Critical Social Analysis of Crisis

In this article, we offer a critical social analysis of crisis in light of capitalist development and, above all, in the post-2008 world. We discuss five approaches in the social sciences that deal with the problem of crisis and develop some theore­tical lines for a critical approach to the theme. We argue that precarity can be an important topic for grasping the current crises via critical approaches. The text also presents the six articles that are part of the issue we edited for Praktyka Teoretyczna entitled “Latency of the crisis.”

"Heritage-for-Peace and Development": An Opportunity Not to be Missed

The dominant approach of the international community to the subject of our research and teaching is to instrumentalise cultural heritage safeguarding within stabilisation and development programs in post-conflict regions. Since the turn of the Millennium, cultural heritage safeguarding has been among the crucial instruments used by the international community, especially in post-conflict regions, for: reconciliation and peace building; development of a common sense of belonging; promoting mutually respectful dialogue in culturally complex societies. Many international organizations, such as the UN, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, NATO, the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Council of Europe, and the EU, promote the management of ethno-political conflicts as their priority. Their agendas follow the principles of a) the overall relevance of cultural heritage for society and b) the importance of social networks for peace-building and peacekeeping in post-traumatic contexts. Instead of opposing this peace and development oriented paradigm from either anti-realist or nationalist perspective, we can recognize it, apply it and use it to improve the social status of social sciences and humanities in Serbia. Anthropological and critical heritage studies-based criticism of UNESCO-driven, state-governed ICH safeguarding fails to comprehend that standard academic constructivist analyses of a community’s key symbols of identity are offensive from the native’s point of view. Our typical analyses unwittingly confuse, annoy or even insult a great majority of the wider public who view/perceive collective identity as something given, inherited and real analogously to the objects and processes of the physical world. Consequently, our theoretical work counterindicates both peacekeeping, stability-building efforts by the international community in post-conflict regions and the goals of critical social science (which it nominally represents). Hence, a novel approach is required, one prioritising heritage stakeholder inclusion (and not our theoretical or ethnoreligious commitments). It is precisely the studies of nationalism and its consequences which forbid us to think of heritage as something useful, a counter-intuitive method for achieving fundamental anthropological goals. As communities regularly perceive their identities as objective and real, and see a critical social theory approach to their customs and traditions as confusing, non-academic, illegitimate or even offensive, I here propose a shift from constructionist criticism, standard in anthropology, to realist instrumentalism, typical of ethnology, in order to boost ICH safeguarding potential for achievement of both social and disciplinary-specific goals.

Digital competences in Nordic teacher education

We investigate how digital competences are being integrated into teacher education (TE) across the Nordic countries - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland in this article. We make the case that there has been an expansion of the agenda for digital competences in education. Digital competences have developed from an information and communication technology perspective to also include a critical, social, and creative understanding of digital technologies and computing competences. Methodologically, we make use of doc-ument analyses, qualitative questionnaires, and interviews with participants in the field. With an emphasis on Danish TE, we explore how TE in the Nordic countries has responded to this agenda on policy and institutional levels. We suggest that the Danish approach to the expanded agenda can augment tendencies and challenges in Nordic responses to digitalisation in TE. A key finding is that Nordic countries respond to the expanded agenda in different ways regarding policy regulation, content areas, and how digital com-petences are organised and distributed on a local level. Tendencies and challenges identified across Nordic countries are valuable to ensure the continual development of teachers’ digital competences.

Six ways to help fix energy hardship in New Zealand

Energy hardship is caused by the interaction of factors including housing quality, appliance efficiency, energy source and price, and occupant needs and income. Multiple policy approaches are needed to address these varied causes of energy hardship, and the lack of an official definition and a measurement strategy in Aotearoa should not preclude policy action to address this critical social determinant of health. Here we outline six ways to help fix energy hardship in New Zealand.

Mutual aid versus volunteerism: Autonomous PPE production in the Covid-19 pandemic crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has confirmed neoliberal capitalism’s inability to meet critical social needs. In the United Kingdom, mutual aid initiatives based on ‘solidarity not charity’ blossomed in a context of state incompetence and private sector negligence – including Scrub Hub, a network of groups that autonomously produced personal protective equipment and provided it directly to health workers. Using a convergence of autonomist and anarchist perspectives, this article examines Scrub Hub as an example of emergent autonomous political economies and considers the challenges of resisting co-optation into volunteerist hierarchies and suppression by the neoliberal state.

Marcuse Today: An Introduction

This contribution serves as an invitation to a renewed exploration of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory. It discloses his continued relevance for critical social theory and politics in the contemporary moment and why Marcuse should not be condemned to the dustbin of history but should be appropriated and developed in our contemporary conditions in which crises are multiplying.

Critical social framework on the determinants of primary healthcare access and utilisation

This paper aims to contextualise ‘healthcare access and utilisation’ within its wider social circumstances, including structural factors that shape primary healthcare for marginalised groups. Mainstream theories often neglect complexities among the broader social, institutional and cultural milieus that shape primary healthcare utilisation in reality. A blended critical social framework is presented to highlight the recognition and emancipatory intents surrounding person, family, healthcare practice and society. Using the theoretical contributions of Habermas and Honneth, the framework focuses on power relationships, misrecognition/recognition strategies, as well as disempowerment/empowerment dynamics. To enable causal and structural analysis, we draw on the depth ontology of critical realism. The framework is then applied to the case of rural elderly women’s primary healthcare use in Bangladesh. Drawing on the literature, this article illustrates how a blended critical social perspective reveals the overlapping and complex determinants that affect primary healthcare utilisation, before concluding with the importance of situating healthcare access in sociocultural structures.