The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Schmeink
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Closing The Gap ◽  
Genetic Science

Chapter 3 analyzes two exemplary literary works dealing with the creation of new posthuman species as a consequence of contemporary consumer society. With liquid modernity commodifying all aspects of life, the logical extrapolation, made possible by genetic science rapidly closing the gap in the dimension of science-fictional possibility, is the commodification of all life itself, including the human. Margaret Atwood and Paolo Bacigalupi discuss future worlds that build upon tendencies of an extreme consumer society and the sea change of human impact in the anthropocene. Both story cycles enhance present dystopian tendencies of liquid modernity to explore the consequences of the hypercapitalist commodification of life and its effect on human subjectivity. In both story worlds, zoe is reduced to its mechanical, material quality and appropriated for consumption, manifest expressly in the changing status of the human into the inhuman, non-human, and posthuman. The chapter discusses this shift in the perception of the human and the consequences of posthuman social development. Most importantly though, in exploring the posthuman as an alternative form of communal and social practice, both literary works provide for a eutopian moment in the dystopian imagination – allowing a hybrid, changing and multiple posthuman perspective to emerge.

Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690-1820s

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Periodical Studies ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Women's Periodicals

This innovative volume presents for the first time collective expertise on women’s magazines and periodicals of the long eighteenth century. While this period witnessed the birth of modern periodical culture and its ability to shape aspects of society from the popular to the political, most studies have traditionally obscured the very active role women’s voices and women readers played in shaping periodicals that in turn shaped Britain. The 30 essays here demonstrate the importance of periodicals to women and vice versa and, crucially, correct the destructive misconception that the more canonised periodicals and popular magazines were rival or discontinuous forms. This collection shows how both periodicals and women drove debates on politics, education, theatre, celebrity, social practice, popular reading and everyday life itself. Divided into 6 thematic parts, the book uses innovative methodologies for historical periodical studies, thereby mapping new directions in eighteenth-century and Romantic studies, women’s writing as well as media and cultural history.

scholarly journals The quest for a successful book-to-series adaptation in the times of SVOD — using the examples of “The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace” by Margaret Atwood

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 93-103
Author(s):  
Joanna Szydełko
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Video On Demand ◽  
Streaming Video ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Entertainment Television ◽  
The Times

A fascinating factor of so-called mass culture is the ability to adapt to society and its needs. The same pattern seems to be followed by the film industry, as it has been influenced by other branches of entertainment, television included. These are SVODs (Streaming Video on Demand platforms), which offer a growing number of screen adaptations of literary works. The following paper aims to analyse some criteria upon which book-to-series adaptations might be regarded as successful, using examples from The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace.Produced respectively by Hulu and CBC, both based on books by the Canadian female writer Margaret Atwood, the analysed shows confirm that the audience is more inclined to watch (and read) an intertextual production that often reflects and comments on contemporary political and social reality.

scholarly journals Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis: Conceptualizing of Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Mohammad Sadegh Najjarzadeha
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
The World ◽  
Individual Family ◽  
Primary Determinant

The more we move onward in America’s history, the more the effect of technology and science can be felt quite tangible. To live in the present era makes this even more notable since the age is going through and begetting such pervasive phenomenon like consumerism .The fact is that this notion is strongly propagated in the postmodern era. Families in this era can be vividly identified as the mere slaves of technology and its omnivorous progeny, consumerism. Donald Richard DeLillo as a postmodern author paid a comprehensive attention to this issue of technology and consumerism in his novels. One of the theorists who has extensively written in the field of consumerism is the polish sociologist , Zygmunt Bauman (1929) who in his book Liquid Modernity asserts a new term for the present condition of the world as it is the antithesis of the preceded solid modernity.Surely, the postmodern world owes a great deal of its liquidity to the prevalence and perfection of consumerism. Cosmopolisdepicts a society or even more limited, a family or a youngster that is not deliberately, entangled in the ruling of technology and consumerism. What is depicted in Comopolis is a combination of the role and dominance of technology and consumerism to form the sociology of a postmodern individual, family, and society.Also, the primary determinant that is technology,is explored in its relation to the other factors. Due to the candidness of most of his futuristic novels, Don DeLillo’s views show little optimism for success within his fictional postmodern world. He has always been blunt at telling us where American postmodern society is going. This paper aims to expose the America’s society in Cosmopolis which is the materialization of a well-developed consumer society, into the theories and concepts by Zygmunt Bauman.

scholarly journals Conscious evolution, social development and environmental justice

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke R Barnesmoore
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
World View

Moving from Barnesmoore’s (2016) theorization of humans as beings with the potential for conscious (epistemological) evolution, this article argues that a revolution in the ideas by which (‘world view’ in which) we conceive of potential practice must necessarily precede a revolution of academic and social practice (that theory necessarily precedes practice). Revolution must be rooted in revolutionary ideas and cannot be facilitated by practices that rise from (are rationalized within) the hegemonic essence (ideas, axioms and logics) of the regime against which revolution is being waged.

scholarly journals Seeking Happiness in Consumer Society. Inspirations for Pedagogy

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 273-290
Author(s):  
Renata Tomaszewska ◽  
Aleksandra Pawlicka
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Professional Work ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
The Individual

One of the tasks of education in preparing an individual to professional work. However, in the sphere of human’s work, dynamic transformations determined by many factors take place, including the development of consumer civilization, in which being happy is like a “duty”. The article ponders upon the concept that consumer civilization appears attractive owing to its development being based on the assumption that happiness is the ultimate goal one should strive for. Yet, happiness is understood as a kind of pleasure, which means that an individual adopts a hedonistic attitude. The tendency to identify happiness with possessing goods influences the lives of both the individual, along with their attitude towards work, and consequently – the whole society. By glorifying the consumption ethos as the factor behind social development and growing rich, the category of happiness becomes distorted and its correlates – neglected. The authors of the paper have devoted it to the analysis of the so-called happiness formula in the reality of consumer civilization. The aim of the reflections is the postulate for pedagogy to pay close research attention to the relations between an individual and happiness.

scholarly journals Women, Nature, and Culture: Patriarchy and Phalloecntrism in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood

Twejer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1209-1254
Author(s):  
Moreen Gorgees Seudin ◽  
◽  
Saman Abdulqadir Hussein Dizayi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
Oryx And Crake ◽  
Cultural Ecological

This paper tackles patriarchy and phallocentrism's concepts by shedding light on women, culture, and nature. Margaret Atwood's novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood are examined in terms of the concepts mentioned above. Atwood's novels and literary works can be examined in light of the concepts of patriarchy and phallocentrism based on environmental ethics. Through the study of these two novels, this paper attempts to elicit the signs regarding the cultural-ecological discourses and women's conditions as they are trapped in a male-centered society. Besides, it stresses nature's conditions whereby natural objects are undermined and are in the same miserable conditions as women. Then, applying these two concepts in the novels, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood are thoroughly explored along with the male/female and culture/nature dualisms question. Keywords: Ecofeminism, Margaret Atwood, Patriarchy, Phallocentrism

Zur Grundlegung einer Theorie sozialer Prozesse / Towards a Theory of Social Processes

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Elias
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Self Image

AbstractA theory of social processes has to diagnose and explain those long-term and unplanned, but yet structured and directional trends in the development of social and personality structures that constitute the infrastructure of what is commonly called „history”. The reception of such a theoretical approach is hampered by the self-image of contemporary sociology as a discipline primarily concerned with the present time and devoted to research on short-term changes and causal relationships within given social systems. This self-image results from a problematic division of intellectual labour between history and sociology, but also from sociology’s increasing involvement in social practice, i.e. bureaucratically controlled social planning. While contributing to such planning, sociologists ignore the long-term, unplanned developments which produce the conditions for the present-day practice of planning and in which all planned social development is entangled. Complementary processes of functional differentiation, of social integration, and of civilization are strands of this complex long-term development. Its dynamics requires further exploration.

Individuality, Choice, and Genetic Manipulation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Schmeink
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Genetic Manipulation ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Identity Creation ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
Systemic Risks ◽  
Personal Consequences ◽  
Systemic Nature ◽  
The Individual

Chapter 5 deals with the personal consequences of a posthuman subjectivity and the task of identity creation. In liquid modernity, risks and threats are becoming ever more global but remain systemic, while at the same time the solutions to these issues is relegated to the individual. The existence of a noticeable gap between society's insistence on individuality, autonomy, and self-assertion and the systemic risks to this claim, caused by a globalized flow of information, technology and politics, is thus the argument of the analysis of the video game BioShock. Science fiction as a genre here allows for the extrapolation and exaggeration of this gap by employing the posthuman as an extreme possibility of human identity creation. The dystopian imagination provides a bleak emphasis of the science-fictional dimension of consequence in terms of this development, by providing an alternative history in which rampant individualism meets an extreme form of consumer society. The human body has become the battleground of liquid modern desires to form and consume identities. Further, the medium uniquely provides the specific ideological commentary on the systemic nature of the illusion of autonomy, especially in liquid modern consumer society.

scholarly journals An African Perspective on Surrogacy and the Justification of Motherhood

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-25
Author(s):  
Akande Michael Aina
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Emotional Appeal ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
African Perspective

Surrogacy as a practice is supported by science, technology, morality and legality. It follows that the issues concerning it cut across all facets of life. And different arguments have being advanced for and against this practice. The belief espouse in this paper is that one cannot discuss successfully the moral, the science or the legality of surrogacy without delving into the cultural question of who is a mother. In other words, it is possible to have simple scientific and legal understandings of the practice and still disagree on the cultural level because of its stronger emotional appeal. The purpose of this work is to expose the Yoruba-African religio-cultural beliefs that have bearing on the understanding of motherhood or ownership of a child. This will be done through a critical analysis of Yoruba cultural beliefs about personhood and the metaphysical underpinning between birth and the ontology of life itself. Theargument here is that given some Yoruba ontological belief about life, motherhood and personhood it may be difficult for the products of surrogacy to fit-in into the society in terms of personal and social development. This work goes further to recommend that cultural beliefs should be taking into consideration when making laws to guide surrogacy in order to avoid conflict between the mothers and the child.

scholarly journals Conscious evolution, social development and environmental justice

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke R Barnesmoore
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
World View

Moving from Barnesmoore’s (2016) theorization of humans as beings with the potential for conscious (epistemological) evolution, this article argues that a revolution in the ideas by which (‘world view’ in which) we conceive of potential practice must necessarily precede a revolution of academic and social practice (that theory necessarily precedes practice). Revolution must be rooted in revolutionary ideas and cannot be facilitated by practices that rise from (are rationalized within) the hegemonic essence (ideas, axioms and logics) of the regime against which revolution is being waged.

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