Collective Emotions and Normativity

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Mikko Salmela ◽  

There are two opposite views about the relation of collective emotions and normativity. On the one hand, the philosopher Margaret Gilbert (1997, 2002, 2014) has argued for years that collective emotions are by constitution normative as they involve the participants’ joint commitment to the emotion. On the other hand, some theorists especially in sociology (Durkheim 2009, 2013a; Collins, 2004) have claimed that the values of particular objects and/or social norms originate from and are reinforced by collective emotions that are intentionally directed or associated with the relevant objects or actions. In this chapter, I discuss these opposing views about the relation of collective emotions and normativity, defending the latter view. While collective emotions typically emerge in situations in which some shared value or concern of the participants is at stake, I suggest that collective emotions may also ontologically ground norms in the manner suggested by Durkheim. I present support for this view from a recent sociological case study on the emergence of punitive norms in the social movement Occupy Geneva.

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Freeden

The issues raised by eugenics are of more than passing interest for the student of political thought. In itself a minor offshoot of turn-of-the-century socio-biological thought which never achieved ideological ‘take-off’ in terms of influence or circulation, there was certainly more in eugenics than nowadays meets the eye. The following pages propose to depart from the over-simplistic identification of eugenics, as political theory, with racism or ultra-conservatism and to offer instead two alternative modes of interpretation. On the one hand, eugenics will be portrayed as an exploratory avenue of the social-reformist tendencies of early-twentieth-century British political thought. On the other, it will serve as a case-study illustrating the complexity and overlapping which characterize most modern ideologies. While recognizing, of course, the appeal of eugenics for the ‘right’, a central question pervading the forthcoming analysis will be the attraction it had for progressives of liberal and socialist persuasions, with the ultimate aim of discovering the fundamental affinities the ‘left’ had, and may still have, with this type of thinking.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 55-73
Author(s):  
Alban Bouvier ◽  

For almost three decades, Margaret Gilbert has introduced a new account of social facts taking “joint commitments”, not only explicit but also implicit, as the cement of sociality properly understood. Gilbert has used this original account of collective phenomena to clarify a variety of issues, both in the philosophy of rights and in the philosophy of the social sciences. This paper focuses on the latter domain; it argues that although Durkheim and Mauss are central references in her pioneering work, On Social Facts, Gilbert’s model has been underestimated in the fields of sociology and anthropology. This may come from the fact that Gilbert provides the reader with only imaginary examples. To overcome this difficulty, Bouvier investigates several historical examples in two related domains:, the political and the religious. Another reason for this relative lack of interest may come from Gilbert’s very unconventional interpretation of the Durkheimian explanation of social beliefs. Although, on the one hand, her “contractualist” (or Rousseauist) interpretation permits a sharp illumination of certain social facts, it may, on the other hand, impede the recognition of the specificity of other kinds of beliefs, which sociologists and anthropologists—including Durkheim—usually consider as collective beliefs. Bouvier, by contrast, introduces alternative models, illustrating them with similar, although ultimately distinct from previous, historical examples.


Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
J. Jesse Ramírez

Focusing on the masked rapper MF Doom, this article uses Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields’s concept of “racecraft” to theorize how the insidious fiction called “race” shapes and reshapes popular “Black” music. Rap is a mode of racecraft that speculatively binds or “crafts” historical musical forms to “natural,” bio-geographical and -cultural traits. The result is a music that counts as authentic and “real” to the degree that it sounds “Black,” on the one hand, and a “Blackness” that naturally expresses itself in rap, on the other. The case of MF Doom illustrates how racialized peoples can appropriate ascriptive practices to craft their own identities against dominant forms of racecraft. The ideological and political work of “race” is not only oppressive but also gives members of subordinated “races” a means of critique, rebellion, and self-affirmation—an ensemble of counter-science fictions. Doom is a remarkable case study in rap and racecraft because when he puts an anonymous metal mask over the social mask that is his ascribed “race,” he unbinds the latter’s ties while simultaneously revealing racecraft’s durability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Nikorowicz-Zatorska

Abstract The present paper focuses on spatial management regulations in order to carry out investment in the field of airport facilities. The construction, upgrades, and maintenance of airports falls within the area of responsibility of local authorities. This task poses a great challenge in terms of organisation and finances. On the one hand, an active airport is a municipal landmark and drives local economic, social and cultural development, and on the other, the scale of investment often exceeds the capabilities of local authorities. The immediate environment of the airport determines its final use and prosperity. The objective of the paper is to review legislation that affects airports and the surrounding communities. The process of urban planning in Lodz and surrounding areas will be presented as a background to the problem of land use management in the vicinity of the airport. This paper seeks to address the following questions: if and how airports have affected urban planning in Lodz, does the land use around the airport prevent the development of Lodz Airport, and how has the situation changed over the time? It can be assumed that as a result of lack of experience, land resources and size of investments on one hand and legislative dissonance and peculiar practices on the other, aviation infrastructure in Lodz is designed to meet temporary needs and is characterised by achieving short-term goals. Cyclical problems are solved in an intermittent manner and involve all the municipal resources, so there’s little left to secure long-term investments.


2018 ◽  
pp. 13-38
Author(s):  
N. Ceramella

The article considers two versions of D. H. Lawrence’s essay The Theatre: the one which appeared in the English Review in September 1913 and the other one which Lawrence published in his first travel book Twilight in Italy (1916). The latter, considerably revised and expanded, contains a number of new observations and gives a more detailed account of Lawrence’s ideas.Lawrence brings to life the atmosphere inside and outside the theatre in Gargnano, presenting vividly the social structure of this small northern Italian town. He depicts the theatre as a multi-storey stage, combining the interpretation of the plays by Shakespeare, D’Annunzio and Ibsen with psychological portraits of the actors and a presentation of the spectators and their responses to the plays as distinct social groups.Lawrence’s views on the theatre are contextualised by his insights into cinema and its growing popularity.What makes this research original is the fact that it offers a new perspective, aiming to illustrate the social situation inside and outside the theatre whichLawrenceobserved. The author uses the material that has never been published or discussed before such as the handwritten lists of box-holders in Gargnano Theatre, which was offered to Lawrence and his wife Frieda by Mr. Pietro Comboni, and the photographs of the box-panels that decorated the theatre inLawrence’s time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Nissi ◽  
Melisa Stevanovic

Abstract The article examines how the aspects of the social world are enacted in a theater play. The data come from a videotaped performance of a professional theater, portraying a story about a workplace organization going through a personnel training program. The aim of the study is to show how the core theme of the play – the teaming up of the personnel – is constructed in the live performance through a range of interactional means. By focusing on four core episodes of the play, the study on the one hand points out to the multiple changes taking place both within and between the different episodes of the play. On the other hand, the episodes of collective action involving the semiotic resources of singing and dancing are shown to represent the ideals of teamwork in distinct ways. The study contributes to the understanding of socially and politically oriented theater as a distinct, pre-rehearsed social setting and the means and practices that it deploys when enacting the aspects of the contemporary societal issues.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.


Author(s):  
Luigia Mocerino ◽  
Franco Quaranta

The scope of this work is to try to quantify the reduction of emissions due to COVID-19; an analysis covering the entire port of Naples will be presented. The explosion of the global pandemic from SARS-CoV-2 led to the adoption of local and global countermeasures aimed at containing contagions. The transportation sector, and in particular the passenger moving sector, was deeply affected; this almost total block of movements between regions and countries if, on the one hand, seriously slowed the economy, on the other, it drastically reduced the emissions on a global and local scale. In this work, the case study of the cruise ships berthed at the Maritime Station (Stazione Marittima) in the port of Naples is examined. The traffic of cruise ships during the lockdown and in the immediately following months was analysed and compared first with respect to the calendars scheduled for the same period and then with respect to the same months of 2019. The reduction in number of cruise ships and passengers were analysed and compared to the previous trends. The vessels collected, for 2019 and 2020 (both those that arrived and those that suffered the effects of the movement block) were subsequently characterized in terms of power and speed. Finally, an estimate of the emissions of NOX, SOX, CO2 produced and saved was carried out. The 2020 results will be compared with the hypothetical emissions that would have occurred in the absence of the lockdown and with those of the same period of the previous year.


Virittäjä ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildikó Vecsernyés

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan, kuinka Suomen ja Unkarin pääministereitä puhutellaan Facebookissa. Tutkimuksen kohteena on se, mitä puhuttelukeinoja kommentoijat käyttävät kahdessa eri tarkoituksessa: toisaalta sympatian tai samaa mieltä olemisen, toisaalta erimielisyyden tai kritiikin ilmaisemisessa. Kahden sukukielen, suomen ja unkarin, puhuttelukeinot ovat samankaltaisia, mutta niiden käytössä on huomattavia eroja esimerkiksi sinuttelun ja teitittelyn yleisyydessä. Aineistona on viiteen Suomen pääministeri Juha Sipilän ja yhdeksään Unkarin pääministeri Viktor Orbánin vuosina 2015–2017 kirjoittamaan Facebook-päivitykseen tulleita kommentteja. Tarkastelun kohteena on 189 suomenkielistä ja 191 unkarinkielistä puhuttelumuotoa sisältävää kommenttia. Kommentit on jaettu myötäileviin ja vastustaviin ja näitä kahta kommenttityyppiä tarkastellaan kvantitatiivisesti ja kvalitatiivisesti pyrkimyksenä selvittää, mitä eroja puhuttelumuodon valinnassa ilmenee. Tutkimuksen teoreettis-metodisena taustana on aiempi sosiopragmaattinen puhuttelututkimus. Tutkimus osoittaa, että suomessa sinuttelu on hyvin yleistä riippumatta kommentin laadusta, mutta unkarissa sinuttelu on tavallisesti erimielisyyden osoittamisen keino. Tyypillinen kannustavan kommentin kirjoittaja käyttää suomessa sinuttelua ja pääministerin etunimeä, unkarissa teitittelyä, ön-teitittelypronominia ja pääministerin titteliä. Unkarin kielessä puhuteltavan yhteiskunnallinen asema vaikuttaakin puhuttelumuodon valintaan vahvemmin kuin suomessa. Toissijaisena strategiana unkarissa esiintyy jonkin verran myös uudenlaista kunnioittavaa sinuttelua yhdistettynä pääministerin etunimen käyttöön. Suomenkielisen aineiston vastustavissa kommenteissa esiintyy vielä todennäköisemmin sinuttelua kuin myötäilevissä kommenteissa sekä sinä-pronominia ja pääministerin sukunimeä, unkarinkielisessä aineistossa puolestaan sinuttelua, te ’sinä’ -pronominia ja pääministerin etu- tai sukunimeä tai nimenmuunnoksia. Toissijaisena strategiana joissain unkarin vastustavissa kommenteissa hyödynnetään ylikohteliaisuutta ja intentionaalista inkoherenssia. Aineiston perusteella näyttää siltä, että Facebook-kommenteissa käytetään suomessa etupäässä sinuttelua samoin kuin muissakin internetkeskusteluissa; kommentoijien mielipiteen ilmaisemisessa nominaalisilla puhuttelumuodoilla on tärkeä rooli. Unkarissa taas internetin yleisestä sinuttelupainotteisuudesta huolimatta tärkeimpänä keinona on sinuttelun ja teitittelyn vastakkainasettelu.   How to address a Prime Minister? Forms of address in comments to posts from the Prime Ministers of Finland and Hungary This article examines how the Prime Ministers of Finland and Hungary are addressed on Facebook. The aim of the study is to investigate which forms of address are used by commentators expressing, on the one hand, sympathy or consent, and on the other, disagreement or criticism. The repertoires of address forms of these two related languages, Finnish and Hungarian, bear many similarities, but the frequency and status of these forms are different. The data consists of comments on five posts written by Prime Minister of Finland Juha Sipilä and on nine posts written by Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán between 2015–2017, comprising a total of 189 comments in Finnish and 191 comments in Hungarian, all containing forms of address. The comments have been divided into two types: comments showing sympathy and comments showing disagreement or criticism. These two comment types have been analysed quantitatively and qualitatively aiming to determine how the address practices employed differ from each other. The theoretical background of this study is based upon previously conducted socio­pragmatic address research. The article shows that the use of T forms  is very common in Finnish, regardless of the type of comment, but that in Hungarian, T forms are typically used as a linguistic tool to express disagreement. In Finnish, a typical commentator showing sympathy will use T forms and address the Prime Minister by his first name, whereas in Hungarian V forms, the V form pronoun ön, and the title ‘Prime Minister’ are favoured. The social status of the addressee has a stronger effect on the choice of address forms in Hungarian than it does in Finnish. However, some Hungarian comments include a new, respectful type of T form used with the first name of the Prime Minister. In comments expressing disagreement in the Finnish data, writers favour T forms, especially T form pronouns, and the use of the Prime Minister’s surname, whereas in the Hungarian data T forms, the T form pronoun te ‘you’ and the use of the Prime Minister’s first name, surname or nicknames are the most typical address practices. In conclusion, commentators in the Finnish data seem to use mostly T forms on Facebook, thus imitating address practices common in other online conversations. Instead of the T/V opposition, nominal forms of address play an important role in expressing the commentators’ attitude. In the Hungarian data, despite the prevalence of the T forms in online chats, the most important resource in expressing relation to the Prime Minister seems to be the contrast between the T and V forms, reflecting their significant status in Hungarian.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document