scholarly journals Shestov : Faith Against Reason

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-493
Author(s):  
Adam Drozdek
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Good And Evil

According to Shestov, knowledge is incompatible with freedom which can be found only through faith because it establishes its truths through the principle of necessity and universality. In fact, the original sin lies in the desire to know, in which not only scientific knowledge is meant, but also knowledge of everyday life. The fall is biblically expressed as a desire to know good and evil. However, it seems that the domain of the moral dimension should not be beyond good and evil, as Shestov suggests, but beyond rationality. Contrasting faith and reason as strongly as Shestov does leads only to a schizophrenic concept of man : man has two faculties that are irreconcilable and even hostile toward one another. It seems that the image of Jerusalem and Athens should be replaced with the image of St. Paul and Minneapolis : different cities that are very close together, not in hostile relationship, but cooperating in a friendly arrangement. Also, Shestov allows for a most irrational expression of freedom. However, he hardly addresses the problem of practical consequences of such a view in social life.

The molding of mediatization: The stratified indispensability of media in close relationships

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Jansson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Online Chat ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
E Mail

AbstractThis article presents a quantitative analysis of how different socio-cultural factors, including lifestyle, affect the extent to which different media are perceived as indispensable for maintaining close relations with family and friends. Through applying ‘indispensability’ as an indicator of the mediatization of social life, the study provides a concrete illustration of how mediatization is continuously molded through socio-cultural processes in everyday life. The results are based on a national survey conducted in Sweden and show that e-mail and video calls constitute a culturally distinctive ensemble of communication, especially in comparison to online chat functions and Facebook. E-mail is valued especially among people with higher education who lead globally oriented lifestyles thus testifying to the enduring status of text-based communication in the longer format as a cultural marker. The study thus suggests that the modalities of communication that certain media make possible are important to how these media are perceived as

Folding and Friction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Goulden
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Smart Home ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Management Control ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Material Interface ◽  
The Social ◽  
Networked Computing ◽  
Social Domains

The internet of things (IoT)—the embedding of networked computing into the material world around us—seeks to reshape our everyday lives. To address the IoT is to address the material interface between the global digital networks of the twenty-first-century economy and the mundane doings, affects, and experiences which occupy the great majority of our existence. Taking domestic IoT, the so-called smart home, as a focus, the author argues that the IoT is more than simply an intensification of existing trends, the ongoing extension of computing connectivity which has already jumped from desktop to laptop to smartphone. In breaking out of the constraints of any single personal device, no matter how mobile, the IoT not only further dissolves the spatial and temporal distance between different social domains but also profoundly implicates social life within those domains, between the members of the setting. The IoT is constitutionally social in a way in which no type of social media is. The chapter provides a consideration of the political economy at play in the smart home, before addressing everyday life and the IoT in terms of information management, control, domestic labor, and resistance. In concluding, two key features of the IoT are highlighted: world folding, whereby incommensurate social domains are layered through one another with often problematic—even absurd—results and its misconceived efforts to erase the social frictions of everyday life, which fails to recognize that it is in these frictions that so much of what is socially valuable resides.

What the World Is Watching

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-48
Author(s):  
Sharon Mazer
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Professional Wrestling ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Madison Square Garden

More than a vulgar parody of “real” sport, professional wrestling is a sophisticated theatricalized representation of the transgressive, violent urges generally repressed in everyday life. More than a staged fight between representatives of good and evil, at its heart is a Rabelaisian carnival, an invitation to every participant to share in expressions of excess and to celebrate the desire for, if not the acting upon, transgression against whatever cultural values are perceived as dominant and/or oppressive in everyday life. More than an elaborate con game in which spectators are seduced into accepting the illusion of “real” violence, wrestling activates and authorizes its audiences, makes them complicit in the performance. Matches can be described in conventional dramatic terms that remain consistent whether in Madison Square Garden or Gleason’s Arena. Because the fight is fixed, the contest is for heat—for the fans’ attention—rather than for victory per se.

Trust and Accountability

2011 ◽  
pp. 363-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Ries
Keyword(s):  
Distributed Systems ◽  
Ubiquitous Computing ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Networked Computers

Ubiquitous computing implies that literally any activity in everyday life can be assisted or accompanied by networked computers. Therefore, the concepts of everyday social life must be carefully reflected on when developing applications for ubiquitous computing. The present chapter focuses on the concepts of trust and accountability. First, both concepts are introduced with their everyday semantics. Second, we explain why trust is relevant for ubiquitous computing, and introduce the main issues for dealing with trust in computer science. Third, we show how accountability can be achieved in distributed systems using reputation and micropayment mechanisms. In both sections, we provide a short overview of the state-ofthe- art and give detailed examples for a deeper understanding. Finally, we provide a research outlook, again arguing for the integration of these concepts into future ubiquitous computing applications.

The Public Perception of Science and Technology in a Periphery Society: A Critical Analysis from a Quantitative Perspective

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Silvio Vaccarezza
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Level Of Understanding

In this article a series of variables referred to the general public's valuations of science and technology are analysed. These valuations refer to different dimensions of science and technology—as a utility of scientific knowledge, their legitimacy, their bond with the cultural matrix of everyday life. The analysis is based on information from a survey carried out in a great urban conglomerate of a little scientific developing country, Argentina. We see that valuation variables discriminate the public according to their positive or negative responses about science, but that there is no evident association between them. We consider one variable in particular dividing the public into those who are ‘trustful’ and those who are ‘cautious’ regarding the advances of science, and we see how it is related to other significations of valuation. The pre-eminence of positions of ambivalence or contradiction in the population's perception regarding this topic is discussed. A factor analysis is presented that comprises these variables and that presents a set of ‘valuation orientations’ towards science as a result. Finally, it is interesting to see how education and the level of understanding of scientific knowledge affect the public's valuation, which questions the basic supposition of the tradition of public understanding studies.

scholarly journals Institutional rhythms: Combining practice theory and rhythmanalysis to conceptualise processes of institutionalisation

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 922-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Blue
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Theories Of Practice ◽  
Temporal Organisation

The practice turn in social theory has renewed interest in conceptualising the temporal organisation of social life as a way of explaining contemporary patterns of living and consuming. As a result, the interest to develop analyses of time in both practice theories and practice theory-based empirical research is increasing. Practice theorists draw on theories of time and ideas about temporal rhythms to explain how practices are organised in everyday life. To date, they have studied how temporal experiences matter for the coordination of daily life, how temporal landscapes matter for issues of societal synchronisation, and how timespace/s matter for the organisation of human activity. While several studies refer to, draw on, and position themselves in relation to ideas about temporal rhythms, those working with theories of practice have yet to fully utilise the potential of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis for explaining the constitution of, and more specifically, changes within, social life. I argue that rhythmanalysis can be effectively combined with practice theory to better articulate the ways in which practices become connected through what I describe as processes of institutionalisation. I argue that this combination requires repositioning the role of time in theories of practice as neither experience, nor as landscape, but, building on Schatzki’s work on The Timespace of Human Activity, as practice itself. Drawing on Lefebvre’s concepts of arrhythmia and eurhythmia, and developing Parkes and Thrift’s notion of entrainment, I illustrate how institutional rhythms, as self-organising, open, spatiotemporal practices emerge, endure, and evolve in ways that matter for both socio-temporal landscapes and temporal experiences.

Drama and Learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Franks
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Societal Level

As ways of making meaning in drama strongly resemble the ways that meanings are made in everyday social life, forms of drama learn from everyday life and, at a societal level, people in everyday life learn from drama. Through history, from the emergence of drama in Western culture, the learning that results at a societal level from the interactions of everyday social life and drama have been noted by scholars. In contemporary culture, electronic and digitized forms of mediation and communication have diversified its content and massively expanded its audiences. Although there are reciprocal relations between everyday life and drama, aspects of everyday life are selected and shaped into the various cultural forms of drama. Processes of selection and shaping crystallize significant aspects of everyday social relations, allowing audiences of and participants in drama to learn and to reflect critically on particular facets of social life. In the 20th century, psychological theories of learning have been developed, taking note of the sociocultural relationships between drama, play, and learning. Learning in and through drama is seen as being socially organized, whole person learning that mobilizes and integrates the bodies and minds of learners. Making signs and meanings through various forms of drama, it is interactive, experiential learning that is semiotically mediated via physical activity. Alongside the various forms of drama that circulate in wider culture, sociocultural theories of learning have also influenced drama pedagogies in schools. In the later part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, drama practices have diversified and been applied as a means of learning in a range of community- and theater-based contexts outside of schooling. Practices in drama education and applied drama and theater, particularly since the late 20th century and into the early 21st century, have been increasingly supported by research employing a range of methods, qualitative, quantitative, and experimental.

Posttraditional Migrants

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 617-635
Author(s):  
Dariuš Zifonun
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
The Creation

This article analyses the participation of migrants in sport. Based on the case study of a Turkish soccer club in Germany, it scrutinizes the structural and processual features of ethnic self organization. The club responds to the problems of social order in modern complex societies—problems emanating from the pluralization of social life-worlds—by employing a number of characteristic answers. Among them are the segmentation into sub-worlds, the composition of an integrative ideology of friendship as well as the creation of a soccer style. In processes of legitimation and delegitimation, questions of belonging and recognition are being negotiated. All of this allows for the management of ambivalence in everyday life and contributes to the distinctively posttraditional character of community. The article suggests that a sociology of social worlds approach can substantially contribute to the study of the interactive social structures of society.

Palaeolithic Art as Cultural Memory: a Case Study of the Aurignacian Art of Southwest Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Porr
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Individual Variations ◽  
Active Individual ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Southwest Germany ◽  
Palaeolithic Art

This article examines aspects of social memory in the Aurignacian mobiliary art of southwest Germany. An analytical distinction is introduced between cultural and communicative memory with different characteristics and functions in Palaeolithic social life. It is argued that the statuettes are reflections of cultural memory, but also stood in a complex and unstable relationship with the flexible conditions of everyday life. The figurative objects are not passive reproductions of collective ideas. Rather, they have to be seen as products of an active individual and intense concern with the field of meanings and associations of cultural memory, and consequently represent individual variations of a socially shared meaningful ideology

scholarly journals Open Secrets and Knowing Smiles

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 720-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena Ledeneva
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Innovative Research ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Life Function

Given the importance of informal ways of getting things done in postsocialist societies, research into the field of unwritten rules and informal practices has been slow to develop. In studying such rules and practices, the researcher often encounters skepticism or hostility stemming from the ways in which people relate to tacit agreements, or else she or he is greeted by an ambivalent smile of complicity—a knowing smile. This article draws a connection between knowing smiles and open secrets and argues that these notions illuminate a great deal about how the “grey areas” of social life function. It also suggests that such seemingly trivial aspects of everyday life can reveal profound features of social institutions and point in the direction of innovative research.

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