Changes In Political Culture Research Articles

Moving Between Scales

This dissertation employs the perspective of library and information science (LIS) to inform and guide methodological reflections in two interdisciplinary fields, computational social science (CSS) and digital humanities (DH). However, CSS often prioritizes recent digital trace data over archival material from earlier periods, and the large-scale methods used in DH face criticism from humanists for their incapability to capture perspectival and interpretative nuances.
 This dissertation blends humanistic and social-scientific approaches to study premodern China, emphasizing the importance of “moving between scales.” It bridges different scales of analysis by transitioning dynamically between them, examines small-scale structures to uncover how they reflect large-scale dynamics, and explores mid-range social phenomena by investigating prosopography of elite society members. Four research questions are posed: (1) What are the challenges and opportunities in investigating a social network based on biased text? (2) How can prosopographical data lead to conclusions about the shifting center of political power? (3) How can structural characteristics in multiple networks reveal changes in political culture? (4) What can bibliographic metadata reveal about the particularity of publishing history of 16th-to-19th-century Chinese books?
 By addressing these questions, this dissertation intends to leverage theories and practices of LIS to develop computational models unveiling historical trends. It seeks to contribute to CSS by enhancing social scientists’ understanding on how societies and cultural systems evolve over time, to DH by revealing the historical changes in the longue durée in premodern China, and to LIS by fulfilling its mission of providing an information perspective to traditional academic disciplines.

Protest Event, Political Culture, and Biography: Post-protest Local Activism in Russia

A biographical approach in social science is usually applied to study the life courses of a particular group of people or to explain individual action and meaning-making through biographical determinants. This article aims to develop the biographical approach by showing how it can be used to explain changes in political culture resulting from protest events. Using the case of post-protest local activism in Russia as an example, it demonstrates that a focus on activists’ biographies allows researchers to better understand how the nationwide protest event of 2011–12 changed the political culture of local activism. By focusing on biography, researchers can discover a very important feature of a protest event: its ability to make possible the meeting of people with biographical trajectories that would ordinarily take them in different directions. Consequently, events create opportunities for bringing opposite meanings, skills, and schemes of action together, thereby, allowing a cultural change to emerge. The article suggests that the proposed explanatory model develops biographical sociology by giving biography more power, informs the sociology of event, social movement studies, and political culture theories.

Turning Points in U.S. Labor History, Political Culture, and the Current Upsurge in Labor Militancy

I consider the current labor upsurge in context of prior pro-labor transformative turning points in U.S. labor history, all of which involved major changes in political culture. My assessment of key conditions in the current moment centers on three important conditions for changing political culture: (a) anti-racist civil rights-based social movement unionism; (b) changing discourse about the role of unions in political economy; (c) the weak position of labor law. Taken in combination, labor in the current conjuncture faces a steep, but not impossible, uphill climb.

The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris, by Colin Jones

It is a great irony that the Library of Congress has catalogued this book under ‘Robespierre’ and ‘the Reign of Terror’. In his innovative study, Colin Jones argues that, on the contrary, Robespierre should be decentred in the story of his own political demise on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794), and that the Thermidorian-spun narrative that the Terror concluded with his execution is inaccurate. In lieu of these frameworks, Jones offers a compelling third perspective to explain the momentous day. He highlights a constellation of institutional tensions (including those among sectional committees, the Commune, the National Convention, National Guard troops, artillery command chains, police branches and spy networks); long-term changes in political culture (including the rise of legalism, a growing suspicion of celebrity and the decline of sans-culotte influence); and a city-wide cast of characters with highly localised understandings of the journée (including militia troops, protesting workers, press owners and judges, among others).

РОЛЬ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ В ПРОЦЕССЕ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ОБЩЕЙ ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ

In the current political situation, the role of political culture as an important factor in the process of forming a common civic identity is growing. Maintaining the necessary stability in society and keeping its integrity depends on it. The article deals with studying such aspects of political culture that are related to the formation of a common civil identity of Russians. In recent years, there have been some changes in the priorities of the political culture of Russians, whose consciousness and life are being seriously tested, increasing the risks of instability. On the one hand, it forces a fresh look at the issue of their relations with the state. It is expected to take such actions that help managing the situation in important areas of life, solve economic, political, social and other important issues. On the other hand, those changes require from sociologists the intensification of theoretical and practical research of changes in political culture in line with the process of forming a common civic identity. The article is dedicated to that goal. The material presented in it continues the author’s study of modern trends in Russian political culture in the context of the current situation. The methods used in the study include, among other things, a secondary analysis of the survey data from some sociological centers, such as Russian Public Opinion Research Center, etc.

The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly

The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly

Examining the influences on the use of behavioural science within UK local authority public health: Qualitative thematic analysis and deductive mapping to the COM-B model and Theoretical Domains Framework.

Behavioural science and its contribution towards improving public health is receiving increased recognition. Yet, the translation of these insights into public health practice is under-researched. This study explored the factors influencing the use of behavioural science within public health at a local authority level. Fourteen local authority staff (n = 13 female) in the south of England participated in semi-structured interviews, which were analysed inductively to identify key themes. These were later mapped deductively to the COM-B model and Theoretical Domains Framework. Nine themes were identified as factors that influence the use of behavioural science in local authority public health: (1) "Limited past experience," (2) "Narrow understanding," (3) "Perceived value of behavioural science," (4) "Translational gap from theory-to-practice," (5) "No protected time," (6) "Old ways of working," (7) "Political influence and organisational culture," (8) "Relationships with key stakeholders," (9) "Access to behavioural science resources". Deductive mapping of these themes revealed that five of the COM constructs (excluding Physical Capability) and eleven of the TDF domains influenced behavioural science use, with "Social influences" and "Knowledge" being the most prominent. Use of behavioural science within local authority public health practice is limited and inconsistent. For it to be successfully implemented, there must be an understanding of its role and value, alongside strategies to overcome a translational gap from theory to practice. Public health teams would benefit from protected time to enable application and strategies to break old habits of using a common-sense approach. System-wide buy-in, particularly related to senior leadership and system partners is needed, which would benefit from organisational and political culture change. Training opportunities, practical resources and expert in-house support should be considered a priority across public health teams.

Israel: Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond, edited by Yael S. Aronoff, Ilan Peleg, and Saliba Sarsar (book review)

Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond, edited by Yael S. Aronoff, Ilan Peleg, and Saliba Sarsar. London: Lexington Books, 2021. 256 pages. $110 cloth; $39.99 paper; $38 e-book.

Fas'ta Siyasal Sosyalleşme Sürecinin Siyasi Kültür ve Siyasi Bilincin Oluşumuna Etkisi

Herhangi bir ülkenin siyasi kültürü, bir dizi faktörün etkisi altında şekillenir. Siyasal sosyalleşme süreci bu faktörlerin en önemlilerinden biridir. Siyasal sosyalleşme, siyaset çerçevesinde değerlerin, ilkelerin ve inançların bir nesilden diğerine aktarıldığı süreçtir. Bu sürecin üç ana rolü vardır. Bunlar, siyasal kültürün bir nesilden diğerine aktarılması, siyasal kültürün oluşumu ve siyasal kültürün değişmesi süreçleridir. Bu süreç, bir dizi kurum aracılığıyla bireylerin siyasi fikirlerinin oluşumunu etkiler. Bu çalışmanın amacı Fas’ta siyasal sosyalleşmenin siyasal kültürün şekillendirilmesi ve inşası üzerindeki etkilerini beş etken çerçevesinde izah etmektir. Bu amaçla öncelikle siyasal kültür ve siyasal sosyalleşme kavramları ve bu iki kavramın birbirleriyle olan ilişkisi ele alınmıştır. Ardından aile kurumu, eğitim kurumları, dini kurumlar, siyasi partiler ve medyanın toplumun siyasal yönelimlerini, siyasal bilincini ve tercihlerini nasıl etkilediği, siyasal kültürün şekillendirilmesi ve inşasına sürecine nasıl hizmet ettiği açıklanmıştır.

Book Reviews

Nir Kedar, David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021), 253 pp. Paperback, $35.00.Naphtaly Shem-Tov, Israeli Theatre: Mizrahi Jews and Self-Representation (London: Routledge, 2021), 202 pp. Hardback, $128.00.Mira Sucharov, Borders and Belonging: A Memoir (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 183 pp. Paperback, $44.99.Lori Allen, A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020), 432 pp. Paperback, $30.00.Yael S. Aronoff, Ilan Peleg, and Saliba Sarsar, eds. Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 257 pp. Hardcover, $105.00.

Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond edited

How are political meanings created? How are they maintained and changed? How do they shape political realities? This book addresses these important yet often neglected questions through the themes of continuity and change in conflict and peace, challenges to democracy, and national memory. As a tribute to the scholarship of Myron J. Aronoff, the contributors of the 10 chapters that make up the book offer nuanced analyses of the political culture in Israel, Palestine, the United States, the Basque Autonomous Region of Spain, and Poland. The topics of the chapters range from political science to literature and visual arts. As its title suggests, Continuity and Change weaves the various topics, case studies, and perspectives together through an underlying temporal motif. Interestingly, the book starts with the future horizon, as Yael S. Aronoff discusses possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The second chapter, by Saliba Sarsar, adds the past horizon, analyzing the political implications of the historical memories of the Holocaust and Al-Nakba. It invites readers to engage with the past in order to rethink a collective identity that does not exclude the Other. The next two chapters, by Nadav G. Shelef and Yossi Beilin, discuss two pathways (and their limitations) to bridge the past and the present horizons: denationalization and trust building.

Some Reflections on Constitutional Amendment Movement in the First Half of Moon Jae-In Government: With Special Reference to the Role of the Judicial Bodies

This article aims at looking into the historical, political, social, and institutional considerations that may have influenced the suspension of President Moon Jae-In s proposal for constitutional amendment in 2018. Although broad factors and dimensions can be called upon in this regard, as far as institutional considerations are concerned, a focus will be given to the role of the judicial bodies in constitutional change. Either any abrupt attribution of all the political, social, and economic problems which the Korean society faces to the constitutional system alone and its concomitant idealistic or fundamentalist, partisan and non-consensual drive for comprehensive constitutional amendment as a panacea for such pathologies are doomed to failure. Since any constitutional reform movement should be based upon deliberative consensus on the exact causes of constitutional problems and effective alternatives to the existing constitutional institutions and rules, not only constitutional amendment but also legislative reform and changes in political culture are required for the successful constitutional change. The Korean experience in the first half of Moon Jae-In Government shows that constitutional changes through either formal constitutional amendment or informal change through judicial interpretation of the constitution can be foreseeable

Can tolerant values survive economic insecurity? The role of functional autonomy in mediating outsider threats in Turkey

This study examines whether host population values that encourage the toleration of outsiders can persist in conditions of economic insecurity. Inglehart et al. (2006) observed that war and economic insecurity produced xenophobia and in-group solidarity against foreigners in Iraq. At the psychological level of cultural values, Maslow (1943) suggested that individuals could gain functional autonomy or freedom from insecurity if they had previously satisfied security needs during their formative years. This thereby points to a possible delay in large scale transition from one value set to another when radical economic change occurs. Indeed, following Maslow, cultural values associated with tolerance of others could persist, at least for a while, even in times of abrupt economic depression or destruction. In this study, we set out to test this value lag due to functional autonomy, and chose Turkey as the test country. As a country that experienced economic growth and relative stability up until a sharp economic decline from 2016, Turkey offers an ideal environment to test the nature and influence of functional autonomy on host population responses to foreigners. In order to examine this, we analysed the results of 1073 questionnaires submitted to participants at Istanbul University and Atatürk University to examine levels of xenophobia. Mann Whitney tests confirmed detectably lower levels of xenophobia and less gender bias among needs-gratified respondents. The implications for political culture change are discussed.

Moralism and Monarchism: Visions of Power in 18th-Century Russia

Moralism and MonarchismVisions of Power in 18th-Century Russia Konstantin D. Bugrov (bio) The time-honored tradition of writing the history of Russian political thought as the history of constitutionalism describes it as a sequence of reform projects, unsuccessfully trying to circumscribe autocratic power with the use of new theories and concepts exported from the West. Marc Raeff depicted modernization in Russia by emphasizing the contrasts between Anglo-Saxon liberal individualism and continental collectivist "state dirigisme," yet the attempts to construct an effective Polizeistaat were halted by the autocratic monopoly of personalized power.1 David Ransel has spoken of the "paradox of a would-be reformer" characteristic of the political culture of 18th-century Russia.2 Some researchers insist that the principal conflict within Russian political thought in the 18th century was between absolutist arbitrariness and legal, procedural limitation.3 If the history of Russian political thought revolves around the problem of the unlimited power of the autocrat, then its key problem is the juxtaposition of arbitrariness and law. As Elise Wirtschafter puts it, "in a society in which property rights carried no judicial or administrative authority beyond the family estate, the development of an educated populace capable of employing reason to make independent judgments produced an abstract philosophical form of politics, [End Page 267] concerned more with moral principles than with the routine functioning of institutions."4 Morals are here juxtaposed with politics. Yet "moral alienation" could also lead to "rebellion."5 Thus political processes in the Russian Empire were supposedly shaped by collisions over moral issues, in which the expectations of enlightened elites collided with the severe reality of an increasingly bureaucratizing machinery of power. In this article I seek to capitalize on Wirtschafter's concept of "moral monarchy," elaborated in The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theater. I consider Wirtschafter's analysis of 18th-century Russian political culture convincing, and I might add that monarchist moralism existed in a variety of genres, enabling the Russian elite to discuss a broad range of issues. While Wirtschafter analyzed 18th-century dramatic pieces, I concentrate on a general study of political texts of the period, including panegyrics, odes, dramatic pieces, and administrative projects. This article does not attempt to describe the whole range of ideas and concepts of 18th-century Russian monarchism. Such a task is far beyond the scope of any journal article. What I am trying to do is provide a reflection on certain political lexicons (or, to use J. G. A. Pocock's expression, "conceptual vocabularies"), manners of speech that—I would argue—were used by the elites of 18th-century Russia to describe the empire's political order.6 These political lexicons overlapped, and the same author could borrow concepts and rhetorical figures from different manners of speech, while conceptual similarities of these vocabularies allowed them to fuse effectively. The second section of the article, however, aims to correct Wirtschafter's concept of moral monarchy to some degree. The tensions that led the Russian elite to "rebellion" were, in my mind, not hidden in the mechanism of moral monarchy, which constantly promoted reconciliation rather than revolution. Its praise of peace and desire to avoid conflicts (I mean, of course, the rhetoric of conflict, not the actual practice of social conflict) were the foundation of moralist monarchism. Thus a radical change in political culture was to be found in the development of alternative political lexicons that would emphasize conflict as a legitimate social regime. In the last section of this article I briefly investigate the example of such a lexicon: Machiavellian civic republicanism. [End Page 268] The Conceptual Lexicons of 18th-Century Russian Monarchism The first was the providential lexicon of church preachers and bishops. Religious legitimation was historically important. For example, Giovanni Maniscalco Basile, in studying the political ideology of 16th-century Russia, writes of an "elastic ideological structure," which established that "the ascendant justification of power (i.e., in the Zemskie Sobory between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century) but also the descendant one (from God to the car´) mix, expanding the (absolute) power of a car´, whose authority derives directly or indirectly from God."7 The...

From Marxism to nationalism: The Chinese Communist Party's discursive shift in the post-Mao era

The Chinese Communist Party's dramatic shift from Mao Zedong's Chinese Revolution to Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream remains under-examined and even misunderstood or mispresented despite its enormous impact on every aspect of national life in the People's Republic of China. There is a clear need for in-depth analysis of the extent to which the CCP has departed from the philosophical foundation of Marxism and Maoism, abandoned socialism and communism, inverted its long tradition of iconoclasm, transformed its own identity and altered its subject position. Part of the CCP's philosophical departure from Marxism and Maoism is its increasing conversion to nationalism. The new nationalism underpinning the Chinese Dream, in particular, operates against the grain of Marxism and Maoism, and vice versa, and is logically irreconcilable with the latter – so much so that the CCP cannot be nationalists and Marxists, Maoists or communists at the same time. The contradictory logics between nationalism and Marxism can be best seen from their respective conceptions of permanence and change, the unity and conflict of opposites, and conceptions of, and approaches to, tradition and the past, which have had major ramifications in political-cultural change in post-Mao China, especially in Xi's New Era.

YOUTH POLITICAL DEPENDENCY IN SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE KAJANG STATE ASSEMBLY IN SELANGOR

ABSTRACTS This research paper discusses the influence of political socialization dependency in social media, especially among the youth that may cause changes in their political culture, especially in Kajang State Assembly (DUN Kajang), Selangor. The internet political campaigns can be seen since the 12th general election (GE-12) when it managed to influence the voters and led to the failure of the Barisan Nasional (BN) to retain their over 50 years of majority of two-thirds of parliamentary seats. This development has been linked to the critical attitude taken by the youth towards the Federal Government due to their over-dependence to political information in social media which is believed to be dominated by the pro-opposition. Thus, the main objective of the study is to examine the relationship between political socialization dependency in social media and political culture change among the urban youth; while analysing in detail which demographic factors that may influence it. Cluster random sampling method was used involving 432 respondents in DUN Kajang. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS v23) has been used for descriptive statistics analysis such as frequency, percentage and mean score, along with Pearson correlation, linear regression and ANOVA analysis particularly in determining differences and identifying relationship between the variables. In general, the findings show that youth political dependency in social media for political purposes has negative, but weak and statistically non-significant relationship with political culture change. However, ethnic factor has been proven to significantly influence the political culture change. Variables such as political socialization dependency in social media and political culture change are basically correlated to each other. Hence, the next step for future research is to further compare the effects of political socialization dependency in social media among the urban and rural youths, so that accurate generalisation can be deduced. Keywords: youth, dependency, social media, political socialization, political culture change

Maintaining Identity Political Culture In Indonesia

This study investigates the portrayal of traditional political cultures in West Kalimantan Province, a growing of election process. Results showed that Political life in Indonesia leads to modern political culture after experiencing a change of paradigm of political life. Political life in Indonesia leads to modern political culture after experiencing a change of paradigm of political life. Beginning Indonesia’s independence in the Old Order Phase, the politics used using the ideological paradigm, subsequent to the New Order Period used the political paradigm of unification and simplification of political parties but in practice it became the strategy of the State’s rulers to facilitate subjugating its citizens. After entering the reform era, several phenomena of political culture are displayed, some are using modern paradigm by giving women the widest possible role in political parties, and so on. Besides that there is the opposite of displaying and practicing traditional political culture, this is as it runs in West Borneo Province. The change of political culture in the modern direction is different from the political culture of the citizens in terms of who will be chosen, most West Borneo Province residents determine their political choice by using traditional patterns.

Post-truth anthropology

Countless commentators have announced the advent of the post-truth era, but while everyone seems to be talking about it, there is little agreement about what it really means. This article argues that anthropology can make an important and distinctive contribution to understanding post-truth by treating it ethnographically. Commonly proposed explanations for post-truth include changes in political culture, in the structure of information in the digital age and universal cognitive weaknesses that limit people's capacity for critical thought. While all these are likely important factors, they do not account for the role of culture in creating and sustaining post-truth. In fact, it is likely that culture, especially in the form of metacognition, or thought about thought, plays an important role by providing knowledge practices, techniques for allocating attention, and especially competing theories of truth. Ethnographic methods provide anthropologists with a distinctive window on post-truth cultures of metacognition.

Structural Transformation of Society and Development of Criminality: A Case Study from of Sri Lanka

In this study, examines how criminality has evolved in the history of Sri Lanka in post independent era and explains the various socio-cultural, economic, political factors and forces that shaped the criminal acts. In doing so, I will also explain how such criminal acts have been addressed by the legal system of the country. In this historical analysis of crime in Sri Lanka, I will explore their trends and patterns, causes, and social and cultural contexts. In addition, the nature of crimes as they occurred during the last 30 years of the civil war, and how vulnerable groups have involved in crime will be examined. The long term crimes trends and high rates of crime fluctuate and reflect that they fluctuate in accordance with political upheavals in the country. Crimes related to political activities began to appear after 1970s, and until then the picture of crime in Sri Lanka was very much like any other traditional society. Thus the late 70s showed the beginning of organized crimes and gang crimes, and the crimes related to drugs increased in numbers and reported in various communities after 1980s. The development of the tourist trade, opening of the economy in late 1970s and the civil war that started in early 1980s have contributed to this change in crimes patterns. During the post war period, crimes committed by army deserters have been increased. The factors that have contributed to the new developments in crime rates and patterns include, the civil war, changes in political culture, media, and introduction of new technology. The legal system and its loopholes, postponement of trials, loss of trust in the legal system, the gap between the rich and the poor, urbanization and development of a poor urban class, less certainty and severity of punishment are seen as background factors that contributed to the increased rates of crimes and its new patterns in Sri Lanka.

From political enemy to profane reality: the ‘friend–enemy’ relation in the political ideology of Italian communists

The ‘friend–enemy’ relation represented an essential ideological mainstay of the thought and action of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the years of republican Italy. This relation goes back to the aftermath of World War I when Soviet communism became established as a global revolutionary movement. The PCI’s strategy of delegitimation of political opponents underwent substantial changes over the years of republican Italy. The long period spanning Togliatti and Berlinguer’s leadership of the party saw a change in political culture destined to alter the very nature of the ‘friend–enemy’ relation. Particularly in the 1970s, with the so-called ‘moral question’, a new antiparty public discourse became established and was implemented mainly against the parties in government. This paved the way to a more radical and absolute logic of enmity that, in the long run, overwhelmed the PCI itself in the dramatic transition from First to Second Republic.