Postmodern neoliberal discourses vs postfeminist theories and practices

The aim of the article is considered the conceptual reconstruction of the relationship between postmodern feminism and the notional field of contemporary neoliberalism. The analytical methods used were based on the assertion that the complexity of textual interventions requires interdisciplinary approaches. The findings and results of the research carried out accentuate that COVID-19 has contributed greatly to the contradictions of the current global landscape in the contexts of neoliberalism and feminism. Feminism asserts as a discourse that the conceptual apparatus of neoliberalism has not served its goals; in fact, postfeminism has not yet chosen its route in the neoliberal context. The assumption that women cannot win their “vindication battle” in the world where "the game is fixed" continues to be taken as an axiom, even though the coronavirus pandemic causes some observers to proclaim the return of influential governments and social contracts. The latter accentuates the role of female representation in neoliberal social, cultural, and political discourses at the global level.

Formation of the Institution of Social Contract In Conditions of Digital Economy in Modern Russia

The article makes an attempt to analyze a new type of social assistance to low-income citizens, low-income families, as well as citizens in a difficult life situation in order to formulate proposals for its improvement. The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin during the meeting with senators held on 23 September 2020 pointed out that "One of the key factors in war on poverty is the social contract" (https://ria.ru/20200923/bednost-1577654986.html). The social contract is a very effective type of social assistance, as it is aimed to activating the citizens themselves in increasing their level of material security. As a result of the contract, they get the opportunity to find a permanent income, including by opening their own business or running a personal subsidiary farm, solve their difficult life situation, retraining. Despite the positive dynamics of the increase in the number of signed social contracts, the mechanism of these contracts itself needs to be improved. In particular, the author suggests that social protection institutions move to proactive social work with poor citizens, informing them more fully about the features of the social contract. It is also proposed to transfer the distribution of quotas for the conclusion of a social contract in various areas of the activities carried out within its framework to the subjects of the Russian Federation, to revise the terms of the social contract in the direction of «job search».

Building back better from COVID-19: Knowledge, emergence and social contracts

COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to enhance life chances by Building Back Better, an objective promoted by the UN and deployed politically at national level. To help understand emergent and intentional opportunities to Build Back Better, we propose a research agenda drawing from geographical thinking on social contracts, assemblage theory and the politics of knowledge. This points research towards the ways in which everyday and professional knowledge cocreation constrains vision and action. Whose knowledge is legitimate, how legitimacy is ascribed and the place of science, the media and government in these processes become sites for progressive Building Back Better.

Poverty rate indicator and measures to reduce it (case of the Astrakhan region)

As a result of the crisis, spread of coronavirus infection, growth of inflation for a number of years in Russia there has been registered a decrease in real incomes of the population, as well as the persistent poverty rate. Despite the unprecedented measures taken by the State to provide social support to the population, the fight against poverty is one of the strategic tasks for the state. The poverty rate indicator is included in the performance indicators of state authorities and regional leaders. Methods of assistance to the most vulnerable segments of the population should be comprehensive (include educational programs, retraining, psychological support, employment, social benefits, support measures for beginning and existing entrepreneurs and the self-employed, social contracts, social treasury), but at the same time they should be targeted and personalized.

State Fragility, Social Contracts and the Role of Social Protection: Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region

Social contracts and state fragility represent two sides of one coin. The former concept highlights that governments need to deliver three “Ps”—protection, provision, and political participation—to be acceptable for societies, whereas the latter argues that states can fail due to lack of authority (inhibiting protection), capacity (inhibiting provision), or legitimacy. Defunct social contracts often lead to popular unrest. Using empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, we demonstrate how different notions of state fragility lead to different kinds of grievances and how they can be remedied by measures of social protection. Social protection is always a key element of government provision and hence a cornerstone of all social contracts. It can most easily counteract grievances that were triggered by decreasing provision (e.g., after subsidy reforms in Iran and Morocco) but also partially substitute for deficient protection (e.g., by the Palestinian National Authority, in pre-2011 Yemen) or participation (information campaign accompanying Moroccan subsidy cut; participatory set-ups for cash-for-work programmes in Jordan). It can even help maintain a minimum of state–society relations in states defunct in all three Ps (e.g., Yemen). Hence, social protection can be a powerful instrument to reduce state fragility and mend social contracts. Yet, to be effective, it needs to address grievances in an inclusive, rule-based, and non-discriminatory way. In addition, to gain legitimacy, governments should assume responsibility over social protection instead of outsourcing it to foreign donors.

Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages

Rhetoric is an engine of social discourse and the art charged with generating and swaying emotion. The history of rhetoric provides a continuous structure by which we can measure how emotions were understood, articulated, and mobilized under various historical circumstances and social contracts. This book is about how rhetoric in the West from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions. It is the first book-length study of medieval rhetoric and the emotions, coloring in what has largely been a blank space between about 600 CE and the cusp of early modernity. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, as in other periods, constituted the gateway training for anyone engaged in emotionally persuasive writing. Medieval rhetorical thought on emotion has multiple strands of influence and sedimentations of practice. The earliest and most persistent tradition treated emotional persuasion as a property of surface stylistic effect, which can be seen in the medieval rhetorics of poetry and prose, and in literary production. But the impact of Aristotelian rhetoric, which reached the Latin West in the thirteenth century, gave emotional persuasion a core role in reasoning, incorporating it into the key device of proof, the enthymeme. In Aristotle, medieval teachers and writers found a new rhetorical language to explain the social and psychological factors that affect an audience. With Aristotelian rhetoric, the emotions became political. The impact of Aristotle’s rhetorical approach to emotions was to be felt in medieval political treatises, in poetry, and in preaching.

The problem of trust and modern Russian pension system

The paper attempts to identify the relationship between trust viewed through private good, club good, private external effects and public good, and pension systems, presented in the form of vertical and horizontal social contracts. Guided by the typology of benefits in the analysis of trust, the author argues: trust in a horizontal pension contract develops in a network of transactions regarding the production of a pension good and is a combination of its various types. In a vertical contract, the possibilities of individuals' retirement planning and the position of private structures in the pension market are limited, that reduces the role of trust as a private and club good and strengthens the importance of trust in the form of a public good. The author shows that in a horizontal pension contract, trust is a basic prerequisite for all pension interactions. The effectiveness of a horizontal pension contract depends on the level of trust: low trust increases transaction costs and makes pension planning unviable. The author concludes that in conditions of low confidence, satisfaction of pension needs is easier to organize through a vertical type contract in which pension needs are satisfied centrally. At the same time, low trust of Russians to pension institutions is the result of a vertical pension contract.

Examining the Role of Economic Actors in Post-war Reintegration Processes: Case of Sierra Leone.

This paper examines post-conflict peacebuilding activities in Sierra Leone by critically looking at the role of economic actors in the reintegration process of its post-war Disarmament Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) initiative. The civil war that lasted for 11 years in Sierra Leone, put doubts on the national governments ability to effectively provide both victims and perpetuators, the necessary protection and assistance needed to fully assume responsibilities within the communities. Because of this, poverty was further entrenched, thereby increasing the countries susceptibility to return to conflict. Though reintegration processes are continuous, integrative and involve exhaustive budgetary commitments, the process, in Sierra Leone was short-termed, not well coordinated and took time to begin delivering. With the United Nations, World Bank and the weak national government leading the process, financing was often insufficient or late, in combination with the lack of a coherent planning strategy; all these factors contributed to lapses in socio-economic profiling, skills and vocational training and spread disillusionment and resentment among ex-combatants and victims. Using content analysis, the paper argues that, post-war countries need active, equitable and profitable economic sectors if they are to graduate from conflict and from post-conflict aid-dependency. Moreover, as social contracts and corporate social responsibility to communities they govern and operate in, economic actors must create enabling environments and, generate jobs to support legitimate local capacities. The utility of this paper lies in the idea that for any post-conflict country to attain long-term social and economic development, reintegration programme design and activities, must holistically incorporate critical economic actors.