7. Fostering Change: Art and Social Conventions

2011 ◽  
pp. 399-460
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Michael Goodhart

This chapter puts many of the ideas outlined previously to work in considering the problem of responsibility for systemic injustice. Building on the insights of Iris Marion Young and Marion Smiley, it argues that responsibility must be reconceptualized as a political rather than a philosophical problem and that its solution lies in counterhegemonic political struggles over the meaning of injustice itself. The chapter shows, in a concrete way, what such struggles might look like, describing the ways in which social conventions and interpretations structure our thinking about responsibility and what might be done to challenge and change them. It concludes that to take responsibility for injustice is to take up this political work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Sobia Kiran

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh and 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane are psychological plays that deal with the relationship between Art, Death and Morbidity. Death is an artistic solution to put an end to the morbidity of attitude caused by toxic relationships, social conventions, and totalitarian institutions. Death, may it take form of suicide or murder, is presented as a Saviour to escape the torture, suffering, depression and tyranny. Art is the creative realm of death, a defensive tool or a protective shield against the repressed uneasy traumatic memories that causes extreme unpleasure. The objective of the paper is to explore the artistic portrayal of death as a refuge from morbidity addressing the research questions 1) How do 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane and The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh suggest death as an escape from psychosis and life of suffering? 2) How does art become a source of realization of Death drive taking form of murder or suicide?


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (122) ◽  
pp. 20160414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi Moussaïd ◽  
Mubbasir Kapadia ◽  
Tyler Thrash ◽  
Robert W. Sumner ◽  
Markus Gross ◽  
...  

Understanding the collective dynamics of crowd movements during stressful emergency situations is central to reducing the risk of deadly crowd disasters. Yet, their systematic experimental study remains a challenging open problem due to ethical and methodological constraints. In this paper, we demonstrate the viability of shared three-dimensional virtual environments as an experimental platform for conducting crowd experiments with real people. In particular, we show that crowds of real human subjects moving and interacting in an immersive three-dimensional virtual environment exhibit typical patterns of real crowds as observed in real-life crowded situations. These include the manifestation of social conventions and the emergence of self-organized patterns during egress scenarios. High-stress evacuation experiments conducted in this virtual environment reveal movements characterized by mass herding and dangerous overcrowding as they occur in crowd disasters. We describe the behavioural mechanisms at play under such extreme conditions and identify critical zones where overcrowding may occur. Furthermore, we show that herding spontaneously emerges from a density effect without the need to assume an increase of the individual tendency to imitate peers. Our experiments reveal the promise of immersive virtual environments as an ethical, cost-efficient, yet accurate platform for exploring crowd behaviour in high-risk situations with real human subjects.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1277-1297 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLYN HEITMEYER

AbstractIn this article, I examine the seeming paradox of Hindu–Muslim romantic affairs in the wider context of communalism in Gujarat in the wake of the 2002 anti-Muslim violence. At the outset, such affairs appear to embody the most extreme form of taboo, both in their defiance of conventional arranged marriage systems (where caste endogamy and shared religious affiliation play a paramount role) as well as in the wider socio-political context in which Hindus and Muslims are viewed as irreconcilable enemies, or at least oppositional in lifestyle, beliefs, and values. Yet, while media reports in recent years have highlighted similar cases of transgressive liaisons elsewhere in India which have been met with extreme violence, the couplings which I describe in this article, are in practice tolerated by kin and neighbours as an ‘open secret’ which, while public knowledge, has not incurred strong retribution. While love has often been presented as a force for emancipation from the constraints of social conventions and norms in the popular media, I argue that this ‘toleration’ of inter-religious liaisons in the cases I describe suggests the very opposite: namely, that they do not present a significant challenge to entrenched social divisions at the local level.


1997 ◽  
Vol 94 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 139-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoav Shoham ◽  
Moshe Tennenholtz

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Mackie

Abstract:The scholarly discourse on social norms in the tradition of Thomas Schelling (1960) often makes a sharp distinction between social norms and social conventions. In attempting to apply that distinction to actual practices and to teach it to practitioners and students I encountered frequent difficulties and confusions, and finally concluded that it is untenable. I recommend a return to some version of Ullman-Margalit’s (1977) distinction between social norms of cooperation and social norms of coordination. Social norms, I say, are distinguished by beliefs in a relevant group that the rule is typical among them and approved of among them. I describe four ways that social norms of coordination, including conventions of social meaning, are influenced by social approval and disapproval. I contend that the effort by Southwood and Eriksson (2011) to show that social conventions and social norms are essentially different breaks down because their conception of social norms is overly moralized. I present a more social conception of social norms that does without the regnant distinction between “social norm” and “social convention” and instead allows for social norms of cooperation, social norms of coordination, and other kinds of social norms.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
J. Slater

This article explores the prophetic liminality of Christian leadership as it is practiced against the contextual backdrop of social, ecclesial and ethical upheavals such as secularism, relativism, sexism, corruption, violence, crime, women abuse, xenophobia, disbelief and disillusionment in authority both in church and state. It argues for an up-to-date and leading-edge church-ministerial response to modern-day situations. It proposes liminal and innovative leadership for both church and state. However, the liminal quality is specifically aligned with the prophetic dimension of leadership. A prophet's leadership is here understood as visionary leadership that challenges and directs people beyond the ordinary, and confronts that which is unethical in society. Liminal here implies being and functioning at the cutting-edge of events, trailbracing and by steering away from the conventional approaches. Sadly, because leadership had become enmeshed with the systemic designs of the church, society, economics, culture or tribe, it demands to be interjected with an exceptional characteristic to minister both directly and at the same time indirectly to problematic situations. In the words of Diarmud O’Murchu, for a leader to function liminally s/he needs to be on the doorstep or on the horizon of everything contemporary. For leaders to stay in force and relevant implies living with innovative freedom, with human-divine recklessness and with honest integrity. In turn for liminality to be an effective quality in leadership, it involves being spiritually and morally courageous and particularly attuned to a transcendent capacity. This enables the leader to move with the ever changing circumstances of our times, into different situations and cultures, thus devising and applying different responses that constantly accommodate new possibilities The article carves out a theological and a directional itinerary for ministerial leadership that offers a liminal-prophetic liminal–transcendent challenge to leadership today. Liminal transcendent leadership pleads not to be dictated by ecclesial or social conventions and neither by personal conventions. Liminal leadership is by nature a painful search for an appropriate response to what is new, for that which is different in contemporary scenarios.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Alma Isunza Bizuet

En este artículo analizo la propuesta de cambio de paradigmas de las organizaciones burocráticas que busca mejorar la calidad de los servicios públicos ofrecidos a los ciudadanos. El paradigma posburocrático implica una corriente de cambio que cuestiona la figura del «servidor público» y concede mayor importancia a los empleados; se considera el peso y la importancia de las instituciones y su relación con las convenciones sociales que le imprimen una identidad característica a cada organización burocrática particular, por ello examino las aportaciones de la teoría sociológica para comprender la vinculación entre la acción social y las convenciones e instituciones sociales con el fin de documentar la importancia de las convenciones sociales sobre las que descansa el funcionamiento cotidiano de la burocracia, y proponer proyectos de investigación relacionados.   ABSTRACTThis paper analyses changes occurred within paradigms in bureaucratic organizations, aiming at proving the quality of the services offered to the citizens. The posbureaucratic paradigm implies a course change that questions from the own conception the figure of the «public servant» and grants the major importance to the employees, it considers the influence and the importance of the institutions and its relation with the social conventions that imprints a characteristic identity to each particular bureaucratic organization, for that reason the contributions of the sociological theory are examined to understand the entailment between the social action and the social conventions and institutions, to illustrate the importance of the social conventions on which the daily operation of the bureaucracy rests; in order to propose related research projects.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Imam Amrusi Jailani

Observing the relationship between men and women, actually recognized the existence of two relationships that are connotative be distinguished, that, sexual relations and gender relations. Sexual relationship is the relationship between men and women based on the demands and biological categories. Whereas gender relations is a concept and a different social reality, in which the sexual division of labor between men and women is not based on an understanding of normative and biological categories, but on the quality, skills, and roles based on social conventions. Thus, the concepts and manifestations of gender relations more dynamic and has the flexibility to consider psycho-social variables were developed. Based on this understanding, it could be someone who is biologically classified as a woman, but from the point of gender may play a role as a man or vice versa. Therefore, we need to reorient the roles of women, especially their involvement in the organization of the Islamic community, which often marginalized.


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