within wider trends towards dystopia and (post-)apocalyptic writing. A central focus is on the role of posthuman elements in dystopian plays which are used to create a constant and pervasive, but mostly unspecific sense of crisis. Two recent works by female playwrights – Dawn King’s Foxfinder (2011) and Stef Smith’s Human Animals (2016) – are compared and related back to Caryl Churchill’s seminal Far Away (2000) to elucidate how the nonhuman comes to be perceived as a threat and how this leads to, and/or supports, a dystopian system and its violent measures. Moreover, both Foxfinder and Human Animals manage to combine absurdist elements that border on the surreal with more or less pronounced didactic implications for the audience, although these connections are realised in different ways by the two playwrights. In this manner, post-apocalyptic dystopian theatre of the early 21st century can become revolutionary rather than regressive.

ON THE ROLE OF “HISTORICAL PHENOMENOLOGY” IN THE RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE LATE 20TH — EARLY 21ST CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
Maksim N. SHEVCHENKO
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Historical Phenomenology ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
The Early 21St Century

This article follows the discussion that developed in the Russian historiography around the postulates formulated by the founders of “historical phenomenology”. The author attempts to identify the most controversial topics of discussion and to form an idea of its role in the development of theoretical and methodological principles of the Russian medieval studies in the early 21st century. The study of the problem has required using historical-genetic and historical-comparative research methods. This article shows an extremely polarized attitude of the Russian researchers to the theoretical and methodological postulates of the “historical phenomenology”. The Russian historians have already addressed this problem, but their writings made no attempt to generalize the criticism or sum up the discussion. The new works, similarly to the previous ones, are written in the genre of criticism of the research program by A. L. Yurganov and A. V. Karavashkin and only multiply works of this nature. The author believes that the time has come to define the results of the controversy, to highlight the key ideas criticized by researchers, and thus, to determine the most controversial topics of the theoretical and methodological legacy of the Russian medieval studies in the early 21st century. Based on the intensity of critical comments, this paper identifies three of the most controversial positions of “historical phenomenology”. Special attention is paid to the problem of “explaining” and “understanding” the research methods, the idea of the “supra-historical” unity and the principle of “non-referentiality” in research analysis. This paper concludes that during the discussion, the Russian researchers clarified their views on the essence of a number of terms and concepts. The polemics initiated by A. L. Yurganov and A. V. Karavashkin allowed drawing clearer lines of demarcation both in the theory and practice of humanities research.

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