Intersecting oppressions; intersecting struggles: Race, class and subalternity

This article offers intersectional theories of racism another way to think about Gramsci’s work; it will explore how Gramsci operationalizes the category of subaltern groups. It begins by briefly reviewing how Gramsci’s work is discussed in contemporary theoretical approaches to racism in the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Michael Omi and Howard Winant and Stuart Hall. It will stress important similarities regarding the relationship between structural and social forces, political ideologies and consciousness. It will note how both ‘intersectionality’ and ‘articulation’ (one variant of this concept discussed by Hall) show how racism can be amplified through the overlapping or overdetermination of identities, representations and societal effects. It continues by exploring how racism was overdetermined in the Italian national context during the time that Gramsci had lived (and relates it to contemporary theoretical frameworks that organize our understandings of race, racialization and racism). The article then explores how subalternity has been theorized away from the context in which Gramsci employed the term and interpreted, instead, from the twin perspectives of absolute domination and radical autonomy. The article concludes by reading subalternity alongside of race, class and as a substantive cultural question and, in addition, a question of strategy and political organization.

The Impact of Digital Media for the development of political culture in Creating Public Awareness: A Study between Entries and Models

The researcher seeks to evaluate and understand digital media in raising awareness of community issues among the public. The research aims to identify theoretical approaches to the impact of digital media on public awareness, and to clarify models of the impact of digital media on public awareness. The research used the descriptive and analytical approach, which attempts to analyze and describe the impact of digital media on social awareness among the public, as the research reached the most important results that the reality imposed itself in the form of digital media through its various means played an important and effective role in the movements and revolutions that the countries witnessed in the movements and revolutions of the democratic spring. Some people described it as "Vmsbouquet revolutions" in relation to the important role that Facebook played in communication between the demonstrators, which prompted some to say that virtual or digital media has replaced political organizations in playing their role aimed at political upbringing in what some have called "" Bringing up the internet.

Fluvial processes and landforms

The period 1965-2000 saw a sustained increase in research and publication on fluvial processes and landforms. The trend toward generalisation and/or mechanistic understanding, rather than site-specific history, continued. Research was multi-disciplinary, with important contributions from hydraulic engineers, geologists and physical geographers and from experimental and theoretical approaches as well as geomorphological and sedimentological fieldwork. Rapidly increasing computer power underpinned new measurement methods and greatly increased the scope of data analysis and numerical modelling. There were major advances in understanding the interaction of river process and form at reach scale, with growing recognition of differences between sand-bed and coarse-bed rivers. Field studies outside Europe and North America led to greater awareness of the diversity of river planforms and deposition landforms. Conceptual models of how rivers respond to natural or anthropogenic change in boundary conditions at different timescales were refined, taking advantage of studies of response to land use change, major floods, and volcanic eruptions. Dating of sediments allowed greater appreciation of fluctuations in the incidence of extreme driving events over centuries and thousands of years. Towards the end of the period research on bedrock rivers began to take off.

In the mirror of transitology: The politics of power alternation in the Caucasus and Central Asia

In 2021 the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus celebrate the 30th anniversary of independence. According to the paradigm of transitology, the political development of a state since the departure from the authoritarian regime entails progressive liberalization and democratization of political processes. And, in accordance with the predominant theoretical approaches, the post-Soviet states were expected to follow this path. However, a closer look at the specifi c scenarios of power alternation in the Central Asia and the South Caucasus provides a much more mixed picture: here the change of ruling elites took very diff erent forms and shapes. The choice of scenario for the transfer of power was always determined by a complex combination of internal and external factors, including the nature and characteristics of the political system of a particular state, its ethnic com-position, the socio-economic situation and external environment. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern several key scenarios: a ‘revolutionary’ scenario, which implies a violent change of power; an intra-elite consensus; transition of power to a successor; a hereditary transmission of power; democratic elections; a resigna-tion of a president. A comparative analysis of the political processes unfolding in the region over the past 30 years shows that even institutionally the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are not ready yet for a competition policy. Moreover, the latter is generally viewed by their leaders as a threat to both the stability of the state and to the interests of the ruling elites. To this may be added the expansion of diff erent informal, archaic political practices across the post-Soviet space. The latter include the sacralization of power, when national interests are equated with the interests of the ruling clan and the whole national identity is built up around this nexus. All this shows the limits of classical transitology theory when it comes to political transformations in the post-Soviet space, which it is unable to explain, yet alone to predict their possible future development. Thus, there is a strong need to develop new theoretical frameworks that would better accommodate particularities of the regional political systems.

Societal Impacts of Cyber Security Assets of Project ECHO

Solutions on both consumer and state levels have become increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks by e.g. malware, phishing, machine learning and artificial intelligence. As the adoption and integration of information technologies are increasing and solutions are developing, the need to invest in cyber-security is at an all-time high. Investment in cybersecurity is a chief priority within the European Union, and project ECHO is a one initiative that put emphasis on devising, elaborating, implementing and enhancing a series of technological solutions (assets) to counteract cyber-attacks. The research problem of this study is what societal impacts do the ECHO assets have as product, as knowledge use, and as benefits to society. The literature review includes theory and practice from academic papers, EU innovation project and professional reports, and some ECHO project workflows. Relevant academic theoretical approaches that provide a basis for this task are: e-skills and training, Organisational Learning (OL), Societal Impact (SI), Societal Impact Assessment (SIA). This is a qualitative pilot study that evaluates the usefulness of employing a Product/ Knowledge/ Benefit Societal Impact framework to assessment of societal impacts. Data collection involved qualitative participatory observation of a co-creative expert hackathon workshop. This pilot study shows that the methodology path, where societal impact of ICT and AI solutions (e.g. the ECHO assets) are examined as these three elements (product, knowledge use, societal benefit). This pilot study serves as a step to validate this path and design and select practical, rigorous and relevant quantitative methodology to further the understanding of both societal impact assessment of cyber, e-, and AI-based solutions and services. To incorporate societal impacts with cyber and e-skills this study recommends developing and refining actual key performance indicators (KPI) to provide a basis for rigorous and relevant qualitative and quantitative questionnaire based inquiry of cyber, e-, and AI-based solutions and services.

Narrating the Digital Turn: data deluge, technomethodology, and other likely tales

In this paper it is argued that digital technologies will have a transformative effect in the social sciences in general and in the fast developing field of narrative studies in particular. It is argued that the integrative and interdisciplinary nature of narrative approaches are further enhanced by the development of digital technologies and that the collection of digital data will also drive theoretical and methodological developments in narrative studies. Biographical Sociology will also need to take account of lives lived in, and transformed by, the digital domain. How these technologies may influence data collection methods, how they might influence thinking about what constitutes data, and what effects this might have on the remodeling of theoretical approaches are all pressing questions for the development of a Twenty First Century narratology. As Marshall McLuhan once put it “First we shape our tools and then our tools shape us”.