Conflictualization: Theorizing how relations, societies, and issues come to be formed by the logic of conflict

Peace, being the goal of almost everybody's struggle, becomes everybody's business, including in spheres such as health or education. There may be specialists and savants such as peace researchers or doctors or teachers but the preoccupation with these issues cannot simply be restricted to the experts or their expertise. As Western medical science leaves out spiritual health, and modern education ignores self‐actualization, contemporary peace research deals just with socioeconomic‐political peace and fails to include personal peace, spiritual peace, inter‐species peace, planetary peace, or cosmic peace within its purview. A broad thematic study of war and peace is not always helpful for individuals engaged in a personal quest for peace. As medical science is only a part of broader health science, or schooling but an element of self‐actualization, peace research is only one aspect of a life‐long search for peace and fulfilment. Peace search then becomes a larger life process in which we concern ourselves with both general and universal peace and unique particular peace. Leaving the study of peace just for peace researchers is like letting just the doctors deal with all our health. Peace researchers are a small number of individuals around the world with academic degrees and honors, stable jobs, steady incomes, and all the other securities in life. Put tersely, such peace research smacks of a brahmanical air of exclusivity and sophistication. When not followed by actual application, research becomes an exclusivistic, pedantic, and normative exercise which focuses mainly on the intellect rather than the equally important emotive and cognitive aspects. This is not to mean that peace researchers are unnecessary, just as doctors or teachers do not become non‐essential. Theories of peace cannot afford an unproblematic subject‐object binary opposition and the observer—observed model cannot be a very valid form of peace search. After all, peace researchers are not some kind of holy angels who descend on the earth, discern the human issues, and hand out remedies; on the contrary, they are also part of the problem and hence they try to be part of the solution. If peace search is a constant struggle involving the whole of humanity, peace researchers are moving within it, witnessing the process, analyzing it, and acting about it with the whole of humanity. So we are all searching for peace in our own ways with our own means for slightly varying ends.

In this essay, I plan to critically discuss widespread introduction of computer into classroom in modern society. I conceive of modern society as a society. The specific question I want to raise concerns discourse now dominant among policy makers who push for extensive use of computers and internet by students. In particular, do computer skills represent, in addition to traditional cultural techniques of reading, writing and arithmetic, a fourth cultural technique? The answer to this question I want to advance requires a brief detour. I want to respond to question about possible ascendancy of a fourth cultural technique by offering, first, some observations about notion of society and, second, difference between and The Concept of Knowledge Society In recent years, concept of society has enjoyed a boom in a number of developed countries. The academic world has naturally reacted gratefully to this success, although it is by no means certain that critical potential which has been present in this concept since its introduction (1) has been recognized. Rather, Ministry of Science and Technology in Germany, for example, has used concept to increase its own relative departmental strength and to legitimate certain programs, in particular program Schools to Net (Schulen ans Netz). From a policy point of view, designation of present society as society is intended to prepare for a restructuring of educational system. The central tenet of this restructuring, which has already begun, is view that ability to manipulate data, in other words, competence with computers and media, will represent society's crucial human capital in future. The concept of the society --simply represented a prestigious, forward, looking banner under which computer might make its entry into schools! In this way, because of positive connotations attached to idea of knowledge, concept of society has been able to assume ideological functions. Moreover, in political sphere it has been used purely descriptively, to designate a certain mega-trend -- namely growing importance of access to for social prosperity. In view of this it should be borne in mind that theory of society was originally intended as a critical theory of society. The term was chosen instead of terms such as information or science to indicate that there are alternative forms of knowledge, that hierarchies develop between these forms of and that these hierarchies, in marking status of different areas of knowledge, take on social significance. Against this background processes of scientification of human and social relationships can be described critically -- for example, as growing disempowerment of individual through dependence on experts . It also becomes apparent that, compared to older factors of birth and capital, is gaining importance as a basis both of social power and of personal opportunities. The power aspect of also has its application in international relations. To preserve and develop this critical potential of theory of modern society as a society it is necessary to work with binary concepts, such as pair value and price in critique of political economy and pair body and corporeality in critical theory of human nature. In theory of society crucial pair of concepts is knowledge and information. These concepts should be so elaborated that they refer to each other while at same time preserving a clear difference. To achieve this it is not enough to fall back on traditional philosophical concept of knowledge, because a strong concept of (equated with science) has evolved in this tradition since Plato (2) -- a concept which has consolidated hierarchy of forms of while discrediting and consigning to obsolescence other forms of in relation to science. …

The paper aims to trace the formation of new theories of society, of theories of basic social conflict and of theories of social inequality at the turn of the century. These theories are based on a theoretical scheme of “new” capitalism / neocapitalism. They also criticize the established theories of postindustrialim and knowledge society. The new theories focus on analysis of the nature of work in contemporary society, of the structures and dynamics of social inequality. The main point of the analysis carried out in the paper is that knowledge science and technology cannot be viewed as an indepentdent explanatory factor on which to base the research of the actual social relations and their transformation. The theories of postindustrialism and theories of knowledge society do precisely this and that is why they are the object of criticism in the new theories which view knowledge, science and technology as subordinate to the relations of ownership and power.

Cooperation is central to human existence, forming the bedrock of everyday social relationships and larger societal structures. Thus, understanding the psychological underpinnings of cooperation is of both scientific and practical importance. Recent work using a dual-process framework suggests that intuitive processing can promote cooperation while deliberative processing can undermine it. Here we add to this line of research by more specifically identifying deliberative and intuitive processes that affect cooperation. To do so, we applied automated text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to investigate the association between behavior in one-shot anonymous economic cooperation games and the presence inhibition (a deliberative process) and positive emotion (an intuitive process) in free-response narratives written after (Study 1, N = 4,218) or during (Study 2, N = 236) the decision-making process. Consistent with previous results, across both studies inhibition predicted reduced cooperation while positive emotion predicted increased cooperation (even when controlling for negative emotion). Importantly, there was a significant interaction between positive emotion and inhibition, such that the most cooperative individuals had high positive emotion and low inhibition. This suggests that inhibition (i.e., reflective or deliberative processing) may undermine cooperative behavior by suppressing the prosocial effects of positive emotion.

Cooperation is central to human existence, forming the bedrock of everyday social relationships and larger societal structures. Thus, understanding the psychological underpinnings of cooperation is of both scientific and practical importance. Recent work using a dual-process framework suggests that intuitive processing can promote cooperation while deliberative processing can undermine it. Here we add to this line of research by more specifically identifying deliberative and intuitive processes that affect cooperation. To do so, we applied automated text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to investigate the association between behavior in one-shot anonymous economic cooperation games and the presence inhibition (a deliberative process) and positive emotion (an intuitive process) in free-response narratives written after (Study 1, N=4,218) or during (Study 2, N=236) the decision-making process. Consistent with previous results, across both studies inhibition predicted reduced cooperation while positive emotion predicted increased cooperation (even when controlling for negative emotion). Importantly, there was a significant interaction between positive emotion and inhibition, such that the most cooperative individuals had high positive emotion and low inhibition. This suggests that inhibition (i.e., reflective or deliberative processing) may undermine cooperative behavior by suppressing the prosocial effects of positive emotion.

A recent trend in communication studies has seen increased attention to delineating the rhetorical dimensions of publics, public spheres, and public opinions, a project largely inaugurated by Gerard Hauser's (1999)Vernacular Voices. This intervention has shifted the focus from elite discourses of public officials in institutional spaces to everyday acts of discursive engagement in more quotidian and diverse public fora. Meanwhile, theories of “deliberative democracy” have come to be a dominant strand of democratic theory among political scientists and political philosophers. Proponents of the deliberative turn consider deliberation, plurality, and public participation essential to a healthy democratic polity and argue that “consensus based on reason-giving” should be the goal (Dryzek 2010, 322). As such, and continuing a long line of criticism that runs from Plato to Kant, Rawls, Habermas and others, rhetoric is often treated in deliberative democratic theory as the opposite of rational deliberation and as a tool to be used merely to persuade rather than to prove (Dryzek 2010, 322–23).More recently, however, there has been an upsurge of deliberative democratic theory that employs a rhetorical lens or rhetorical concepts and that seeks to emancipate rhetoric from its Platonic and Kantian shackles, such as Bryan Garsten's Saving Persuasion (2009) and Robert Ivie's “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now” (2002). Seeing see deliberation as necessarily rhetorical, these theorists shed light on the essentially controversial and agonistic nature of political debate, dialogue, and decision making. They view rhetoric not as merely monodirectional or a form of deceit but instead recognize that rhetoric occurs across multiple public settings and circulates throughout various publics.Continuing to push this dialogue further, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation, a collection of essays edited by Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen, adopts a rhetorical lens to consider public deliberation, political discourse, and democratic society. In a well-crafted introduction, the editors advance the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a unifying perspective for developing a cross-disciplinary “understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon.” In this connection, they argue that “discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways is constitutive of civic engagement” (1). Through eighteen chapters divided into three sections, the contributing authors use rhetorical citizenship as an umbrella term to engage a number of discursive sites, citizen actors, and various publics and public controversies in both theoretical musings and practical, international case studies on deliberative democracy. Overall, the essays marshal “a diversity of actual deliberative practices” in considering “how everyday people participate in and practice citizenship, and how everyday practices might be enhanced” (8).The authors proffer citizenship as a mode of political activity and as a discursive and deliberative process that requires public reflection and entails a rhetorical orientation to the arguments and debates that take place in democratic society. Enacting rhetorical citizenship is thus not merely constituted by “deliberative exchange among representatives and citizens across multiple sites” (4). It also requires “internal deliberation” by citizen actors with regard to the public arguments put forth by their political representatives and other public officials. Rhetorical citizenship is a process that requires both citizens' rhetorical output and their discursive, critical engagement with political discourses. To these ends, the individual authors consider “actual civic discourse” that occurs across multiple sites and through a multiplicity of actors at the same time that they interrogate notions of rhetorical agency and issues of “voice, power, and rights” (7). Further, although proponents of deliberative democracy take consensus and the elimination of conflict as their end goal in public debates and controversies, this collection affords a space for considering the productive and emancipatory nature of conflict, contention, and agon in the public sphere and within public spheres—while also looking ahead to rethink consensus and deliberative norms in general.Throughout the collection, the authors draw heavily on rhetoricians and political philosophers, including Gerard Hauser, Robert Asen, Robert Hariman, Kenneth Burke, Jürgen Habermas, and John Dryzek, among others. While the overall themes of the book are centered on deliberation and rhetoric, scholars from communication studies, discourse analysis, and political philosophy, along with fields outside the humanities such as political science and sociology, all contribute to the dialogue. Developed initially for the 2008 “Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation” conference in Copenhagen, the individual chapters in this collection represent this disciplinary diversity while bringing together academic voices from throughout the international community as well. Each chapter is prefaced by a brief introduction written by the editors, effectively organizing and clarifying the objectives that tie the essays together. As a brief review does not afford space to consider each of the eighteen individual chapters in this collection, my aim here is to reflect on several essays from each section, all of which serve to illuminate the book's broader themes and contributions.The book's first section provides the historical precedents for deliberative democracy, rhetorical citizenship, and the idea of the public forum. Kasper Møller Hansen, a political scientist, traces the origins of deliberative democracy through political thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey. While contemporary theories of deliberative democracy are often regarded as constituting a new scholarly trend, such dialogues have their roots with these historical political thinkers and with earlier conceptions of the republican tradition. While Hansen provides a historical background for deliberative democratic theory, Manfred Kraus traces the origins of rhetorical citizenship to ancient Greece. Kraus persuasively argues that the Sophists' “analysis of operational truth with respect to the contingencies of human life,” along with their belief in the “constant negotiation between contradictory points of view as observed in the Athenian practice of political assemblies and law courts, laid the ground for the concept of citizenship” (40). Kraus argues that there was never a Sophist philosophy of rhetoric per se, but when brought together the individuals who identified with sophistry constituted an intellectual movement that presaged Aristotle's later inauguration of rhetorical theory. Finally, tracking and comparing the development and ultimate failure of forums, town halls, and public meetings in France and the United States, William Keith and Paula Cossart tease out some of the fundamental tensions that complicate the ability of citizens to enact their rhetorical citizenship in various discursive contexts. Together, the essays in this section productively set the stage for the remainder of the collection, offering a historical grounding for the main themes of the book as a whole: deliberative democracy and its republican roots; citizenship as a fundamentally rhetorical, discursive, and agonistic practice; and the need to identify alternative discursive sites where citizens can and do participate in political discussions and perform strategies that mitigate the problems and pitfalls of the formal political sphere.Broken up into three parts, the twelve essays in section 2 break some new ground in terms of theory building and for considering non-discursive norms for engaging in political action and public deliberation. Part 1 of section 2 is perhaps best represented by Marie Lund Klujeff's essay and case study on what she calls provocative style. Political debate can be messy. It does not often live up to the ideals or follow the conventions espoused by political theorists and academics. In the political arena, participants may meet discursive challenges that limit or diminish their ability to effectively contribute to debate and thus must adopt unconventional rhetorical strategies that afford an agentive capacity. Klujeff argues that employing a provocative style in public debate can serve as a “deliberate violation of the norms of official communication and communicative action,” instantiating a “stylistic parody [that] functions as refutation by mockery” (105–7). In the internet debate that Klujeff tracks in her case study, the use of such a non-normative stylistic tactic indeed resulted in “offense and irritation.” However, it simultaneously gave “rhetorical salience to the conflict” for a much wider audience that would have otherwise not been engaged. It also allowed for the citizen provocateur to participate and contribute to the deliberative process. Similarly, in “Virtual Deliberations” Ildiko Kaposi also looks to an online forum to argue that “the criteria for judging deliberative talk need to be treated and interpreted flexibly, and modified according to the circumstances in which deliberation and discussion occur” (119). In all, the four essays in part 1 of section 2 argue that breaking the rules of decorum in public deliberations can serve important rhetorical functions. Such non-normative, provocative strategies do not necessarily seek consensus but instead aim to further community building, help circulate political discourse, and foster moral respect between both debaters and broader publics.The four essays in part 2 examine elite discourse in order to “study how notions of citizenship are portrayed and realized by agents in positions of power and influence” (63). The authors look across multiple public settings and interrogate political subject matter from the literary public sphere to gendered war rhetoric and from political statements concerning a terrorist attack against the Danish embassy to a case study of constitutional law and political philosophy. Challenging the discursive and deliberative norms of the formal political sphere, the elite citizens (including Barbara Bush and Tony Blair) discussed in part 2 are seen to undertake disruptive discursive acts in the midst of formal political settings. The authors demonstrate that while one is able to exercise one's rhetorical agency through such destabilizing acts, the norms in such institutionalized settings are not so easily challenged or subverted. As Lisa Villadsen writes in her exemplary essay “Speaking of Terror: Norms of Rhetorical Citizenship in Danish Public Debate Culture,” in such an “a-rhetorical debate culture” as the formal political sphere, the rules of deliberative conduct determine the standards of “proper” rhetorical citizenship (179). Any deviation from these norms is considered a breach of one's citizenship status. Given this, Villadsen calls for the need to “continue questioning the norms—spoken or unspoken—that underlie notions of rhetorical citizenship in a given national or cultural setting” (179). Using a rhetorical lens to examine why modes of communicative action may succeed or fail allows for greater opportunities to understand citizenship across multiple settings. Part 3 of section 2 continues the collection's broader goals of examining rhetorical citizenship, deliberative practices, and rhetorical agency across a variety of public contexts. From public hearings held in Quebec, Canada, to grassroots groups in New York and Washington, DC, online debates over Danish real estate economic issues, and public engagement with a song from a popular Danish revue, the four essays extend and add to the diversity of sites in which public deliberation occurs and to what effect.The final section offers a set of future-oriented proposals for how rhetorical citizenship and deliberation can be productive for democratic society in ways that are not agonistic or confrontational. Effectively bookending the collection, the three chapters advance strategies and conceptualizations for reducing contentious debate and transforming competing political arguments in such as way as to encourage a more dynamic and constructive public sphere. As an exemplar, Christian Kock's, “A Tool for Rhetorical Citizenship: Generalizing the Status System” reappropriates and reformulates status theories with the aim of identifying how “present-day debaters” and “observers of debate” may find new grounds for building consensus or mutual understanding between otherwise opposing viewpoints (279). In deliberative contexts where “partisanship and polarization rule,” Kock provides a tool for fostering “normative metaconsensus” through narrowing down party-line disagreements to “more specific points—in which either side might have a better chance of persuading people unsympathetic to their positions” (294). This is not only a tool for debaters and the elite, Kock argues, but also a means of building awareness of the nuances of political disagreements among both citizens who consume these discourses as well as the media that represents them.On the whole, the notion of rhetorical citizenship is a timely intervention that aims to rethink the standards and practices of public deliberation and thereby contribute to a healthier pluralistic democratic polity. Perhaps especially in the context of U.S. politics, where the vitriolic bifurcation of present-day partisan lines leaves little to no room for rhetoric and deliberation in the formal political sphere, such a discussion is not only warranted but necessary, providing a way to think through this antagonistic gridlock. Rhetorical citizenship affords a critical space in which to theorize new practices of public engagement and deliberation and to move beyond deliberative democratic theory's insistence on rigid discursive norms and consensus building. We should attend to and take seriously agon, agitation, destabilization, and other nonnormative dissentious acts in order to better understand alternative sites of democratic instantiation. The nature of conflict, contention, and competition is not always derisive and dividing. Instead, as many of the essays in this collection argue, agonistic enactments can be productive and provocative, building communities, circulating discourse to multiple publics, and affording an agentive modality for civic engagement and citizenship. At other times, as the essays in the concluding section argue, there is an evident need to rethink the meaning of consensus in itself and consider rhetorical strategies for orienting oneself to oppositional positions. Across multiple sites, from online fora, grassroots enclaves, and more formal institutional settings, the international case studies taken up in Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation speak to the broad applicability of rhetorical citizenship as a concept.This variety in case studies is indeed one of the strengths of the collection, especially when paired with the disciplinary diversity represented by the individual authors. A concept like rhetorical citizenship, as demonstrated by this diverse collection, produces an opening for various other academic traditions to look to the tools and theories cultivated within rhetorical theory and apply them to cases across cultural and political settings. While the concept of rhetorical citizenship in itself requires the reader to extrapolate in order to see how it might be defined across these ostensibly disparate applications, the editors' introductory chapter and prefatory remarks at the start of each section strategically orient the essays to this larger theme. Moreover, as this disciplinary promiscuity speaks to the broad appeal of rhetorical citizenship, Kock and Villadsen do not provide a justification for why these various fields are represented and what this contributes to the overall dialogue. Interdisciplinarity should not be taken as an end in itself, although that is not necessarily to say that is the case with this collection. The diversity of the authors is likely symptomatic of this being a conference proceedings rather than the editors' attempt at diversity for diversity's sake. Given that the topic of the collection is deliberation and democratic society, however, it seems fitting that a range of disciplinary voices would be represented in this dialogue, especially when humanistic disciplines, while sharing much in common, often are insular and speak in their own respective vacuums.Finally, the collection attends to a wide spectrum of public and political sites where deliberation actually takes place. As the editors state in the introduction, “Focusing on how citizens deliberate allows us to consider both macro and micro politics, but always with an eye to the significance for the individuals involved” (6). In this regard, the editors advance a set of research questions that speak to the larger themes of the book, such as “What forms of participation does a particular discursive phenomenon encourage—and by whom? How are speaking positions allotted and organized? … What possibilities are there for ‘ordinary’ citizens to engage in public discourse?” (6–7). Despite the repeated insistence on the collection's commitment to “vernacular rhetoric,” the public settings and political fora addressed in the individual case studies are not quite as representative of a pluralistic democracy as one would hope. The issue of gender is only explicitly taken up in one essay, while questions of how and where racial, ethnic, and LGBTQ minorities are able to perform their rhetorical citizenship are not addressed.The four essays that engage online deliberation are perhaps the closest the volume comes to exploring vernacular discursive contexts, and indeed these critical engagements are valuable. Participation in such online dialogues, on the other hand, still requires an availability that allows for free time to deliberate as well as the economic security that affords ready access to the internet. The editors assert that “a rhetorical focus has a special regard for individual actors in the public arena, not just the eloquent politician or NGO representative but also the person watching an election debate on TV, chiming in with a point of view through a blog on civic issues, collecting signatures from passerby on a windy street to stop municipal budget cuts, or deciding to join a local interest group” (6). And while each of these sites and settings are addressed, the rhetoric and deliberation that is endemic to the streets, down on the corner, in the market, and even in the local pub are left out of this discussion. The reader is left to wonder who we should and should not consider a citizen, what publics the concept of rhetorical citizenship includes and excludes, who has the capacity to enact their rhetorical agency, and more pointedly, whether access to the public arena and the deliberative process necessarily entails a relative position of privilege. As such, while the disciplinary diversity may be one of the strong points of this collection, this openness is contained by a mostly straight, white, male representation of deliberative democratic society.Despite these omissions, however, Christian Kock and Lisa Villadsen's Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation offers an excellent portfolio of case studies and theoretical insights that will surely contribute to future discussions across a range of disciplinary sites. The bridging of rhetorical studies and deliberative democratic theory is an important intervention that is promising for future cross-disciplinary scholarship and for extending the scope of the discourses and deliberative practices that actually do occur outside more formal political settings. As such, this collection would be well suited for graduate seminars that focus on rhetorical theory, civic engagement, and the public sphere, or as source material for scholarship that aims to expand on discursive theories of citizenship across multiple public and international contexts. It also bodes well for nascent scholarship that aims to bridge the divide between political science and rhetorical studies, a mutually beneficially relationship that offers many opportunities for advancing theories of contemporary democratic society.

This article presents a biographical account and analysis of the work and ideas of Elise Boulding as a pioneer of peace education, peace research and peace activism. In a context where many of the leading figures in the emergence and evolution of peace research and conflict analysis are seen to be men, the article emphasises the significance of women as peacemakers and peace thinkers and the role that Elise Boulding played in this evolution of a gendered peace. Born in Norway in 1920, Elise emigrated as a child to the USA and in her academic career took a leading role in some of the key institutions that shaped the contemporary peace research community globally. She was a creative thinker who opened spaces for the 'new voices' that appears in the title of this article, exploring the place of women, children and the family in the everyday practices of peacemaking in pursuit of what she called a global civic culture of peace. The second part of the article takes the form of a partly auto-biographical account by Irene Santiago and her work in the Philippines, showing how much of what Elise Boulding argued for and represented has come to inspire contemporary peacemakers to mainstream gender analysis in the policy, theory and projects of their peace building work.

The October 7, 2023, Gaza War imposed profound psychological and occupational burdens on Palestinian nurses, including those in the West Bank who were indirectly affected by the conflict. This study assessed the prevalence of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and quality of life (QoL) outcomes among nurses working in the West Bank. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from January to March 2025 with 350 registered nurses recruited through stratified random sampling. Data were collected using the Impact of Event Scale–Revised (IES-R) to measure PTSS and the World Health Organization Quality of Life–BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) to assess QoL. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, t-tests, and one-way ANOVA, with standardized effect sizes (Cohen’s d for t-tests and eta-squared, η², for ANOVA) reported to indicate practical significance. Nurses reported high PTSS across intrusion (mean = 1.94), avoidance (mean = 1.79), and hyperarousal (mean = 1.78) subscales. The total PTSS score (mean = 5.51 out of a possible 12) indicated a substantial symptom burden. Nearly half (49.2%) experienced violence at Israeli checkpoints, which was associated with significantly higher PTSS (mean = 6.09 vs. 4.90; p < .001; Cohen’s d = 0.49) and lower QoL (mean = 3.13 vs. 3.34; p = .001; Cohen’s d = 0.36). QoL scores were poorest in physical health (55.25%), psychological well-being (56.5%), and environmental conditions (48.25%), but higher in social relationships (63.9%). The Gaza War has had a marked psychological impact on nurses in the West Bank, particularly for those exposed to checkpoint violence. Targeted, trauma-informed mental health interventions, resilience training, and systemic reforms to improve safety and working conditions are urgently needed to protect and support the nursing workforce in conflict settings.

During the past few decades, research on and work in phenomenology has increased remarkably in the Nordic countries. One concrete manifestation of (and perhaps also a partial reason for) this development is the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP), which was established in 2001 in order to promote dialogue and cooperation between phenomenologists in the Nordic countries. This forum has been highly successful and has attracted a lot of attention. Membership statistics speak for themselves: in 2004, the Society had about 100 members, by 2008, the amount of members had tripled and, today, the Society already has more than 800 members. In light of these numbers, it hardly comes as a surprise that NoSP has also attracted a lot of attention outside the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The number of submissions for the annual meetings of the Society indeed makes it evident that the Nordic countries constitute and comprise an important focal point in contemporary phenomenological research. Does phenomenology from the Nordic countries amount to a distinct Nordic perspective on this branch of philosophy? Although the Nordic countries do share a set of ethnic, religious, and historical characteristics, and although there is something like a recognizable cultural unity in the Nordic region, there is no clearly identifiable Nordic approach to phenomenology. Nevertheless, when taking a bird’s eye perspective on the way phenomenology has developed in the region, one noteworthy feature is the extent to which phenomenologists have engaged and cooperated with other traditions, schools of thought, and scientific disciplines. Ties have been made with analytic philosophy, critical theory, pragmatism, and

We develop our argument in five steps. The first section retraces the evolving interaction between peace research and politics. It recalls some of the central features of critical peace research as well as the articulation between norms and causal assumptions. The second and third sections expound what we call the bureaucratisation of positive peace by governments and NGOs at both the institutional and ideational levels. We draw attention to how peacebuilding has been institutionalized in diplomatic and aid organizations and how it propagates a set of received wisdoms about peace. In the fourth section we problematize a number of paradoxes of state sponsored peacebuilding from the viewpoint of critical peace research. Finally, we offer a number of concluding observations on the role of peace researchers and some suggestions how a tradition of critical peace research could be reinvigorated to fruitfully engage with contemporary peace issues.

An analysis and critique of Parsons' theory of action, while clearly essential to any investigation into Parsonian sociology, is not in itself sufficient. The 'action frame of reference' is only, as it were, the primary set of concepts for sociological analysis. This analysis in itself presupposes a number of distinct concepts which prescribe the object of 'sociology' and make it a region theoretically discrete from other discourses. This chapter presents an outline of the basic concepts of Parsons' sociology, relates such concepts to more generalised conceptions of the 'social' and 'social relations', and through that judges the major criticisms made from within sociology of Parsons' theory of society. On this basis the chapter offers its own critical investigation of that theory and draws a number of conclusions concerning the status of sociological theory.

Globally, military expenditures continue to rise, while capacities for conflict prevention, diplomacy, and peacebuilding remain persistently underfunded. Concurrently, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping military strategy, information environments, and geopolitical dynamics. These developments underscore the urgent need for a renewed peace ethics capable of addressing militarized AI, structural security asymmetries, and the transformative power of emerging technologies. This essay argues for a shift from a predominantly militarized conception of security toward a comprehensive framework grounded in human security, multilateralism, and a proactive “AI for Peace” agenda. Drawing on United Nations frameworks, the 2025 UN call to rebalance military spending, contemporary peace research (including the 2025 Friedensgutachten of the German Peace Research Institutes), and current geopolitical challenges, the essay develops conceptual foundations, policy alternatives, and ethical criteria, and presents a focused case study illustrating how AI for Peace tools could support conflict mediation and peace assessment in the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war.

IntroductionThe popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) bears witness to thriving movement protests worldwide. The development of new hardware technologies such as mobile devices and digital cameras, in particular, has fast enhanced visual communications among users that help document and broadcast contemporary social movements. Using social media with these technologies thus presents new opportunities for grassroots social movement organisations (SMOs) and activist groups to become narrators of their activist lives, and to promote solidarity and recognition for advancing varied civic and political agendas. With the case of a student activist group that led and organised a 10-day occupation protest in Hong Kong, this article examines the idea of new media-savvy SMOs as political curators that employ SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives at large-scale movement protests. Invoking the concepts of curation and choreography, it highlights how these processes can work together to encourage contentious engagement and collaboration in contemporary social movements.The New Media-Savvy SMO as Political CuratorWhereas traditional social movement studies stressed the importance of pre-existing social networks and organisational structures for collective action, developments in new information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge the common theories of how people are drawn into and participate in social movements. In recent years, a spate of research has particularly emphasised the ability of individuals and small groups to self-organise on the Internet (e.g. Rheingold). Lately, observing the use of SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter in contemporary social movements, work in this area has focused on how SNSs enable movement diffusion through personal networks and individuals’ online activities even without either the aid or the oversight of an organisation (e.g. Shirky).However, horizontal activism self-organised by atomised new media users seems insufficient as an explanation of how many recent protest movements achieved their high tides. While the flourishing literature shows writers have correctly centred their study on the changing dynamics in control over information and the growing importance of individual users’ contributions, it fails to account for the crucial role that SMOs continue to play. In fact, recent studies consistently observe the continuing importance of SMOs in mobilising and coordinating collective actions in online environments (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, Collective). Whereas new ICTs have provided activist groups with the instrument to deal with their contentious activities with less cueing and leadership from conventional institutionalised structures, SMOs have created their own new media resources. Nowadays, a significant percentage of protest participants have received their information from online platforms that are run by or affiliated with these organisations. The critical questions remain about the kinds of communication methods they utilise to activate and integrate independent activists’ networks and participation, especially in emerging social media environments.Unfortunately, existing research tends to overlook the discursive potentials and cultural dimensions in online activism while emphasising the cost-effectiveness and organisational function of new ICTs. In particular, social movement and new media scholars merely attended to the ways in which digital media enable widescale, relatively un-coordinated contributions to repositories of resources for networks of activists and interest groups, as SNS applications stress the importance of user participation, openness, and network effects in the processes of content production and sharing. However, the mere existence or even “surplus” (Shirky 27) of “second-order communal goods” (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl, “Reconceptualizing” 372)—a collection of resources created collectively but without a bounded community, through video-posting, tagging, and circulation practices engaged in by individuals—does not accidentally result in critical publics that come to take part in political activism. Rather, social movements are, above all, the space for manifesting ideas, choices, and a collective will, in which people produce their own history through their cultural creations and social struggles (Touraine). As such, the alteration of meaning, the struggle to define the situation, and the discursive practices carried out within a social movement are all major aspects of social movements and change (Melucci).Indeed, SMOs and marginalised communities worldwide have increasingly learnt the ability to become narrators of their activist and community lives, and to express solidarity and recognition afforded through technology adoption. The recent proliferation of social media applications and mobile digital technologies has allowed activist groups to create and distribute their own stories regarding concrete actions, ongoing campaigns, and thematic issues of protest movements on more multimedia platforms. In order to advance political ideas and collective action frames, they may bring together a variety of online content in such a way that the collated materials offer a commentary on a subject area by articulating and negotiating new media artefacts, while also inviting responses. Therefore, not only are the new media channels for activist communication comparatively inexpensive, but they also provide for a richer array of content and the possibility of greater control by SMOs over its (re-)creation, maintenance, and distribution for potential digital narrating. To understand how digital narrating takes place in contemporary protest movements with SNSs, we now turn to two analytic concepts—curation and choreography.Social Media Content Curation and Choreography Curation, as a new media practice, involves finding, categorising, and organising relevant online content on specific issues. For instance, museums and libraries may have curators to select and feature digital items for collection and display, improving the types of information accessible to a public audience. In protest movements, SMOs and political actors may also curate peer-produced content on SNS platforms so as to filter and amplify useful information for mobilising collective action. In fact, this process by SMOs and political actors is particularly important, as it helps sort and draw timely attention to these information sources, especially at times when users are faced with a large amount of noise created by millions of producers (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). More importantly, not only does content curating entail the selection and preservation of online materials that may facilitate collective action, but it may also involve the (re-)presentation of selected content by telling stories not being told or by telling existing stories in a different way (Fotopoulou and Couldry). In contrast to professional collecting, it is a much more deliberate process, one which clearly articulates and puts forwards (opportunities for) new meanings or new understanding of a subject (Franks). For example, when new media content is re-posted or shared in its original form but in a new context, digital narrating occurs as it may result in a new or additional layer of meaning (Baym and Shah). Therefore, more than merely expending information resources available to activists, the power of curation can be understood primarily as discursive, as users may pick up particular versions of reality in interpreting social issues and protest movements (Bekkers, Moody, and Edwards).Moreover, nowadays, social media curating is not restricted to text but also includes image and video streaming, as the development of mobile devices and digital cameras has facilitated and enhanced instant communication and information retrieval almost regardless of location. The practice of content curating with SNSs may also involve the process of choreographing with various social media modules, such as posting a series of edited pictures under an overarching schema and organising user-generated photos into an album that suggests a particular theme. Rather than simply using a single visual item designed to tell a story, the idea of choreographing is thus concerned with how curated items are seen and experienced from the users’ perspectives as it “allows curators not just to expose elements of a story but to tell a structured tale with the traditional elements of beginning, middle and end” (Franks 288).In practice, the implementation of choreography can be envisioned to bring together the practice of content curating and that of enhancing and connecting contentious engagement at protest movements. For example, when SMOs make use of images and video to help frame an issue in a more advanced way by sharing a picture with a comment added on Facebook, they may at once, whether consciously or unconsciously, suggest possible endorsement to the selected content and/or the source—may it be that of an individual user or a formal organisation—while drawing attention to the image and circulating it beyond the original network for which it was posted (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker). As such, by posting pictures with captions and sharing user-generated photos that do not belong to the SMO but are produced by other users, curating and choreographing with social media content can create a temporary space for practicing mutual recognition and extending the relationship between the SMO and the larger public. Combined, they may therefore “entail the creation of norms and boundaries in particular user communities and their platforms” (Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker 239).This article examines the ways in which a new media-savvy SMO employed SNS platforms to (co-)create digital narratives, with the case of the 2012 Anti-National Education Movement in Hong Kong. By highlighting how social media content curating and choreogr

The present reasoned bibliography was published in Swedish in 1990 as part of a series of reports issued by Linkoping University, Arbetsrapporter fran Tema Kommunikation, as number 1990:4 in the series. It gained some diffusion among history of photography specialists in the Nordic countries, but was never printed. In the thirty years that have passed since then, no new and comprehensive reasoned bibliography of the earliest Nordic history of photography has been published. There are therefore reasons for making the bibliography available in a digital format, in Swedish as well as in English.The survey is structured such that each country is dealt with separately, and the sources divided into contemporary sources, later publications, and research. The presentation of contemporary sources – unprinted sources, commentary in newspapers and periodicals, and manuals from 1839-1865 – still constitutes a current overview from each Nordic country. The presentation of later publications, however, goes no further than 1990. The infrastructure and focus of research have changed radically over the past three decades. Rather than updating the bibliography with research literature from the current era, I have chosen to present it as a historiographic snapshot from 1990. That will allow it to serve as a starting point for other research overviews with current assumptions and perspectives. (Less)

The sociological study of urban society has been increasingly diversifying its focus of interests under the pressure of changing social situations. Along this trend, it may be unavoidable that the systematic presentation of “the structural theory of urban society” has almost been neglected. capitalism The first reason for the neglect is sought in traditional studies of Japanese as a main subject of social science in Japan. Urban studies, especially the structural studies of urban society have often been overlooked in this field. Now it is required for us to analyse the nrban social structure in relation to modern capitalism in Japan. In this essay, we will examine an urban theory presented by Minoru Shimazaki who represents an approach with the view mentioned above.The second reason for the neglect is sought in proper urban studies which have been made by urban sociologists under the influence of modern American sociology. Many of those sociologists have been weak in the view to the whole structure of urban society and society as a whole. It is only after 1955 that Japanese sociologists have turned their interests to the structural theory of urban society. Yet it will take more time before they attain to the full systematization and the wide consensus about the conceptual framework of the structural theory of urban society. Here we will examine the theory of social structure developed by Eitaro Suzuki who presented a relatively systematic conceptual framework.We must confront several difficult problems in order to construct the structural theory of Japanese urban society at the cross-road of the two approaches developed by Shimazaki and Suzuki. One is the lack of fruitful criticisms between those two approaches concerning their conceptual frameworks and theoretical orientations. The other is the vague understanding of problems of social relation and social group in both approaches which should be included in the theory of social structure. We conclude that the remaining problem for the theory of social structure will be to find a point of contact with the theories of social relation and social group which should take proper position within the framework of social structure.