scholarly journals A Possible Cripistemology of the Queer: Modes of Dismantling “Ability” and “Heterosexuality” in Transgender Autobiographies

2016 ◽  
pp. 46-67
Author(s):  
Oindri Roy ◽  
Amith Kumar P.V.
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Unrequited Love ◽  
Compulsory Heterosexuality ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual

Based on A. Revathi’s The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life-Story (2010) and Kate Bornstein’s A Queer and Pleasant Danger (2012), the paper explores the possible connections that arise between the two autobiographies while articulating the similar praxis of living beyond gender norms, though in very distinctive cultural contexts. The comparability of the texts provides grounds to construe “queer” and “disability” in the transsexual experiences as symptomatic but not solely based on the common negation of “compulsory heterosexuality” and “compulsory able-bodiedness” as imposed social constructs. The process of “transgendering” (Ekins and King 34) as initiated by the sense of disability/queerness of being in the “wrong body” is also explored through the study of the narratives. Both Revathi and Bornstein are affected by an innate desire for a "feminine" form of existence as well as the social injunction of following the dictates of "normality" and "ableism" vis-à-vis the gender attributed at birth. The surgical and hormonal transformations do not lead to a psychosocial “rectification” and may culminate in a dysfunctional womanhood. Revathi’s unrequited love and failed marriage and Bornstein’s inability to "qualify" as a lesbian will be read as instances of how the inadequacy of social structures is misconstrued as a "gender-impairment" in the individual and instituted as "hijra" or "butch."

"With a Shade of Disgust": Affective Politics of Sexuality and Class in Memoirs of the Stalinist Gulag

Slavic Review ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Kuntsman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Category ◽  
The Common ◽  
Varlam Shalamov ◽  
The Individual

This article addresses a topic seldom discussed in gulag studies: same-sex relations in the camps. In particular, it deals with affective politics of sexuality and class in gulag memoirs and the role of disgust in the formation of sexual and class boundaries. It approaches disgust as existing between the individual and the social, the subjective and the historical, the internal and the external, and traces the ways the gulag memoirs constitute the disgusting, the disgusted, and the boundary between them. At the center of the article are descriptions of same-sex relations in the Kolyma camps of the 1930s-1950s by Evgenia Ginzburg and Varlam Shalamov. Based on a critical reading of these and other memoirs, Adi Kuntsman reveals how same-sex relations among the common criminals are constructed by the memoirists as disgusting because they go against gender norms and against class perceptions of sexual morality. Kuntsman shows how these perceptions of the appropriate, embedded within the habitus of the intelligentsia, are transformed in the memoirs into the universal category of humanness, locating the common criminals, and, by association, anyone who engages in same-sex relations, beyond the bounds of humanity.

Mitigation for minors: Exploring the nuances of social constructs and legal status in structuring sentences for youthful offenders

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-522
Author(s):  
Megan C Kurlychek
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
New York State ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Youthful Offender

New York State is one of only two states in the nation that processes all 16- and 17-year-old defendants as adults. Contrary to this seemingly punitive stance, the state also maintains a Youthful Offender Statute that requires mitigated punishments for youths up to their 19th birthday upon court designation of youthful offender status. This study empirically examines the individual and combined impact of the social status of being a “minor” and the legally awarded status of being designated a youthful offender, upon adult court sentencing decisions framing the discussion within broader conceptualizations of youthfulness, culpability, and punishment. Utilizing a population of all youths ages 16–21 whose cases were disposed in New York between 2000 and 2006, this study finds the legally defined status of youthful offender to provide much greater mitigation at sentencing than the more general social status of being a minor. Findings are discussed as they relate to categorical and individualized assessments of culpability. In addition, as the study finds individualized assessments of culpability to be related to factors such as gender and race, broader implications for the role of court assigned statuses and mitigation of punishment are offered.

The Effectiveness of Transferring Multi-Agent Behaviors From a Learning Environment in the Presence of Synthetic Social Structures

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Garfield ◽  
Annie Wu ◽  
Mehmet Onal ◽  
Britt Crawford ◽  
Adam Campbell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Agent Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Impact

The diverse behavior representation schemes and learning paradigms being investigated within the robotics community share the common feature that successful deployment of agents requires that behaviors developed in a learning environment are successfully applied to a range of unfamiliar and potentially more complex operational environments. The intent of our research is to develop insight into the factors facilitating successful transfer of behaviors to the operational environments. We present experimental results investigating the effects of several factors for a simulated swarm of autonomous vehicles. Our primary focus is on the impact of Synthetic Social Structures, which are guidelines directing the interactions between agents, much like social behaviors direct interactions between group members in the human and animal world. The social structure implemented is a dominance hierarchy, which has been shown previously to facilitate negotiation between agents. The goal of this investigation is to investigate mechanisms adding robustness to agent behavior.

scholarly journals Offspring social network structure predicts fitness in families

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1749) ◽  
pp. 4914-4922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick J. Royle ◽  
Thomas W. Pike ◽  
Philipp Heeb ◽  
Heinz Richner ◽  
Mathias Kölliker
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Parus Major ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Social Network Structure ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Social structures such as families emerge as outcomes of behavioural interactions among individuals, and can evolve over time if families with particular types of social structures tend to leave more individuals in subsequent generations. The social behaviour of interacting individuals is typically analysed as a series of multiple dyadic (pair-wise) interactions, rather than a network of interactions among multiple individuals. However, in species where parents feed dependant young, interactions within families nearly always involve more than two individuals simultaneously. Such social networks of interactions at least partly reflect conflicts of interest over the provision of costly parental investment. Consequently, variation in family network structure reflects variation in how conflicts of interest are resolved among family members. Despite its importance in understanding the evolution of emergent properties of social organization such as family life and cooperation, nothing is currently known about how selection acts on the structure of social networks. Here, we show that the social network structure of broods of begging nestling great tits Parus major predicts fitness in families. Although selection at the level of the individual favours large nestlings, selection at the level of the kin-group primarily favours families that resolve conflicts most effectively.

ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION AMONG INDONESIAN AND NORWEGIAN STUDENTS

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEIN KRISTIANSEN ◽  
NURUL INDARTI
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intention ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Individual Perceptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contextual Elements ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

This paper aims to identify determinants of entrepreneurial intention among young people. The empirical basis is formed by surveys among Indonesian and Norwegian students. The main objective is to compare the impact of different economic and cultural contexts. Independent variables in the study include demographic factors and individual background, personality traits and attitudes, and contextual elements such as access to capital and information. The individual perceptions of self-efficacy and instrumental readiness are the variables that affect entrepreneurial intention most significantly. Age, gender and educational background have no statistically significant impact. Generally, the level of entrepreneurial intention is higher among Indonesian students. The lower level of entrepreneurial intention among Norwegian students is explained by the social status and economic remuneration of entrepreneurs in comparison with those enjoyed by employees in the Norwegian context.

scholarly journals THREE LIVES OF NIKOLAY AGAFONOV: TRANSFORMATION OF IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF WAR AND REVOLUTION

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
Alexander I. Kazankov ◽  
◽  
Oleg L. Lejbovich ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Collective Farm ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Farm System ◽  
The Relationship

The article reconstructs N. P. Agafonov’s life story. It aims at determining the relationship between the individual and the social in a person’s biographical trajectory, analyzing ego-transformation process in a specific historical context. The research methodology involves the use of autobiographical narrative, formed in the process of investigative actions, carried out by the organs of OGPU–NKVD in 1929 and 1937. N. P. Agafonov’s fate is of special interest for historians because during a third of a century he changed his identity three times: at the beginning of the century N. P. Agafonov realized himself as a social democrat, an active participant of the revolutionary underground in St. Petersburg and Perm in 1905–1907. After its defeat, he chose a musical and dramatic career. During the Civil War, he got a haircut as a monk. In the pre-Soviet era, Agafonov behaves like a conformist, whose inner evolution is congenial to the changes taking place in the social circle of democratic youth. The turbulent nature of the events of the Civil War does not allow him to make an artistically reasonable and socially conditioned choice. During the Soviet regime he denounced the collective farm system as a hieromonk, called on parishioners to be strong in faith and expressed hope for the return of the good old times, for which he was subjected to repression by the punitive authorities.

scholarly journals The Theory of Half-education (translation from German Maria Kultaieva)

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodor W. Adorno
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Adaptation ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Dialectic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Education ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

The theory of  half- education was presented at first on the congress of German sociologists (1959). The tendencies regarded in this theory are really taking place in the contemporary education and have determining its crises, which becomes more evidence in the social and cultural contexts of the later capitalism. The theory of half-education is rethinking  and actualizing  of the conceptualizations of education and culture in the German idealism, Marxism and Freudianism, explicating the dialectic of Enlightenment through diagnostics of its degenerations and deformations in the options of the alien spirit, what has a very dangerous consequence of the liquidation of culture  that is converting into the mas one. Half-education  is parasitizing    on   the idea of education which has  intrinsic contradictions: its conditions are the individual autonomy and social freedom, but it is depending on society. Id demands both: the individual autonomy and social adaptation. These contradictions can be overcame  by the  application of  the negative dialectic, which joins complementary the critic of education and the critic of society opening new perspectives for them.

scholarly journals Shut Away

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pearson Ripley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Significant Cost ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Background ◽  
The Common ◽  
Immigration And Customs Enforcement ◽  
The Individual

Shut Away is a window into a less-discussed immigration story in the United States. At present there are around fifty undocumented immigrants living in houses of worship after receiving deportation orders. It is the strategy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to avoid raiding these “sensitive locations,” allowing them to provide their occupants with insulation from the possibility of deportation. This act of taking sanctuary comes at a significant cost as the individual does not leave the property upon entering. Comprised of still photographs, video portraits and oral histories, Shut Away seeks a more nuanced account of life in sanctuary beyond the common depiction of victimhood. This paper will analyze the foundation, creation and context of the project. It begins with the historical and political background of the topic and the participants, then analyzes the methodology of the social and creative approach to the work The paper ends with a contextualization of the project within the documentary field and a reflection on the traditions of photography in which the work falls.

Social Historian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biographical Dictionary ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (1662), the first biographical dictionary in England, was published after his death. Fuller relied heavily on books and documents, but he also traveled widely, interviewing the most knowledgeable persons he could find and gaining knowledge first-hand of his country’s commodities, enterprises, buildings, and natural features. The work is organized on a county-by-county basis, and the notable individuals are listed in chronological, rather than alphabetical order. The result is a treatment of notable persons across many centuries in the context of the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which they lived. Fuller saw England as distinguished in many ways by industriousness and ingenuity as well as by a concern for the common good. The Worthies is one of the most original historical works in early modern England and is unexcelled as an analysis of the society that Fuller and his contemporaries knew.

Desperately seeking the good society

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 636-654
Author(s):  
Gill Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Good Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Northern City

Working towards the ‘good society’ is an important aspiration to hold, but equally its subjectivity complicates the realisation for all – each person’s view of what ‘good’ means in relation to society differs. The notion is also open to statutory appropriation and mainstreaming using rhetoric to suggest its centrality to governmental thinking, but the reality reveals policy and practice, which undermines the accomplishment of social justice and thus a good society. This paper seeks to explore this complexity through dissecting the processes of representation of the ‘good society’ in theory and in practice. The paper will argue that the ‘good society’ might be termed a doxic construct. Bourdieu used ‘doxa’ to explain how arbitrariness shapes people’s acceptance of their place in the world, the covert process is ‘internalised’, seemingly objectively, into the ‘social structures and mental structures’, producing a universal and accepted knowledge of something (Bourdieu, 1977 ). The possibility of difference is undermined; thus, the varied needs and contexts of people’s lived realities are consumed within prevailing normative narratives. Foucault (cited in Simon, 1971 : 198) referred to a ‘system of limits’ and Bourdieu (1977: 164) ‘ sense of limits’, both authors will assist in seeking to uncover how such invisible practices limit and constrain the imagining of possibilities beyond the taken-for-granted. The paper argues that community development can be a catalyst to challenge this invisibility by utilising Freire’s ( 1970 ) conscientisation, enabling people to recognise structural oppression to challenge the status quo. This paper will draw on examples offered within a northern city to build on Knight’s, 2015 research, which posed the question ‘[w]hat kind of society do we want?’, identifying, when asked, a hunger for change. The paper explores whether there is a desire to overturn the predominant individualism of the neoliberal era to reignite the notion of the common good.

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