Reckoning

Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements is an analysis of the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics, while also laying out and contextualizing the social movement’s unique political philosophy, radical Black feminist pragmatism (RBFM), along with documenting measurable political effects in terms of changing public meanings, public opinion, and policy. Throughout the text, the author interweaves theoretical and empirical observations, rendering both an illustration of this movement and an analysis of the work social movements do in democracy.

The Equal Rights Amendment, Then and Now

One hundred years in the making, the Equal Rights Amendment is the only proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that has met the requirements of Article V of the Constitution but has not been added to the Constitution due to a congressionally imposed ratification deadline. The amendment guarantees that “[e]quality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” like gender equality guarantees in most constitutions around the world. This chapter exposes the unique trajectory of the Equal Rights Amendment to shed light on the process of feminist constitutional change and the evolution of substantive feminist legal aspirations. The revival of the ERA ratification process, decades after Congress’s deadlines, has generated transgenerational public meanings for a new body of gender equality law and public policy.

PROFESSIONAL SELF-REALIZATION OF PERSONALITY AS A DETERMINANT OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

In the article, the process of professional self-realization of the individual is interpreted as determinants of the scientific, technical andsocio-economic development of society from the standpoint of dialectical materialism as a theoretical and methodological basis of domestic psychological science. Self-realization is considered as a process of subjects` realization in a professional activity of universally-active abilities, that ensuring the creation of social values which determine the progressive cultural-historical and socio-economic development of society. The basics of the study of the problem of self-realization which began intensively developed in the domestic psychological science since the 1970`s were laid in the works of S.L. Rubinstein, formulated in the 1920`s principle of creative independent activity, in which person creating socially valuable products purposefully manifests and develops his own essential forces, enriches society with cultural results of life activity, contributing to its development. A self-fulfilling person is characterized by an active civic position, manifested in self-determination, initiative, self-discipline, responsibility, independence in activities aimed at creating of public goods, a reflective type of construction of one’s being, different from a reactive type of existence, the main purpose of which is only adaptation to living conditions for implementation own needs without taking into account the needs of society. The scientific, technical and socio-economic development of the country as a priority objective of domestic state policy, the implementation of which will ensure the leading position of the Russian Federation among the scientific, technical and socio-economically highly developed powers of the world, is possible only if the subject of being realized his essential forces as universal activity abilities in labor determined by public meanings. The alienation of person from work determines the alienation of an individual from its essential uniqueness, which in turn causes a violation of the course of human phylogenetic development and the cultural and historical development of civilization.

Populism as Parody: The Visual Self-Presentation of Jair Bolsonaro on Instagram

This study analyzes the visual self-representation of current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is considered to be one of the exponents of the recent rise of rightwing neopopulism. Despite the growing body of literature analyzing contemporary populism, little has been said about the deployment of images in the construction of public meanings relevant to popular understandings of populist leaders. This research draws from the social media analysis of Casullo to investigate how the images posted on Bolsonaro’s Instagram account show him (1) as a mirror of the people, (2) someone extraordinary, and (3) quick to appropriate symbols of power. Referencing the work of Butler, we document how the visual self-representation of Bolsonaro is marked by eccentricity and unsophistication, which makes his demeanor, body, and appropriation of institutional power function as a series of parodies. His performance hyperbolizes the transgressive aspect of populism, producing a vertiginous and pleasurable ambiguity toward the figure of the leader. In emptying the presidency from its extraordinary dimension, the parody paradoxically does something extraordinary by reestablishing the distance that it seeks to eliminate. His eccentric rejection of basic social standards, over-the-top masculinity, and impromptu use of everyday objects as props work to construct an image that he is just an ordinary man, extraordinarily occupying the presidency.

Public Deliberation on South Korean Nuclear Power Plants: How Can Lay Knowledge Resist against Expertise?

Through a public engagement exercise held in 2017, 471 Korean citizens decided to resume construction of two nuclear reactors. This article examines the white paper, academic articles, and interview accounts to discuss how distinct groups in their contexts articulated “lay knowledge” as the basis of participatory science and technology governance enacted in Korea. Reflecting on both Brian Wynne’s emphasis on public meanings and the STS literatures’ attention to lay actors’ knowledge-ability, the article reveals the articulation of “lay knowledge” as a process of simultaneously empowering and disempowering the lay public.

Reassembling Heritage after the Disaster: On the Sungnyemun Debate in South Korea

This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in various settings and also threatened by either natural or manmade disasters that constantly take place around the world. In doing so, we focus on discussing one specific case: the debate surrounding the identification of Sungnyemun as the number one national treasure in South Korea. Sungnyemun, which was first constructed in 1396 as the south gate of the walled city Seoul, is the country’s most acknowledged cultural heritage that is supposed to represent the national identity in the most authentic way, but its value was suddenly questioned through a nationwide debate after an unexpected fire. While the debate has been silenced after its ostensibly successful restoration conducted by the Cultural Heritage Administration in 2013, this article argues that the incident is a prime example illustrating how the once venerated heritage is reassembled through an entanglement of various agents and their affective engagements. Methodologically speaking, this article aims to read Sungnyemun in reference to the growing scholarship of actor-network theory (ANT) and the studies of heritage in the post-disaster era through which to explore what heritage means to us at the present time. Our synchronic approach to Sungnyemun encourages us to investigate how the once-stable monument becomes a field where material interventions and affective engagements of various agents release its public meanings in new ways.

Towards an anticipatory public engagement methodology: deliberative experiments in the assembly of possible worlds using focus groups

Against the background of critique in public engagement scholarship on new and emerging science and innovation, this article engages with the methodological and conceptual challenges of making anticipatory knowledge. Adopting a science and technology studies perspective, a public engagement methodology is presented aimed at anticipating the kinds of possible and plausible worlds that novel science and technology bring into being. Drawing on six empirical social science research projects using focus groups, design criteria are explicated on context, framing, moderation, sampling, analysis and interpretation. A feature of the methodology lies in the assembly of emergent collectives and identities that are constituted to negotiate endogenously public meanings, concerns and priorities. I reflect on the potential of such processes to reconfigure dominant policy narratives, the role of the social scientist in mediating such processes and the politics of making anticipatory knowledge.

The Trophies of Victory and the Relics of Defeat

Civil War soldiers understood that what thy saved would help shape historical memories and influence public meanings for years to come. Civil War soldiers were always intrigued by the relics, but their craving for things of war became an obsession during the last weeks of the Confederacy’s existence when both sides were grasping for things to help them remember the past as they transitioned to a future without war.

Mothering Brooklyn

This paper examines how Brooklyn retail signage represents how gentrifying women struggle for claiming space in public and the way in which different intersectional identity formations are used and implicated in transforming urban space. In exploring different ethnographic dimensions to retail storefronts, we show how women, many of whom are college-educated, married, and new mothers, play a significant role in redefining Brooklyn and cultural norms of motherhood more broadly. Yet, as newly arriving women emerge as key players in the gentrification project, they experience backlash against their public roles. We explore how women also employ race, inequality, and patriarchal notions of heteronormative sexuality as a cover for their public challenges to patriarchal power. Drawing on visual ethnography, interviews, and digital archival material we argue that the ambiguity of word play accomplishes both the pushing of normative boundaries as well as the protective cover of public meanings.