Societal Failures Research Articles

Children’s Plight to Life of Poverty and Injustice Captured in F.H. Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles

This research paper analyzes how children's experiences of poverty and injustice are imagined and articulated in F. H. Batacan's novel Smaller and Smaller Circles. By employing content analysis, passages and excerpts from the novel were identified and subjected to in-depth analysis using sociological and philosophical approaches to literary criticism. The study aims to explore the novel’s portrayal of the causes and effects of these experiences, and how it reflects the broader discourse on the morality of children's suffering. The findings reveal that the novel imagines children's experiences of poverty and injustice as resulting from a complex interplay of societal norms, such as generational responsibility, the culture of silence, and toxic masculinity. Institutional failures, including the church’s complicity, inefficient law enforcement, and barangay deficiencies, further exacerbate these conditions. Additionally, media and societal attitudes, particularly misplaced faith and victim blaming, contribute to the perpetuation of these harmful conditions. The novel portrays these imagined experiences as leading to psychosocial trauma, delayed or denied justice, delinquency, and even suicide. Through this portrayal, the novel positions itself within the discourse on the morality of children's suffering, raising questions about the ethical implications of these societal failures.

The Local “Salad Bar” of Hate: Global Hegemonic Masculinity in Australia’s Extreme Right

This paper examines a local manifestation of extreme right political mobilisation in Australia from the standpoint of Connell and Messerschmidt's (2005) global hegemonic masculinity. Using Messerschmidt and Rohde’s (2018) methods for analysing violent extremists’ public statements, we examine public blog posts by “The Lads [sic] Society” to scrutinise the relationship between local advocacy for a white ethno-state in Australia and global hegemonic masculinities. The analysis finds that localised white nationalism is both a response to, and constituted by, the tensions of global hegemonic masculinity and is, in part, an attempt to reclaim localised white hegemonic masculinity in the face of a multitude of perceived global societal failures. Through the analysis, this paper contributes to Messerschmidt and Rohde’s (2018) claim that various global hegemonic masculinities simultaneously coexist and compete, while pointing to how discursive processes continue to redefine masculinities at the local level. The paper also responds to a broader invitation to incorporate gender analysis into the study of extreme political movements, enabling a more critical understandings of the motivations and experiences of those that participate in them.

Invisibility and silence: an extreme form of art resistance of Aaron Curme

ABSTRACT Social alienation necessitates a critique against social paradoxes that disregard individual experiences and portray societal failures as successes. Aaron Curme adopts the extremes of invisibility and silence to counteract these paradoxes and constructs an artistic identity of resistance, a demonstrative choice of resistance, an extreme, ironic and paradoxical behavior aiming to directly expose the core of problems. Employing auto-hermeneutics, the artist’s self-conscious artistic practices are observed that embody paradoxical empowerment through absence, and constantly transform the silence into a subtly communicative and aesthetically appreciative form that offers a novel interpretation towards the unheard perspectives of others.

Climate change and security narratives in Colombia

AbstractIn September of 2022, Gustavo Petro presented an alternative vision of the future of Colombia from that which Colombian administrations have pursued for the past two decades. In his speech to the United Nations, Petro called for an end to the irrational war on drugs and described the drug epidemic as a symptom of significant societal failures. Petro directed his criticism at Plan Colombia, a counternarcotics security strategy, speaking directly about vital elements such as the aerial eradication program. Although Plan Colombia has ended, the United States continues to provide significant financial support to the Colombian government to fund its counter narcotics mission. Is Petro serious about ending the counternarcotics mission in Colombia? Given the political climate, should the United States change its policy approach in Colombia? This article argues that despite an increased use of narratives about climate change and a declining relevance of security narratives, US funding for security has remained constant. Our findings suggest that the United States uses aid as a hard power tool to ensure that certain strategic interests are met irrespective of the political climate.

Sharing responsibility for conspiracy beliefs: The agency-in-context model

In this paper, I borrow Neil Levy’s account of bad beliefs as a starting point to discuss how the social turn in epistemology affects our understanding of the formation, persistence, and spreading of conspiracy beliefs. Despite the recent convergence of philosophers and psychologists on the importance of studying the social dimensions of cognition, current models of conspiracy beliefs differ substantially as to the role that agents have in adopting and maintaining conspiracy beliefs. As a result, the proposals also differ in the remedial strategies they recommend. Here I endorse an integrative approach, which I call “agency in context”, combining explanations of bad believing in terms of the agent’s cognitive habits and information processing with societal failures in providing the support agents need to recognize marks of epistemic authority in sources of information and acquire the critical skills for the evaluation of competing explanations.

Pausing again: Reflecting on humility and possibility in pandemic times.

Despite continued global strife, the period of exception that has characterised experiences of pandemic times now seems to be changing. As graduate students, the emergence of COVID‐19 unsettled our lives and broke our timelines, but we recognise that our experiences of it have also been framed by relative comfort and privilege. In the context of the various and unequal personal, institutional, and societal failures that COVID‐19 has caused and amplified, we seek to pause and reflect on how our collective encounter with pandemic times might also be a space of possibility. We respond to calls for more humble and gentle geographies, situating our reflections in recent work on failure in the academy. The pandemic has humbled us, but we also recognise it as an opportunity to practise an ethic of humbleness in our work. While by no means linear, we talk/write through this process as it relates to our engagements with our personal, institutional, and research contexts. Ultimately, by giving space to the “messy” and “mundane” aspects of doing research, we hope to unpack how the pandemic has humbled our ambitions, timelines, and expectations and offer a pause to explore what this means for us and research more broadly, in terms of what we want to leave behind and what we wish to take forward.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Related Lived Experiences of Individuals With a Spinal Cord Injury/Disease.

IntroductionCOVID-19 related restrictions and recommendations have impacted everyone. Those living with a disability, such as individuals with a spinal cord injury (SCI), may have had pandemic related changes made yet more challenging by societal failures to accommodate their mobility, physical abilities, and health care needs. To better understand participants experiences we drew upon Heidegger's phenomenology and the mobilities paradigm. The objective of this study was to explore COVID-19 pandemic related lived-experiences of individuals with an SCI.Materials and MethodsThis study used an interpretive phenomenological methodology. Semi-structured interviews were the primary means of data collection. These were conducting in May and June of 2020, roughly 2–3 months into the pandemic. Transcript data were analyzed using a phenomenological methodology.ResultsWe interviewed 22 participants with SCI, the mean age was 54 years, and nine were females. We identified three themes: (1) Experiencing changes to mobility and daily life described how new rules had impacted everyday life and usual routines, particularly in regard to mobility. (2) Struggling with new challenges explored some of the negative experiences of the pandemic. (3) Being resilient in the face of a new normal conveyed the resilience participants exhibited despite challenges.ConclusionAlthough our findings indicate some positive changes and highlight the strengths that many individuals with SCI have, they also accentuate issues with ableism within the medical system. Certain changes were made primarily because people without disabilities needed them, and several COVID-19 changes were made without consulting individuals with disabilities. With physical movement restricted, our findings emphasize the importance of the movement of information and a need for increased dialogue with people in the SCI community about their ongoing pandemic related needs.

Organising care and community in the era of the ‘gay disease’: Gay community responses to HIV/AIDS and the production of differentiated care geographies in Vancouver

Scholarship on the place of the HIV/AIDS crisis in urban geographies of sexual minority activism has powerfully insisted on the importance of community organising as a response to state and societal failures and to their homophobic, AIDS phobic and morally conservative underpinnings. This paper extends this scholarship by examining the urban social geographies of exclusion produced by such community organising efforts. It draws on the perspectives of long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS (LTS) in Vancouver to highlight the differentiated care geographies of HIV/AIDS that resulted from the racialised, classed and gendered politics and urban imaginations enacted by gay and allied HIV/AIDS organising. Though LTS networks, spaces and politics of care and community were more extended than Vancouver’s gay community during the 1980s and 1990s, the centring of the West End gay village in many community-led responses to HIV/AIDS resulted in LTS geographies outside the West End being excluded from important systems of care and community. LTS narratives of the city at the time of the ‘gay disease’ thus tell an urban politics of sexual and health activisms as shaped not only by processes of heteronormativity and homophobia but also of racially, colonially and class-inflected homonormative urban imaginaries.

How is Fear Constructed? A Narrative Approach to Social Dread in Literature

Fear-inducing narratives can be divided into two subtypes of horror and dread. While horror stories concentrate on a concrete visible object such as a monster, in dread narratives the object of fear is abstract or absent altogether. Pure forms of either are rare and most narratives mix both types, usually with dominant in one or the other. An interesting subtype of dread narratives is the narrative of social dread, where the fear is social in nature.
 One of the few narratologists to study construction of fear in arts, Yvonne Leffler suggests a variety of narrative techniques often used in horror fiction. Adjusting Leffler’s list of techniques for tales of dread instead of horror helps analysing the nature and amount of dread present in a range of different narratives from light reading and literary fiction to non-fiction. A narrative approach helps to reveal how non-fiction texts use similar techniques, and sometimes more extensively than fictional texts. Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) is an excellent example of social dread in fiction, where societal failures are a big part of the fears induced, and the questions raised in the narrative are denied definite answers. Kanae Minato’s Confessions (2008) is closer to a thriller, because despite raising issues of societal failure, the work gives conclusive answers to all of the questions raised during the narrative. Although Haruki Murakami’s Underground (1997–98) is a nonfiction compiled from interviews of terror attack survivors, it nevertheless has the hallmarks of a social dread narrative, such as question-answer structure and abstractness of the source of fear. More importantly, Murakami’s work alternates between identifying and anticipatory readings, gives no definitive answers to the questions it poses, and the fear it conveys is social in nature.

Time Bank and Dynamics of its Metamodel

The concept of Time Banks developed over many decades. Eventually, it formed itself into an approach utilizing the dormant aspects of human activities that cannot be sold on the traditional labour market. Time Banks need to be considered as socio-economic systems, which in contrast to monetary systems are based on equality and reciprocity. Time Banks belong to the sphere of complementary economic systems which are one of the traits of postmodern society. They appeared as a reaction to various economic and societal failures, filling the empty spaces mainstream economy leaves behind. But equality and reciprocity are not the only ones on the list of properties that ought to be monitored and carefully considered when the nature of Time Banks is investigated, and ways in which they can be implemented in practice are explored. This paper exemplifies identified attributes and provides a description of their meaning, significance and outlines their mutual interrelationship. Alphabetically ordered, the list starts with Accessibility, Adaptability, or Affordability and ends with characteristics such as Tailorability or Transparency. As is well known from the systems theory, capturing the mutual relationship among attributes and the development of appropriate structure enable the so-called metasystem to be created. Mostly, metasystems are described regarding their structure. The challenge that this paper accepts is to sketch the possibility of capturing its behaviour in terms of system dynamics. For this purpose, diagrams used in this discipline are applied.

THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY FOR GAINING SOCIAL EXPERIENCE AND ACQUIRING BEHAVIORAL MODELS AT PRE-SCHOOL AGE

Pre-school age is an intensive period in the life of a person which offers great potential for development. The dimensions of the impact of the social environment (children, parents and other adults) on the child’s personality are multifaceted. This accounts for the emphasis on social norms, goals and ideals. Education is the one factor that can best provide the socialization of adolescents.The changes in modern society have led to redefining the parenting patterns for bringing up children. The role of the family as an environment for transferring social experience has never lost its significance. Children need continuous care in order to handle societal failures; they need support for mastering the culture of behavior, as well as timely and appropriate help for ensuring conflict-free communication and for enabling them to take responsibility for their own choices and actions.Psychological studies show that various factors influence both the upbringing of children as well as the parents’ attitudes towardsthem. The relevant factors include: the childhood experiences of the parents; the unrealized needs of the parents; interpersonal relations in the family that are characterized by emotional depth and style that are considered to have established "a standard".The parameters of the actuality of the research problem are based on the interrelationship of the social and educational aspects that are related to the position of the child and his personal assertion in society:- Atpre-schoolage, thechildgraduallyfitsintothesocialsystem, whichistheresult of learningexperiences, actionsandrelationships, awarenessandrediscovery of theselfandtheworld of otherpeople.- Thechildbecomesaware of thenorms of behaviorandthemeaning of actions–their ownandother people’s - andlearns to takeresponsibilityfortheiractions.- Oneyearbeforeschool starts, the childdevelopstheability to accepttheposition of othersand to takeintoaccounttheirownandothers’perspective.- For a successfulpersonalrealization, itisimportantforchildren to havetheskills to worktogetherandcommunicatein a group. Thisisthecompetencethatdirectstheirbehaviortowardsco-ordination, co-operationandsynergy.The abovementioned specific features of the child's personality are the result of the intentional educational interactions between the kindergarten and the family and are related to the acquisition of knowledge, rules and norms, and of value-oriented patterns that define behavior. The foundations for thisare laid during the pre-school age and are considered the most stable and lasting, often referred to as the "basic personality structure". Along with them, the "behavioral potential" of the child, which is demonstrated at different ages, is shaped and developedthrough upbringing. Consequently, behavior is seen as a specific manifestation of the personality associated with its selective attitude towards the influence of various factors in the social environment. The direction of the educational activitiesinspires the motivation for personal behavior aiming at growth and self-actualization. Hence, the presence of a certain skill level which imposes a new approach to learning - replacing the mechanical reproduction with the acquisition of competences for and attitudes towards interaction in a changing environment. What is appropriate for achieving these goals is the applicationof functional models for cooperation, individualization and differentiation of the educational process. These ensure that the child is provided with conditions for activity and for mastering basic, sustainable rules for conscious participation and development that are important for the success of each of his activities. This is a type of social education that is achieved through exploring the social fabric andacquiring the skills for learning, choosing and communicating.

Are Faith Based Programs Effective in Reducing Recidivism?

Although Muslims comprise 5.3% of the NSW population, they account for 9.3% of prisoners in correctional centres. The high rate of Muslim representation in the prison population is the result of longterm neglect of the needs of second and third generation of Muslims by the wider Muslim community and by governments. This article first argues the high rate of the Muslim population in the prisons is not a failure of Muslim community alone, but is a product of a combination of individual, familial and societal failures due to various factors. These factors are multidimensional and need to be identified accurately to fashion appropriate responses. This article proposes a strategy for reintegration of Muslim parolees into society and reducing recidivism in prisons based on the experiences from a parolees mentoring program, which was conducted in 2016 by a community based institution, Islamic Science and Research Academy of Australia (ISRA), in collaboration with Bankstown Community Corrections Centre (a department of NSW Corrective Services). The findings show a mutual collaboration between NSW Corrective Services and faith-based organisations can assist in reducing recidivism in Muslim parolees.

When unbearable suffering incites psychiatric patients to request euthanasia: qualitative study

BackgroundThe concept of ‘unbearable suffering’ is central to legislation governing whether euthanasia requests may be granted, but remains insufficiently understood, especially in relation to psychiatric patients.AimsTo provide insights into the suffering experiences of psychiatric patients who have made a request for euthanasia.MethodTestimonials from 26 psychiatric patients who requested euthanasia were analysed using QualiCoder software.ResultsFive domains of suffering were identified: medical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, societal and existential. Hopelessness was confirmed to be an important contributor. The lengthy process of applying for euthanasia was a cause of suffering and added to experienced hopelessness, whereas encountering physicians who took requests seriously could offer new perspectives on treatment.ConclusionsThe development of measurement instruments to assess the nature and extent of suffering as experienced by psychiatric patients could help both patients and physicians to better navigate the complicated and sensitive process of evaluating requests in a humane and competent way. Some correlates of suffering (such as low income) indicate the need for a broad medical, societal and political debate on how to reduce the burden of financial and socioeconomic difficulties and inequalities in order to reduce patients' desire for euthanasia. Euthanasia should never be seen (or used) as a means of resolving societal failures.

How Can Violence Among Urban Youth Be Stopped?

How Can Violence Among Urban Youth Be Stopped?

Exploring representations of Black masculinity and emasculation on NBC’s Parenthood

ABSTRACTHere, representations of Black masculinity and emasculation are explored on NBC’s Parenthood. We question whether depictions of Black masculinity represented through Parenthood’s character, Alex, are empowering or stereotypical; how do they reflect, destabilize, and/or reinforce heteronormative depictions of Black community members? Two seasons were analyzed using Owen’s thematic analysis. Ultimately, Black males are portrayed as being societal failures, criminals, violent, and hypersexualized through his character. This embodiment ultimately preserves long-held images of Black men as “Toms, coons … bucks … as oversexed, aggressive, violent, animalistic, or emasculated” (Jackson, R. L. II. 2006. Scripting the black masculine body: Identity, discourse, and racial politics in popular media. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Practical recommendations and suggestions for researchers and media practitioners are provided.

Sensing Space: Augmenting Scientific Data with Spatial Ethnography

The increased relevancy of digital technologies in the humanities and visual literacy through the use of rich media—maps, photography, video composition, big data, and interactive Web platforms—can serve as representations to communicate the study of spaces and urban life. How then does the integration of scientific, visual, and sensorial research methods become associated into the curriculum of GeoHumanities? We investigate spatial ethnography—by contextualizing three eminent risks present: societal disruption, technological failures, and political dysfunction—as a method that provides a multisensorial depiction of transformed urban spaces. These perspectives of risks are evaluated through a case study following the catastrophic events of March 2011 within a government-sanctioned 20-km evacuation zone in Fukushima, Japan. The five visual research methods—defining a route, measuring risk, interviews with stakeholders, film documentaries and photography, and the process of “thick mapping”—complete an ethnographic dossier that tests new discoveries between scientific data and the humanities into academic discourse.

The internalization of societal failures by multinational enterprises

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show that the market-internalization framework can be applied to non-economic institutions because society’s non-market sub-systems – political, social and cultural – are subject to failures just like economic markets, and firms can contribute to their repair or replacement by selectively, strategically and responsibly internalizing the market and non-market arenas for these sub-systems’ functions.Design/methodology/approach– Internalization theory is applied to a new area – that of societal failures.Findings– Internalization theory can be applied to the joint failures of economic and non-economic institutions, and this helps explain the growing “political role” of multinational enterprises in economies in transition as well as the phenomenon of increasing multinational firm activity in underdeveloped economies.Research limitations/implications– The limits and implications of internalization are drawn in terms of theory development, legitimacy and managerial strategies.Originality/value– This paper is the first to analyze the selective internalization of societal failures by the multinational enterprises. It extends internalization theory and examines the contested notion of “public goods”.

Rift Valley Fever: scientific pathways toward public health prevention and response.

As humankind strides into the second decade of the 21st century, we can take pride in advances that have enhanced the lives of many around the world. The planet is a very different place from what it was during the 19th century. The connectivity experienced through global travel and communications was unthinkable then, when technology was about to affect nearly every facet of life. And yet, scourges that infested the industrial world at that time, then nearly disappeared during the early 1900s, in the industrialized world, like cholera and typhoid fever, 1– 3 continue to rage in Africa and Asia 4– 7 in these modern times. Despite technologic advancements, these diseases are classic indicators of inadequate infrastructure, showing persisting societal failures. While the “classic” diseases continue to rage, new highly fatal diseases have emerged or reappeared during the 21st century, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), 8, 9 Nipah virus encephalitis, 10 and avian influenza 11 with adverse global or regional public health and economic impact. These events have shown how ecologic changes brought on by factors associated with increasing human population size, like massive consumption of natural resources and encroachment on environments, have brought animals (and the pathogens that infect them) in close contact with immunologically naive humans. Once introduced into humans, those pathogens that are transmitted from human to human can spread with lightning speed by global and regional commercial markets and travel. Advancing technologies are creating exciting possibilities for prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases. They include: far-reaching and constantly improving communications tools, including use of mobile text messaging resulting in improved surveillance approaches, 12 and state-of-the-art satellite imagery and mapping capacity to forecast and detect ecologic changes and climate anomalies relevant to disease prevalence. 13, 14 In addition, monitoring of animal and insect vector mobility and geographic distributions and, development of highly sensitive diagnostic tools for use in human, animal, and vector surveillance are enhancing the ability to detect new pathogens or changes in reservoir patterns for known pathogens. These new capacities will dramatically affect the ability to detect early, and, ultimately to forecast in advance, the emergence of disease threats so that effective measures can be taken to avert or minimize the public health impact. Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is an illustrative model for assessing the impact of climate and ecology on its periodic reemergence and spread, as well as for the potential that modern technologies and public health advancements can contribute to disease forecasting, prevention, and control. 12 Rift Valley

The Hazards of Agency

The theory of agency, which has seen many recent applications in the social sciences and management literatures, is essentially a theory of failures: It seeks to understand the problems created when one party attempts to control another's behavior, given that control is costly and it often does not pay to extract perfect compliance from that agent. There are said to be two core problems of agency, moral hazard and adverse selection; Arrow refers to these as the problems of “hidden information” and “hidden action.” Societal failures in control and service are interesting in part because they are so plenary. Given the theoretical importance of agency in elucidating the nature of such failures and the methods devised in social systems to ameliorate them, we might expect to find the types and consequences of agency failures well-understood by now. Indeed, applications of agency theory have cut across the economics literature and entered the study of many disciplinary, not to speak of institutional settings. Thus, besides the strictly formal work, we see agency models applied in such areas as government regulation and bureaucratic behavior (and corruption), interest groups and corporate political action, corporate governance, the employment relation and compensation systems in firms, collective bargaining (and bargaining in general), centralization and privatization in economies, diplomatic behavior, auditing relationships and control in the firm, municipal bond issuance, and so on. Given their importance, it is surprising — indeed, stunning — to find a lack of consensus on exactly what the problems of agency are. This paper analyzes the variety of definitions of these problems that appear in the literature, and serves, in a way, as a survey and reconceptualization of the critical issues surrounding the problems of agency. Some of the major variables that emerge from the analysis are then employed together to identify some major types of agency relations. I conclude that the key definitional distinction relating to these concepts should be observability vs. judgment disability, rather than hidden information vs. hidden action. I then show how the elemental concepts underlying moral hazard and adverse selection can be systematically sorted into parallel processes of problems of agent and principal action, focussing on the principal side. Among the insights generated is that adverse selection is better conceived as two separate, if related problems, those of adverse claims and of adverse performance. The logic of what I call the core agency sequence generates the following problems, respectively, as the principal creates, specifies, observes, interprets, judges, and intervenes/redirects agency: Adverse Claims, Communicative Hazard, Moral Hazard, Cognitive Hazard, Adverse Performance, and Control Hazard. The problem of adverse claims suggests the need to generate what I call a theory of testaments, for which the existing literature in such areas as reputation and legitimacy would be a subset. The paper also identifies and discusses certain other problematic situations in agency, including what I call the problem of distrust in the commons.

School Exclusion: The Will to Punish1

ABSTRACT: This paper examines perspectives on student disaffection in education at the levels of culture and policy. It considers the balance between punitive/exclusionary and therapeutic/restorative positions. The paper engages with concepts of retributive punishment (Murray, 2004a; 2004b), social welfare ideologies (Esping-Andersen, 1990) and discourses of social exclusion (Levitas, 1998). The conclusion is that policy choices are made about how disaffected, at risk young people are to be provided for, and these policy choices are not contained simply within an education policy and practice setting. The policy responses emerge from national and local government decision-making. They correlate with national indicators of punitiveness in the criminal justice system and the scale of inequalities tolerated. Policies resonate with deep-seated cultural positions which are linked to the willingness to pay – for prevention or for punishment – and with the propensity to allocate blame either to individuals and families or to societal failures. Opportunities for intervention at points in the reinforcing cycle of punitiveness are indicated.