Robots and Moral Revolutions

Author(s):  
John Danaher

Human societies have, historically, undergone a number of moral revolutions. Some of these have been precipitated by technological changes. Will the integration of robots into our social lives precipitate a new moral revolution? In this keynote, I will look at the history of moral revolutions and the role of techno-social change in facilitating those revolutions. I will examine the structural properties of human moral systems and how those properties might be affected by social robots. I will argue that much of our current social morality is agency-centric and that social robots, as non-standard agents, will disrupt that model.

Author(s):  
Stefan Collini

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.


Author(s):  
Geoffrey Haddock ◽  
Sapphira Thorne ◽  
Lukas Wolf

Attitudes refer to overall evaluations of people, groups, ideas, and other objects, reflecting whether individuals like or dislike them. Attitudes have been found to be good predictors of behavior, with generally medium-sized effects. The role of attitudes in guiding behavior may be the primary reason why people’s social lives often revolve around expressing and discussing their attitudes, and why social psychology researchers have spent decades examining attitudes. Two central questions in the study of attitudes concern when and how attitudes predict behavior. The “when” question has been addressed over decades of research that has identified circumstances under which attitudes are more or less likely to predict behavior. That is, attitudes are stronger predictors of behaviors when both constructs are assessed in a corresponding or matching way, when attitudes are stronger, and among certain individuals and in certain situations and domains. The “how” question concerns influential models in the attitudes literature that provide a better understanding of the processes through which attitudes are linked with behaviors. For instance, these models indicate that other constructs need to be taken into account in understanding the attitude-behavior link, including intentions to perform a behavior, whether individuals perceive themselves to be in control of their behavior, and what they believe others around them think the individual should do (i.e., norms). The models also describe whether attitudes relate to behavior through relatively deliberative and controlled processes or relatively automatic and spontaneous processes. Overall, the long history of research on attitude-behavior links has provided a clearer prediction of when attitudes are linked with behaviors and a better understanding of the processes underlying this link.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Tom Juravich

This paper traces the history of the song “Bread and Roses” to examine labor culture and the role of song in the labor movement. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, “Bread and Roses” was included in several of the first generation song books produced by unions that reflected an expansive and inclusive labor culture closely connected with the Left. With the ascendance of business unionism and the blacklisting of the Left after the war, labor culture took a heavy blow, and labor songbooks became skeletons of the full-bodied versions they had once been. Unions began to see singing not as part of the process of social change but as a vehicle to bring people together, and songs such as “Bread and Roses” and other more class-based songs were jettisoned in favor of a few labor standards and American sing-along songs. “Bread and Roses” was born anew to embody a central concept in the women’s movement and rode the wave of new music, art, and film that were part of new social movements and new constituencies that challenged business unionism and reshaped union culture in the 1980s.


Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOROTHEE BRANTZ

In recent years, urban history has witnessed an expansion of actors. Historians have substantially and continuously extended their perspectives when it comes to examining the forces that drive urban developments. This expansion to an ever-broader range of human and increasingly also non-human actors (e.g. animals, technological systems and resources such as water) has opened up many new venues for investigations. It has also raised new questions about the role of cities in the history of social change. One of the most provocative ideas involves the claim that cities themselves should be considered agents and proprietors of change. Such notions of urban agency are premised on the assumption that, on the whole, cities are more than the sum of their parts. In this context, urbanization is not just viewed as the outcome of other determining societal forces, most notably capitalism. Instead, cities themselves are understood as determining entities and powerful enablers or preventers of material transformations. The investigative potential of such a perspective is tremendous, but the possible pitfalls should also not be underestimated. Exploring the explanatory prospects of urban agency requires, first of all, a critical engagement with both of the terms ‘agency’ and ‘the urban’. In my brief contribution to this roundtable, I would like to offer two points to the discussion: the first centres on the relationship between agency and intentionality/responsibilities, which is ultimately a political concern; the second aims to differentiate between the city as an entity and the urban as a process. Such a distinction, in turn, poses conceptual as well as methodological questions regarding the efficacy of agency as an urban concept.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Käthe Anne Lemon

Canadian University Press (CUP) is a co-operative national student news group that produces a news service and unites student newspapers across the country. Since its establishment in 1938, CUP has brought campus newspapers from across the country together to share news and information as well as training with one another. From 1965 to 1991 CUP's policies stated that the major role of the student newspaper was to "act as an agent of social change." During this time CUP and its members took on an educative and active political role. Using CUP as a case study of a politically engaged press organization that saw its role as an active participant in the events it reported, this thesis illuminates the factors that can encourage a politically engaged press taking into consideration both theory and practice. This study examines the factors that made it possible for CUP to act as an agent of social change, how that role was interpreted, and the changes that resulted in the organization moving away from that role.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dakir Dakir ◽  
Umiarso Umiarso

Poverty is the social-human problem in Indonesia and in the world. Pesantren with its social capital was able to take a role for that encourages social change towards a better direction. This study is a critical study on the role of pesantren in the mobilization process of social values and norms so that it was able to make social change in the perspective of social capital. The result of the study shows that through its social capital, such as social networking and trust, pesantren was able to break through the backwardness of society into a better society. In fact, the direction of social change conducted by pesantren which is integrating the religious values with the various dimension of social lives, and based on the spirit then supported by the principle of trust, empirically all of these become the powerful basis for the professional relationship. 


Sociology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nettleingham

‘Generations’ have been invoked to describe a variety of social and cultural relationships, and to understand the development of self-conscious group identity. Equally, the term can be an applied label and politically useful construct; generations can be retrospectively produced. Drawing on the concept of ‘canonical generations’ – those whose experiences come to epitomise an event of historic and symbolic importance – this article examines the narrative creation and functions of ‘generations’ as collective memory shapes and re-shapes the desire for social change. Building a case study of the canonical role of the miners’ strike of 1984–85 in the narrative history of the British left, it examines the selective appropriation and transmission of the past in the development of political consciousness. It foregrounds the autobiographical narratives of activists who, in examining and legitimising their own actions and prospects, (re)produce a ‘generation’ in order to create a relatable and useful historical understanding.


2014 ◽  
pp. 3-6

In this interview set asks Keri Facer, author of Learning Futures: Education, Technology, and Social Change (2011), about her ideas and what keeps her optimistic about the future. Her book makes a powerful case for reimagining the role of education in response to environmental, social and technological changes. She advocates for schools to be at the centre of “future-building” work in their communities.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Käthe Anne Lemon

Canadian University Press (CUP) is a co-operative national student news group that produces a news service and unites student newspapers across the country. Since its establishment in 1938, CUP has brought campus newspapers from across the country together to share news and information as well as training with one another. From 1965 to 1991 CUP's policies stated that the major role of the student newspaper was to "act as an agent of social change." During this time CUP and its members took on an educative and active political role. Using CUP as a case study of a politically engaged press organization that saw its role as an active participant in the events it reported, this thesis illuminates the factors that can encourage a politically engaged press taking into consideration both theory and practice. This study examines the factors that made it possible for CUP to act as an agent of social change, how that role was interpreted, and the changes that resulted in the organization moving away from that role.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

Recent debates and policies on development reflect a growing recognition of the complex role of religion in development and most significantly of its contribution to social capital formation. Through an analysis of the history of the All African Conference of Churches (AACC) as one of the most significant ecumenical structures on the African continent, this contribution will discuss the role and significance of the ecumenical movement for social change (read: development). It underscores the crucial role of the AACC in the formation of social capital through its member churches and through its own international links to other organisations and ecumenical bodies in the period since its inception to the turn of the century. While I argue that the AACC has made a positive contribution in the formation of social capital, I nevertheless contend that not much has been done to draw on local epistemologies for development in its programmatic work.


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