Contemporary American Society Research Articles

COVID-19 in the United States as affective frame.

In this paper I attempt to contribute to the developing field of “political philosophy of mind.” To render concrete the notion of “affective frame,” a social situation which pre-selects for salience and valence of environmental factors relative to a subject’s life, I conduct a case study of a deleterious socially instituted affective frame, which, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, produced individuated circumstances that came crashing down on “essential workers” who were forced into a double bind. We saw here an untenable and ultimately fatal situation that forced a choice between, on the one hand, increasing the risk of their failing to provide financial support for their family if they quit their job or reduced their hours, and on the other, increasing their risk of contracting the virus by continuing to work. The case study will thus be itself an affective frame that will bring to the fore for its readers a nexus of harmful social practices of contemporary American society. Form is reinforced by content here, as this particular affective frame brings forth a further emphasis on affect when we focus on workers simultaneously socialized into roles as breadwinners and as members of the caring professions. For those people, quitting work becomes even more difficult as they come to affirm their self-identity of being providers of affective labor for those in their care at work and of being the affective anchor of family life at home, the one who financially helps keep a roof over the heads of their loved ones as well as being the emotional backbone of the family. Hence the affective frame of “essential workers in Covid times” renders salient and affirmatively valenced their affectively laden self-image as caring helpers of those in need, at home and at work.

I Meant What I Said, and I Said What I Meant?: Organizational Rhetoric Around Social Justice Issues

From systematic racism to climate change, institutions in contemporary American society are increasingly expected to wake up to and take a stance on major social and political issues that challenge our societal well-being. Yet such communicative efforts are not always met with unanimous positive reactions. The public, or some social groups, may question the underlying motivation for such efforts, seeing them as nothing more than political performance (Anderson & McClain, 2020). Certain narratives may backfire, too, especially when the effort is described as intending to benefit the bottom line rather than supporting social justice (Carlos & Lewis, 2018; Kim, 2014). Finally, despite the unprecedented wave of public support for BLM in summer 2020, many people were hesitant to rejoice over the “victory” because promises may never become progresses, especially considering that the past sixty years have witnessed a decrease, rather than an increase, in racial equity despite all the talking (e.g., a greater racial wealth gap; Miller, 2011, Shapiro, Meschede & Osoro, 2013). Stating an organization’s intention to contribute to a better, more equitable society is a must, but a deep understanding on how organizations should communicate such intentions, and how their words influence the public’s perception is still lacking. In response to the need for more rigorous and systematic research on how organizations communicate their intention to engage in social justice and how the public responds, this symposium has curated five interrelated empirical papers on this timely topic. Embracing a mixed method approach, these papers have combined the strength of archival analysis with experimental methods to showcase various aspects of an organizations’ decisions around rhetoric and communication style, how these decisions are perceived, and why certain strategies are perceived more favorably than others. Predicting People’s Perceptions of Organizational Statements Following George Floyd's Death Presenter: Xuan Zhao; Stanford U. Presenter: Rachel Song; U. of Washington Presenter: MarYam Hamedani; Stanford U. Presenter: Amrita Maitreyi; Stanford U. Presenter: Clarissa Gutierrez; Stanford U. Presenter: Hazel Markus; Stanford U. Presenter: Jennifer Eberhardt; Stanford U. Perceptions of Organizational DEI Messages that Leverage Moral Claims and Instrumental Claims Presenter: Preeti Vani; Stanford Graduate School of Business Presenter: Benoit Monin; Stanford Graduate School of Business Pain & Punishment: How University Diversity Rationales Affect Responses to Interracial Conflicts Presenter: Jordan Starck; Stanford U. Presenter: Stacey Sinclair; Princeton U. The Efficacy of Leader Rhetoric to Promote Inclusion During Periods of Intergroup Conflict Presenter: McKenzie Preston; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Arianna M. Beetz; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Andrew Carton; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania “But Are They Walking the Talk?”:How People Make Sense of Diversity Communications and Demographics Presenter: James T. Carter; Columbia Business School Presenter: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School

An analysis of reasons behind racism and racial discrimination in the United States, from the historical, cultural, and social perspective

The research is to explore why racial discrimination still exists in contemporary American society. This phenomenon has been observed in its long history, but it remains unsolved in contemporary society. The research uses the case study method. Through the case study of the ethnic minority in America, the research hopes to reveal broader lessons of racial discrimination globally. As a result, this research has found several reasons from the perspectives of history, culture, and society. The research deepens our understanding of racial discrimination and racial inequality. Moreover, the research can be useful to the policymaking of governments to solve this problem.

Mapping principal dimensions of prejudice in the United States.

Research is often guided by maps of elementary dimensions, such as core traits, foundations of morality, and principal stereotype dimensions. Yet, there is no comprehensive map of prejudice dimensions. A major limiter of developing a prejudice map is the ad hoc sampling of target groups. We used a broad and largely theory-agnostic selection of groups to derive a map of principal dimensions of expressed prejudice in contemporary American society. Across a series of exploratory and confirmatory studies, we found three principal factors: Prejudice against marginalized groups, prejudice against privileged/conservative groups, and prejudice against unconventional groups (with some inverse loadings for conservative groups). We documented distinct correlates for each factor, in terms of social identifications, perceived threats, personality, and behavioral manifestations. We discuss how the current map integrates several lines of research, and point to novel and underexplored insights about prejudice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Ancient Order of Things: Essays on the Mormon Temple

The Ancient Order of Things: Essays on the Mormon Temple

How geographic mobility contributes to exposure to political difference on social media platforms

Prevalent theory explaining why and how people encounter political difference on social media platforms ascribes an important role for weakened geographic boundaries. Yet, research has yet to test the role of geography in producing these encounters. This study fills that gap in the literature by testing the proposition that the more a person moves, the more political difference they will encounter on social media platforms. To do so, the study offers a constructive critique and amendment of theory to incorporate geographic mobility and geographic difference in political discussion. Then, drawing on a national online survey sample reflecting the target population of adult internet users in the United States (N = 1493), it uses confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the relationships between these variables and other dimensions of difference in political discussion on social media platforms. Results show geographic mobility is indirectly related to political difference through geographic difference. Results are discussed in light of their implications for our understanding of how media technologies contribute to political communication in contemporary American society.

Teoria elit Charlesa Wrighta Millsa w perspektywie współczesnych procesów regresu demokracji

The aim of the article is to present the works of Charles Wright Mills, primarily his trilogy that criticizes contemporary American society and elites: The New Men in Power, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, and The Power Elite. Although more than half a century has passed since the first publication of these works, the conclusions made by Mills seem to be still valid for us. In his works Mills described the negative aspects resulting from the development of modern society: mass society, disappearance of the public sphere, bureaucratization and concentration of corporate power in the hands of the “power elite”. All this means that Mills’ thought is still relevant. The article attempts to indicate the universal nature of Mills’ elite theory and use it to explain the causes of contemporary processes of democratic regression.

“About a Life Shaped by Exploitation”: The Uncanny Racialized Capitalism and the (Black) Performative in Sorry to Bother You

Although Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) is not conspicuously different from other didactic films at the beginning, it soon becomes unpredictable and even surreal when its protagonist Cassius “Cash” Green encounters an abominable epitome of racialized capitalism, the horse-men called the Equisapiens. Considering the abhorrent experiments whereby the black body is transformed into a horse-man that is a “stronger, more durable, and more obedient” workforce, it can be said that Sorry to Bother You launches into a diatribe against contemporary capitalism which is still inextricably tethered to racism. In light of Afrossurealism which sheds light on the black agony and grief through unrealistic and surreal elements, this paper examines the plan of transforming black people to the horse-men and the continuous attempts of subverting the dehumanization. In drawing on the idea of the uncanny conceptualized by Tzvetan Todorov and Rosemary Jackson, I will attempt to construe the Equisapiens as a representative symbol of the contemporary racialized capitalism. I will then seek to explore how the protagonists begin causing a rupture in a non-self-destructive way with the vestiges of racism which persist in the guise of capitalism, applying the idea of the (black) performative conceptualized by Sadiya V. Hartman and Jeffrey T. Nealon. I will ultimately argue that Sorry to Bother You as an Afrosurrealist film raises a possibility of resistance against the surreptitious racialized capitalism in contemporary American society.

Legible Bodies and the Ghosts of American History: On Racialized Surveillance in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs Videogames

This article reads Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs, a series of open-world videogames, through and against the entangled histories of race and surveillance in the United States. Drawing especially on recent research at the intersections of STS (science and technology studies) and CRT (critical race theory), several aspects of the videogames’ fictional world, game mechanics, plot, and visual and procedural representation are scrutinized. The first two Watch Dogs titles, I argue, both erase the realities of racializing surveillance in their conceptualization and simulation of a contemporary American surveillance society and prominently feature characters who embody the painful histories and the enduring present of racializing surveillance in the United States in several ways. These two opposing representations ultimately reproduce the racializing logics of contemporary digital surveillance as well as its lineage in American history in the ways that both whiteness and Blackness organize the operation of surveillance in the Watch Dogs franchise.

Assessment of the Effects of a Legal Advocacy Program in a Gwinnett County Domestic Violence Program

Domestic violence has become very common in the recent past, although it is classified as a crime many family members have become victims of the same. There are several types of domestic violence which range from physical violence, sexual, emotional, Psychological, spiritual, cultural, verbal and financial abuse. Legal advocacy for all victims of domestic violence regardless of the type of domestic violence has become an essential service and an important component in most domestic violence programs, as this social issue continues to be a major problem in contemporary American society and the world at large. Evaluation of the effectiveness of legal advocacy program is crucial for quality service delivery, demonstration of accountability as well as accomplishment of goals. This paper reviews the literature in legal advocacy and its effectiveness in curbing domestic violence. The areas of focus for this paper are: - purpose of legal advocacy, results of legal advocacy, and indicators of legal advocacy. In a sample of 235 cases, recidivism was assessed from official criminal data during a 12-to-18-month period after cases were initially handled by the Baltimore, Maryland’s State Attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit.

Symbolic Consumption and Media in Bret Easton Ellis’s Less than Zero

The present paper seeks to argue that consumption and media wield an unparalleled influence over contemporary American society, in a way that these drives constitute the primary means through which identity is constituted. Closely referring to Jean Baudrillard’s critical concepts, the present research contends that the fictional characters of Bret Easton Ellis, particularly in Less Than Zero, are prone to this postmodern world, where all experience via consumption has become fathomless, and traditional notions of identity have been changed. Ellis’s characters oscillate between the extreme poles of violence and ennui as they do their best to prevent their psyches from collapse amidst the surrounding turmoil caused by excessive consumption. Neither one of these alternatives results in any relief. In this type of literature, the protagonists are immersed in the contemporary world of consumption and the mass media. The primary interest here is on the effects of this immersion in the world of commodities on the major characters (Clay and Blair), and their reactions in the selected novel. Accordingly, dependence on possessions by the characters of the novel in order to isolate themselves from the threatening disorder of the post-modern world is the major concern of present study of the novel.

“We Work Hard, We Play Hard!”—Fictional Gayspeak in the Italian Dubbing of “The Simpsons”: A Queer Audiovisual Translation Study

Despite being an animated sitcom, The Simpsons is a satire of contemporary American society and culture. This article intends to apply a queer perspective to Audiovisual Translation Studies, in line with what Flotow (2019) defined the third approach to gender-focused audiovisual translation, that is, the investigation of gay and queer source texts and their treatment in the target text. This study deals with the process of sexualisation of fictional gay men through fictional gayspeak. The analysis focuses on excerpts where the Italian dubbing departs from the original, and the strategies that have been used to reproduce gayspeak into Italian. The investigation rests on the idea that translation is a gender-constructing activity implying the queering of the target text, which is a process that varies from language to language.

The Return of the (Prodigal) Son in Rita Dove’s and Luis Alfaro’s Adaptations of "Oedipus the King"

The current essay analyzes two adaptations of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King: Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth and Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey, focusing on the hero’s banishment from his original home and on his return, which enables him to obtain the inheritance and power that would have been his birthrights. Attention is also paid to Oedipus as the emblematic truth-seeker who wants to access knowledge at all costs. In navigating the wealth of sources on the adaptation of Greek tragedy for the American stage, the objective is to identify insights relevant for Dove and Alfaro, whose African American and Chicanx backgrounds influence their rewritings of the famous play. It is the conclusion of the study that the two artists successfully address urgent political issues for contemporary American society: the need to remember the injustices at the heart of its historical race-based slavery system and the need to empower underprivileged youths so that their lives wouldn’t be destroyed by incarceration in the US prison system.

Reading the Subaltern Other: A Postcolonial Critique of Kureishi’s The Black Album

This paper aims at a postcolonial study of Kureishi's novel, The Black Album (1995). In particular, the study explores how significantly the postcolonial concepts of racism, identity crisis, double consciousness, and unhomeliness inform and influence the narrative and the characterization of the novel. The study is oriented around the research question of how the characters belonging to the Pakistani diaspora in England are turned into subalterns others of the native white inhabitants, and how this, in turn, makes them vulnerable targets of racist violence. Besides, the psychological repercussions of this racist violence on the lives and minds of the characters are investigated. Moreover, the representation of different communities and their concerns are looked into to view how their mutual tensions lead to the conflict that can be broadly categorized as a clash between two conflicting ideologies, that is, Muslim fundamentalism and British liberalism. The qualitative, descriptive methodology has been employed in this paper which relies mainly on close-textual analysis and interpretation. The research is significant as the study of racism and the othering of Muslims is highly relevant in the context of the ongoing debate on Islamophobia in the West and how adversely it affects the Muslim lives there. It is also relatable to the racist violence the black community is facing in contemporary American society.

Flanking Maneuvers: The Counternarratives of the Military Unconscious in Phil Klay's “After Action Report” and “War Stories”

This article examines the ways in which Phil Klay’s short stories “After Action Report” and “War Stories” generate counternarratives that challenge and fragment populist representations of soldiering, war, and Americanness. In doing so, the analysis reveals new ways of approaching the contemporary American civilian-military disconnect. The article examines this disconnect in a framework based on Fredric Jameson’s theories that reveals the text’s underlying military unconscious: a type of political unconscious that rises from the lived-in social realities of veterans and active duty personnel. The military unconscious is complemented by what I term the hegemonic soldier: the ideological construct which informs the dominant cultural representations of soldiering and war, and which reinforces itself through representations in a fashion similar to the idea of nostalgic recreation.
 By applying these concepts, the analysis can uncover the counternarratives that stem from the texts’ military unconscious. The first case study examines the ways in which Klay’s “After Action Report” ruptures the military institution’s hegemonic discourse of killing by providing alternative discourses that allow the soldier subject to resist the hegemonic soldier, and reassert ownership over their experiences. The second case study examines how “War Stories” reveals and critiques the latent presence of the hegemonic soldier in contemporary American society. The hegemonic soldier is shown to be an omnipresent force that appears even in narratives that seek to subvert it. Together, the case studies demonstrate veteran literature’s unique potential in understanding the development of contemporary American culture.

Tragedy, Dignity, and the Dionysian

abstract Arthur Miller is a moralist, but his moral vision is not as simple as it sometimes is taken to be. Miller does not hold his characters against an objective moral standard; rather, his goal is to encourage his readers to examine the social mores that underlie their own moral judgments and self-narratives. In this way, Miller's project is much like Nietzsche's, as is his vision of tragedy, which is based on the experience of crises in a person's self-narrative or sense of dignity. Like Sean O'Casey and absurdist dramatists, Miller is working within a Nietzschean metaphysics of the tension between our oversimplified Apollonian narratives and the Dionysian complexity of life. Miller's critique of the ways the inadequacies of our cultural myths misguide our lives and our societies continues today in the works of commentators who seek to understand the tribalism and tensions in contemporary American society.

Social Media Debate Position 2: A Problematic Environment- Against the Use of Social Media for Credible Information

This paper seeks to argue against the use of social media as an information resource and, in particular, that social media should not presently be considered a credible source of information for information professionals and the general public. Based on an exploration of the current literature, the authors discuss negative aspects of using social media for information purposes, namely, in terms of the dubious credibility of social media content, the commonality of echo chambers, and the effect of emotional content on users. There are several benefits of social media within our society, but ultimately social media should be approached with caution when it is used as a source of information for news, health-related information, or scholarly topics. Although this paper critiques social media primarily in terms of its implications for the library and information science field, it also views these various issues associated with social media more broadly in terms of their implications for the general public in shaping contemporary American culture, society, and politics.

The Formation and Development of the Black Lives Matter Movement: A Political Process Perspective

The “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement is believed to be the largest social movement in American history. Making sense of such a historically significant social movement will certainly enable a fuller understanding of contemporary American politics and society. The significance of BLM also makes this movement a benchmark case that provides a testbed for social movement theories. Within the framework provided by political process theory and the process tracing method, this article seeks to explain the political and socioeconomic dynamics underlying the development of BLM. One important factor that stands out in the case of BLM is the presence of an enabling political-economic environment characterized by rising ethno-racial inequalities, police brutality, and racism under the socially polarizing effects of the 2008 economic crisis. A second set of factors to be considered is BLM’s adoption of a decentralized organizational structure, which facilitates the rallying and mobilization of large segments of society based on loose coalition strategies enacted through social media. Third, the rise and development of BLM greatly owe to the deployment of strongly motivating slogans, symbols, and modes of collective action that carry symbolic value, appeal to mass emotions, and address the political opportunities in place.

A Study of Consumption Alienation in Updike’s Works

Updike’s works reflect the characteristics of contemporary American society. There are many descriptions of consumerism in his works. The purpose of this paper is to present the consumption alienation in Updike’s works, to explore the survival predicament of people under the consumption alienation, and to point out its damage to the ecological environment.

Lost in the funhouse: Allegorical horror and cognitive mapping in Jordan Peele’s Us

Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) is an entertaining horror film that also contains a number of interesting interpretive complications. The film is undoubtedly meant as a commentary on the inequity, inequality and injustice that saturate our supposedly egalitarian American society. Beyond that vague and general characterization, though, the film offers a number of interesting (and more specific) allegorical interpretations, none of which in themselves seem quite adequate. This article explores the plethora of signs that circulate through Us, demanding interpretation but defeating any definitive interpretation. This article explores the way Us offers clues to its meaning through engagement with the horror genre in general (especially the home invasion subgenre) and through dialogue with specific predecessors in the horror genre. At the same time, we investigate the rich array of other ways in which the film offers suggested political interpretations, none of which seem quite adequate. We then conclude, however, that such interpretive failures might well be a key message of the film, which demonstrates the difficulty of fully grasping the complex and difficult social problems of contemporary American society in a way that can be well described by Fredric Jameson’s now classic vision of the general difficulty of cognitive mapping in the late capitalist world.