scholarly journals Teaching about power and empathy in multicultural societies

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-80
Author(s):  
Elizaveta Friesem
Keyword(s):  
Media Literacy ◽  
Social System ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Nonviolent Communication ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Civic Dialogue ◽  
University Course

This essay describes the sequence of three activities (from one U.S. university course) that aimed to (1) increase students’ awareness about social injustices, (2) help them develop their empathy to see the complexity of these injustices, and (3) consider ways to change the social system through civic dialogue. The first activity was designed to explore the dynamics of cultural appropriation using principles of media literacy education and the concept of power. The second activity complicated the picture by encouraging students to reflect on the importance of empathy. Students discussed how empathy can substitute blame in conversations about cultural appropriation. The third activity connected empathy to practices of nonviolent communication (developed by Marshall Rosenberg) and Kingian nonviolence. As a result, students were able to discuss how these principles can be applied to cultural appropriation, especially when media technologies are involved.

scholarly journals Transition, worker protests and blockades of public spaces in Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1152-1182
Author(s):  
Nada Novaković
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social System ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
Local Factors ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Economic Crisis ◽  
The Subject

The subject of this paper has been workers' protests and blockades of public spaces in Serbia over the last 20 years. Their most important causes and reasons, organization and efficiency are sociologically analyzed, described and explained. They were happening in "waves". The first started with the acceleration of privatization (2004 and 2005), the second with its deepening (2009 and 2010), and the third coincided with the end of privatization and the intensification of the global economic crisis (2014-2019). The main hypothesis is that workers' protests and blockades are systematically determined. The most important is the nature of the social system, i.e. the applied concept of transition and privatization. Individual and local factors (causes) are less significant. Workers' protests and blockades are less effective at the end than at the beginning of accelerated transition and privatization.

«The Third Person» of the Russian Nation: the Socio-Philosophical View

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
А. Халтурин ◽  
A. Khalturin
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
Civic Consciousness ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Spiritual Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

This article discusses the most famous philosophical and legal approaches to the understanding of the nation — "the nation as a state" and "nation, as a culture" in various social and philosophical options. Strategic adjustment of the state national policy is based on the idea of formation of the Russian nation, based on the civic consciousness and spiritual community. The author examines the Russian nation in a new methodological perspective — as the multinational people of the nation. In this case, the new methodological story becomes a new methodological dialectical synthesis, removing the contradiction between two opposing concepts. The core of the multinational people stands ethnocultural interaction with the subjects of the social system.

The Social System of the Welfare Hotel

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-162
Author(s):  
VERNON L. ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
The Social

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

Disruptive Fixation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Sims
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Middle Schoolers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Conventional Type

In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic foundations, it promised to reinvent the classroom for the digital age. This book documents the life of the school from its planning stages to the graduation of its first eighth-grade class. It is the account of how this “school for digital kids,” heralded as a model of tech-driven educational reform, reverted to a more conventional type of schooling with rote learning, an emphasis on discipline, and traditional hierarchies of authority. Troubling gender and racialized class divisions also emerged. The book shows how the philanthropic possibilities of new media technologies are repeatedly idealized even though actual interventions routinely fall short of the desired outcomes. It traces the complex processes by which idealistic tech-reform perennially takes root, unsettles the worlds into which it intervenes, and eventually stabilizes in ways that remake and extend many of the social predicaments reformers hope to fix. It offers a nuanced look at the roles that powerful elites, experts, the media, and the intended beneficiaries of reform—in this case, the students and their parents—play in perpetuating the cycle. The book offers a timely examination of techno-philanthropism and the yearnings and dilemmas it seeks to address, revealing what failed interventions do manage to accomplish—and for whom.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document