scholarly journals Care and affective relations: Social justice and sociology

2020 ◽  
pp. 003802612095274
Author(s):  
Kathleen Lynch ◽  
Manolis Kalaitzake ◽  
Margaret Crean

This article examines the ways in which the care-indifferent and gendered character of much political egalitarian theory has contributed to a disregard for the care-relational dimensions of social injustice within the social sciences. It demonstrates how the lack of in-depth engagement with affective relations of love, care and solidarity has contributed to an underestimation of their pivotal role in generating injustices in the production of people in their humanity. While humans are political, economic and cultural beings, they are also what Tronto has termed homines curans. Yet, care, in its multiple manifestations, is treated as a kind of ‘cultural residual’, an area of human life that the dominant culture neglects, represses and cannot even recognize for its political salience. If sociology takes the issue of relational justice as seriously as it takes issues of redistribution, recognition and political representation, this would provide an intellectual avenue for advancing scholarship that recognizes that much of life is lived, and injustices are generated, outside the market, formal politics and public culture. A new sociology of affective care relations could enhance a normatively-led sociology of inequality, that is distinguishable from, but intersecting with, a sociology of inequality based on class (redistribution), status (recognition) and power (representation). It would also help change public discourse about politics by making affective in/justices visible intellectually and politically, and in so doing, identifying ways in which they could be a site of resistance to capitalist values and processes.

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Drance Elias da Silva

This Article may be situated within the rapport field between Philosophy and Social Sciences, at the search regarding to the concept concerning the Representation. Regarding to Philosophy, under a general view, the concept, concerning Representation, has been, since a long time, understood as a trail which one would get througl reaching to the real and true ones. Representation, as the thought contents expression form had not been known departing from Philosophy as a barrier against the objectivity concerning the knowledge. Representation, in its source, has been constituting itself a cognictive, inmanent reflection, related to the conscience inner subjectivity. But departing from the episthemological point of view, it has been not so easy for the campus concerning the Culture Sciences as a totality. In the theory regarding to knowledge, the Social Sciences campus and, more specifically, in the human life Symbolic dimension constitutive aspects, it has been, often, accepted negatively as an entry door for the histotical social reality. Nowadays, one may conclude that the contents concerning the Culture are deeply rooted within the histotical reality, which may present new dimension the reading regarding to the Symbolical side concerning the human life, under the view regarding to the unseen aspect, such as the intellectualistic Western dominant Culture allows understanding the way which could be in.


Author(s):  
Mina Karavanta

If creolization was represented as the property of the postcolonial world, the sign of hyphenated cultures emerging from the slave plantation economy and the slave trade, it has become a concept that names the transformation of the dominant cultures from within the other “minor” cultures and histories with which they have been living. Creolization emerges as the urgency to develop new concepts and disseminate “contrapuntal” and “affiliated” histories (Said) in order not only to narrate the Caribbean diaspora but also the social, political, and historical development of a wider British culture. In this light, this essay examines Imoinda: Or She Who Will Lose Her Name as a text that mediates between cultures represented as oppositional and operates as a site where their discrepant histories are translated, written anew, and rethought. The text as a site of translation and affiliation of different aesthetics, genres and traditions represents a new poetics of the human whose history is now narrated by the formerly dispossessed and expropriated other. The history of imperialism and slavery narrated of imperialism and slavery is an old narration but its telling is new for it generates new ways of understanding this history in the present where constituencies and communities of different cultural practices, often speaking different languages while sharing the language(s) of the dominant culture, are called forth to live together and live well.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvey

The body has become a major focus of attention—both theoretically and politically—over the past twenty years. In much of this literature it is presumed that the body is some kind of social construct at the same time as it is a locus and a measure of both the material and the social world we inhabit. The author situates this idea against the background of Marx's representations—too often by-passed in recent literature—in order to show how Marx's concept of variable capital contains a theory of body formation under capitalism at the same time as it lays the groundwork for understanding how political persons act as moral agents to try to change the conditions under which laboring occurs. The struggle for a living wage in Baltimore is then used as a concrete example of how this form of body politics operates under contemporary conditions, illustrating how the body that is to be the measure of all things is itself a site of political-economic contestation over the very forces that create it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009145092199382
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Lofaro ◽  
Hugh T. Miller

Safe injection sites are spaces where people who inject drugs can do so under the supervision of staff at the sites who attempt to revive them if they overdose. Public officials in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have proposed the sites as a means to reduce opioid overdose deaths in the city, a policy proposal that has been politically and legally contested. This article uses the Narrative Politics model to elucidate the concerns, values, and aspirations of the competing narratives in the public discourse over safe injection sites in Philadelphia. Despite the aspirations expressed within the Harm Reduction narrative to open such a site, opposition from the Nimby (not in my backyard) narrative has, at the time of this research, successfully precluded such a step. Other narratives in the discourse include the Abstinence narrative opposing safe injection sites and the Social Justice narrative opposed to incarceration but also hesitant to wholeheartedly endorse the Harm Reduction narrative for its delayed advocacy of compassionate treatment of people who use drugs now that the face of the person who uses opioids is a white one. In addition to juxtaposing competing narratives against one another and considering their alignments, disagreements, and interactions, the authors consider absences and shared presuppositions. The social construction of the purported drug addict varies in some ways between and among the prevailing narratives; in other ways, all the narratives problematize “addiction” as an affliction that justifies techniques of discipline aimed at caring for and controlling the population.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 335-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole G. Silver

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA–eclectic, vibrant, and heterogeneous–still bears the marks of its past as a site of Victoria's empire. The city abounds in English Victorian artifacts: buildings, statues, fountains, streets and their names (even to Victoria Street and Rhodes Drive) are all reminders of the period, but one wonders what, if anything, they mean to the people who live with them. Some recognize them as a legacy–pleasant or unpleasant– of the days when the Cape was a British colony; to others they are symbols whose context has been forgotten, to yet others, they are simply objects devoid of extrinsic meaning. All are, however, artifacts of imperialism, in its broader sense of the social, political, economic, and cultural domination of one group over all others.


2014 ◽  
pp. 313-332
Author(s):  
Grażyna Gajewska

The principal hypothesis of our inquiry states that the mechanisms of power and controlling human life, practiced by the Nazis during WW 2, reflected the modern approach to the human defined in the categories of life unworthy of life. The studies conducted hitherto in the context of the above hypothesis focus on the sites which in the wake of commemorating the extermination are treated as symbols of the genocide industry, such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. In turn, this article aims to investigate the validity of the hypothesis with regards to a site which so far has not been considered in cultural studies – (for example the Hospital for the Mentally Ill “Dziekanka” in Gniezno – in addition, we treat this hospital as the exemplification of the wider ideological, political, economic phenomenon). I wish to show that the phenomena of reducing and destroying human life, which held no value for the authority, was virtually identical regardless of the place where the extermination took place. Thus, we will establish a new point on the map of memory of the victims of Nazi policies, a site where the annihilation was carried out, at the same time demonstrating the particular features associated with that particular space. The “might” of the German authority during World War 2 was founded on tremendous attention to detail; consequently, that which took place in the sites of mass extermination proceeded in much the same way in those places which are now hardly remembered.


2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Paulo Fagundes Visentini ◽  
Analúcia Danilevicz Pereira

The creation of the Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic (ZPCSA) in 1986 and the Gulf of Guinea Commission (GGC) in 2001 was about changes in the distribution of world power. This article argues that though they emerged at different times, their strategic orientation converges in a number of areas related to the significant interests in the South Atlantic as an area of stability in the region to be marked by strong political, economic and military ties. They also converge on the ideal for development, security and greater projection of power and influence in international affairs. The South Atlantic being a route of passage and trade, as a means of access and flow of energy products, the region became a site for new calculations of regional strategic powers about world affairs. The article also argues that ZPCSA and GGC are therefore crucial for the regional order and the development of higher capacities for cooperation on strategic issues. The actual point of convergence extends to ensuring the sovereignty through dialogue between the states in the region that are involved.


Author(s):  
Janet Judy McIntyre-Mills

This article is a thinking exercise to re-imagine some of the principles of a transformational vocational education and training (VET) approach underpinned by participatory democracy and governance, and is drawn from a longer work on an ABC of the principles that could be considered when discussing ways to transform VET for South African learners and teachers. The purpose of this article is to scope out the social, cultural, political, economic and environmental context of VET and to suggest some of the possible ingredients to inspire co-created design. Thus the article is just a set of ideas for possible consideration and as such it makes policy suggestions based on many ways of knowing rooted in a respect for self, others (including sentient beings) and the environment on which we depend. The notion of African Renaissance characterises the mission of a VET approach in South Africa that is accountable to this generation of living systems and the next.


Author(s):  
Ruslan Rafisovich Hasanov

On the basis of the archetypic analysis of development trends of a conflictological paradigm the author’s model of minimization of conflict potential in modern society is offered. Institutional construction is the basis for model that is harmonized with a factor of societal identity.It is noted that the problems of social conflicts, according to data from monitor- ing studies of the Ukrainian school of archetype, are increasingly shifted into the sphere of interpersonal relations. It is stimulated by the progression in society of so-called self-sufficient personalities, the “subjectification” of the social space, and at the same time narrowing down to the solution of entirely specific situations in which there is a collision of the interests of two or more parties.Instead, in order to find the optimal solution for resolving the conflict, it is necessary to have interdisciplinary knowledge, in particular understanding of the deep nature of such conflicts. Collision of points of view, thoughts, positions — a very frequent phenomenon of modern social life. In order to develop the correct line of behavior in various conflict situations, it is important to adequately under- stand the nature of the emergence of the modern conflict and the mechanisms for resolving them in substance. Knowledge of conflict nature enriches the culture of communication and makes human life and social groups not only more calm, but also creates conditions for constructive development. It is proved that in modern life one can not but agree with the statement that an individual carries first re- sponsibility for his own life and only then for the life of the social groups to which he belongs. And while making decisions within the framework of modern mecha- nisms (consensus), the properties of human psychology such as extroversion, emo- tionality, irrationality, intuition, externality, and executive ability will not at least contribute to such a task.That is why in the author’s research attracted attention to the archetypal na- ture of the conflict — the primitive images, ideas, feelings inherent in man as a bearer of the collective unconscious.


Author(s):  
Ruslan Rafisovich Hasanov

On the basis of the archetypic analysis of development trends of a conflictological paradigm the author’s model of minimization of conflict potential in modern society is offered. Institutional construction is the basis for model that is harmonized with a factor of societal identity. It is noted that the problems of social conflicts, according to data from monitoring studies of the Ukrainian school of archetype, are increasingly shifted into the sphere of interpersonal relations. It is stimulated by the progression in society of so-called self-sufficient personalities, the “subjectification” of the social space, and at the same time narrowing down to the solution of entirely specific situations in which there is a collision of the interests of two or more parties. Instead, in order to find the optimal solution for resolving the conflict, it is necessary to have interdisciplinary knowledge, in particular understanding of the deep nature of such conflicts. Collision of points of view, thoughts, positions — a very frequent phenomenon of modern social life. In order to develop the correct line of behavior in various conflict situations, it is important to adequately understand the nature of the emergence of the modern conflict and the mechanisms for resolving them in substance. Knowledge of conflict nature enriches the culture of communication and makes human life and social groups not only more calm, but also creates conditions for constructive development. It is proved that in modern life one can not but agree with the statement that an individual carries first responsibility for his own life and only then for the life of the social groups to which he belongs. And while making decisions within the framework of modern mechanisms (consensus), the properties of human psychology such as extroversion, emotionality, irrationality, intuition, externality, and executive ability will not at least contribute to such a task. That is why in the author’s research attracted attention to the archetypal nature of the conflict — the primitive images, ideas, feelings inherent in man as a bearer of the collective unconscious.


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