Super-Spreaders or Victims of Circumstance? Childhood in Canadian Media Reporting of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Content Analysis

This qualitative research study, a critical content analysis, explores Canadian media reporting of childhood in Canada during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Popular media plays an important role in representing and perpetuating the dominant social discourse in highly literate societies. In Canadian media, the effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents’ health and wellbeing are overshadowed by discussions of the potential risk they pose to adults. The results of this empirical research highlight how young people in Canada have been uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Two dominant narratives emerged from the data: children were presented “as a risk” to vulnerable persons and older adults and “at risk” of adverse health outcomes from contracting COVID-19 and from pandemic lockdown restrictions. This reflects how childhood was constructed in Canadian society during the pandemic, particularly how children’s experiences are described in relation to adults. Throughout the pandemic, media reports emphasized the role of young people’s compliance with public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save the lives of older persons.

The Madman and Psychotherapy in the Neoliberal Academy: A Chinese Doctoral Student's Experience in the United States

This self-reflective paper examines my experience as a Chinese doctoral student while studying in a large research university in America. Through my self-reflection, with Foucault's analysis on power, I hope to shed some light on my experience with the neoliberal academy, which caused much discomfort and created my fragmented identities. Instead of questioning the problematic neoliberal power relations that caused my discomfort in the first place, as the madman of higher ed, I was directed to psychotherapy to treat my symptoms, which only caused more confusion. Through my story, I hope to reveal how social context, Neoliberalism in this case, and social discourse of psychotherapy, work hand in hand in higher education space, which have exercised intangible power and created the fragmented identities among many international doctoral students in America. At the end of the paper, I also provided suggestions for graduate students to navigate the neoliberal academy.

Beyond the Language of Covid-19: Transformation of Social Discourse and Reproduction of Cultural Capital

The research draws on the concept of ‘cultural capital’ as well as assumptions of critical discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics to argue that the Covid-19 pandemic may be viewed as a global turning point. The article explores the context and the means that have facilitated the transformation of cultural capital during the coronavirus outbreak. The dramatic changes to culture have been successfully pushed through due to the public’s incessant exposure to institutionalized, governmental and mass media discourses, which have been urging people to adopt new communicative and cultural practices with a varying degree of argumentation and imposition. The changes entail reviewing social structure, spatial and relational stereotypes and standards, which in the long run transforms cultural capital. The global scope of the pandemic and the relatively identical regulations imposed by governments on their citizens generate a tentative tendency to cultural convergence: individuals are made to abandon their culture specific practices and values and adopt those that ensure physical survival. Received: 8 September 2021 / Accepted: 16 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

SUBVERSION AND THE DOUBLE VOICE IN LILLIAN SMITH AND KATHERINE DUPRE LUMPKIN

Lillian Smith and Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin provide a subversive framework for the history of the South through the genre of autobiography. This paper will explore how both authors use a double voice to articulate their confrontation with the Lost Cause. On the one hand, the child protagonist is a Southerner and therefore an insider and participant, while on the other hand, the adult protagonist subverts the dominant social discourse thanks to a critical distance which is both physical and psychological. Smith and Lumpkin use autobiography to challenge tradition, hence subverting the central roles of race and gender.

Recipes for Happiness: a Proposal for Analysing the Moral Orientation of Actions and Emotions

This paper draws up a proposal for analysing discourses on paths to happiness. Recipes promoted by the happiness industry are studied as moral guidelines for social action: imperative messages spread through the Internet seek to guide their recipients in their quest for happiness. In a fielddominated by positive psychology, we approach happiness from a sociological perspective, which is to say as: an institutionalised social discourse; a form of social production; a socially-framed emotion. Research is based on systematic Internet observation and on quantitative and qualitative textual analysis procedures. We show how digital media in the ‘happiness’ field: (a) promotes recipes; (b) provides scientific legitimation for said recipes; (c) focuses on a generic individual as the recipient of the messages and as protagonist. A typology is proposed based on the meaning, nature and object of the actions that lead to happiness. Results show how recipes involve normative and moral orientations of actions and emotions: they indicate what to do and how to think andfeel to be happy. Happiness as a moral obligation involves most concerns shaping the agenda of contemporary societies, with a strong emphasis on individualism and on a utilitarian understanding of social relations and the social environment.

The Dynamics of Religious Legitimation

This chapter examines legitimation theory and the ways in which religion has justified inequality throughout most of history. The rise of economic and political inequality generated social attitudes and beliefs that justified it, making it seem proper, natural, and consonant with the mandates of celestial powers. Elites’ ideology presented this inequality as necessary and fair. Because religion also meets psychological and social needs, until modern times, religion played the major ideological role in legitimating inequality, social institutions, and behavior. Inequality and class or other group-based hierarchy can be maintained by either physical force or ideological persuasion. Physical force can be expressed as threat of imprisonment, torture, or death. But physical force generates resentment and expensive policing. Less costly, ideological control is generally expressed through the manipulation of social discourse. Thus, it is most effective for elites to embrace self-serving ideological systems that are convincing to themselves and to those below them.

Construction and Validation of the Legitimizing Income Inequality Scale

Although income inequality has become a focus of political and social discourse, counseling psychology research examining correlates and consequences of legitimizing income inequality remains sparse. A significant barrier to the study of income inequality is the lack of available measures to assess attitudes toward socioeconomic inequality. The purpose of this study was to develop and provide initial validity evidence for the Legitimizing Income Inequality Scale (LIIS). Results supported a bifactor structure for the LIIS with a general factor (ω = .95) and subfactors measuring Social Welfare Beliefs (ω = .92), Economic Fatalism (ω = .87), and Economic Meritocracy Beliefs (ω = .90). The LIIS significantly correlated in theoretically consistent directions with scores on measures of classist attitudes, socioeconomic conservatism, impression management, and colorblind racial attitudes. Implications for future research and training using the LIIS are provided.

Public dialogue as a way to create an inclusive touristic space (on the example of “K. I. Shulzhenko museum” MIC)

The relevance of the article. An important problem of modern Ukrainian society is small number of inclusive spaces, what complicates the process of socialization of young people with disabilities. Prevailing forms of mentality in Ukraine (charitable, administrative, magical) do not provide an opportunity to adequately solve this problem. Only a humanistic, dialogue­based model of mentality will contribute to the creation of a true inclusive in the society. The purpose of the article is to develop proposals for the formation of a local tourism inclusive space on the example of “Klavdiia Shulzhenko Museum”. The methodology. The work is a practice research based on the principles of the philosophy of dialogue, devoted to the search for practical ways to implement a humanistic model of social development in a particular enterprise of tourist infrastructure. The use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, genera­lization) and special methods (modeling) is deter­mined by the purpose and objectives of the study. The results. Based on the analysis of successful examples of the formation of inclusive space in Ukrainian museums, a step­by­step plan for the transformation of space in the direction of inclusion for the “Klavdiia Shulzhenko Museum”. For the first stage, it is important to create a space for dialogue with the target audience and establish cooperation in the working group. For the second — cooperation for creating the excursions. The next stage is the transformation of infrastructure. The practical significance. The article is a theoretical base for practical museum projects, in which young people with disabilities are actively involved in society, visitors without disabilities will understand that young people with disabilities have high potential and are able to actively participate in society; creates a positive social discourse of acceptance, favorable for the socialization of young people with disabilities. Conclusion. Since the problem of transformation of society in the direction of inclusion is not belongs exclusively for Kharkiv, it is has meaning to use successful world and Ukrainian cases. Since infrastructural problems are the result of existing mental attitudes, they can be solved through changes in mentality (establishing public dialogue), rather than government directives. For Kharkiv, the Municipal Institution of Culture “K. I. Shulzhenko Museum” is a place with significant social and cultural potential. Given the creation of an inclusive space in the museum, it can become one of the outposts of socialization of young people with disabilities, but also — to promote the formation of a positive image of people with disabilities in society. The solution of this task can take the form of cooperation with NGOs and further joint project activities.

Institute of Philosophy: Traditions and Innovations

The article is devoted to the historical and philosophical analysis of the unique and paradigmatic role of the H.S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the philosophical life of Ukraine for 75 years since its foundation. The authors outline its role in the process of institutionalizing philosophy in Ukraine from the time of the domination of the dogmas of Soviet Marxism to the introduction of current research traditions in modern Ukrainian philosophy. The continuity and peculiarities of the change of generations of researchers in the field of philosophy and the involvement of Ukrainian philosophical thought in the world intellectual discourse are studied. The article's authors reveal the gradual formation of the Kyiv philosophical tradition, the role of the Institute's leadership in the style and nature of scientific research of certain periods. Particular attention is paid to the institutionalization of new research areas at the Institute, such as political philosophy, philosophy of language and speech, which belong to the leading paradigm of modern philosophy. Attention is paid to the cooperation of the Institute with domestic scientific and educational institutions, its international relations. The status of the leading professional publications, which became significant both in Soviet times and during independence, is highlighted. Finally, the article notes the role and tasks of the Institute in modern social discourse, focuses on the values, the preservation of which is taken care of by representatives of the Institute.

Data, Models, and Decisions: How We Can Shape Our World by Not Predicting the Future

Modelling and simulation can be used for different goals and purposes. Prediction is only one of them, and, as this chapter highlights, it might not be the main goal—even if it was in the spotlight during the COVID-19 crisis. Predicting the future is a vanity. Instead, we aim to prevent certain events in the future by describing scenarios, or, even better, we try to actively shape the future according to our social, technological, or economic goals. Thus, modellers can contribute to debate and social discourse; this is one of the aims of Digital Humanism.