COMPARATIVE CONCEPTOLOGY OF POWER AND RESISTANCE USING GOOGLE NGRAM BOOKS

The article discusses the evolution of key concepts referring to governmentality in comparative perspective. The Russian discourse on government and power is compared with the Western discourse. The Google Books Ngram Viewer databank covering the period from 1800 to 2019 is used as a source of information. This databank contains more than 5% of all published books. The proposed discourse analysis suggests that the Russian and Western discourses have some elective affinity: in both cases there is little room for truth telling and whistle-blowers face significant risk.

Max Weber and the chemistry of the Protestant ethic

This article aims to reconstruct a possible interpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism through the concept of elective affinity, which, as I have read, records fundamental implications for social science thinking. I argue that, in contrast to mechanical descriptions, Weber’s model sought to capture social phenomena through interactions between elements with heterogeneous qualitative properties. This effort, in turn, bears a very strong resemblance to the operation of social science models examining the functioning of complex systems. In line with this, I proceed as follows: first, I briefly outline the backbone of the argument of The Protestant Ethic, and then, through the concept of elective affinity, show how it can be fitted into one of the defining lines of current social science approaches. In line with this, I attempt to discuss the argument of The Protestant Ethic in the context of agent-based models. I argue that Weber’s approach can be seen as essentially a prototype of agent-based modeling.

Mutual affordances: the dynamics between social media and populism

In a recent contribution to this journal Paolo Gerbaudo has argued that an ‘elective affinity’ exists between social media and populism. The present article expands on Gerbaudo’s argument and examines various dimensions of this affinity in further detail. It argues that it is helpful to conceptually reframe the proposed affinity in terms of affordances. Four affordances are identified which make the social media ecology relatively favourable to both-right as well as left-wing populism, compared to the pre-social media ecology. These affordances are neither stable nor uniquely fixed: they change in concordance with ongoing technological developments and in response to political events. Even though these dynamics can be quick-moving, a fairly stable alliance of interests between social media and populism seems to have emerged over the last decade. This raises the plausibility that as long as the current social media ecology persists, populist tendencies will remain prevalent in politics.

Eric J. Hobsbawm tra marxismo britannico e comunismo italiano

By developing the biographical genre though a “translocal micro-history” approach, the research aims to study the figure of Eric J. Hobsbawm focusing on his elective affinity with Italy. It examines the ways in which the encounter of the English historian with this country took place and was renewed from the fifties until the new Millennium. First, it analyzes the relationships networks which Hobsbawm created in Italy or with Italians worldwide; secondly, it considers the results that these interactions provoked at the level of scientific production and political reflection, trying to capture at the same time the transformations that his political identity underwent in contact with the Italian Communist Party. Moreover it try to explore the features that his reputation reached in Italy, discussing the influences his production exerted on Italian historiographical context and on Italian public opinion.