Social Thought Research Articles

Durba Mitra. Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra. Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Book review: Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2020), vii+ 290 pp.

Whose idea of socialism? Conflicting conceptions of the family and women’s subordination

This article compares Honneth’s attempt to revise socialist thinking on women’s subordination in the family with feminist work on the topic. Both identify economism as the reason why socialism has historically failed to come up with an adequate account of women’s oppression in the family. However, their attempts to overcome economism proceed in different directions. Feminists overcome economism by expanding and enriching ideas of the economic and value producing activity and applying these reworked categories to women’s reproductive labour. Honneth overcomes economism by suspending materialist explanation and focussing on emancipatory ethical dynamics implicit in the family. In comparison to feminist work, Honneth’s ethicised account of gender and family is as reductive as the economism it aims to surmount. First, his progressive historiography engenders a Whiggish narrative of the steady expansion of women’s social freedom in the family that downplays ambiguous and negative historical developments related to the changing nature of patriarchy. Second, his reified archetype of the family obscures the systemic causes of persistent gendered asymmetries within households. Finally, his Hegelian endorsement of institutionally expressed normativity leads in a reformist political direction and away from the radical, deep-democratic options that socialist feminists deem necessary to counteract women’s subordination.

Introduction

RISE 6.1 is the second of a two-volume themed issue dedicated to the study of sexual liberation and its literatures in Ireland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that extends the line of scholarly and historical inquiry first begun in RISE 5.1. The essays collected there examined the social and cultural politics that attended the historical rise of the heteropatriarchal state and interrogated the durability of conservative notions of Irishness, especially in terms of the sexual politics of the nation. While mindful of the ways in which this important historical paradigm continues to assert itself in Irish culture and the politics of the nation state, the current volume also seeks to put analytical pressure on the idea of ‘liberation’ central to counter-hegemonic ideas of sexual morality and revolution, and how it can be applied to the work of contemporary writers and social thinkers in Ireland. Adumbrating the ways in which the heteronormative social order asserts itself (the gaze, temporality and sociospatial formations), these essays collectively interrogate the dialectical tension that conjoins conservative and insurgent practices and ideologies in the still unfolding landscape of Ireland’s changing codes around sexual morality and identity.

Logical and Historical Aspects of the Genesis of Russian Sociology (on the Example of N.Ya. Danilevsky and N.K. Mikhailovsky)

Introduction. In the article, the actual problem of the nationalization of modern Russian sociology is associated with the clarification of the logical and historical aspects of the genesis of Russian sociology.Methodology and sources. The theoretical sources of the study were the works of representatives of the Russian tradition of the historiography of sociological doctrines (N.I. Kareev, M.M. Kovalevsky, P.A. Sorokin) and modern Russian historians of sociology (A.I. Golosenko, Yu.N. Davydov). For a comparative analysis of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of Russian sociology, the potential of the biographical method is used and the works of N.Ya. Danilevsky and N.K. Mikhailovsky are involved. The empirical base was made up of materials of public discussions in the Russian media on the nationalization of science and education, and expert assessments. The methodology of socio-cultural analysis, social constructivism, typological approach is used.Results and discussion. The article deals with the connection of the theoretical constructions of the first Russian sociologists with their historical vision and axiological consciousness. In the “paradigm personalities” of Mikhailovsky and Danilevsky, the splitting of the emancipating social thought into science and managerial activity and moral and pedagogical practice was expressed. Criticism of the evolutionist-progressive reading of the formula “Russia and Europe” by Mikhailovsky is expressed in the theoretical distinction between types and stages of social evolution. The non-religious moral and dogmatic attitude of subjective sociology laid at the foundation reduces the content of these categories to the combinatorics of indicators of division/integration, homogeneity/heterogeneity. Her declared orientation towards the moral ideal aroused the sympathy of the Russian intelligentsia, in contrast to the ideas of Danilevsky, a social thinker, an advanced official, and a macroeconomist. The relevance of the typological approach to world history developed by him and the method of modeling comparative types are substantiated. Cultural-historical types are de-ideologized concepts designed to analyze historical events, build models and scenarios for the interaction of “historical individuals” and highlight the essential elements of the potential for their future development.Conclusion. A new stage in the interaction between Russia and Europe is characterized by a crisis of Europe's political subjectivity, a decrease in its role in world economic relations. Turning to the origins of Russian sociology allows us to identify points of divergence in the formulation of the question of the type of subjectivity in Russia, commensurate with its natural and cultural potential, and in the directions of the search for an answer.

INDIA IS A SPIRITUAL LEADER: MYTH OR REALITY

<p><span>There is a buzzword in the world about India’s being a spiritual leader. The patriot classical Hindu protagonists are advocating vehemently for (re)establishing its old and golden image to the people, especially the students and youths in this vast country and the world as a whole. India just completed the celebration of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsab (Nectar Festival of Freedom) by commemorating its 75th year of Independence (from 1947 to 2022). India, henceforth, decided to celebrate the next twenty-five years as the “Amrit Kaal” i.e., golden period (from 2022-2047). During this quarter century, the vision of India is to achieve a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy, reminisce with respect to the Indian struggle for independence and the sacrifice of the freedom fighters, and promote India’s heritage, culture, literature, and language. When the government of India upholds and prioritizes the promotion of its age-old tradition, culture, language, spirituality, and philosophy, a critical group of scholars and thinkers put up multiple problems and crises facing India in the present time. Therefore, a debate is going on regarding the issue of India’s role as a global leader as well as the spiritual master. The criticism and counter-arguments by scholars and social thinkers are neither wrong nor anti-national. This is the beauty and fine characteristic of modern Indian democracy, where every citizen enjoys the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression, though with certain restrictions as enshrined in the Constitution. In the run of this debate, the Prime Minister and his team are determined to take India to such a height that every man on this earth can have a taste of its spiritual and philosophical honey juice. Now the question is - are Indian culture, heritage, philosophy, and spirituality so rich and exuberant? What are there in India’s philosophy, and spirituality, and the teachings of Indian sages and saints? Do they have created any impact ever upon the minds and activities of people anywhere in the world? Can India really show the path to the global leaders and general people to end war and conflicts, and bring forth peace and prosperity? This article seeks to examine all these questions and finally explores if the acclaim of India as a spiritual leader is appropriate or absurd.</span></p><p><span><strong>Keywords:</strong> India, spiritual leader, Indian philosophy, Indian scriptures, <em>Amrit Kal</em>, Indian <em>yoga</em>.</span></p>

Female community health agents’ structure of social thinking about domestic violence against women

This study aimed at describing community health agents' representational structure on domestic violence against women. A quantitative-qualitative research study based on the Theory of Social Representations in its structural approach and carried out in a municipality from inland Bahia, Brazil. The community health agents participated through free evocation and centrality techniques: choix-par-bloc, constitution of word pairs and mise-en-cause, from May to August 2019. Data analysis was carried out by means of the EVOC software (Ensemble of Programs Permettant I'analyse des Evocations), similarity analysis and mise-en-cause analysis. These professionals' representational structure is organized from the central elements of disrespect and sadness, which attribute negative meanings to the representation regarding their positions and repercussions; the other elements integrate specific information to the structure of the representations, justifying them. It is concluded that the understanding regarding organization of the community agents' social thinking about the phenomenon allows its problematization, as well as the elaboration of prevention and coping strategies for women in situations of violence, the aggressors and the community.

Estrutura de pensamento social de agentes comunitárias de saúde sobre violência doméstica contra a mulher

Abstract This study aimed at describing community health agents’ representational structure on domestic violence against women. A quantitative-qualitative research study based on the Theory of Social Representations in its structural approach and carried out in a municipality from inland Bahia, Brazil. The community health agents participated through free evocation and centrality techniques: choix-par-bloc, constitution of word pairs and mise-en-cause, from May to August 2019. Data analysis was carried out by means of the EVOC software (Ensemble of Programs Permettant I’analyse des Evocations), similarity analysis and mise-en-cause analysis. These professionals’ representational structure is organized from the central elements of disrespect and sadness, which attribute negative meanings to the representation regarding their positions and repercussions; the other elements integrate specific information to the structure of the representations, justifying them. It is concluded that the understanding regarding organization of the community agents’ social thinking about the phenomenon allows its problematization, as well as the elaboration of prevention and coping strategies for women in situations of violence, the aggressors and the community.

II. Family Welfare and Pernicious Property: White Womanhood and Catholic Social Thought in the United States

A significant literature presents the Catholic social thought tradition (CST) as a resource for combating racism and white supremacy, and an equally important body of work critiques the documentary tradition for the ways it fails to adequately address these pernicious social sins. This essay will combine elements of both approaches to address a topic relatively modest in scope: showing how attention to the historical and contemporary operation of white womanhood, exposed by sociologist Jessie Daniels in her book Nice White Ladies, informs, critiques, and presents opportunities for Catholic social thought on gender and family, both in the ecclesial documents and in their appropriations by white US Catholic scholars. I will address three themes: images of women; the nexus of families and the welfare state; and whiteness as property.

Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (review)

Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (review)

Exploring Women’s Well-being in Haryana: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives

The term female well-being was first used by Noble Laureate Amartya Sen in 1992. Women's well-being in Haryana tackles the complexities of social change and illustrate the most critical challenges (gender discrimination, violence, and honor killings) that women are facing in the present scenario despite globalization, modernization, and development in all spheres of life. Women's well-being is studied by analyzing infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate and life expectancy, literacy and level of education, work status and income level, family structure, and political power. The trends in women's well-being are contextualized in light of the legislative provisions, women's social welfare policies, and movements that enhance, empower, sustain, or detract the women's condition in the state. The present study is an attempt to explore women's well-being based on social institutions, gender concerns, socio-demographic profile, and educational, economic, and political dynamics and interpret significant transformation in women's lives over the years in Haryana. In this descriptive study, quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to explore women's well-being in the state. The present investigation is based on primary and secondary sources as well. However, the present research sketches social institutions, gender concerns, and the status of women in Haryana, but it is mainly concerned with the women's well-being concepts, issues, and future perspectives. The present research has implications for center and state governments, policy-makers and non-governmental organizations, academicians, and social thinkers.

Support vector machine and neural network for enhanced classification algorithm in ecological data

The current economic scale is bigger and bigger, the social material living standard also along is also getting higher and higher with the rapid economic growth. However, the problems caused by economic development are also increasing, on the one hand, there is the contradiction between supply and demand caused by resource consumption and shortage of resources; on the other hand, there also is contradiction between the great pollution and destruction in the ecological environment and the public's increasingly demanding ecological environment. Especially, the contradiction between the ecological environment and the social environment has become the focus of attention of the Chinese public. Therefore, the ecological environment protection becomes the current consensus either from the national level or the social level, how to manage and protect the ecological environment is also a question of the current social thinking. The common practice of ecological environment protection is to control and protect, at the same time, governance is to restore the damaged environment. There are many means for protection, such as energy conservation, emission reduction, monitoring and so on. Energy saving and emission reduction not only mean that the consumption of resources is reduced, but also mean that the discharge of pollutants and destroy the ecological environment are reduced. And monitoring refers to the existing ecological environment monitoring; the change of ecological environment is detected by real-time observation, so that counter measures are made according to the changes.

Legitimizing Private Land Ownership in the Ottoman Empire: State Policy vs Economic Thought

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ideas of both the liberals and the German Historical School (laissez-faire vs. protectionism) began to find an increasingly receptive audience in the Ottoman Empire. This was accompanied by a radical change in the approach to the concept of private land ownership. This article aims at discovering traces of this change in the economic literature produced by Ottoman political economists and social thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century. The otherwise contrasting approaches of liberal writers, such as Serandi Arsizen (Sarantis Archigenes), Sak?zl? Ohannes Efendi and Mehmet Cavid Bey, on the one hand, and of the protectionist writers, such as Ahmet Mithat Efendi and Musa Akyigitzade, who were inspired more by the German Historical School (and by Friedrich List, in particular), on the other, are examined in order to display similar perceptions of private land ownership in Ottoman economic thought. State-induced private propertization of land received strong support from Ottoman intellectuals from different schools of thought, and the inviolability of property rights in land is considered sine qua non for economic development.

Conceptional Transfer and Early Russian Modernity (Reflection on: Laboratory of Concepts: Translation and Languages of Politics in Russia in the 18th Century. Ed. by S.V. Pol’skoy and V.S. Rzheutskiy. Moscow: NLO publ., 2022)

The authors of the book investigate the practices of translation in the context of socio-cultural transformations in the early years of the Russian Empire. Europe and Russia in the Age of Enlightenment were radically different semiotic systems, so the interpreters of western philosophy and political literature sparked a sort of “cultural revolution” in terms of the transfer of ideas and concepts, the genesis of a new public language. Early Russian interpreters introduced the world of western thought and the languages of politics and social thinking to the elites and to the emerging civil society. And as such the corpus of Russian interpretations is a more eloquent reflection of intellectual evolution than the original writings of Russian thinkers of that time. And given the fact that in those times translations would always involve the inception of new lexical and semantic elements, the “laboratory of concepts” scientific metaphor used in the book to denote the intellectual origination of Russian modernity is absolutely justified.

Special Education Teacher Profession in the Czech Republic

The expert contribution brings knowledge not only about the special education profession itself, but also describes important competencies that are crucial for the performance of the special education profession in the Czech Republic. The mentioned profession is included in the system of helping professions, which have their specificity not only in the context of the demanding performance of the given profession. As part of the presentation of the legislation related to professional requirements, we also discuss the level of personal assumptions, which is based on the personal setting of each special education teacher. The special pedagogue is a key actor in the integratively inclusive process and, thanks to his competences, abilities and personality, he works to shape the next generations and social thinking.

Cosmology and Vigilance: Political Vanguardism in Saint-Simon and Blanqui

This paper re-examines the idea of political vanguardism—long consigned to the dustbin of defunct scientific socialist ideology—to shed light on the theory of democratic representation. The discussion connects the use of the term “vanguard” by two prominent early socialist thinkers to what it terms the “cosmological” dimension of their writings. It shows how each author figured vanguard agency as fomenting different visions of the intellectual progress required for representative government, and that these visions were sustained by analogies to the origin and development of astronomical objects. The “utopian” socialist Henri Saint-Simon (1770–1825) first invoked the vanguard metaphor to describe a way of thinking about scientific progress that would naturalize a new governing elite. The revolutionary communist Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) then appropriated the vanguard idea to reimagine scientific authority in a way that would preserve and expand citizens’ capacities to hold their representatives accountable. The article pursues three goals. First, it provides a revisionist history of well-known scientistic attempts to stabilize mass democracy in the nineteenth century, revealing how claims to scientific authority were contested from within a socialist republican tradition usually seen as complicit in such agency-inhibiting ideologies. Second, the concept of vanguardism it reconstructs from this history, as a response to the “usurpation” of a vigilant attitude between citizens and office holders, offers new resources for theorizing democratic representation. Finally, it draws attention to the importance of cosmological rhetoric in the history of modern republican and socialist political thought.

Citizenship Education in the 21st Century for Nigerian Polytechnics

Purpose: Three substantial problems are visible in the teaching of citizenship education in the polytechnic. Firstly students are studying the courses only with the intention of passing their examinations and getting a diploma. Secondly the issues of ideology. It is whenever we notice the problematic that we will appreciate the ideology attractiveness of the course, which hinges on Western developmental framework. Thirdly the problem encountered by the teacher of citizenship education. This study intend to provide some useful information on how to be a good citizen of a particular nation, for both staff and students in Nigerian polytechnics.
 Methodology: This work adopted qualitative research design, and some readymade materials for data collection. These prompt the researcher to carry out this study for easy access of information.
 Findings: Education for involved democratic citizenship as an educational drive overcomes the disintegration transversal connections of the different devotions, and could become a part of citizenship consolidation. There has been a focus on the cure of social and environmental harms ascending from the certainty that education must be focused towards the foundation of a serious and publically involved citizenship, helping to realize social reality and its problems and to build social thinking to manage the difficulty of this reality, and encouraging participation in the formation of democracy and enlightening cohabitation.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Serious importance need to be given to citizenship education from primary to post-secondary level of education in the Nigerian polytechnics. Multi - disciplinary approach should be employed as a method of teaching citizenship education at higher level of education. Citizenship education should be introduced at all levels of teachers training institutions.

Invoking Self-Related and Social Thoughts Impacts Online Information Sharing.

Online sharing impacts which information is widely available and influential in society. Yet, systematically influencing sharing behavior remains difficult. Past research highlights two factors associated with sharing: the social and self-relevance of the to-be-shared content. Based on this prior neuroimaging work and theory, we developed a manipulation in the form of short prompts that are attached to media content (here health news articles). These prompts encourage readers to think about how sharing the content may help them to fulfill motivations to present themselves positively (self-relevance) or connect positively to others (social relevance). Fifty-three young adults completed this pre-registered experiment while undergoing fMRI scanning. Ninety six health news articles were randomly assigned to three within-subject conditions that encouraged self-related or social thinking, or a control. Invoking self-related or social thoughts about health-related news (vs. control) 1) causally increased brain activity in a priori regions of interest chosen for their roles in processing social and self-relevance and 2) causally impacted self-reported sharing intentions. This study provides evidence corroborating prior reverse inferences regarding the neural correlates of sharing. It further highlights the feasibility and utility of targeting neuropsychological processes to systematically facilitate online information spread.

Economic Analysis by Optimal Placing of DGs in Distribution Networks by Particle Swarm Optimisation and Gravitational Search Optimisation Algorithm

The particle swarm optimisation and gravitational search optimisation algorithm (PSOGSA) is a hybrid algorithm which is used to determine size of optimal Distributed Generation (DG) in this paper. The PSOGSA integrates the social thinking ability (gbest) in PSO to capability of local search in GSA. The algorithm combines the searching capability of PSO and with enhanced exploration ability of GSA. Distributed generations are connected in distribution systems to consumers to reduce losses, enhance the voltage profile, reliability and economic benefits. DG optimal positioning and loss minimisation have a significant role for economic operation and overall reduction of energy costs. For evaluation of proposed algorithm, the test bus sets IEEE15, 33 and 69 are chosen. For considered objectives i.e., optimal DG sizing and economic analysis, this PSOGSA algorithm gives better results as compared to other methods and better outcomes has been achieved when DG unit of type III operates at power factor of 0.9 lag

Using Socialist Ideas to Help the World Health Organization Deal with International Relations and Develop New Policies to Improve the Health Care System

This paper is a detailed analysis of how socialist thinking can help International Health Organizations. WHO's health system is of great importance to people all over the world, and it holds a key position in the deal with international relations. But judging from the examples of the effects of various transnational epidemics discussed in this article, the current WHO health system is inadequate for this vital responsibility and fails to handle international relations well. This paper will give a detailed explanation of why WHO needs to apply socialist thought and argue the excellence of socialist thought in helping WHO better deal with international relations and international health issues. The deficiencies of WHO's health system are directly reflected in its policies. This paper will demonstrate how reforming WHO's policies with socialist ideology will improve international relations and better deal with international health issues.