Early Twenty-first Century Research Articles

The rise of populist radical right parties in Europe

After World War II, radical right parties in Europe experienced a decline, but over the last three decades, they have regained strength, becoming significant players in European politics. Since the early twenty-first century, they have secured representation at various levels, from local governments to national parliaments and the European Parliament. Nowadays, populist radical right parties rank among the top three most powerful political forces in one-third of European countries. In Austria, the FPÖ ( Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) emerged as the leading party in the 2024 elections, winning 28.9% of the vote. In Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia coalition came to power with 25.99% of the vote in 2022. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won its fourth consecutive election. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN – Rassemblement National) achieved major victories in both the European Parliament and national elections, becoming the country’s largest party. Though initially considered marginal, populist radical right parties have become a lasting and serious force in European politics. This special issue features six carefully selected articles, each offering empirical and theoretical insights into different aspects of the rise of radical right and right-wing populist parties in Europe, contributing to a broader understanding of this phenomenon.

Social inequalities in the twenty-first century: gaps in access to resources, technology and a sustainable future

The article considers new forms of social inequality, interest in which emerged mainly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Special attention is paid to the analysis of global, digital and environmental inequality. The reasons of sociological interest to these problems are considered, the most important of which are the technological progress, changes in the ways of assessing the level of social inequality, as well as the transformation of research optics and tools of cognition, including the emergence of artificial intelligence technologies.The main characteristics of the new forms of social inequality, their interrelation, levels and measurement criteria are presented. The article describes several perspectives of studying global social inequality. In sociological literature, most of them are related to the transition from the study of the nation-state as a key unit of analysis to the study of global social space. The analysis of digital inequality and the problem of the social divide now appears as a combination of several levels of research and is related to the consideration of access to technology, possession of digital skills, and the life chances and opportunities. Environmental pollution and climate change have led to research interest in socio-environmental inequalities, which are related to the unequal distribution of environmental risks. Environmental neo-colonialism is examined in the context of analyzing environmental inequalities as a factor that rein forces social inequalities.The article concludes that further sociological study of social inequality issues is necessary, analyzes the role of sociology in addressing these issues and actualizing the data.

Two Pandemics and Workplace Shifts: Generational Considerations: A Multi-Factor Comparison of How Pandemics Impact Young Workers: Insights for Management and Employees©

This paper will compare several business-related factors. There has been relatively little academic research conducted to compare and contrast a breadth of workplace issues and dimensions during the early twentieth century’s Spanish Flu epidemic and the early twenty-first century’s COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This manuscript analyzes several variables and adds to the literature by examining significant factors that impacted workers and their workplaces during these two significant healthcare incidents. The major factors discussed include the labor force members during both of these pandemics, the demographics of those workforces, the workplace safety, the labor economic data during these two pandemics, the wages & how they fluctuated, the labor unions & evolving perspectives towards unionization, and the dominant industry shifts. Several of the findings regarding Millennials and Generation Z workers are supported by this author’s current research of university students who were employed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The insights provided in this manuscript are instrumental for business managers and human resource management professionals, higher education, and for those who provide corporate training.

Minilateralism and the new Indo-Pacific order: theoretical ambitions and empirical realities

ABSTRACT The introductory paper sets the stage for the research essays in the special issue. It provides an overview of the concepts of minilateralism and the context in which minilateralism has become an alternative form of collective action by states in the international arena, in particular in the Indo-Pacific region that has emerged as the new centre of gravity in world politics. How has minilateralism become a prominent feature of inter-state cooperation in the early twenty-first century, and how is it often used to complement (and in some cases, even substitute for) traditional international organisations, which are based on more liberal and inclusive multilateral norms and principles, but suffering from functional deficits? In a world of more diffuse power, how can minilateralism offer states an expanded toolset for pursuing their policy preferences and advancing their interests? At the same time, the paper also highlights the potential negatives of (or challenges to) minilateralism, including difficulties emanating from a narrowly framed agenda that perpetuates certain narratives, a leadership vacuum that could emerge from non-hierarchical arrangements, and questions about how to achieve support and legitimacy with low institutionalisation.

Contemporary Tibetan Monastic Business and the Corporate Form

In early twenty-first century Tibet, many Geluk monasteries established capital funds that they invested in small businesses—the Geluk being one of the main Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Drawing on fieldwork in northeast Tibet, this article examines debates surrounding this monastic engagement in business, asking why it proved contentious despite historical and canonical precedent. I approach this question by thinking about monastic business engagement in relation to Geluk monasticism as a distinctive corporate form. Foregrounding how monks made sense of what they were doing as corporate actors, I examine common rationales, concerns, and questions of legitimacy at the heart of arguments both for and against monastic business development, and how these related to the monastic corporation’s core concern with preservation and continuity. The article concludes with some broader reflections on what these debates can tell us about the ongoing process of corporation-making, suggesting some possible avenues for future research.

The English Studies Interview with Alan Hollinghurst: In Conversation with Dominic Dean

ABSTRACT Alan Hollinghurst is the author of seven novels including The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), The Stranger’s Child (2011), The Sparsholt Affair (2017), and The Line of Beauty (2004), with the latter winning the 2004 Man Booker Prize. He is widely celebrated for his distinctive style, his tragicomical explorations of English life in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and his introduction of richly imagined and humanely observed gay themes to mainstream literary fiction. His latest novel is Our Evenings (2024). Alan Hollinghurst spoke with Dominic Dean about Our Evenings, its themes, inspirations and treatment of social and political history; the role of buildings and material objects in his fiction; his style and formal innovations and influences; and his relationships with TV adaptations and with the literary academy.

Social inequalities in adult mortality across Europe (18th-21st centuries): A critical analysis of theories and evidence

This study examines the historical evolution of socioeconomic disparities in adult mortality, with a focus on European societies. Despite the widespread improvements in population health, social inequalities in mortality are a pervasive phenomenon nowadays. This paper employs a critical analysis of both theoretical and empirical literature to investigate major international studies and their findings on longevity differences associated with socioeconomic status from the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Findings reveal that adult mortality trajectories have differed notably across social classes and regions, with some areas exhibiting disparities before the demographic transition and others showing inequalities emerging later. Understanding these long-term health inequality trends sheds light on the changing influence of medical advances and their interplay with economic growth, educational disparities, environmental factors, state roles, and production distribution, which have shaped mortality disparities through different development stages. These factors elucidate the international heterogeneity of results until the mid-twentieth century and offer explanatory insights into observed north-south patterns in Europe. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how advancements in public health, economic development, and social policies have shaped health outcomes over centuries. The implications of this research inform ongoing debates and health policy, emphasizing a nuanced interpretation of historical data to craft effective strategies that address health inequalities today.

Historical insights, current challenges: tracking marine biodiversity in an urban harbor ecosystem in the face of climate change

The Boston Harbor Islands is the only coastal drumlin archipelago in the USA, featuring a distinctive and uncommon geological intertidal habitat known as mixed coarse substrate, which supports a range of coastal species and ecological processes. Recently designated as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places due to climate change impacts, coastal adaptation and restoration efforts are crucial to their preservation. Such efforts can benefit from historic and current knowledge of endemic and emergent biodiversity. To investigate broad trends in coastal biodiversity, we compiled an inventory of marine coastal macroalgae, macroinvertebrates, fish, mammals, and shorebirds observed in the harbor since 1861. Records span 159 years, consisting of 451 unique taxa from 19 phyla. Analysis of average taxonomic distinctness (AvTD) revealed increases in diversity towards the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, likely associated with improved water quality (dissolved oxygen; AvTD > 85, p = 0.01) due to harbor restoration in the 1980s. Macroinvertebrates comprised 50% of the records, making this the most diverse taxonomic group in the time series. A significant increase of non-indigenous species, primarily macroinvertebrates and macroalgae, was observed over the last 20 years near human infrastructure and across multiple islands, a consequence of global change and characteristic of most urban harbors. The mixed coarse intertidal habitat, which makes up > 70% of Boston Harbor’s inner islands and supports high macroinvertebrate and macroalgal diversity (47% of species records), is not routinely monitored; our findings serve as a foundational resource for climate adaptation projects and decision-making.

Frustrative Nonreward: Behavior, Circuits, Neurochemistry, and Disorders.

The surprising omission or reduction of vital resources (food, fluid, social partners) can induce an aversive emotion known as frustrative nonreward (FNR), which can influence subsequent behavior and physiology. FNR is an integral mediator of irritability/aggression, motivation (substance use disorders, depression), anxiety/fear/threat, learning/conditioning, and social behavior. Despite substantial progress in the study of FNR during the twentieth century, research lagged in the later part of the century and into the early twenty-first century until the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria initiative included FNR and loss as components of the negative valence domain. This led to a renaissance of new research and paradigms relevant to basic and clinical science alike. The COVID-19 pandemic's extensive individual and social restrictions were correlated with increased drug and alcohol use, social conflict, irritability, and suicide, all potential consequences of FNR. This article highlights animal models related to these psychiatric disorders and symptoms and presents recent advances in identifying the brain regions and neurotransmitters implicated.

Industrial Policy and Democratic Corporate Governance: Perspectives from the BNDES Case

In the early twenty-first century, Brazil underwent a remarkable economic boom, primarily driven by the Brazilian National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES). This state-owned financial institution spearheaded a new industrial strategy, sponsoring domestic companies, such as Odebrecht and JBS, to their internationalisation. Nevertheless, this initial successful story took a dramatic turn. Over the years, the Brazilian national champions found themselves involved in corruption scandals, human rights violations and environmental damage, with BNDES indirectly funding these activities. This article seeks to discuss this crony capitalism arrangement, examining the role of corporate governance in safeguarding industrial policy from capture. We conclude by exploring how a democratic model of corporate governance could provide some insights for addressing this issue.

Churchgoing in Edinburgh and Leith, 1836–2016: The Statistical Record

In the ongoing scholarly debate about the secularisation of Scottish (and British) society, churchgoing is one of the few metrics for which longitudinal data exist, albeit fragmentarily. This article assembles and analyses the evidence about levels of church attendance in Scotland’s capital (and second largest) city during the nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries. It draws upon quantitative data (nine religious censuses, with varying methodologies, in 1836, 1851, 1882 and between 1980 and 2016) and qualitative sources (chiefly local newspapers). Relative to population, churchgoing in Edinburgh and Leith appears to have declined continuously since the mid-nineteenth century, in-person attendance standing at an estimated 3.59% of the city’s residents on an average Sunday in 2022–3, somewhat lower than in Glasgow. Possible explanations for this decrease are briefly explored.

Scholars as political influencers: celebrity, social media and political movements in Thailand

ABSTRACT The early twenty-first century witnessed a significant surge in democratisation movements against unjust dictatorships worldwide. In Thailand, political protests across the nation have captured considerable attention in recent years, primarily led by students and young people advocating for democratic reforms, with support from scholars and professionals. Despite this, studies of Thai politics have largely overlooked the role played by Thai scholar celebrities. While some critics have examined the rise of influencers in the online era, few have contextualised them within the political sphere. This article aims to address these gaps by elucidating the concept of celebrity culture within the political arena. The paper comprises three main sections. The first section delves into the notion of celebrity, celebrity culture, and, more specifically, scholar celebrities. Following this, a concise overview of the Thai socio-political landscape is provided, with particular emphasis on the ongoing political conflict dating back to 2006. The third and final section scrutinises Thai scholars as political influencers, exploring their relationship with and contribution to the Thai political movement. Additionally, it investigates the distinctive characteristics of these social media political influencers compared to traditional media influencers, particularly regarding their interactions with their fan bases. Contrary to prevailing beliefs regarding the negative ramifications of celebrity and fame, this study posits that scholar celebrities, irrespective of public agreement or dissent, serve to spotlight specific issues and instigate public discourse or national dialogue, thereby conferring a vital advantage to political movements.

From the Model to the Glance

Between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century, the process by which astronomers identified gravitational lenses went from a time-consuming spectroscopic experiment to a two-second glance at a telescope image. This article analyzes discoveries of gravitational lenses over this period to explore the questions: How did astronomers learn to see new objects in the sky, and how did they train their eyes to effortlessly recognize these patterns in nature? Rather than separating procedural and intuitive approaches, I argue that the mathematical modeling and the spectroscopic identifications of the sixties and seventies were necessary scaffolding for the development of expert intuition in the eighties. By developing an intuition for what a lens looked like, astronomers increasingly relied on their own expert judgment rather than spectroscopy or calculations to initially identify lensing candidates. Through this history, I highlight intuition as a skill and explore the methods by which scientists train and retrain their intuition over the course of a career. The gamut of gravitational lens discoveries reveals that scientists used models to not only describe the world as it is but also to teach themselves what it could look like. To retrain their intuition and to learn how to see gravitational lenses, astronomers learned to see their models.

Olga Ravn and the Logic of the Lyric Essay

Abstract: The lyric essay is becoming one of the most significant female-coded literary and intellectual modes of the early twenty-first century. While instances of the lyric essay have recently proliferated, debate continues to surround its defining characteristics, structural antecedents, and evolution. This essay proposes that the defining contours of lyric essays emerge particularly clearly through attention to pieces that do not belong to the lyric essay tradition but share many of its qualities. Looking to the lyric essay's adjacent forms helps to elucidate the relationship between the lyric essay's formal dimensions and its characteristic thematic associations with care.

The Interconnections of Food and Femininity in BP Koirala’s Sumnima and Govinda Bahadur Malla’s The Window of the House Opposite

The aim of this paper is to map out the interconnections of food and femininity in Nepali fictional texts of the early twenty-first century. The gastrocritical approach helps understand the food-related behaviors in the literary texts. B.P. Koirala’s Sumnima and Govinda Bahadur Malla Gothale’s The Window of the House Opposite are considered the sources of evidences for making an associative study between gastrocriticism and feminist studies. Informed by the analytic framework such as cross-case and within-case analysis, this study uses the critical insights of Claude Levi Strauss’s “Gusteme” Mary Douglas’s “Deciphering a Meal” and Roland Barthes’s “Food as System.” The cross-case analysis and within-case analysis assert that food is a remarkable determinant of Nepali femininity, which has not been the wholesale victim of patriarchy as the daughter’s role is in an advantaged position as compared to the role of daughter-in-law and wife. This discourse between gastrocriticism and feminist studies, thus, establishes a generalization that women in the twenties of the turn of twentieth century had not received an undifferentiated treatment.

The System of Social Sciences in the Context of Civilizational Approach: Formulating the Problem

In modern socio-humanitarian disciplines, the concept of a “system of social sciences” is absent. This concept existed in Soviet times and meant, among other things, the existence of a single conceptual social science apparatus and methodology. It is generally recognized that the interdisciplinary approach that replaced this system, which was recognized in our country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is based on the difference in concepts, subjects and objects of research of the sciences of the entire socio-humanitarian block. At the same time, Russian social science practically does not pay attention to the theoretical and methodological relationship between the interdisciplinary approach and the concept of globalization, developed in Western science mainly in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and which came to our country in the post-Soviet period in many ways in a “ready-made” form. At the same time, those researchers who state such a relationship consider this circumstance as a virtue of an interdisciplinary approach. In the first part of this article, an attempt is made to analyze the impact of the concept of globalization, in particular, its characteristic denial of the values of national statehood, sovereignty, including cultural and historical, on the formation and general principles of an interdisciplinary approach. The second part examines modern concepts of Russia as a civilization, first of all, the concept of state-civilization, currently introduced in the “Concept of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation” dated March 30, 2023 and “Fundamentals of state policy in the field of historical education” dated May 08, 2024, in the context of the advantages of the Soviet Union identified by the author the experience of the social sciences system. At the end of the article, proposals are made to combine some basic principles of Soviet social science with a modern civilizational approach in order to create a unified value framework for the disciplines of the socio-humanitarian block.

Disposability, social security, and the facts of work in Nicaragua’s sugarcane zone

ABSTRACT This article explores the instability of facts surrounding former sugarcane workers in Nicaragua with Chronic Kidney Disease of Non-Traditional Causes (CKDnt). CKDnt is a progressive disease that has been linked, albeit inconclusively, to working conditions in sugarcane plantations and other extreme environments. It emerged in the early twenty-first century, at a time when the social and political value of agricultural labor in Nicaragua and across the Americas was shifting due to the rise of new regimes of corporate responsibility and neoliberalized systems of state care. Partly as a result of a lack of conclusive knowledge about what causes the disease, former workers receive uneven medical and social benefits from both sugarcane corporations and the Nicaraguan social security system, the Instituto Nacional de Seguridad Social (INSS). This article traces the parallel emergence of Nicaragua’s agro-economy and the INSS during the twentieth century, and it draws on ethnographic research with ex-workers to understand how the making of facts about work and the making of facts about health shape each other. The article argues that the disposability of labor is not an inherent feature of monocrop capitalism; rather, disposability emerges as corporations and state authorities work strategically to manage the inherent porosity of the boundaries between plantations and their socio-political surroundings.

Conversations in geography: Journeying through four decades of history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom

This article offers a critical appraisal of institutionalised knowledge production and exchange on the history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom. We examine broad epistemic trends over 41 years (1981–2021) through an analysis of annual conference sessions and special events convened by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). We show how organisational, sociocultural, and epistemic changes were coproduced, as expressed by three significant findings. Organisationally, the group emerged through shared philosophical interests of two early career geographers at Queen's University of Belfast in 1981 and received new impetus through its strategic plan 1995–1997, which inspired long-term research collaborations. Socioculturally, the group's activities contributed to national traditions of geographical thought and praxis in masculinist academic environments, with instances of internationalisation, increasing feminisation, and organisational cooperation. Epistemically, the group's events in the 1980s shaped contextualist, constructivist, and critical approaches, and coproduced new cultural geography, but the emphasis shifted from historically sensitive biographical, institutional, and geopolitical studies of geographical knowledges, via critical, postcolonial, and feminist geographies of knowledge-making practices in the 1990s, to more-than-human and more-than-representational geographies in the early twenty-first century.

MYSTIFICATION IN THE SYSTEM OF MANIPULATIVE TACTICS

The article is devoted to the study of mystification as a separate manipulative strategy that can become a manipulative tactic in the manipulative strategy of positive or in the manipulative strategy of persuasion. The purpose of the study is to establish the status of hoax in the system of modern manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics with the definition of its qualifying features, as well as to find out the correlation of hoax in the system of modern manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics with other equal and/or unequal ones — argumentation, persuasion, persuasion, provocation, etc. The purpose of the study is to solve a number of tasks: 1) to reveal the peculiarities of different views and their evolution in the qualification of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics in communicative linguistics and linguopragmatics; 2) to interpret the manipulative strategy and manipulative tactics of hoax with the hierarchisation of their respective differential features; 3) to establish the trends in the use of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics of mystification in various discursive practices. The object of the analysis is hoax in the system of manipulative strategies and manipulative tactics, and the subject is the system of multi-level resources for the implementation of the manipulative strategy and manipulative tactics of hoax in different discourse practices. The study uses various methods, including the fundamental method of contradictions, based on the active use of facts as the basis of evidence, to identify contradictions in arguments, messages, news stories, etc, the method of comparison, which is of exceptional importance if the comparison is successful and/or deep, mainly through explication or implication of the model, the method of ‘pieces’ and/or ‘puzzles’, when the whole hoax used to achieve the most effective manipulation is differentiated into separate components that need to be assembled, as well as the method of discourse and contextual analysis, content analysis, etc. Conclusions and Prospects. The defining features of the manipulative strategy of mystification include: unreality, illusion, deception, aggressiveness, quasi-argumentation, dominant rivalry, communicative orientation, which in a number of discursive practices acquire the functions of manipulative tactics. While in the not so distant past mystification was associated with fiction and non-fiction discourse, music, film discourse, and partly scientific (→ popular science) discourse, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought mystification to various marketing technologies. During this period, various manifestations of the manipulative strategy of mystification in political and journalistic discourse became especially important, undergoing various modifications and transformations. A full-fledged examination of the functional field of the manipulative hoax strategy with the diagnosis of its various manipulative tactics, as well as the synthesis of other correlative and non-correlative manipulative and/or communicative strategies, is promising. It is relevant to compile a register of linguistic means of implementing the manipulative strategy of hoaxing, to diagnose the filling of everyday life with elements of hoaxing through pathogenic, anonymous and other texts. Modern artificial intelligence technologies significantly expand the functional load of the manipulative hoax strategy, so it is important to establish linguistic filters for the recognition and identification of such hoax products (dipfakes, virgifakes, etc.).

Systematic Review of Factors Influencing Students’ Performance in Educational Buildings: Focus on LCA, IoT, and BIM

In the evolving field of civil engineering studies, a significant transition is evident from fundamental to new-generation research approaches. This paper presents a systematic literature review aimed at analyzing these shifts, focusing specifically on the performance of students in educational buildings thought the integration of modern technologies such as the Internet of Things, life cycle assessments, and building information modeling. Covering the literature from the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first century, the review emphasizes advancements in sustainable infrastructure, eco-friendly designs, digitalization, and advanced modeling. A comparative analysis reveals that while the fundamental articles are primarily focused on indoor air quality parameters, the new-generation articles prioritize technological integration to address broader environmental concerns and for improved building performance. Challenges in the education sector, such as insufficient energy use, high maintenance costs, and poor working conditions, are also discussed, showcasing their impact on student learning outcomes. The methodology employed for this review included a comprehensive search in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, using keywords such as “school buildings”, “IoT”, “BIM”, and “LCA”, ensuring a robust and diverse collection of academic articles. The findings show that new trends supplement existing topics, suggesting an integration rather than a replacement of traditional practices. Consequently, future research efforts will need to include a broader range of information to fully account for the evolving landscape in this field.