social differences
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Author(s):  
Marvin T. Brown

AbstractThe social is constituted by on-going communication and behavior patterns that influence participants perceptions, expectations and moral boundaries. For some, moral boundaries protect the racial hierarchy of American prosperity by calling natural what is actually social. Controversary about the meaning of sex, race, and ancestry can help us understand this difference, and thereby sharpen our awareness of our experiences of the social from social diversity to social amnesia. Social amnesia eliminates any awareness of the climate of injustice. In this context, a disturbing trend is our increasing reliance on private philanthropy to solve social problems, which moves us toward a new form of feudalism instead of a civic democracy. In a civic space that arises from the connections between our shared humanity and social differences, it is possible to listen to diverse voices and to make incoherent stories coherent.


2022 ◽  
pp. 24-51

This chapter explores the history and operation of state legislatures. The urban-rural divide characterizes stark political and social differences that fuel legislative behavior. The content of public policies across the United States is influenced by these divisions and contributes to either the support of or opposition to social change. State legislators are on the front lines of these geographic ideological divides. These variations by region contribute to the increase in single-party control and have generated pronounced policy differences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-226
Author(s):  
Rustina Rustina

All human beings are creatures of the one God. They are equal, regardless of cultural background. Therefore, they receive the same appreciation from God and that must be respected and glorified. Thus, discrimination based on gender, skin color, class, race, ethnicity, religion, and so on has no basis at all in the teachings of Tawhid. Only the level of taqwa to Allah is the measure of the difference. The concepts of biological and sociocultural differences between men and women view that biological differences between the two are considered natural, while social differences are considered cultural. Whatever the background of these differences, it is not a reason to justify each other because women have the same rights as men in all fields, including education, economy, social, culture, even law and defense and state security. Women deserve special rights. Women should have important roles as well as recognition in various aspects of life. Education for women is very important. Educating women is a fundamental and critical necessity, so they can play their role properly and correctly and give contribution as productive members of the society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000312242110608
Author(s):  
Jen Triplett

How do political actors forge social solidarity across preexisting axes of social difference? This article investigates how political elites undertaking projects of political articulation—understood as linking together diverse constituencies to create integrated political blocs—contend with preexisting cultural constraints embedded in the social fabric. I do so by tracing how the post-1959 Cuban regime attempted to build a population-wide revolutionary identity despite persisting cultural understandings of women primarily as apolitical housewives. Through systematic analysis of a large corpus of state discourse in the form of speeches and women’s magazines, I show how regime leaders negotiated, with varying degrees of success over time, the cultural constraints that gender posed to their unifying project. Ultimately, the regime’s initiatives to politicize women through including them in mass campaigns and radicalizing their traditional household tasks were relatively successful, but cultural backlash against women’s increasing presence in the labor force prompted the institutionalization of a gendered division of labor in the economy that traditionalized their initially radical entry into the workplace. Analyzing how political elites confront and manage social differences within political blocs promises to contribute to a better understanding of the political production of social solidarity and its downstream effects on categorical inequalities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-189
Author(s):  
Anubha Singh

Abstract This article unpacks the material and cultural implications of the Digital India programme’s rhetoric of social transformation and digital empowerment by asking the question ‘How and whom does digital empowerment seek to empower?’ Through an analysis of the discourse on the Digital India website, this article concludes that the recurring depoliticization and dehistoricization of social differences deliberately make the programme’s intended beneficiaries vague. By flattening structural differences among caste, class, gender, and ethnicity, Digital India’s technopolitics recasts empowerment as an individual issue and naturalizes the myths of meritocracy, castelessness, and genderlessness. Furthermore, in a Hindutva regime, Digital India’s depoliticized technopolitics becomes a tool for managing citizenship that reinforces the status quo. This article argues that, by declining to define a process of empowerment that considers cultural complexities and structural hegemonies, Digital India’s call for digital empowerment remains an empty signifier.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Samuele Tonello

<p>This thesis in divided in two main parts. First, I develop the claim that current democracies are unable to properly defend what I deem the pivotal feature to evaluate the quality of a political system - namely the people’s liberty - due to what I call a twofold democratic dilemma. On the one hand, common citizens are affected by biases that compromise their ability to successfully maintain forms of self-government. On the other hand, even representative forms of democracy that limit to a certain degree the people’s power are threatened by an oligarchic power. That is, oligarchs are using their wealth power to sway governments towards pursuing oligarchic interests rather than common ones, thus hindering the people’s liberty. For this reason, I argue that we ought to rely on Pettit’s view of liberty as non-domination to resolve the democratic dilemma. The thesis conceives these two threats as two forms of domination that must be avoided and focuses on adding a supplementary editorial and contestatory dimension of democracy to the classical participatory one. Republicanism could offer a solution to both sides of the dilemma. On the one hand, citizens’ political task would be more compatible with the people’s biases, since citizens would limit their participation to control that government’s policies do not entail oligarchic domination. On the other hand, framing liberty as a battle between dominating masters and dominated slaves, republicanism could offer the many the institutional means to counteract elites’ political domination. In this way, I conclude the first part of the thesis, but this opens the gates to the main question of the thesis, namely to how we should structure this contestatory democracy. The problem is that whereas republican scholars agree on the importance of setting freedom as non-domination at the basis of our political systems, there is no such agreement on the best way to institutionally enhance the republican ideal. I analyse this debate, maintaining that while Pettitt’s ideal is the view to pursue, we should reject his editorial solution because small committees of experts are likely to increase oligarchic domination rather than to protect the people’s liberty. Rejecting Pettit’s model does not yet imply refusing any editorial model, since I argue that critical scholars mistakenly identify the editorial component of democracy with Pettit’s answer only. In this way, they neglect alternative solutions to Pettit’s, such as Bellamy’s and McCormick’s. Having explained that Bellamy’s solution does not resolve the democratic dilemma, since this scholar rejects editorial bodies, I argue that McCormick’s “Machiavellian Democracy” framed on a divided conception of the populace offers instead the solution I am looking for. Institutionally recognizing the social differences among the populace, we could create modern bodies similar to the Roman “Tribune of the Plebs” to offer the weaker part of the population a class-specific institution to use as defence from oligarchic domination. The problem is how to implement a modern “Tribune of the plebs” making sure that these bodies are effective but popular in character at the same time. I thus explain how modern editorial tribunates could work in practice, drawing from McCormick’s “thought experiment”. I agree with most of McCormick’s ideas – lottery selection, wealth threshold exclusion, large size tribunates, etc. - but I suggest that we must review some of his suggestions with features more concerned with improving the people’s knowledge – specialization, education selection, etc. Hence, I conclude the thesis describing my thought experiment of a system of Specialized Ministerial Tribunates. In this way, I argue that we could better resolve the democratic dilemma. On the one hand, tribunates’ editorship would be more specific and would not require members of the tribunate to analyse the operation of governments on a too broad spectrum, thus reducing the problems of the people’s biases. On the other hand, tribunates’ operation could be primarily connected to detecting oligarchic features in the policies enacted by single ministries, thus challenging more precisely any oligarchic influence over governments. In sum, I argue that an editorial dimension could produce significant improvements to the people’s liberty. Thanks to a modern “Tribune of the plebs”, citizens could participate more meaningfully in politics, while taming more efficiently the influence oligarchs have on how modern societies are politically directed.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Samuele Tonello

<p>This thesis in divided in two main parts. First, I develop the claim that current democracies are unable to properly defend what I deem the pivotal feature to evaluate the quality of a political system - namely the people’s liberty - due to what I call a twofold democratic dilemma. On the one hand, common citizens are affected by biases that compromise their ability to successfully maintain forms of self-government. On the other hand, even representative forms of democracy that limit to a certain degree the people’s power are threatened by an oligarchic power. That is, oligarchs are using their wealth power to sway governments towards pursuing oligarchic interests rather than common ones, thus hindering the people’s liberty. For this reason, I argue that we ought to rely on Pettit’s view of liberty as non-domination to resolve the democratic dilemma. The thesis conceives these two threats as two forms of domination that must be avoided and focuses on adding a supplementary editorial and contestatory dimension of democracy to the classical participatory one. Republicanism could offer a solution to both sides of the dilemma. On the one hand, citizens’ political task would be more compatible with the people’s biases, since citizens would limit their participation to control that government’s policies do not entail oligarchic domination. On the other hand, framing liberty as a battle between dominating masters and dominated slaves, republicanism could offer the many the institutional means to counteract elites’ political domination. In this way, I conclude the first part of the thesis, but this opens the gates to the main question of the thesis, namely to how we should structure this contestatory democracy. The problem is that whereas republican scholars agree on the importance of setting freedom as non-domination at the basis of our political systems, there is no such agreement on the best way to institutionally enhance the republican ideal. I analyse this debate, maintaining that while Pettitt’s ideal is the view to pursue, we should reject his editorial solution because small committees of experts are likely to increase oligarchic domination rather than to protect the people’s liberty. Rejecting Pettit’s model does not yet imply refusing any editorial model, since I argue that critical scholars mistakenly identify the editorial component of democracy with Pettit’s answer only. In this way, they neglect alternative solutions to Pettit’s, such as Bellamy’s and McCormick’s. Having explained that Bellamy’s solution does not resolve the democratic dilemma, since this scholar rejects editorial bodies, I argue that McCormick’s “Machiavellian Democracy” framed on a divided conception of the populace offers instead the solution I am looking for. Institutionally recognizing the social differences among the populace, we could create modern bodies similar to the Roman “Tribune of the Plebs” to offer the weaker part of the population a class-specific institution to use as defence from oligarchic domination. The problem is how to implement a modern “Tribune of the plebs” making sure that these bodies are effective but popular in character at the same time. I thus explain how modern editorial tribunates could work in practice, drawing from McCormick’s “thought experiment”. I agree with most of McCormick’s ideas – lottery selection, wealth threshold exclusion, large size tribunates, etc. - but I suggest that we must review some of his suggestions with features more concerned with improving the people’s knowledge – specialization, education selection, etc. Hence, I conclude the thesis describing my thought experiment of a system of Specialized Ministerial Tribunates. In this way, I argue that we could better resolve the democratic dilemma. On the one hand, tribunates’ editorship would be more specific and would not require members of the tribunate to analyse the operation of governments on a too broad spectrum, thus reducing the problems of the people’s biases. On the other hand, tribunates’ operation could be primarily connected to detecting oligarchic features in the policies enacted by single ministries, thus challenging more precisely any oligarchic influence over governments. In sum, I argue that an editorial dimension could produce significant improvements to the people’s liberty. Thanks to a modern “Tribune of the plebs”, citizens could participate more meaningfully in politics, while taming more efficiently the influence oligarchs have on how modern societies are politically directed.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggi W. H. Leung ◽  
Johanna L. Waters ◽  
Yutin Ki

AbstractAround 30,000 children living in Shenzhen, Mainland China cross the border to Hong Kong to attend school every day. This paper focuses on the school as a key meso-level organisation that mediates macro-level policies and micro-level everyday life experiences among these children and their families. We advocate a relational, spatial perspective, conceptualising schools as webs of intersecting physical, social and digital spaces, where differences between the “locals” and “others” are played out, negotiated and (re)produced, and in turn giving rise to specific (and understudied) geographies of in/exclusion. Drawing on our qualitative research, we offer a close reading of three exemplary school spaces: (i) the physical classroom and school grounds, (ii) the digital classroom, and (iii) at the school gate. Our findings demonstrate the complex and at times contradictory ways in which “the school” is a place of both inclusion and exclusion. It is a dynamic and power-traversed space where social differences between the “locals” and the “others” are played out, contested and redefined continuously.


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