Time Of Social Change Research Articles

Abjection and Exclusion in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child

Doris Lessing’s 1988 novella The Fifth Child tells the story of Ben Lovatt, a so-called “monstrous child” in the eyes of his family. In light of Julia Kristeva’s illustration of abjection, it can be seen that Ben’s otherness has unsettled the conventional assumption about children, and his physical and behavioral differences, viewed as a threat to the idealized family life, accounts for his fate of being excluded and rejected. In consideration of the contextualized descriptions in the book and the political background in which the story is set, it is reasonable to assume that what happens to Ben is indicative of what the non-European immigrants went through in the post-war Britian. The exclusive attitude of the Lovatts towards Ben bears much resemblance to the nationwide rejection of the “dark strangers” who brought with them different customs and values. In this sense, the story of Ben, a heterogenetic other who challenges the fixed perception of what British children should look like, can be taken as a mirror which reflects, in the time of social change, how the British society tackled difference in culture.

Evading Censorship. Spanish Radio Disobedience During Late Francoism

Unlike in neighbouring countries, Spanish radio stations were subject to a severe censorship regime for most of the twentieth century. After the end of the civil war (1939), General Franco’s regime issued regulations to control the press and radio. In the case of newspapers, the Press Act (1966) eased this surveillance, but such relief did not apply to radio broadcasting. However, in the second half of Franco’s dictatorship, some local stations and, especially, a nation-wide radio station (Cadena SER) tried to bypass restrictions set by the authorities. This article covers different initiatives, paying special attention to those developed by Cadena SER, which played a decisive role in liberalising information. To this end, journalists who played a key role in this transition were interviewed. As a result of this research, it has been observed that, despite the threats, disobedience was a constant from the 1960s onwards. Such disobedience was not always aimed at fighting the regime during this time of social change, but also responded to the broadcasters’ commercial strategies. It has also been found that certain authorities facilitated these activities through their personal influence.

‘Girls do this, guys do that’: how first-in-family students negotiate working-class gendered subjectivities during a time of social change

Despite efforts to foster a more equitable gender representation, Australia's higher education sector and workforce continue to be highly segregated. This article focusses on the gendered experiences of first-in-family (FIF) students—many who are from low-socioeconomic communities—transitioning to Australian universities. In terms of the gendered nature of widening participation, we know students who are FIF will often study disciplines which align with traditional gender norms. Drawing on the First-in-Family Project (n = 48), we present the analysis of our findings in two parts. First, we provide an overview of the cohort where we analyse the gendering of degree choice of FIF students. Second, underpinned by theoretical work focussed on student gendered and classed subjectivities, we address how FIF young people negotiated classed and gendered norms during the transition to university. Our data suggest that young people engage in ‘gender work’ and ‘class work’ which informs their identities and how they make choices about their futures. Based on our research, we argue that to achieve social justice there is a need for a renewed attention to gender within the widening participation agenda.

Conjuring Up a King

Conjuring Up a King

Innovations and Challenges in Identity Research

In his oft-cited monograph Second language identities (2007), David Block made his thorough foray into examining issues surrounding second language acquisition and identities from a poststructuralist lens. Since then, his work has been essential reading for second language researchers and practitioners interested in how identity plays out in social contexts. In 2022, Block’s new book Innovation and Challenges in Identity Research comes out as a timely response to the intricate ways in which identity should be made sense of and researched in times of social change. Compared to his previous related monographs (see Block 2003, 2007), this well-written volume features Block’s new thinking shaped by Marxist political economy, which leads to the critical realist stance he has taken to capture and evaluate innovations and challenges in identity studies. Reading through this book, I was particularly drawn to Block’s disciplinary transcendent approach to delivering a historically situated and thoroughly compelling framing of identity, which constitutes one of the primary strengths of the book. I also learned that identity is not simply a matter of individual agency but largely rests upon the social structure which envelops and shapes our ways of being in the complex and uncertain world.

Leadership Styles of Heads of School and Teachers’ Creative Behavior in a Time of Social Change

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic led to the transfer of the educational system in Poland to the online realm. This had a massive effect on the way in which lessons were taught, as well as on the communication system within the schools themselves. This study sought to understand the shift from offline teaching to online through the perspective of the leadership style of the head of the school, and what that style meant for the school’s teachers. In moving to a different delivery method, teachers were required to be creative – but not all teachers were equally creative or equally adaptable.

The Hermeneutics of Tradition: Political Implications of a Philosophical Legacy

The interrogation of the problematic character of established traditions has become an increasingly dominant feature of contemporary political and social discourse. Gadamer's discussion of tradition takes on an often-unacknowledged utility in light of these discussions by both observing the subtle ways in which tradition persists even in times of social change while also placing an emphasis on the volitional (hence, risky and contingent) character of engagements with tradition. Gadamer's approach allows for a fidelity to tradition that nonetheless allows for a critical, emancipatory engagement with it, a precursor to the more explicitly political projects of hermeneutic thinkers such as Luigi Pareyson and Gianni Vattimo. This hermeneutic lineage offers our modern age a chance to embrace a new and more authentic relationship with the traditions in which we always-already find ourselves situated by giving us the opportunity to make those traditions speak to the challenges of our tumultuous present.

KOMSOMOL MEMBERS OF THE RUSSIAN PROVINCE OF THE FIRST CALL: ATTITUDE AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY

The definition of such terms as ―generation of revolution‖, ―generation of revolutionary change‖ used in the literature includes people born after the 1890s., whose social formation and political activity occurred at the time of the revolution and civil war. At the same time, even narrower social groups can be seen within this generation, among which the author singles out the generation of the first Komsomol members as a specific social group that unites people of the same age and common opportunities. The participants in the revolutionary transformations, who were born in the 1890s, were already formed personalities: they grew up in a traditional environment, with its traditional values. Boys and girls who joined the communist union in 1919-1920 were for the most part born at the beginning of the 20th century. For them principles, values, rules, traditions, that remained unshakable and traditional for their parents, in the difficult conditions of a changing reality lost their exclusivity and absoluteness. The capability to have a different worldview, andbehavior, accordingly, was at a certain stage reinforced by certain forces that used it for their own purposes. At the same time, as it often happens in times of social change, social lifts began to work, giving teenagers real opportunities to break out of the reality that was predicted for them by their original existence and available opportunities. The formation of the ―generation of Komsomol members‖ in various regions of the country, with a common trend, took place under the influence of local subjective factors. Here, Orenburg region is taken as a region, the Orenburg province - the southeastern outskirts of the European part of the country. The source base is built on the sources of personal origin of the region in question.

Incongruence between parental and adolescent educational aspirations hinders academic attainment.

Previous research has shown that parental educational aspirations for their children are an important predictor of children's academic attainment. However, recent studies have pointed to potential negative effects, in particular if there is a mismatch between parental educational aspirations and the aspirations of their children. This study examines (1) the role of socio-demographic and school achievement-related factors in shaping a potential (mis)match between parental educational aspirations and the aspirations of their children, and (2) whether incongruence between parental and their children's educational aspirations hinders academic attainment in times of social change. We use data collected for the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study (BCS70) and Next Steps (formerly known as the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England), a cohort of young people born in 1989/90. We find that in both cohorts socio-demographic and achievement-related characteristics are associated with incongruent aspirations, and that incongruent aspirations between parents and their children are associated with a decreased likelihood of participating in and completing higher education. The study contributes to current debates regarding the causes and correlates of discrepancies in educational aspirations and how such discrepancies affect later life chances.

Unifying state and nation: modern myths and narratives of Japanese nationalism in times of social change

Kokutai (national polity) was notoriously the ideological organising principle of imperial Japanese society in the early twentieth century, but the end of WWII saw it replaced by a more nation-oriented view of the relationship between the state and the people. This change led to an interpretation of the nation that prioritises ethnic nationalism, although its key text, the Postwar Constitution seems to invite a more civic interpretation. This paper argues that the change and this inconsistency should be analysed in terms of two modern myths – the myth of kokutai and the myth of homogeneous ethnos. The key to the influence of these myths lies in their symbolic representation in the 1889 Meiji and 1947 Postwar Constitutions, and how their historically contingent interpretation formalised relations between the people and the state. These interpretations produced contesting narrative articulations of the myths, among which first statist and later ethnic nationalist narratives emerged dominant, but in both cases remained in tension with other narratives.

Possibilities for new social work professional resistance in Chile: times of social change?

In the current unscrupulous neoliberal climate, social workers are increasingly confronted with ethical and political tensions that clash with the profession’s commitments to human rights and social justice. However, despite neoliberalism’s global reach, the scholarship on social work professional resistance has been largely limited to the Global North. Taking into consideration this absence in the literature, this article seeks to explore the possibilities for professional resistance in the Global South, specifically, in Chile, a country in which neoliberalism was forcefully imposed and that has experienced an exponential growth in social movements over the past two decades. The following article explores the structural and material conditions that have historically shaped social work resistances, arguing that the current social and political climate, specifically, the constitutional process under way, presents a space from which new resistances are possible and necessary in order to challenge neoliberal hegemony.

Effects of between and within Herd Moves on Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV) Recrudescence and Shedding in Captive Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus).

Haemorrhagic disease associated with elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (Elephantid herpesvirus, EEHV) infections is the leading cause of death for Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) calves. This study assessed the effect of captive herd management on EEHV shedding, as evidence of latent infection reactivation, focusing on: (1) the influence of social change on the odds of recrudescence; (2) the respective effects of between and within herd moves; and (3) characteristics of recrudescent viral shedding. Trunk and conjunctival swabs (n = 165) were obtained from six elephants at an EAZA-accredited zoo, collected during a period of social stability, and at times of social change. Longitudinal sampling took place at times of moving two bulls out of the collection and one new bull into an adjacent enclosure to the cow herd (between herd moves), and during a period of mixing this new bull with the cow herd to facilitate mating (within herd moves). Quantitative PCR was employed to detect EEHV 1a/b, 4a/b, and EF–1–α (housekeeping gene). Generalised estimating equations determined EEHV recrudescence odds ratios (OR) and relative viral DNA load. Sixteen EEHV 1a/b shedding events occurred, but no EEHV 4a/b was detected. All management-derived social changes promoted recrudescence (social change OR = 3.27, 95% CI = 0.412–26, p = 0.262; and between herd moves OR = 1.6, 95% CI = 0.178−14.4, p = 0.675), though within herd movements posed the most significant increase of EEHV reactivation odds (OR = 6.86, 95% CI = 0.823−57.1, p = 0.075) and demonstrated the strongest relative influence (post hoc Tukey test p = 0.0425). Shedding onset and magnitude ranged from six to 54 days and from 3.59 to 11.09 ΔCts. Differing challenges are associated with between and within herd movements, which can promote recrudescence and should be considered an exposure risk to naïve elephants.

Non-governmental organization global, volunteerism local: An exploration of moral anthropology

This paper is an exploratory study of moral anthropology focused on the local practices of global non-governmental organizations. For more than 10 years, Ruili Women and Children Development Center (the Center) in the southwest border region of China has developed itself into a non-governmental organization that adopts transnational humanitarianism and fosters a spirit of grassroots volunteer dedication. In this paper, two anthropologists’ analytic framework of morality will be examined and my own views on morality/ethics will be discussed in three aspects: morality as norms, morality as doing good, and ethics as affect. The Center came into existence in response to the decline and uncertainty of local morality (morality as norms). Under such conditions, the Center allies itself with transnational humanitarianism to provide much-needed medical care for the sick in the region (morality as doing good). In the process, the Center, mainly consisting of female members, has created a “life-environment” that is in tune with global humanitarianism and an army of devoted volunteers, especially among local HIV-infected women, who have found “ joie” in life itself (ethics as affect). This study hopes to broaden our theoretical and experiential understanding of non-governmental organizations, and of how to improve quality of life in times of social change.

O poder da videoarte e do cinema negros na arte contemporânea

This paper provides a critical framework to discuss the history of Black Film traditions in contemporary visual art. Since production of video art started in 1960, Black video and video performance artists had until now little visibility, were unrecognized and under-researched as they should have been. The paper aims to show the role of the Canadian video artists: Stan Douglas, Sylvia D. Hamilton, Michele Pearson Clarke; Brazilian artists: Ayrson Heraclito, Renata Felinto; and the South Africa Filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah; in redefining black identity. The works of these artists are very important to addressing black aesthetics in contemporary art films and video art in the present times of social change, black activism and Post-blackness philosophical movement. These artists discuss blackness, diversity, diaspora, and deconstruct a white Eurocentrism narrative and explores the complexity of the contemporary art scenes of Africa and video art of the Americas. This is of paramount importance to the role of black Films in the arts, as well as to decolonize artistic institutions, in addition to showing the importance of black video art and film. I will present a discourse on the works of the above mentioned artists, as they are engaged with political culture, and they make references in their oeuvre to African roots, race, gender, politics, society, and culture. These artists raise the social practice and contemporary issues for black people. It is important to emphasize their black video art contributes to this rise in the reshaping of black identity in art and in Film studies.

Making the planet green again: The interplay of attitudes and group norms in the conversion to organic farming

AbstractAttitudes and social norms are key social psychological concepts that have often been considered as independent determinants of human behavior. However, questions about the interplay between the two are somewhat of a blind spot in social psychology. In the present research, we test the hypothesis that when an important change in norms is involved, behavioral intentions will be shaped by a discrepancy between personal attitudes and the perceived group norm, that is the perception of other group members’ attitudes. This proposition is tested and supported across three studies in a context of the conversion to organic farming, a behavior indicative of a significant societal and behavioral change. Farmers who did convert to organic farming were those who perceive other farmers to hold less positive attitudes toward this environmentally‐friendly practice compared to their own (Study 1a & 1b, N = 1,023). Among conventional farmers, the intention to convert to organic farming is also predicted by a discrepancy between personal attitudes and the perceived group norm (Study 1b). Finally, among agricultural colleges’ students (Study 2, N = 280), the intention to become an organic farmer was influenced by an interaction between attitudes and perceived group norm and not only by independent effects of these two variables. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for a better understanding of behavioral adaptation in times of social change are discussed.

Transformation of the Self in a Time of Chaos

This essay looks at the intellectual relationship between author Angela Gilliam and Afro-Brazilian scholar-activist Abdias Nascimento. In 1968, both Gilliam and Nascimento were involved in self-examination and reinvention in terms of the positive affirmation of blackness and politicization of racial consciousness. This was a crucial time of social change and political struggle for equal rights to citizenship in Brazil and the United States. It was in her interpreter-translator work for Nascimento that Gilliam’s relationship to cultural and political expressions of peoples of African descent became deepened. This essay is a longer version of the lecture she delivered during the 2015 Abdias Nascimento symposium held at Brown for which she sent to us to include in this special issue before her passing in September 2018.

ViewpointRuminations on peer review in the time of social change

PurposeThis viewpoint article looks at several approaches to peer review that become detrimental to the scholarly process and disadvantage diverse voices in the scholarly conversation.Design/methodology/approachAs a viewpoint article, the piece relies on published research and the author's personal experience as an author and a journal editor.FindingsThe article focuses on the manuscript structure; manuscript length expectations; and several immediately obvious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the scholarly communication process.Originality/valueThe article addresses the aforementioned aspects of peer review with a goal of contemplating their cumulative impact on the state of diversity in scholarly communication and suggests possible ways of rethinking the situation.

História social da criança proletária

Dentro das intencionalidades possíveis, este artigo se colocou como desafio contribuir para a composição de uma proposta de história social da criança proletária, tendo em vista as interpretações e perspectivas históricas idealistas, não históricas, hibridas, parciais e descontextualizadas que existem sobre as visões, os sentidos e os modos de conceber as crianças e o conceito de infância desde os primórdios da Revolução Industrial até os nossos dias. Ao analisar a produção acadêmica nacional e internacional, constatamos um denominador em comum: mesmo existindo uma grande variedade e quantidade de pesquisas vinculadas a diversos âmbitos da criança e sua infância, os estudos sobre crianças proletárias em tempos de profundas mudanças econômicas e sociais ocorridas no século XIX na Europa é quase que insignificante. Valendo-nos dos aportes do materialismo histórico e dialético, analisamos as contribuições de A situação da classe trabalhadora na Inglaterra, de Friedrich Engels, para a compreensão do tema. Tendo como fundamento os aportes da obra clássica de Engels, o estudo conclui que é possível visualizar uma nova configuração do conceito e de um novo sentimento de infância, de natureza materialista e não idealista, baseado fundamentalmente no papel que coube às crianças proletárias em tempos de mudanças sociais. Ao ser elaborado e redimensionado pela classe trabalhadora, ele precisa ser reconhecido e incorporado pela academia.

Struggling with Emotions in Times of Social Change:Control Restoring Operations in the Workplace and the Family

Struggling with Emotions in Times of Social Change:Control Restoring Operations in the Workplace and the Family

The mythologisation of key workers: occupational prestige gained, sustained... and lost?

PurposeKey workers are deemed “essential” for keeping the country going while the rest of us have been resigned to the safety of our homes. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, key workers have become the exalted symbol of the pandemic; although, during pre-pandemic many of these roles were considered “low skilled” and were (and still are) low paid.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis uses newspapers as data sources to discuss occupational prestige and situate it within previous theory.FindingsThis social commentary discusses how occupational prestige evolves and devolves during times of social change, and how elevated status, dependent on one's service to the country in the spirit of a “war-time” narrative, is just temporary and fleeting. Prestige is wrapped up in notions of class, income and education, and during the pandemic, “key workers” have become their own sub-group with an almost mythologised status and value, which the authors argue might take the focus away from genuine efforts to improve working conditions (e.g. access to PPE and pay rises etcetera).Originality/valueThe article considers the current value of key workers and how elevated levels of prestige are transitory. The enduring nature of this new status is yet to be seen. More qualitative nuanced research is required around how occupational prestige changes, evolves and devolves and more quantitative research on why and how widespread some of the critical issues might be.