Complex Social Reality Research Articles

Alienation and Capitalist Society in Arthur Miller's “Death of a Salesman”: A Marxist Reading

The present paper deals with one of the top three most notable tragedies in American history is considered to be “Death of a Salesman”. It premiered in 1949, vividly demonstrating an instinctive insight into society. Arthur Miller, the playwright, emphasized that the play should reflect not just the psychological and subjective world of the characters but also the actual, complex social reality. It has effectively captured the pathos of a typical American salesman. The study aim to shed light on Loman's private drama by examining it through the lens of societal issues, thereby illuminating the play's economic context and inner history. This method is timely because it addresses the central contradictions and inequalities that sustain and deepen under capitalism. The study seeks to enrich our understanding of the dangerous impact of the capitalist system on the working class and how it affects them and makes them alienated. This study depends on the original play script rather than others' ideas and recognizes the fusion of Marxism's effect on the play through closely reading the text. The findings that reached after studying Miller’s play is that the materialistic world can be seen as the dominating one and its negative impact mentally and physically on the Lomans.

New rural pension scheme, intergenerational exchange, and intergenerational economic support of the rural elderlies: a study from the perspectives of classical altruism theory and exchange motivation theory

As the severity of rural old-age care in China becomes increasingly evident, the manner in which rural elderly individuals obtain economic support has emerged as a significant societal concern. Central to this paper is the question of whether the new rural pension scheme, as the first government-provided institutional pension, influences the longstanding intergenerational economic support within families. Drawing upon classic altruism theory and exchange motivation theory, this study analyzes the complex rural social reality in China. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) for the years 2013 and 2015, we employ a two-part model to examine the policy effects of new rural pension scheme, as well as the 2014 pension insurance reform and pension increase. Our findings reveal that (1) altruism and exchange motivation coexist in the rural Chinese social reality and jointly influence the behaviors of rural families. (2) Intergenerational economic support for the elderly in rural Chinese families primarily depends on the exchange motivation aspect of intergenerational care. Thus, it is vital to strengthen the intergenerational support of the family in addressing the pensions of the elderly in rural China.

Українська національно-правова ідея: виклики сьогодення

It was found that the Ukrainian national-legal idea is the driving force for the preservation and development of Ukrainian identity and statehood based on social and legal ideals, which are formed through the value beliefs, attitudes and orientations of conscious, socially active citizens. Today’s challenges for the national-legal idea of Ukrainians are, first of all, Russia’s military aggression, when the enemy disregards all international and general civilizational rules of human coexistence and tries to destroy our identity, sovereignty and independence. The challenge is not simply the preservation of Ukrainian identity, but, in fact, democracy in the center of Europe. It was emphasized that it is important, despite complex social, political, economic and legal realities, to form a holistic understanding and perception of citizens from an early age, themselves and their nation, traditions, customs, culture as the highest value of national self-identity and the basis of selfaffirmation of a person. Today poses new challenges for Ukraine. Challenges, perhaps the most extensive in the history of the modern development of our state, which are connected not only with the threat to our national identity, but also with the physical destruction of Ukrainians. We are choosing the right to life and our own thousand-year history in the twenty-first century, in the center of Europe. In these challenges of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is important to preserve our national values, ideals, and ideas, because it is precisely them that the enemy is fiercely destroying, trying to erase our history and the future of Ukrainians. It is noted that the legal ideology, as a component of the legal idea, personifying the law and its essence, establishes the principles of democracy, equality and justice as the main directions of the development of the state and society. Today, we observe Ukrainians realizing the value of the legal ideology of our state, which is aimed at recognizing, observing and realizing the rights, freedoms and duties of a person and a citizen, at the development of a democratic society and a social and legal state. Citizens realized that these are not empty words and that these factors determine the vector of development of our society. Attention is focused on the fact that legal ideology, as a component of the legal idea, personifying the law and its essence, consolidates the principles of democracy, equality and justice, together with the national idea, it accumulates national values, progressive initiatives.

Co-producing composite storytelling comics: (counter) narratives by academics of working-class heritage

Composite storytelling as a social qualitative research method represents a growing spirit of creativity to explore themes of social injustice. This article discusses the potential methodological affordances and challenges of such approaches when used to collectively unsettle, interrogate and (re)imagine what it means to become an academic of working-class heritage. The participatory project discussed in this paper involved eight social science and humanities academics in UK-based elite higher education institutions. In a series of storytelling sessions, the participants created narrative encounters to foster moments of critique and analysis to explore the complex social realities of their routes into and through academia as people of working-class origins. Working alongside an illustrator, the participants used empirical insights to create composite stories in multimodal comic formats. Through this work, we seek to prompt further discussions about the generative possibilities of pursuing similar methods in the social sciences and beyond to challenge forms of social injustice.

Search for the Soul of Black Preaching

This article examines Black preaching as a vital force in African American communities, offering a powerful testament to resilience, spiritual enlightenment, and social transformation. Black preaching emerges as a beacon of hope and resistance amidst oppressive conditions, weaving together theological insight, cultural richness, and communal resilience. Through a rich historical lens, the article explores the performative and substantive dimensions of Black preaching, highlighting its capacity to navigate complex theological and social realities. While acknowledging moments of complicity and challenge within Black preaching, this article emphasizes its enduring legacy as a catalyst for liberation and justice. Ultimately, Black preaching emerges as a dynamic expression of faith, embodying the enduring struggle for dignity, justice, and freedom within the African American experience.

A poetic inquiry: the role of the social sciences and humanities in revitalising AIDS

ABSTRACT For the past four decades, biomedical science has transformed clinical outcomes for HIV and AIDS. However, the social, economic and gendered determinants of HIV remain largely intact. The social science and humanities offer concepts and methods for articulating why these remain intractable. I used poetic inquiry – an arts-based, qualitative approach – as I reviewed literature on the “end of AIDS, and post-AIDS”. As I did so, I considered what contribution the social sciences and humanities could make in moving us closer to these ideals. Several themes and found poems emerged in this reading: (1) how language oversimplifies complex social realities; (2) the voices of people living with HIV and AIDS must be included; (3) HIV and AIDS intersects with social inequalities; (4) social and structural issues are no barrier to HIV prevention and (5) the need for radical interdisciplinarity. The paper concludes that the end of AIDS requires responses that are integrated, holistic and that radically challenge our silo’d disciplinary boundaries and frames. The social sciences and humanities are key to this charge.

Photography in a context of change for the insular Hispanic Caribbean

After the Second World War, the Caribbean art experienced profound transformations in their creative practices and modes of cultural understanding. The complex social and political realities in the islands of the Hispanic Caribbean led to a turning point in regional processes, a transformation of the art field, and rethinking of peripheral discourses. from the demonstrations, the topics of interest and the role of the artist in society. Photography, and especially that coming from peripheral spaces in the international logic of art, contributed the most rebellious icons of the moment. The cultural symbols of a new voice, which responds to an emancipatory and decolonizing thought, is expressed in the construction of a visual discourse of ethical and libertarian paradigms. The most innovative language of the time appealed to a background photographic base due to the relationship between immediacy and pregnancy of the image, or the inherent reproducibility that fosters a more effective communicative function.

Sparring with Femininity

This ethnography explores how a group of adolescents—predominantly girls—negotiated a sport-for-development program centred on the traditionally masculine pastime of mixed martial arts (MMA). The ethnographic setting was a youth centre in central Montréal that provides free after-school programming for youths aged 11 to 18 years. Our analysis yielded three prominent themes: 1) ‘girls don’t do MMA,’ in which we discovered how young female pugilists actively challenged residual stereotypes that cast them as ‘too soft’ to play violent sports such as MMA; 2) ‘a mixed bag of martial artists,’ in which we learned how local youths conceived MMA as a vehicle for supporting innovative agendas that extended well-beyond the sport of MMA; and 3) the ‘racialization of self-defence,’ in which we witnessed how self-defence against complex social realities (profiling and marginalization) experienced by many non-white youths in the area were integrated into the teachings of the MMA program. Collectively, these themes raise important questions about the socially significant role(s) that MMA plays in the lives of local youths with respect to their race, class, and gendered identities.

Geçiş Döneminde Devamlılık ve Değişim: Modern İran Edebiyatında İrfan Örneği

The concept of Sattlezeit was coined by Koselleck to identify a period of change and transformation in Europe beginning from the middle of eighteenth century in which the meaning of old concepts was changing to fit the conditions of a modern world and to account for the new relationship humans were developing with nature, history, and time.1 Koselleck focuses his analysis on concepts used in political discourse, specifically what he calls “basic concepts” without which communication in the realm of politics is not possible. Because they index newly emerged complex social and political realities, these concepts are highly complex, ambiguous, and contested.

Conceptualizing a transdisciplinary nexus for addressing complex problems

We envision opening a way of perceiving the transdisciplinary Hidden Third as a transcendental nexus of both passive and active causal powers reflecting and engaged with the external structures that create the complex social realities in which we live. It is in these realities and their possible worlds that the revealing of our relational capacities and activating (actualising) potentialities occurs. We propose that innovative and co-created solutions to complex problems can emerge when something at work within each person helps very differently minded people with a stake in an issue to realise that they have capabilities and potential that can be actualised situationally. To facilitate this idea, we adopt a notion of transindividuality, which is constitutive through relationality. This is a futural process of imaginal thinking and imaginary thinking. We suggest that when temporarily functioning in an intermediate inner universe (mundus imaginalis), and by operating between the empirical (concrete facts) and the abstract (e.g., meditative thinking), active imaginal powers foster emergent solutions unbounded by the positivistic framing problems and their future consequences. We conceptualized a transdisciplinary nexus that draws from the mundus imaginalis and the Hidden Third to provide deeper insights into the role that people’s inner images of the world play when engaging in transdisciplinary problem solving.

Solidarity in the Context of Migration: A Philosophical Perspective

Solidarity is a permanent component of social life. In this sense, it becomes a transformative value that clearly connects people and their projects with others. The current situation in the world sharpens the issue of human solidarity. War, migration crises, aggressive globalization, territorial elitism, consumerism, populism, and the ideologization of social discourse lead to the distortion or elimination of the idea of solidarity. Nowadays, there are multi-level and multi-directional changes and transformations in individual and social ethos. Therefore, understanding solidarity requires an analysis of the context in which it is applied, as well as basic scientific assumptions. The article addresses this issue in the context of migration. It consists of three main elements: 1/ Firstly, it explains the philosophical phenomenon of solidarity as a very complex and multi-faceted individual and social reality; 2/ It portrays solidarity as a European virtue and value, which today seems to be experiencing certain difficulties in the EU’s migration policy, particularly revealed by the refugee crisis; 3/ It presents several ways of reflecting on solidarity in the light of representatives of contemporary philosophy and theoreticians of political thought (H.G. Gadamer, J. Dean, A. Grimmel, J. Tischner). These proposals can become an opportunity and a call to reflect on solidarity in times of its axiological and actual deficit.

Art Yarning: On an Integrated Social Science Research Method

ABSTRACT This article presents a messy social science research method that integrates art therapy tools and Indigenous yarning – a concept loosely translated as complex conversational storytelling. The method – Art Yarning – is an innovative research tool that mirrors and responds to the complex social and research realities in interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and researchers in Australia. Drawing on collaborative research with Indigenous communities on Gunditjmara and Wathaurong Countries in Victoria, I present and discuss Art Yarning as a ‘messy’ method (Law 2004): that is, as shifting, uncertain, slow, modest, and diverse, only capable of delivering situated, incomplete, temporary knowledge – a valuable, humbling position that recognises and respects boundaries around Indigenous knowledges. Art Yarning prioritises Indigenous and visual ways of knowing and challenges the problematic conviction that any social science method can deliver complete, single-source knowledge. Art Yarning enhanced participants’ sense of Indigenous identities, healing, and non-Indigenous participants’ adaptation to aspects of Indigenous ways of knowing-being-doing (Martin 2003). Rich multilayered new knowledge was achieved via processes that reduce power imbalance in research. Critically, the integrated method facilitates learning from, rather than learning about, Indigenous peoples in social science research.

Toward a critical social ontology

AbstractI argue in this paper for a critical social ontology, or an approach to theorizing social reality and social institutions that is more than descriptive of social reality, but is also able to provide practical reasoning with an ontological dimension for judgment. At the heart of this idea is a different take on social metaphysics from most standard current accounts in that it begins with empirical, phylogenetic capacities of human beings for social practices (realizing abstract thought in the world) as well as relationality (the need for attachments to others). The combination of these two essential human capacities, what I call the practical‐relational nexus, is generative of more complex social reality. The ontogeny of any social reality is the result of the ways that this practical‐relational nexus has been organized and shaped by external social structures and systems, themselves the product of certain kinds of social power. I then explore the metaphysics of social power before considering the ways that this approach to social metaphysics can inform practical reasoning with the capacity for social and political criticism.

Everything About Children, Death, and Ethics All at Once

Whilst children’s competency is evident through their everyday socio-material encounters, dominant discourses continue to depict children as incompetent ‘human becomings’, shielding them from ‘sensitive’ matters (e.g., death). Originating from adult-centric traditions, this humanist understanding prioritises binary oppositions (e.g., life/death, body/mind, and child/adult). Reinforced by neoliberal academic expectations, such a developmentalist assumption is further appropriated and holds true as ‘gold standard’ when examining children and childhood, producing injustices against children. In response to critical post-human calls to disrupt child-adult binaries, I use post-qualitative inquiry to showcase the epistemological-ethical-emotional entanglement within a research project investigating children’s children’s encounters with death. Specifically, by combining poetry and drawing to challenge increasingly homogenous academic writing and traditionally clean-cut research paradigms, this work playfully highlights that children face power injustices in contemporary social life and their rights to participation in complex social realities (e.g., death) matter.

Dichotomy and Two-Component Polytomy in Contemporary Sociology

The article reveals the need to rethink the heuristic potential of dichotomy as a cognition method in the research of contemporary social reality, which characterizes by its structure complication and dynamics acceleration. Based on the analysis of recent works by foreign and Russian authors, it gives the description of the understanding of dichotomy and the dichotomous method in social and humanitarian knowledge, its comparison with other terms used to characterize opposites and their relationship, and the separation of dichotomies into scientific and everyday ones. This paper analyzes the practice of applying the dichotomous method in sociological research in recent years: it identifies the main sociological dichotomies and reveals their movement in contemporary sociological knowledge, which consists of the use of established dichotomies in the research of the balance between extremes, the convergence of opposites, overcoming contradictions and, conversely, their exacerbation, polarization of social relations that are observed in the contemporary world, as well as the formation of new binary pairs following the example of the dichotomy «sustainability – vulnerability». It determines the changes in the practice of dichotomous method using in the field of social and sociological cognition: on the one side, there is a transition from its use as the main research method to use in combination with other methods and methodological techniques, which allows solving a wider range of research tasks, on the other side, along with dichotomies, researchers construct two-term polytomies, which their authors call dichotomies. The author reveals significant heuristic possibilities of the dichotomous method for conceptualization, analysis and explanation of the increasingly complex and dynamic contemporary social reality: this method allows you to identify the differences between the research objects, to carry out their comparative analysis and interpretation, to reveal their dualism and opposite sides, while emphasizing the independence and interconnectedness of these extremes, to order and generalize the data obtained on the basis of this method, to develop alternative models of explanation.

The Photographer Photographed: A Conversation with Jean Mohr

The Swiss photographer Jean Mohr, who died in November 2018 at the age of 93, is well known for his long career documenting the plight of the displaced and dispossessed. Especially noteworthy are his collaborations with major intellectual figures, through which he experimented with the construction of visual narratives. His celebrated books with John Berger include *A Fortunate Man*, an intimate portrait of an English country doctor, and A Seventh Man, a meditation on migrant labour in 1970s Europe; with Edward Said, he published After the Last Sky, a reflection on Palestinian life through the fusion of text and photography. Partially based on a short interview conducted with Mohr in early 2018, this paper reflects on his life and work, taking the reader on a journey mediated by our conversation. In particular, I explore the development of his unique approach to photography and the experimental construction of visual narratives. In so doing, I argue that Mohr’s work offers social scientists, particularly those engaged in studying processes of migration or zones of conflict, ways of constructing more effective, more engaged, and more experiential accounts of complex social realities.

The ethical principles reflected in the systemof „jus civilae”in Ancient Rome

Law as a complex social reality interferes with other normative systems among which those of a moral-religious nature occupy a central place, suffering from them a direct influence both in terms of the realization of the law and in terms of its application. This ethical foundation of Roman law made possible the creation of a coherent normative system that crossed 12 centuries of existence remaining as a valuable treasure of the ancient civilization, which represented a configuration factor of future posthumous legal regulations. Making an exhaustive analysis of the legal phenomenon expressed by the concept of„jus civilae", we will show that the Romanian legislators combined tradition with innovation, valorizing, at the same time, the principles of a moral order creating legal institutions that have remained enshrined in the specialized doctrine

MULTIPOLARITY AND MULTILATERALISM: COOPERATIVE OR RIVAL CORNERSTONES OF A NEW WORLD ORDER

Today we are nowadays confronted with a strange asymmetry: While the technology driven processes of globalization are interconnecting societies and creating networks of mutual interdependence in all sectors of live, the adaption of a political order to such revolutionary changes is behind time. This discrepancy creates the present unease, conflicts and uncertainties which haunt our societies. The classical question is thrown into the open: Are the fundamental forces unleashed by the technological revolution and its impact on changes in socio-economic relations strong enough to create a balanced world order based on peaceful cooperation among the various multipolar actors? The analysis carried out in the article allows us to state that Multipolarity and Multilateralism do not need to exclude each other. In a way they can coexist. Even more: Multilateralism could create the basis of a multipolar global order which accentuates more cooperative than conflicting issues. Despite the fact that both concepts are based on different modes and follow different objectives, their interplay mirrors much more the present complex social, economic and technological reality.

ДИАЛОГ КАК ОСНОВА ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И ОБЩЕСТВА: ОБРАЩАЯСЬ К НАСЛЕДИЮ МАРТИНА БУБЕРА

Well-known in the last century, philosopher, thinker, outstanding representative of existentialism and educator Martin Buber left a rich heritage: the evolution of the philosophy of dialogue and a new perception of a person, his education, the role of a teacher in the formation of a person’s character, personality in the period of searching for new values, spiritual foundations and guidelines in conditions complex modern social reality, the need for dialogue to comprehend the complex reality and search for opportunities for an adequate understanding of the present and future. The article discusses the role of lifelong education and the teacher in times of social, political and other changes. The article discusses Buber's dialogue philosophy of education, which remains invariably relevant for all spheres of society, and aims to teach students to be people, intellectuals, to understand their personal presence as a unique reality that interacts with society.

Religious Moderation and the Struggle for Identity Through New Media: Study of the Indonesian Ahmadiyya Congregation

This study aims to examine the religious moderation promoted by Ahmadiyah through the website. The Ahmadiyah religious moderation discourse is related to the struggle for identity in the public sphere. This study is qualitative with documentation data collection techniques, namely digging documents containing religious moderation texts found on the Ahmadiyah website. The data are analyzed using a new media approach, which is an approach that sees a text that appears on a new media website as connected to the traditional text of the Holy Book. However, because website media texts relate to the offline world, external factors from social complexity also affect website text building. The results of the study indicate that internally the religious moderation text constructed by Ahmadiyah online comes from its ideology which is indeed fighting for peace and non-violence jihad. Meanwhile, externally, complex social realities in the midst of mainstream authorities and the state also contribute to the moderation text of the Ahmadiyya religion. The values of moderation promoted by Ahmadiyah are, first, supporting the strengthening of nationality by developing the concept of a spiritual and moral caliphate, not a political and militaristic caliphate. Second, strengthening peace and non-violence by encouraging jihad with a pen (jihad bi al-qalam) in response to various emerging social issues. Third, strengthening religious tolerance and freedom by emphasizing openness, not coercion in religion. Fourth, strengthening the existence of local culture by optimizing universal Islamic teachings. In the context of the Ahmadiyya as a minority, the discourse on religious moderation can be said to be an effort to struggle for Ahmadiyya identity in the public sphere in the midst of the mainstream and state authorities. However, this identity struggle seems to be hampered by the problem of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's (MGA) prophetic position. Therefore, a more massive dialogue is needed with the local Muslim mainstream.