Social Coercion Research Articles

THE NEW ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY AND TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

This article investigates the intersection between economic theory and sociology through a qualitative methodology, aiming to deepen the interdisciplinary debate between economics and the New Economic Sociology (NES). The analysis focuses on the contributions of Granovetter, Fligstein, and DiMaggio, highlighting how NES concepts can enrich the understanding of territorial development, especially regarding the role of social relations in territories. Sociologists, in turn, demonstrate diligence and creativity in addressing cultural and political issues concerning collective representations and social coercion, fundamental concepts that define institutions. Based on a robust set of authors and bibliographic references, the article seeks to complement the debate on NES. The research reveals that NES offers valuable insights for analyzing territorial dynamics and reinforces the importance of a territorial approach in formulating development strategies. In the end, the article demonstrates that the themes discussed by NES confirm the need for a more integrated territorial perspective in constructing sustainable development projects.

Women’s gifting of their inheritance share to male kin is void: a study of late Ottoman fatwas on social coercion

ABSTRACT This paper explores the juristic discussions about women’s access to their financial rights during late Ottoman Egypt. Taking fatwa collections as a source of social history, one can recognize that women sometimes gave up their financial entitlements to their male relatives voluntarily. This concession is thought to have occurred due to the influence of deeply ingrained social customs in some tribes. While various historical and anthropological studies have explored this social practice, this paper focuses instead on the Islamic law ruling concerning this phenomenon. I discuss in this paper how some ostensibly conservative ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt, in pursuit of upholding women’s financial rights against patriarchal oppression, recognized an important principle of social coercion. By considering fear of social stigma as a constraint on women’s free will and thus as a form of legal duress, those ulama enabled women to reclaim their rights when possible— likely following the death of their male relatives. This paper urges us to rethink the position of the ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt regarding women’s rights. Furthermore, it illuminates an overarching concept of coercion in Islamic law, which holds relevance to various modern debates.

Modernidad, democracia y pandemia ante la emergencia de los nuevos autoritarismos

Modernity and democracy constitute the ethical and political horizon of our time. Apel and Habermas' discourse ethics, Rawls' theory of justice, reflect the effort to sustain our rules based on democratic values. In this paper we will take a critical look at the situation of current democracies, as well as on the impact of the pandemic on the exacerbation of a generalized crisis of democratic systems. When analysing the situation of democracy during the covid-19 pandemic, the rise of authoritarian features has been observed: new mechanisms of violence, new forms of control, social coercion, centralization of political and economic power. The pandemic has shown a crisis in the capitalist system, revealing the null protection capacity of the global democratic system. Taking into account some authors such as Bauman, Hannah Arendt, Donatella di Cesare, Zizek and Byung-Chul Han, we will analyse the crisis of modern democracies and their authoritarian elements, from the impact of the pandemic on democratic government systems. Finally, we will analyse the elements that promote the thesis of authoritarian democracies as inherent forms to global capitalist dynamics.

Human beings in a civilization of cognitive technologies

The problematics of civilization development and the place of human being in it is a significant area of research, which is additionally actualized nowadays in the conditions of the outlined transition to a new stage - the civilization of cognitive technologies. According to the assessment proposed in the article, three stages of civilization development should be distinguished: agrarian, machine, and the civilization of cognitive technologies, which is currently being formed. It is characterized by the main need in the form of artificial cognitive systems for intellectual control of machines for the production of material goods, and the result of satisfying this need is the replacement of human beings by artificial cognitive systems in the intellectual control of machines. The following several questions are key in the context of the mentioned problems: "What are the functions of human beings in the existence and development of civilization?", "Do these functions change?", "Are there inalienable ones among them?", "What can become the basis for the further development of civilization?". The functions of human beings within civilization are the generation of needs and work to satisfy them. Generation of needs is an inalienable function of human being in civilization, which determines the determining role of the evolution of needs in the development of civilization. The main role in the evolution of needs belongs to social mechanisms of compulsion (motivation) to consumption, which influence not only the satisfaction of social needs, but also stimulate excessive consumption of material goods and intellectual activity. Further development of civilization will preserve the position of human being as an initiator of this development only in case of successful implementation of social coercion mechanisms. The condition for this is social integration: preservation and expansion of ties between human beings, counteraction to the fragmentation of society.

Human Rights: is the concept truly coherent with the Christian moral teaching?

The text explores the evolution of anthropological perspectives within Christianity, specifically focusing on the concept of rights. It traces the historical shift from a pre-modern emphasis on the social nature of humans to the emergence of individualistic anthropology in the 17th century. The tension between freedom and justice becomes a central theme, with human rights seen as a means of protecting individual autonomy from social coercion. The text explores the concept of personhood in Christianity, emphasising its central role in understanding the Trinitarian identity of God and its significance in Christology. It examines the classical definition of a person as an individual substance of reasonable nature, highlighting its limitations when applied to social aspects of human life. The author expresses scepticism about reconciling the concept of human rights with Christian anthropology, asserting that the rights-focused ethics is rooted in a non-Christian philosophical framework. The conclusion acknowledges the contemporary dominance of the rights-focused ethics but warns against the temptation to create a new "Christianity" compatible with this framework, urging a recognition of the anti-Christian nature of the ethical foundations of the modern Western society.

Unidirectional or Bidirectional? Relation between Parental Responsiveness and Emotion Regulation in Children with and without Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

Parenting is crucial for emotion regulation in children. Much less is known, however, concerning the association between parenting and emotion regulation in children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), who are known to have poor emotion regulation. The current study aimed to examine how parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation related either unidirectionally or bidirectionally to one another over time and to investigate whether the associations were different in ODD and non-ODD groups. Data were collected each year for three consecutive years from a sample of 256 parents of children with ODD and 265 parents of children without ODD in China. The results from the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) suggested that the directionality of the link between parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation differs according to ODD status. The non-ODD group demonstrated a unidirectionallink between early emotion regulation and subsequent parental responsiveness, consistent with the "child effect". However, in the ODD group, the link between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation was transactional, in line with social coercion theory. Multiple-group comparisons found that increased parental responsiveness was more strongly associated with improved child emotion regulation in the ODD group only. The research established a dynamic and longitudinal relationship between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation and suggested that intensive interventions should aim to improve parental responsiveness to children with ODD.

Freedom and Agency in The Second Sex

Freedom and Agency in <i>The Second Sex</i>

Richardson on moral innovation

Richardson on moral innovation

Public idioms and nominalisation in news discourse

Introduction. The analysis of news discourse is constantly in the trend of scientific research, since the very concept of discourse implies fluidity and continuity, and news as a genre represents a special form of narration that can be considered through the communicative function of language, which can be revealed through speech acts, that is, through discursive social practice. The use of public idioms sometimes creates an impression of authority and professionalism in the media, which affects the readers’ perception of the material. Nominalisation is also used to create the effect of undisputed objectivity in news writing, which can make it difficult to understand the text. These language practices are sometimes used as a communicative tool of social coercion, soft assent or resistance to readers’ persuasion, to shape discussions about war and conflicts. Relevance of research. The article aims to show how public idioms and nominalisation are presented in news discourse and what communicative tasks they can perform. The task of the research is to reveal the special role of public idioms and nominalisation in news discourse, which can be specific markers of the cultural and ideological field and which, when carefully read, reveal the resource possibilities of media discourse. The object of the research is public idioms and nominalisation in news discourse. The research methodology: Analytical-synthetic method made it possible to analyze the latest research in the field of news discourse, which made it possible to expand the idea of the use of discursive practices in foreign media and, accordingly, follow them on the material of domestic news. Discourse analysis provided tools for analyzing the language of the media through the social context in accordance with the communicative goal, based on the linguistic theory as “social semiotics” - the study of the text as a process of formation of the semiotic system due to interests and ideology. Results and discussion. Public idioms play a special role in the analysis of news discourse as markers of a special cultural and ideological field, and syntactic figures of nominalisation, which upon careful reading reveal the resource possibilities of media discourse. Considering the communicative component of news discourse, it should be noted that public idioms and nominalization as unifying and expressive elements can mobilize the audience to action and form a desire for change, activity or response to certain problems, challenges, and draw public attention to certain phenomenon. Conclusions and prospects. News discourse is a special genre, where the accuracy of information transmission limits the practices of manipulation, but at subtle discursive levels media coercion and media control occur at first sight imperceptible, in particular, through the use of public idioms and nominalisation. The proposed approach opens wide opportunities for further research on public idioms and nominalisation in media discourse through ideal, interpersonal and textual functions. The analysis of news discourse should be expanded to include structural, communicative, multimodal and other scientific directions to intensify the convergence of theoretical and methodological attitudes.

Between Economy and Social Coercion: Nuptiality in Transition. The Case of the Don Army Territory (Southern Russia), 1867–1916

The nuptiality transition in the Don Army Territory 1867–1916 depended on residence, economy, and religion. In rural areas, population growth and the scarcity of good land undermined the Orthodox tradition, though it was defended by the Church; rural Armenian-Gregorians persisted in early marriage, unlike Old Believers, Buddhists, and Lutherans. In cities, Armenian-Gregorians and Jews, unlike Catholics, adopted late marriage. Age at marriage among Orthodox was slightly later in cities and their hinterlands, against the tradition that Church conservatism favored. The different trajectories of nuptiality reveal a struggle between religion, economics, and urban life, making nuptiality a scene of contradictory influences.

The authoritarian trade‐off: A synthetic control analysis of development and social coercion in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

AbstractThe Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has recently experienced a series of policies seeking economic development and intensive methods of social coercion. A unique leader, Chen Quanguo, brought these changes to the XUAR in 2016. This paper seeks to examine the effects of Chen's regime. We specifically examine three outcomes: GDP per capita, arrest rates, and spending on public security. Using the synthetic control method, we find that Chen's regime had no significant effect on the development. However, his policies led to much higher rates of arrest and larger spending on public security.

Good advice is expensive – bad advice even more: the regulation of online reviews

ABSTRACT Consumer decisions have always been influenced by others’ opinions. The era of digital platforms, however, introduced a significant change: While in the past, consumers were likely to consult their social environment and credible literature, they nowadays rely on the views of other consumers they do not personally know via online review. Consequently, reliability of the reviews is no longer safeguarded by social coercion. This paper will explore how EU law has responded to this challenge. It will argue that while EU law prohibits a wide range of actions that harm reliability of online reviews, it is evidently failing to enforce consumer law judging from the scale of persistent violations. In response, the paper will suggest measures to minimise manipulation and scarcity of online reviews by primarily reducing the accountability deficit of online platforms. These tools could serve as an impulse during the ongoing legislative process of the Digital Services Act.

Вербальные и невербальные стратегии взаимодействия активных и пассивных курильщиков в ситуациях курения в общественных местах: метод формулирования кейсов

Objective. Identification of the features of social perception in situations of smoking in public places, as well as patterns and strategies of interaction in the communicative practices of active and passive smokers in public urban spaces using the “case formulation” method.Background. Because of the non-compliance with the law on smoking in public places, the issue of combating such violations becomes urgent. But it is important to use not only the administrative resources of the state, but also social control. Searching for the features of communicative practices of both active and passive smokers in relation to each other, their mutual social perception and factors influencing the interaction between them will help to suggest effective ways to use social capital to combat the problem of smoking in public places.Study design. The paper studied cases related to the behavior of smokers and non-smokers in an open urban space. Using the interpretation of qualitative data, categories and subcategories corresponding to the patterns of behavior of subjects and their mutual perception from both interacting groups were identified. Categories and subcategories were formed by data encoding.Participants. For the study, 4 cases of interaction between active and passive smokers in Tverskaya Street were selected by random sampling.Measurements. The method of covert observation with a passive type of participation was chosen. 4 observation sessions were conducted the results of which formed the basis of the cases. The observation involved the study of the behavior of subjects in relation to each other, including verbal and nonverbal signs exchanged by communication participants; features of urban spaces in which communication takes place; the place of interaction.Results. Active and passive smokers use verbal and nonverbal interaction strategies, which are characterized by some features of social perception. Thus, verbal ones include an impersonal expression of discontent, an appeal to the fact of smoking, an appeal to the smell; non-verbal ones — most often motor ones: slowing down the step, accelerating the step/overtaking, as well as changing the trajectory of smoke.Conclusions. The using of the case formulation method opens up opportunities for studying various communicative practices in the modern urban environment. It is important to conduct communication campaigns aimed at both violators and people affected by their actions. The former should be encouraged to behave responsibly by the immersive transfer of “someone else’s” social experience, the victims should be mobilized to use the advantages of their existing social coercion apparatus by verbalizing demands.

(Re)Mapping the Grey Area: How Sexual Violence is Normalized in Discussions with University Students

Despite efforts by feminists to educate people about healthy sexual interactions and to promote the benefits of affirmative consent, a heterogendered imbalance in sexual intimacy persists. Much of the societal and research attention has focused on clear cases of nonconsensual sex, but a wider lens that incorporates social pressures and coercion is needed. (Mostly) cis-men continue to pressure and coerce their partners (mostly people who identify as women) to acquiesce to sexual intimacy. Our heteropatriarchal culture continues to perpetuate the belief that men are owed sex from women in many situations. Feminist scholars have argued that, instead of a stark line between consensual and nonconsensual sex, there is a continuum or spectrum ranging from sexual consent to sexual assault, creating a large “grey area” in which partners must navigate sexual intimacy. This grey area is not gender neutral. Gendered structure, culture, discourse, and practices help to normalize heterogendered dominance in everyday life, undermining women’s sexual agency while also mobilizing rape. Drawing on interviews with university students (N=45) who have navigated this spectrum, we seek to map the grey area, exploring how consent is often hijacked through relentless pressure and coercion. When pressure and coercion are encoded into the gendered order as entitlements granted to men, the line between sexual assault and agentic, “consensual” sex becomes less and less discernible. We conclude that, in order to foster sexual autonomy, gendered power dynamics must be disentangled from sexual intimacy.

Overcoming political distrust: the role of ‘self-restraint’ in Japan’s public health response to COVID-19

Political trust has long been presented as a key social determinant of pandemic resilience in public health by facilitating public cooperation with government instructions. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, countries where citizens had relatively low levels of trust in government tended to see higher numbers of infections and deaths. Yet Japan’s public health response to COVID-19 complicates a straightforward relationship between political trust and successful pandemic response, presenting something of a paradox. Trust in government, very low by international comparison, was compounded by a lack of state authority to enforce its public health recommendations. Nevertheless, it appears that initially, most people followed government advice, particularly politicians’ calls for jishuku (‘self-restraint’). This paper explores the Japanese government’s response to COVID-19 and places the concept of jishuku in historical context, arguing that it represents a complex dynamic that includes expectations about the solidaristic behavior of imagined fellow citizens, stigmatization and social coercion, and government appeals to ethnonationalist identity that together may have helped overcome low trust in government. ‘Compliance’ itself is complicated in this picture, with compliance with individual measures dependent on the dynamic tension between a variety of different factors beyond political trust alone.

Pressure to play: Social pressure in online multiplayer games

Videogames raise concerns about excessive gaming that lead to neglect of social relationships and obligations. In this article we develop an empirically grounded, sociological explanation for why players engage in excessive gaming. Theorizing that online multiplayer games encourage social capital acquisition, we examine if, how, and why social pressure leads players to engage in excessive gaming. Based on in-depth interviews with 21 players, we identify three forms of social pressure: social persuasion among gaming friends; social obligation in highly organized and hierarchically structured game-groups; and social coercion in highly competitive game-groups.

Табу на покликання вчителя

The work "Taboos on the teaching vocation" was read by the German social philosopher and representative of critical theory Theodor Adorno as a report on May 21, 1965 at the Berlin Institute for Educational Research (West Berlin). In this report, Adorno considered the socio-psychological and socio-cultural reasons that in the context of Western European culture have historically led to the social emergence of many psychological taboos on the pedagogical work of the school teacher. The philosopher theoretically deduced the dialectical connection between human hostility and disgust for the work of the teacher from the cultural tradition of German society, which historically developed as late bourgeois. A characteristic feature of the attitude of the overly materialistic socio-cultural system was aversion to the work of the teacher as a "hungry job", that is, to a poorly paid profession. Another factor of public disgust for the work of teachers, the philosopher called the socio-cultural tradition of society, which as a closed society willingly practiced physical violence as a means of social coercion. According to this tradition, through the use of violence, the teacher must subordinate students to his authority, subordinate to social and school ideology. The historical result of such dialectics was the socio-cultural (ideological) distortion of the image of the teacher, the castration of his image in social psychology, his self-alienation from the professional vocation and the ideological elimination of the power of his spirit. As an ideological alternative, Adorno suggested that society, if it consciously seeks democratic change, first of all take into account such young teachers who demonstrate the impulse of their individual spirit in the performance of their profession. According to the philosopher, only the spiritual freedom of such a young educator, a man who is capable of self-understanding, conscious of himself and his vocation, who reflects and is socially active, can democratize schools, devalue society and destroy dehumanized social traditions. First of all – in order to overcome the barbaric tradition of violence.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND SOCIAL COERCION

ABSTRACTMuch legal and philosophical work has been devoted to discussing the importance of protecting freedom of expression from legislative curtailment by the state. That state-centric focus has meant that the ways that wider social phenomena can stifle freedom of expression have, with a notable exception, escaped sustained philosophical attention. The paper reflects on the nature of socially coercive restrictions on free expression and offers an account of how it is appropriate to respond to such forms of social coercion. First, it considers a range of social costs pertaining to expression and argues that such costs can constitute meaningful restrictions on the freedom to express. Second, it reflects on the normative implications concerning that threat to free expression and defends two related moral duties citizens have to refrain from being complicit in unjustified social coercion—a duty of expressive toleration and a duty of respect for expressive agency.

Перфекционизм и ограничение одобрения

The article deals with Hurka's critique of Kymlicka and Arneson's critique of Dworkin on endorsement constraint thesis, according to which a person cannot have a valuable life if values are imposed on her - primarily by state action - overriding her preferences and convictions on the good life. This thesis has often been identified with neutral liberalism andcounterposed to perfectionism. The text argues against Hurka's and Arneson's argument that mild coercion and paternalistic reduction of trivial, bad or worthless options can indeed bring about a more valuable life. Their argument does not acknowledge adequately the difference between coercion from a person's immediate social environment and state coercion, which are not equally legitimate. My critique, however, does not exclude the legitimacy of perfectionistic measures, as a person could accept as justified state intervention concerning the support of particular values or goods, while at the same time not endorsing those values and goods. Not all endorsed goods or activities should be treated equally, as more relevant and valuable ones can be legitimately supported by particular policy. Sladeshek Michal. Perfectionism and Endorsement Constraint // Philosophy and Society. 2021. №32 (1): 89–104.

O discurso da interdição em Crônica da casa assinada

Neste artigo, discute-se como se manifesta o discurso da interdição no romance Crônica da casa assassinada, de Lúcio Cardoso. A partir da oposição fundamental natureza vs. cultura, procura-se demonstrar que as relações não-prescritas são sancionadas pragmaticamente com a segregação dos atores a determinados espaços. Instauram-se, portanto, na narrativa duas ordens de espaço: o das relações prescritas e o das não-prescritas. No romance, as relações não-prescritas são as homossexuais e o incesto, sendo este considerado interdito. Os espaços de segregação, levando-se em conta a categoria verticalidade, correspondem ao baixo. Na articulação alto vs. baixo, o primeiro é o espaço da cultura, das coerções sociais, das relações prescritas; o segundo é o espaço da natureza, das pulsões individuais, das relações não-prescritas. A fundamentação teórica é a Semiótica de linha francesa e a metodologia consistiu num recorte do romance em que se selecionaram sujeitos que, em seus percursos narrativos, buscam entrar em conjunção com objetos-valor, considerados interditos pelo destinador social.