Social Dichotomies Research Articles

Philosophical foundations of worldview conflict within Western thought in the conservative perspective

Abstract: In the face of growing conflicts in Western societies and the formation of deep political, ideological and worldview divisions within Western civilization, it becomes legitimate to ask whether we are not witnessing ongoing culture wars? The observed intensifying social dichotomies do not touch only the issue of political sympathies or antipathies, but concern almost all aspects of human life: the concept of nation, attitude to religion, family model, approach to sexuality and even the existence of gender. The purpose of this article is to trace the conservative style of thinking in the context of the culture war, to distinguish the elements of common concepts within this philosophical tradition, as well as the peculiarities of each of the selected authors. The paper has the following order: an introduction devoted to the origins of modern conservatism, allowing to outline the conceptual framework of this style of thinking. It is hypothesized that modern British conservatism arose in response to events associated with the collapse of socialism in Poland and Czechoslovakia, while the philosophical development of Polish conservative thought is inspired by Anglo-Saxon publications. In the first part, the thought of British conservative philosophy on the phenomenon of culture war is described on the example of Roger Scruton's philosophy, and then compared with American authors Allan Bloom and Gertrude Himmelfarb. The second part of the article is devoted to two Polish authors who have dealt extensively with the subject of culture war – Agnieszka Kolakowska and Anna Pawczynska. Finally, the conservative interpretation of the culture war is compared with the liberal and left-wing interpretations in order to point out the links, connections, as well as differences between them.

O smislu umetnosti i kulture - strateške konfuzije i dileme razvoja kulturne i kreativne industrije u Srbiji

The paper critically assesses theoretical and practical differences between "an original" and "a copy" of an artwork, in the context of dominant strands of thought about cultural and creative industries. One strand refers to the Frankfurt critical theory, whereby the other refers to the theory of balancing contemporary European theory of cultural policy. The first favours authenticity in arts and duality between an original and a copy, while the other critically appraises most contemporary social dichotomies in culture and arts. The paper aims to examine basic strategical dilemmas of cultural policies regarding the meaning of art and culture in the context of development of cultural and creative industries. The research starts with an assumption that dilemmas stem from unsustainable dichotomies, particularly in the context of digitalization, which additionally encourages critical assessment of the reasons "for" and "against". It is placed in the context of comparative theory of democratic transition and consolidation, particularly referring to Serbia which is crossing over from the final phase of transition into a democratically consolidated society. The research results show that the difference between an original and a copy is not such a sharp line as the Frankfurt critical theory suggests. It is demonstrated that the disappearance of the original's aura is the most visible in creative activities of industrial type, more precisely cultural industries, whose expansion has marked the 20th century and which are completely based on technical reproduction i.e. copying of artwork. On the other hand, two other pillars of creative industries typical of the 21st century are not sensitive to the difference between an original and a copy. They involve significantly more from the contemporary artistic production, including creative activities of non-industrial type, such as various types of visual and performance arts, as well as business-like cultural and creative activities which use artistic creativity to bring about added value of products and services, that can be, but are not necessarily, artistic or cultural. This is why the debates about the original and the copy do not make much sense. Actually, because of the involvement of these two pillars of cultural and creative industries, the more pertinent issue is the decay of the artwork aura reduced to an aesthetical value, without a spiritual - theurgic dimension, which secular society refuses to pose in science and education, as well as art production practice, even though it is vital for the understanding of the meaning of culture and art in the contemporary society.

Towards an Oceanic Dubliners

Oceanic Studies sheds a compelling new light on James Joyce's Dubliners. Although they are citizens of a major imperial port city living amidst a global flow of goods, cultures, and ideas, Joyce's characters are n also impeded from reciprocal engagement in this circuitry. From Eveline, who stands paralyzed at the docks by the North Wall as ‘all the seas of the world tumble about her heart’, to the boys of ‘An Encounter’, who marvel at tall ships but are imprisoned by social dichotomies, to Jimmy Doyle's ill-fated efforts at cosmopolitanism on board an American yacht, to the latent Gaeltacht musings of Gabriel Conroy, a would-be European son of a Dublin Port and Docks board member, Joyce uses water to help identify a persistent desynchronization of national and global Ireland.

Middle Class Urbanism: The Socio-Spatial Transformation of Tehran, 1921–41

Most of the available literature on Tehran between the two world wars deals with the morphological transformation of the city and the role of the Pahlavi state in accomplishing massive urban projects. In contrast, this article focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the sociality and spatiality of the city. It demonstrates how the consolidation of the discourse of modernity resulted in the development of social and political desires for the production of new forms of social life and spaces. The article argues that the formation of the modern middle class and its alignment with the Pahlavi state’s reform projects contributed to a twofold process: first, the decline of the traditional forms of social life and spaces and, second, the production and prevalence of alternative forms. This process resulted in the establishment of social dichotomies with vast spatial manifestations and polarized the city both socially and spatially.

“This migrants’ babble is not a German dialect!”: The interaction of standard language ideology and ‘us’/‘them’ dichotomies in the public discourse on a multiethnolect

AbstractThis article investigates a public debate in Germany that put a special spotlight on the interaction of standard language ideologies with social dichotomies, centering on the question of whetherKiezdeutsch, a new way of speaking in multilingual urban neighbourhoods, is a legitimate German dialect. Based on a corpus of emails and postings to media websites, I analyse central topoi in this debate and an underlying narrative on language and identity. Central elements of this narrative are claims of cultural elevation and cultural unity for an idealised standard language ‘High German’, a view of German dialects as part of a national folk culture, and the construction of an exclusive in-group of ‘German’ speakers who own this language and its dialects. The narrative provides a potent conceptual frame for the Othering of Kiezdeutsch and its speakers, and for the projection of social and sometimes racist deliminations onto the linguistic plane. (Standard language ideology, Kiezdeutsch, dialect, public discourse, Othering, racism by proxy)*

Urban Poverty and the Rural Development Bias

It has often been said that there is an ‘urban bias’ in development, due to the assumption that economic growth and modernization naturally occurs in cities and has as its ultimate destination development by urbanization. This has meant that problem oriented interventions are typically focused on excluded rural people and built around rural paradigms. Even in development practice that is explicitly urban, stakeholders are often viewed through a rural lens. This has often left development practice with what amounts to a rural bias. Nowhere has this urban bias in development policy and rural bias in development practice been more clearly manifest than in the developmentalist states of Asia. Drawing on contemporary empirical data from the Urban Poverty Project (UPP), an ongoing World Bank/Indonesian government urban anti-poverty initiative in Northern Java, we discuss some of the ways in which this rural bias has weakened the conceptual tools for imagining development in urban environments. It will be our argument that the dominant rural/village development trope and its corresponding scalar dichotomies between local and global and social dichotomies between traditional and modern have formed the basis of much of the way we think about and practice development. This has often obscured, rather than clarified what people actually want and need and how it can best be delivered.

Hiddenstream art forms: the bridge between theory and practice

At a time when values in mainstream art are being questioned, studying traditional art forms could contribute to Portuguese teachers knowing what these values are in general and, in particular, how they operate in hiddenstream art forms. Art theory and practice in Portugal are still controlled and guided by an institutional, financial power structure in which women are barely represented. This article reports the findings of researches into clay figurines in Galegos and the teaching of Portuguese patrimony that were underpinned by the desire to engage with multicultural curriculumreform. As a consequence, we argue that there is a need for extensive reflectionon and debate about the meaning of traditional values and standards throughout Portuguese education, particularly with regard to the unconscious application of social dichotomies such as mainstream and hiddenstream arts, and that art teacher training needs to play the key role in art educational reform.