Socio-political Turbulence Research Articles

Embracing uncertainty: porous and actionable responses to climate change at the borders of Indigenous and scientific expertise(s) in Siberia

AbstractThis article explores uncertainty as an onto‐epistemological concept that reveals integrative capacities of Indigenous and scientific knowledge. Looking at official scientific approaches to climate change in Russia, it traces how Indigenous peoples in Siberia navigate their lives as they continue to witness anthropogenic causes of climatic degradation intertwined with forceful denial of Indigenous needs and sociopolitical turbulence. By focusing on two ethnographic accounts involving Indigenous Eveny and Nanai, the article explores how uncertainty, and in particular environmental uncertainty, can be dealt with, acted upon, and deployed productively while broadening our understandings of vulnerability, agency, and resilience. Drawing on discrete Indigenous strategies of hariok among Nanai and nyamnin among Eveny, the analysis reveals a pathway to think about adaptive potentialities of uncertainty as a mode of responding to rapidly shifting environmental and sociopolitical conditions.

Проблема взаимоотношений с народом в деятельности Императорского Православного Палестинского общества (конец XIX – начало XX в.)

The activities of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS), founded in 1882, reflected important trends in the socio-political and ideological development of Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Created mostly on order to strengthen the political influence of Russia in the Holy Land, and to assist the pilgrims arriving there, the IOPS, from the point of view of its founders, had another extremely important task – to develop the contacts between the power structures and the conservative upper classes of society with the masses of the common people. Seeking to reach this goal, the IOPS launched the extensive publishing activities, established its local departments in the dioceses and organized there the so-called popular readings dedicated to the Holy Land. In the course of these activities, a number of problems emerged related to the question of the ways and mechanisms of interaction between an educated society and the masses. It was necessary to realize what subjects and forms of presentation of the material would attract the people to the greatest extent, what forms of communication should be used, how much the consciousness of the intelligentsia differs from the system of ideas of the social lower classes. The solution of these issues was supposed to help strengthen the religious foundations of people's self-consciousness in the period of growing socio-political turbulence. The conservative leaders of IOPS also believed that developing of the above-mentioned activities would give them the opportunity to comprehend the peculiarities of the common people’s worldview. The beginning of the revolution in 1905, the development of secularization tendencies and the aggravation of social contradictions did not allow the IOPS to fulfill the intended program. However, its activities became an important page in the history of Russia in the pre-revolutionary period.

The Importance of Becoming Tamed: Wild Food Plants as Possible Novel Crops in Selected Food-Insecure Regions

Domestication of new plants is one of the key (ongoing) phenomena in the history of agriculture. Wild plants are the ancestors of current and future crops and the largest reservoir of genetic diversity for crop breeding and improvement. Wild food species have been used for human nutrition since ancient times and are often the object of human strategies for coping with emergency situations, such as natural disasters and conflicts. We analyzed qualitative data collected through ethnobotanical field studies conducted in recent years in five selected Eurasian regions (Afghanistan, Kurdistan region of Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Ukraine) that have been recently affected by wars and/or socio-political turbulence. Data were collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with local people. We identified five taxa for each region, which are culturally very salient in the local food systems, that retain an important economic value in local markets, and that, therefore, could be good candidates for becoming novel crops. The cultivation of the reported species may significantly help local communities in their post-war livelihoods and especially in terms of food security and domestic nutritional care. Future studies should focus on the agronomic feasibility of the highlighted species within their regional ecosystems.

Introduction: Hong Kong independent documentaries and their visibility

In their general introduction to the present Special Issue the authors trace the origins of and motivation behind much of the independent documentary filmmaking produced in the city during a period of great sociopolitical turbulence, leading up to the tight censorship protocols put in place after the mainland government’s promulgation of the repressive National Security Law in 2020. With reference to the individual essays that comprise this volume, they chart the sudden and unprecedented rise of documentary filmmaking in Hong Kong following many decades of public indifference to the genre. Limited public and underground screenings that took place before absolute censorship measures were implemented in 2021 showed huge box-office demand for these topical films, reflecting images of ordinary Hong Kong people and their struggle for political representation. This opening essay introduces a range of essays and one interview, mostly in relation to specific films, dealing with the now-contentious coupling of documentary films or television broadcasts and democracy. As the essays indicate, some directors and producers of these observational and participatory documentaries are still active overseas and many of the films discussed can now only be screened outside Hong Kong. Nevertheless, they bear witness to a spirit of resilience and resistance as well as a deep-seated desire for a genuine democracy based on universal suffrage constantly reneged on by the city’s various rulers, from the colonial era until now.

Synergetic Modeling of the System of State Organization of Society

The research contained in this work is aimed at actualizing the problem of forecasting the sustainable development of society and the state in the conditions of multifactorial socio-political turbulence observed in the modern world. The stated provisions and conclusions are intended to draw attention to the need to increase the effectiveness of cognitive activity in relation to state-organizational reality through logical and rational tools associated with the development of an appropriate dynamic self-organizational model of the object under study. The article, appealing to the synergetic methodology, expressing the basis of the post-non-classical scientific paradigm, contains an analysis concerning the issues of the ontology of modelling of human-dimensional systems; modelling of crisis states of socio-political systems; program formula of the dynamic model of the state system. The article substantiates the position on the fundamental possibility and importance of carrying out interdisciplinary design and research activities in the state-legal sphere, using methods of mathematical modelling and computer programming, thereby ensuring an increase in the quality of social engineering, predictability and functionality of the system of the state organization of society.

Downside systematic risk in Pakistani stock market: role of corporate governance, financial liberalization and investor sentiment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance, investor sentiment and financial liberalization on downside systematic risk and the interplay of socio-political turbulence on this relationship through static and dynamic panel estimation models.Design/methodology/approachThe evidence is based on a sample of 230 publicly listed non-financial firms from Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) over the period 2008–2018. Furthermore, this study analyzes the data through Blundell and Bond (1998) technique in the full sample as well sub-samples (big and small firms).FindingsThe authors document that corporate governance mechanism reduces the downside risk, whereas investor sentiment and financial liberalization increase the investors’ exposure toward downside risk. Particularly, the results provide some new insights that the socio-political turbulence as a moderator weakens the impact of corporate governance and strengthens the effect of investor sentiment and financial liberalization on downside risk. Consistent with prior studies, the analysis of sub-samples reveals some statistical variations in large and small-size sampled firms. Theoretically, the findings mainly support agency theory, noise trader theory and the Keynesians hypothesis.Originality/valueStock market volatility has become a prime area of concern for investors, policymakers and regulators in emerging economies. Primarily, the existence of market volatility is attributed to weak governance, irrational behavior of market participants, the liberation of financial policies and sociopolitical turbulence. Therefore, the present study provides simultaneous empirical evidence to determine whether corporate governance, investor sentiment and financial liberalization hinder or spur downside risk in an emerging economy. Furthermore, the work relates to a small number of studies that examine the role of socio-political turbulence as a moderator on the relationship of corporate governance, investor sentiment and financial liberalization with downside systematic risk.

Reading Bonhoeffer amid the Hong Kong Protests

This essay reflects on how the people of Hong Kong have read the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and found inspiration for their own struggle against authoritarianism, specifically following the pro-democracy movement in recent years. The purpose here is not to offer a first-hand interpretation of Bonhoeffer's works, but rather to present a historical exercise in sorting through contextual readings of Bonhoeffer. In what follows we will first offer a review of the church's participation in the protests that took place in Hong Kong during the second half of 2019 and articulate the relevance of Bonhoeffer's thought for the situation. Secondly, we will reflect on several important concepts concerning how Bonhoeffer transformed from a seeming ‘pacifist’ into a participant of the anti-Nazi movement. Next, some important figures involved in the Hong Kong democracy movement who are interested in Bonhoeffer will be examined. They are not Christians in the usual sense and thus offer us a good opportunity for examining why Bonhoeffer's late thought can gain ‘this-worldly’ acceptance. Interestingly, through this process we find that the particular contextual reading conditioned by Hong Kong's recent socio-political turbulence has offered occasions to rethink and develop some of Bonhoeffer's important concepts treated in existing scholarship. 1

СОЦИАЛЬНЫЙ СОСТАВ АКТИВНЫХ УЧАСТНИКОВ БИТВЫ ПРИ СТОУК-ФИЛДЕ 16 ИЮНЯ 1487 ГОДА

The battle of Stoke Field is often proclaimed to be the finish of the Wars of the Roses in England. It was less than two years after the overthrow of Richard III Plantagenet by Henry VII Tudor. His victory was not so much the result of military superiority as the consequence of a policy of intrigue and betrayal, and it explains the preservation of a significant number of hidden adherents of the overthrown dynasty around the new monarch. Their unification around the Yorkist pretender to the throne led to the last major battle in more than thirty years of struggle for the English throne. Prosopographic analysis allows the author to assess the degree of participation of various social groups in military activities and the impact of the Wars of the Roses on society. Written sources provide an opportunity to partially recover the named composition of the participants in the battle. The author identified 170 people. Most of them are Lancastrians (134 people). The largest social group (89 people) was of gentry (knights and squires). They served as middle and junior officers and formed the basis of both armies. They depended on the outcome of the battle. The battle of Stoke Field was a typical battle of the Wars of the Roses. The most active participants were representatives of the nobility and gentry, and their reasons for participation were personal ties among the nobility. The defeat of the Yorkists did not mean the end of sociopolitical turbulence (which gives some historians a reason to extend the Wars of the Roses to the late 15th century and even to the early 16th century), but subsequent hostilities were social rebellions rather than the episodes of "Game of Thrones".

Interrogating Boundaries against Animals and Machines: Human Speciesism in British Newspapers

ABSTRACT Humans favor and venerate their ingroups, while disregarding outgroups to the degree of dehumanizing them. We explore the social construction of such boundaries and its associated speciesism toward two nonhuman outgroups: animals and machines. For this, we analyzed UK newspaper coverages of the binaries Human–Animal and Human–Machine between 1995 and 2010. We quantified if and how tolerance toward ambiguous concepts that challenge and expand definitions of humanness (e.g., nonhuman primates, cyborgs) varied across time as well as with journalist gender, political leaning, and expertise. In this analysis, the ca. 1100 individual journalists stood as proxies for the British public and therefore as a human-ingroup subset. We found more tolerance toward intermediaries in broadsheet newspapers, females, and subject experts, as opposed to tabloids, males, and subject novices. Moreover, ambiguity tolerance hit a low during the year 2000, likely due to Western sociopolitical turbulence—potentially including wider societal stress over the landmark millennium year itself—attesting that ingroups become more closed during stressful times. Compared with the plasticity of the Human–Animal dichotomy, the Human–Machine binary was more rigid, indicating that the relative novelty of IT developments triggers increased caution and anxiety. Our research suggests that cognitive mechanisms facilitating human-ingroup protection are deep-rooted, albeit malleable according to changing socioeconomic conditions.

School leadership for civic learning: The case of socio-political turbulence in Hong Kong

Currently, the challenges deriving from the complex and dynamic socio-political context in Hong Kong influence principals’ and teachers’ relationships and interactions. Academic autonomy in Hong Kong secondary schools is not simply granted by the principals, it is influenced by the society, school conditions and key stakeholders. This study employed qualitative methods to examine how principals negotiate the political context surrounding citizenship education and how these practices influence the civic learning in schools. The results revealed that in school citizenship education, when principals lacked a clear vision of citizenship education, most teachers were compliant and avoided discussing controversial political topics with their students. Such teachers had less autonomy and consequently less self-efficacy. When principals mediated the diverse needs of students and balanced the different expectations of school stakeholders, there were both compliant and critical teachers. Teacher autonomy and self-efficacy were also affected by the current socio-political context in Hong Kong. When principals had a clear school civic mission, the results differed across schools. These findings suggest that principals have to reflect on their own understanding of the purposes and perspectives of citizenship education significantly to meet the multiple demands of a complicated and turbulent socio-political environment.

Overview of the Course of Undergraduate Medical Education in the Sudan

Abstract

Миграция в Россию из стран СНГ: основные ракурсы проблемы

The study of migration from the CIS countries to Russia involves an analysis of its various compo-nents: socio-economic, sociocultural, legal. It’s pos-sible to outline three most important aspects of this problem. The first – socio-economic view – related to labor migration and the specifics of domestic and socio-cultural adaptation of migrants. The second – macroeconomic view – is interesting from the point of view of the influence of the migration factor on the structure and strategic development of the Rus-sian economy. The third – legal view – i important in the context of illegal migration. The problem under discussion also needs macro-political reflection. It is important to note that the macro-political dimension of migration from the CIS countries to Russia today includes such significant aspects as the problem of growing ethnic and political tension by the accumu-lation of local societal contradictions between mi-grants and native people, the transformation of the Russian national-state identity under the influence of migration practices and the role of the «migration factor» in the growth of socio-political turbulence in Russian society.

Introduction

The sociopolitical turbulence in the recent history of Turkey has radically affected the theatre and performance scene. In a climate of fear and repression, performing arts have been fighting for survival and developing ways to endure the dark times, to achieve freedom of artistic expression and open platforms for critical communication. This collection of articles considers contemporary theatre and performance in Turkey, reflecting on some of the complex issues that practitioners, academics and institutions have faced in the current political environment. Each author presents a part of the complex picture of theatre and performance culture in Turkey, and hopes to start a conversation about this oppressed, yet fertile, artistic landscape.

Selective Consent and Dissent: Professional Response to Reform in the Post-Crisis Greek NHS

Utilising the sociology of the professions as an analytical framework, the article explores the response of the Greek medical profession to state-imposed managerialism during times of economic recession and socio-political turbulence. It is argued that the case of southern welfare states, permeated by clientelism and corruption, underpins a distinct form of professional–state relations, currently missing from relevant theoretical discussions. Rich qualitative data collected from practising hospital doctors in Greece reveal a willingness to concede elements of clinical autonomy in exchange for the minimisation of the role of a corrupt state in the organisation of the Greek National Health Service.

The Egyptian Spartacus: The poetry of Amal Dunqul

Mounting sociopolitical changes, along with the incompetence of the post-revolutionary regimes in Egypt have functioned as adequate themes for the writings of Amal Dunqul. He adopted speaking truth to poweras an ideology to not only document the consequences for such sociopolitical turbulence but also to face the incompetence of the authority. He employed this concept in his writings to empower his people to move to ask for their rights. He believed in the strong role of literature in changing societies. The paper, thus, displays the role of Amal Dunqul as a real intellectual who courageously speaks truth to power fearless of any consequences. It also illustrates how he was influenced by the socio-political turbulence took place especially after 1952 revolution and the defeat of 1967. In addition to analyzing his stance towards the authority of Nasser and Sadat in his poetry and how he stood against their policies.

Socio-Political Turbulence of the Ottoman Empire: Reconsidering Sufi and Kadizadeli Hostility in 17th Century

The fierce hostility that happened between the Kadizadelis and the Sufis during the 17th century of the Ottoman Empire is not the new issue in Islamic civilization discourses. During this period, the empire suffered from massive decadences in almost all sectors. Kadizadelis believed that such phenomenon did not come out of the void. They insisted that the crux of the problem was primarily laid in the heresies and religious innovations (bidᶜah) that were promoted largely by the Sufis. Embarking from this suspicion and anxiety, they initiated propagandas in which they aimed to bring back people to re-embracement of the primordial teachings of Islam. Nevertheless, many historians and scholars have doubted Kadizadelis attempts. They suspected that there were other non-religious motives that stirred their revival agendas. This paper presents an analysis that aims to challenge the commonly believed notion in which the Sufis and the Kadizadelis were totally adversarial.
 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20414/ujis.v20i2.807

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Social Theory and Literature in Falling Leaves

This study takes a sociological approach to exploring the notion of structure and agency in Adeline Yen Mah’s Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter. Structure and agency, one of the oldest debates in the social sciences, seeks to determine whether human beings are able to exercise agency over social structures and the numerous obstacles that come their way, or whether they are inevitably subject to such boundaries. Falling Leaves is an autobiography based on the author’s traumatic experiences of facing alienation and rejection from her own family. Throughout the book, the author describes how she goes about addressing the unending emotional abuse that she must endure and demonstrates a powerful determination to transcend her misfortunes. Furthermore, the story is narrated against the backdrop of a socio-political turbulence during an era in which China faces ongoing political trials and upheaval; as such, the author juxtaposes her own calamities against the strife of her country in search for meaning and identity. Through a structure and agency framework, this study focuses on the notion of reflexivity, the process of self-engagement and introspection that individuals employ in order to confront the structural limitations in their lives.

Arabic-speaking Immigrants Before the Courts in Tucumán, Argentina, 1910–1940

This article studies the personal experiences and daily interactions of Arabic-speaking immigrants living in Tucuman, Argentina, during an era of intense economic dislocation and sociopolitical turbulence (1910–1940). Court proceedings make up the evidence of the following discussion to assess the varied experiences of non-elite Arabic speakers residing in Tucuman. Immigrants, like Argentine citizens, used the justice system to seek redress or answer allegations of aberrant behavior. Recent scholarship on emigre colonies generally focuses on their institutions, including cultural organizations and the immigrant press, which offer the experiences and perspectives of a narrow group of people. While these works have added great depth to this field, much less attention has been paid to immigrants who did not associate with these institutions. A series of court proceedings related to violent crime and divorce demonstrate the difficulty of interpersonal relationships and life in Argentina and the consequences for certain actions.

‘Conception Trauma’ of Group Analysis in Serbia

Traumas that occur at the very beginning or just before the creation of a professional field, seem to be inscribed into their own conception. Bringing such traumatic experience to awareness is usually much more troublesome than those which intrude later into a field. Finding ways to let their contents emerge from being stored in some proto-mental, unthinkable psycho-social areas—and translating them into thinkable forms in search of finding meaning and integration—is a developmental challenge for the field and its organizations. After a brief reminder of the socio-political turbulence in Serbia over the last two decades, we shall give some basic information about the establishment of group analysis in Serbia with examples of traumatic intrusions into those processes. We shall then skip from external issues into the internal space, sharing some illustrative dream contents from the ‘GAS reflection group’, and show how they were helpful in understanding the ‘organizational conception trauma’.

‘Thy Kingdom Come’: The Impact of Colonization and Proselytization on Religion among the Nagas

Does socio-political circumstance have an impact on religion, religious conversion or religious beliefs? Assuming it does, how does such circumstance shape the theology and beliefs of a people who exist amid a turbulent socio-political situation? In this paper I will analyze the impact of socio-political turbulence on Nagas and assert that among the Nagas there is a correlation between the height of political violence and the rapid conversion to Christianity. The long history of colonial violence and suppression coupled with the undermining of Naga cultural values and practices by the process of proselytization created an atmosphere conducive for conversion to Christianity and shaped the Nagas’ theological choices.