Social Thought Research Articles

Jus Post Bellum and Catholic Social Thought: Just Political Participation as Civil Society Peacebuilding

This paper serves three purposes. First, it examines the theme of jus post bellum (“postwar justice”) as it emerges within a just peacemaking (JP) framework. Second, it defines just political participation as civil society peacebuilding reflected in Catholic social thought (CST). Third, it envisions a place for just political participation within the jus post bellum praxis specifically endorsed by the World Bank report of 2007, titled Civil Society and Peacebuilding: Potential, Limitations and Critical Factors. The paper then attends to the Church and faith-based organizations and their roles in civil society peacebuilding postbellum. In doing so, it clarifies the characteristics of jus post bellum within a JP scheme by (a) distinguishing them from the just war approach, (b) identifying JP-oriented jus post bellum thinkers such as Daniel Philpott and Larry May, and (c) incorporating civil society peacebuilding endorsed by both the World Bank report and CST.

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

Research on National Ideological Security: Guiding Contemporary Chinese Social Thought with Marxism

National ideological security is one of the important contents of the overall national security concept. As a tendency and development trend of thought, social ideological trends reflect people’s certain interests and demands in specific environments, and have a broad impact on people’s thoughts in social life. However, the current world is complex and ever-changing, and contemporary China is also in a "unprecedented great transformation", which determines the long-term coexistence of various ideological trends, especially the mixed social ideological trends of neoliberalism, historical nihilism, democratic socialism, and universal values, challenging the mainstream ideological status of Marxism. In this context, it is particularly important to play the guiding role of Marxism as the mainstream ideology. Adhering to the mainstream ideology of Marxism is conducive to strengthening the Party’s leadership in ideological work, resisting the negative effects of other social trends, and better maintaining national ideological security.

Understanding Social Theory Creation: A Perspective from Pierre Bourdieu and Talcott Parsons

The paper looks into social theory critically and will discuss issues that are related with creating social theory. The basic aim of this study is to introduce the idea of social theory and identify the issues that are fundamental to theorizing. The discussed social thinkers such as Bourdieu and Parsons to create a perspective about social theory. This paper discusses an account of social theory then the two social thinkers are analysed. Finally, the issue of Macro/Micro during creation of social theory is discussed. The paper concludes that the field of social theory is in flux and there have been attempts for categorisation and tenet creation but the theorist still tends to transcend them. Social theory gives and takes from the world concurrently and for that reason it can be said that it will remain in a flux.

Elementy magii i religii w rzeczywistości społecznej kapitalizmu

The article is dedicated to the issue of magic and religion in the social reality of capitalism. The goal of the article is to present examples proving that capitalism in various places (post-communist Central Europe, San Cristobal in the Mexican state of Chiapas, Colombian department Valle del Cauca, New York) and at various times (from the 1970s to the second decade of the 21st century) was associated with elements of religion and magic through social thinking and practice, and therefore elements of social reality. On the other hand, in the discourse, capitalism is often presented as a part of nature: the existence that acts objectively, like the laws of physics. In the article, this apparent contradiction is presented as a dialectical aspect of the present day, in which the discourse and social reality are complementary.

Роль антропологии Канта в теории конфликтов Р. Дарендорфа: «Необщительная общительность» в человеческой природе, культуре и политике

My paper focuses on one of the most discussed key concepts of Kant’s social philosophy, namely on his notion of “unsocial sociability”, from the perspective of its influence on Ralph Dahrendorf’s theory of social conflicts. In the first part, I show how various areas of Kant’s philosophy – his ethics, philosophy of history, anthropology, social and political philosophy – are connected through this concept, and briefly describe the key features of its critical reception. In the second half of the article, I turn to the question concerning the role of this concept in Dahrendorf’s theory. I show that this concept was already implicitly present in his early studies of the 1950s and was gradually becoming a more explicit part of his approach to the analysis of conflicts, playing its most prominent role in his works of the 1980s and 2000s. In contrast to those critics of Dahrendorf who regard the notion of unsocial sociability as methodologically alien to his social theory, I argue that Kant’s concept is used as its theoretically substantiated component rather than an anthropological vignette that only pays tribute to Kant as a social thinker. Moreover, it still significantly influences more recent approaches, primarily because it allows scholars to see conflicts in a normative light and to critically assess utopian elements of previous interpretations.

Propheticness of the Ecumenical Social Thought: the “Life and Work” Oxford Conference about the State and Economic Order

Propheticness understood as a Christian interpretation of the world's spiritual, ideological and social challenges, is the primary dimension of ecumenical social thought. History of the ecumenical movement has many times confirmed this prophetical vision which often ran counter to or preceded dominant political and socioeconomic orders. The World Council of Churches’ model of responsible society has exemplified such a vision. Although today forgotten, a prophetical voice of ecumenism sounded at the conference of the Life and Work movement held in Oxford in 1937. The gathering, even though it took place in a gloomy time of political totalitarianism and socioeconomic crisis and in the shadow of the oncoming world war, produced a theological interpretation of the state and the economy, which later became an abundant source of ideas for the next decades of the ecumenical social teaching. The article aims to manifest the comprehensiveness and freshness of the Oxford concepts and, thereby, to demonstrate the Propheticness of ecumenical social thought. Eventually, it wishes to prove the relevance and significance of ecumenical teaching about society today. A survey of the subject literature and literary analysis is the primary method employed in the article.

Gioacchino Rossini's Opera "Silk Ladder": from the Author to the Director

Art is considered as one of the forms of social thinking, which depends on social, political and cultural processes of human existence. The author analyzed the dialogue of modern artistic traditions of the world, to which the Ukrainian theatrical space was also invited. It has been proven that at the turn of the 21st century, such a dialogue turns into a "polylogue". The "polylogue" is characterized from the standpoint of the "immersion" of art in general and music, in particular, into the global digitalization of the world with an increase in information flows and the emergence of "clip thinking" in the modern viewer. The following criteria for evaluating the results of artistic creativity are proposed, such as: advertising and performance component; space-time component; material component in the equivalent of decoration, art technologies, the price of a seat — content for viewing. It was determined by the search for the work for its own directorial embodiment, which became decisive in the appeal to the musical work of Gioacchino Rossini. His one-act farce "Silken Ladder" was selected. The work of the composer is studied. The prerequisites for the creation of the opera, some features of the author's style of the artist during the period of its writing are revealed, which determined the universality of this example for interpretations in today's conditions. The kinship of the figurative sphere of the one-act comic opera with the main characters of the Italian street comedy dell'arte has been rethought. The integrity of the ideological and artistic content of the opera is highlighted and its musical and structural component, which corresponds to the features of Rossini's comedy-opera genre, is emphasized. An analysis of the most interesting directorial incarnations of Gioacchino Rossini's opera "Silkin Ladder" was carried out. Typologies of her directorial interpretations are classified. The original concept of staging Gioacchino Rossini's opera "The Silkin Ladder" is proposed, which is reflected in the synthesis of updated scenography principles and the figurative component of commedia dell'arte.

Poetry Work of Saadi Shirazi and Piramerd at Sar Hazir Komeglayeit

A section of poets carrying the message of high love of humanity, and made their poems a tool to serve the values of humanity and society, and deal directly with human social ideas. Their mission is the development of human values and values of love, respect, healthy social relations and .. Saadi Shirazi and piramerd are poets who carry the message of human education, through which they were able to build a school for the preparation of ethics and social values of man and human society. From this aspect, we began a study comparing the poems of both poets under the title "Effect of Saadi Al-Shirazi and piramerd on Social Thought". It consists of two parts. Our research ended with a comparison of their poems, presenting the research results and referring to the research sources.

History of Indra Desam and Ayodhitasariya’s Principles

Ayodhitasar is a Tamil pandit and a social thinker. He was well recognized in various fields like sociology, politics, religion, culture, medicine, and journalism. All his principles are called Ayodhitasariyam. He created an alternative history book called “Indra Desa Sarithiram”. The text focuses on Buddhism and the oppressed people rather than giving importance to Brahmins and Hinduism. The first subaltern history book written in Tamil from the position of the oppressed people is “Indra Desa Sarithiram”. Through the Ayodhitasariyan’s principles the traditional myths and histories are re-read, re-interpretations of the historical narratives of marginal people and original meanings are explored. The article discusses about the re-reading of the linguistic studies and about Ayodhitasariyam’s principles.

Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit (By Bruce B. Lawrence)

Reviewed by: Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit by Bruce B. Lawrence Gordon D. Newby (bio) Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit Bruce B. Lawrence New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos, 2021. 192 Pages. Professor Bruce B. Lawrence, The Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University, has published his latest work, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit, in the Wiley-Blackwell Manifesto series. In an introductory overview, Lawrence declares his work to be a Manifesto in three words and six chapters. His choice of the genre of manifesto gives this work a personal, confessional voice and a hortative message that encourages the reader to adopt a different historical worldview and a new analytic vocabulary. His starting point is to return to and invite into the intellectual and moral worldview of Marshall G. S. Hodgson, the author of the posthumously published three-volume work, The Venture of Islam. Each of the three words of the title of this manifesto point to three interconnected aspects found in Hodgson’s major work that has the subtitle of “Conscience and History in a World Civilization,” placing Hodgson’s project in a moral as well as a historical dimension.1 In Lawrence’s view, the Hodgsonian mission failed to bring about the shift in thinking that he hoped. Lawrence writes, “At the most basic level each [term in the title, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit] connotes a surplus: Islamicate is more than Islamic or Muslim, Cosmopolitan is more than congenial or civil, and Spirit is more than subject or agent. Together Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit projects the presence of a tidal wave in world history that remains hidden for most, [End Page 92] opaque for many, and misunderstood even by experts” (p. xvi). In this manifesto, Lawrence exhorts us to take strong action to revise our thinking and those of our students to a pan-world perspective. Because Lawrence’s Manifesto is so closely linked to Hodgson’s Venture, it must be viewed with Venture in mind. Marshall Hodgson, a professor at the University of Chicago and chairman of the interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought, died in 1968, and his Venture of Islam was completed from his notes and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1974. Its broad vision of the role of Islamicate civilization was quickly embroiled in controversy over his use of the term “Islamicate.” This neologism was meant to distinguish between the religion of Islam, that is things and ideas Islamic, and the wider civilization that was Islamicate. This distinction was meant to open a discussion of Islamicate civilization to include groups usually identified as Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and others who were part of the culture and history of the Islamicate world and decenter the discussion of world civilization away from the teleological imperative of Western Christian culture and the subject of religion. In Lawrence’s “Preamble,” he asks, “Why Islamicate, why now, why me?” His answers inform the reader who he is and why he is so strongly engaged with this subject in the manifesto. It is a reference to Hodgson’s urging that we reveal who we are and the pre-commitments that we bring to any discussion. For Hodgson, this is the beginning of realizing the force of Conscience in the projects of writing and teaching world history. In Lawrence’s work, we learn that he started using The Venture of Islam for an undergraduate class at Duke University in 1976, only a year after its publication.2 As Lawrence recalls Venture’s reception among his students and colleagues, his experience reflects a broader reception among students and colleagues who struggled with Hodgson’s neologisms and his challenges to re-think and re-center our values when we make our modern Euro-American world the standard against which we measure the rest of the world and its past. Even before 1979, the year that the Iranian Revolution brought Islam to Western headlines and consciousness, the term Islam had acquired fraught and pejorative connotations and distorted interpretations that entailed prejudices and misinterpretations. The word had become too loaded and charged to be analytically useful for talking about the fourteen centuries of Islam’s existence and its world-wide spread. Prophet Muhammad’s...

Astrological and Divinatory Practices in Burma: Mapping the beidin Category

Astrological and Divinatory Practices in Burma:Mapping the beidin Category Aurore Candier and Jane M. Ferguson This special issue of The Journal of Burma Studies is part of a collective and multidisciplinary project which explores astrological and divinatory knowledge and practices in Burma. These practices include fortune telling, divinatory, and therapeutic techniques, and they serve a broader system for the interpretation of past, present, and future events. In Burma, as elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia, astrology, and divination rationales are part of social thinking and are also embedded in religious fields (Vernant 1974:10; Guenzi 2021:9). The collective aim of these four articles is to investigate the articulation between astrology, divination, religion, power, and discourse in Burma. The articles draw on research from multicultural contacts and consider the coproduction of knowledge through circulations of people, ideas, and systems of meaning across the longue durée (Raj 2007; Pollock 2011; Bala 2012; Fourcade 2013). In doing so, the articles endeavor to find connections and analogies with distant or closer past practices and knowledge in Burma as well as in neighboring countries. [End Page 147] Beidin 1 is the current Burmese designation for practices and knowledge related to astrology and divination. Mapping beidin as a category requires combining anthropological and historical methods. The first approach is to identify what knowledge and practices beidin encompasses today, and this is carried out through case studies of specialists and their practices, communities of knowledge, and conceptions. The second article in this set, "Min Theinhka: An Astrologer's Career through the Lens of Biography," by Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière opens with an ethnographic visit to Min Theinhka's compound, then segues to the complex profile of the remarkable astrologer, tracking his life story through the biography authored by one of his disciples. Moving from the story of an astrologer, Coderey's article, "We Are Made of Time: Astrology and Healing in Rakhine State, Myanmar" turns to an ethnographic exploration of healing practices among Buddhist communities. Through this evidence, Coderey's article demonstrates how the mastery of time (and the relation of timing with key events) relates the individual to the cosmic order. Thus, astrologers provide this key expertise for peoples' well-being. The second methodology is one of long-term historical perspective. It makes use of a variety of written sources (stone inscriptions, court manuscripts, royal chronicles, astrological literature), to apprehend when beidin emerged as a category of knowledge and how it changed throughout history to become what it is today. Its ontological history is the subject of Aurore Candier's [End Page 148] article, "The Emergence and Evolution of the Beidin Category in Burma: The Transition of the Long Nineteenth Century." Moving from Burmese categories and navigating the spatiotemporal waters of the waterclock itself, Caterina Guenzi's article, "The Burmese Hour" offers a compelling comparison of how horometrical systems which operated in Brahmanical India were also adopted in the Burmese courts; Brahmin astrologers at the Burmese courts were engaged differently than those remaining in India under the British. This article also offers a timely intervention and call for Southeast Asianists to engage with more research from South Asia. At the crossroads of the history of science and knowledge, the four articles understand science(s) and knowledge(s) as related "nomad concepts" loosely separated by "moving borders;" and focus on practices and practitioners to unveil the "scientific culture and knowledge" pertaining to specific moments and places in history (Van Damme 2015). In terms of time and space boundaries, the emphasis is on local changes, although the articles do constantly keep in mind the process of global integration.2 Some of the articles in this issue, such as those by Brac de la Perrière and Candier explore moments of important local changes, tracking the evolution of beidin conceptions and practices within them. These specific moments are either long periods in history, or a sequence of decades, or a few years following a traumatic event (political crisis, conflicts). Moments unfold in a particular time and space—a place filled with actors from different horizons with their own "regimes of [End Page 149] historicity" or conceptions of the world.3 While some...

Эвристические возможности понятия энергии в философии культуры (казус Батая)

The article examines an example of the use of the concept of energy in humanitarian knowledge. The interdisciplinary concept of French writer, philosopher, social thinker Georges Bataille, described by him in the book "The Accursed Share", is presented. It is shown that the concept of energy is applicable to the study of sociocultural systems. In the light of this approach, culture appears as a system of devices ("organs", "machines") that utilize free (psychic, social) energy. In the absence of these devices, socio-cultural systems experience internal pressure of excess energy (the "accursed part"), which is fraught with the destruction of these systems due to troubles, civil wars and other conflicts. Bataille examines in detail three ways of utilizing free energy, which can be described in the framework of the philosophy of culture as three «organs» or three «machines» – war, religion and labor. The article gives a non-classical understanding of these phenomena. War cannot be reduced only to a set of violent actions to seize resources or impose will on the enemy. Religion cannot be reduced only to establishing a connection with the divine. Labor cannot be reduced only to the production of material or spiritual goods. All these activities are partly self-referential, and this self-referential can only be explained by an additional function, which is disclosed in this article. In conclusion, the relevance of the use of the concept of energy in the cultural and philosophical analysis of the current situation is shown. This situation cannot fail to attract the attention of those who rely on a humanistic position.

ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЕ ПОДХОДЫ К ИЗУЧЕНИЮ СОЦИАЛЬНОГО ИНТЕЛЛЕКТА

The work is devoted to the actual problem of studying social intelligence as a socio-psychological construct that influences the processes of modeling effective communication and achieving goals in activities. Based on the purpose of the study, which is to review theoretical approaches to the study of social intelligence, a description is given of the main scientific approaches to understanding the content of social intelligence: general psychological, factor-analytical, psychometric, structural-genetic, cognitive and ethno-psychological. The analysis made it possible to single out common essential grounds in understanding the content of social intelligence: as a complex general ability, characterized by structure and a set of cognitive, emotional and behavioral components, the subject of which is the prediction of one's own actions and the actions of other people in various situations of interaction; as a personal education associated with the performance of certain activities and the level of development of general intelligence. Particular attention is paid to the ethnopsychological approach to the study of social intelligence, which is due to scientific interest in the problem of ethnocultural characteristics of social intelligence. The influence of the social environment, including the ethnic community, within which the socialization of the individual takes place, on the development of social intelligence is emphasized. It is noted that social thinking and social representations and laws, stereotypes, cognitive schemes established in society have an impact on the formation of a person's social intelligence. The article provides the author's understanding of social intelligence as a structural psychological formation that contributes to the socialization of the individual, ensures adaptation in society and influences the effectiveness and success of social interaction. The functions of social intelligence are also given: cognitive-evaluative, communicative-value and reflective-corrective. The applied significance of the results of this study is to substantiate the initial positions of the authors to develop an empirical research program to study the ethnocultural characteristics of social intelligence.

From Sustainable Finances to Faithful Investing: A moral proposal according to the Catholic Social Thought

From Sustainable Finances to Faithful Investing: A moral proposal according to the Catholic Social Thought

Odious Praise: Rhetoric, Religion, and Social Thought , by Eric MacPhail

Odious Praise: Rhetoric, Religion, and Social Thought , by Eric MacPhail

The Social Suicide Rates: A Review on Durkheim’s Theory of Suicide

Suicide is a societal disease. Various philosophers have offered opposing opinions on the reason of suicide. However, Ken Morrison's Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought contains a lengthy study of Émile Durkheim's suicide. This research looks into Emile Durkheim's idea of suicide. Two examples are presented to demonstrate how he describes various sorts of suicide. Above all, it demonstrates how suicide thoughts engulf people. Why people commited suicide is explored in detail for four types of suicide.

The Social Representation of Coronavirus during the First French Lockdown

Introduction:More than two years ago, the world was hit by the health crisis of COVID-19. This crisis has had many impacts, some of which are not yet fully visible. Publications have increased in this field, but some subjects remain to be studied in depth, such as the question of territorial or social inequalities in the face of this health crisis and its illustration in the field of social thinking.Methods:This qualitative research is based on the hierarchical free association method used in Social Representations Theory (SRT). The survey was conducted on a French sample during the first lockdown between March and May, 2020. Different groups and social categories were questioned, including rural/urban, executives, employees, or unemployed people.The results showed a social representation of the coronavirus that differs in certain groups, with, for example, a greater perception of risk in the unemployed group.Results:These results confirm that the consequences of this health crisis since the first lockdown in March, 2020, had already impacted representations that reflected social and territorial inequalities.Conclusion:These results are discussed in the light of international experience and, in particular, that of Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the health crisis.

A Defence of the Concept of the Landowning Class as the Third Class

Abstract Although Marx dubbed landowners one of the ‘three great classes’ of modern society, the most prominent Marxian and socialist thinkers of capitalism and land over the past century – from Lefebvre to Massey to Harvey – have implicitly or explicitly argued that landowners are not capitalism’s ‘third class’, and that the social relations of land are marginal or contingent to the mode of production as a whole. Through assessing the work of Marxist geographers, political economists, value-form theorists, and others who have dismissed the class-status of landowners and blurred the line between ground rent and interest, this article argues that the theory of the landowning class is fundamental to the understanding of the totality of capitalist social relations, as well as to developing more incisive analyses of struggles around housing, land, and movement today.

Diasporic Hybridity and Liminality in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland

Diasporic experiences of Indian characters have drawn a considerable attention of social thinkers, political leaders, literary scholars and critics. The experiences of immigrants have been explored by postmodern researchers and writers in an effort to understand the reasons behind their hopelessness, the breakdown of their families, and how they ultimately internalise the ideals of the host culture at the urging of the native culture. Greek word for dispersal is where the word “diaspora” originates. It speaks of the scattering and displacing of individuals from their place of origin. The authors of diaspora have tried to underpin the hidden underlying reasons of leaving one’s country and compensating for their periferal status in the adopted culture. While juxtaposing the past and present experiences, the diaspora writers critically analyise the nature of exile, homelessness, nostalgia, memory of native land, hybridity, liminality, marginality, culture shock and identity crisis. In this research article, Jhumpa Lahiri's representation of immigrants’ struggles with identity, self-formation, and cultural differences in her book The Lowland will be critically assessed. It attempts to throw light on the social and political insecurities, human rights and cultural challenges brought forth by their liminal status. Facing liminality the characters are hovering in a perpetual mental dilemma between Indian lifestyle and American advanced culture. The major themes of the novel are location, relocation, dislocation, displacement and alienation which are solely caused by characters’ personal choices and actions.