A thought-provoking and timely call to apply Judaism's powerful teachings to help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path. While appreciating the radical, transformative nature of Judaism, Richard Schwartz argues that it has been "stolen" by Jews who are in denial about climate change and other environmental threats and support politicians and policies that may be inconsistent with basic Jewish values. Tackling such diverse issues as climate change, world hunger, vegetarianism, poverty, terrorism, destruction of the environment, peace (...) prospects in Israel, and American foreign policy, he offers practical suggestions for getting Judaism back on track as a faith based on justice, peace, and compassion. He urges the reader to reconsider current issues in line with Judaism's highest values in an effort to meet the pressing challenges of today's world. (shrink)

The Hebrew phrase tikkun olam means repairing, mending or healing the world. Today, the phrase tikkun olam, particularly in liberal Jewish American circles, has become a slogan for a diverse range of topics such as activism, political participation, call and pursuit of social justice, charities, environmental issues and healthy nutrition. Moreover, the presidents of the United States who attend Jewish religious days and Jewish ceremonies state the tikkun olam in its Hebrew origin, pointing out its origin embedded in the (...) Judaism and a religious rule and/or an obligation that is important in Jewish tradition and thought. Nevertheless, when we look at the context of religious literature in which the phrase is used, it is seen that, although it is difficult to make a clear definition, it does not reflect modern/widespread uses and their meanings. Furthermore, tikkun olam is an ignored and even rejected concept by the Rabbinic Judaism which claims to represent the tradition and its current representative Orthodox Judaism. This fact is also seen in the usage and prevalence of the term in the U.S. and Israel. Thus, in this article, especially with reference to the norms of Mishnah, the religious-juristicial contexts and possible meanings of the phrase of tikkun olam, the notion of tikkun olam in Jewish liturgy and its implied meaning and the Kabbalistic understanding of tikkun will be presented, the development, changing and conversion of the phrase in modern age and its contemporary usage areas and reinterpretations will be demonstrated.Summary: Recently and especially in the U.S., the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam are used as a slogan in a widespread manner such as for activism, political participation, social justice, all kinds of charities, environmental issues, counter terrorism and healthy nutrition. Such a common usage of the phrase is largely the result of its literal meaning and ambiguity. Hence, this article aims to explore the place of the concept of tikkun olam in Jewish religious literature and its variations and semantic changes. Tikkun olam, literally means the repairing, mending or healing the world. However, regarding its religious context, it is difficult to determine what it means accurately. In time, some has used the tikkun olam as a legislative justification for changing specific laws, some has attributed to it an eschatological meaning which indicates to the mesianic age, and some has dicussed it in the context of mystical sense. The first usage of the phrase of tikkun olam in the Jewish religious literature was simply in the form of “because of tikkun olam” in Gittin epistle, a tractate of Mishnah and Talmud. Here, the phrase was used as a reason of a judgment concerning to the subjects of marriage, divorcement, slavery, captivity etc. In the context of these subjects tikkun olam indicates to the similar meanings like “repairing, organizing, healing, changing the world; regulating and improving the society, maintaining the social order, and prioritizing the common good. In fact, the concept of tikkun olam as the reason of the judgements in these matters is likely related to a juridical reason that intends to ensure the personal and public welfare such as clarifying the marital status of woman, to prevent the capture and seizure from Jewish society, and to deal with economy and identification of juridical status of the slaves.The other reference to tikkun olam appears in the second part of the aleinu prayer. However, the notion of tikkun olam in the aleinu prayer refers to a situation that happens in God’s Kingdom if Torah and halakhah are followed carefully. Hence, the aleinu prayer’s tikkun olam points out eschatological expectation which desires a messianic age, but not the socio-political and ecological concerns of the world as in the current fields and meanings.The modern idea of tikkun olam is also associated with the Jewish mystical movement, Kabbalah. Nonetheless, the concept of tikkun in Kabbalah is not a concept related to the socio-political circumstances of the world where we live in, but it is related to the restoring of the divine world. In order to restoring the divine world, human should fulfill the commands by studying Torah and have a spiritual and moral rehabilitation process by engaging in ascetic practices.The use of the phrase of tikkun olam gradually progress in the socio-political life of the U.S. The first use of the expression of tikkun olam in the U.S. was in the 1950’s by Shlomo Bardin, the founder of the Brandeis Camp Institute in California. Bardin asserted that the Aleinu prayer was the most important expression of Jewish values, particularly the expression “le-taken olam be-malchut shaddai” that is typically translated as “when the world shall be perfected under the reign of the God.” Bardin suggested that these words referred to the obligation of Jews to work for a more perfect world. The concept of tikkun olam entered contemporary usage by the way of its being preferred as a name to those such as social justice and charity programmes which was launched by the Reformist and Conservative groups in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1970s, United Synagogue Youth which is the national youth foundation of the conservative movement adopted the expression of tikkun olam and changed the title of its social action programs from “Building Spiritual Bridges” to “Tikkun Olam.” Nowadays, United Synagogue Youth proceeds all of its social activities and tzedakah programs through the tikkun olam project.By the end of 1970’s, New Jewish Agenda, an organization devoted itself to the religious and social values, acknowledged the slogan of “Tikkun Olam” as the spirit of its ideology. In 1986, Michael Lerner entitled a left-oriented liberal publication with the concept of Tikkun by claiming that this concept represented the origin of Judaism, and he take an important role on making the concept have a prevalence.Pittsburgh Platform organized in 1999 by the Reformist Jewish Movement emphasized that people must perform the most significant moral principles in the relationships with all non-Jewish people and all other creatures. This platform also stated that making the world a better place with the help of God would quicken the upcoming the messianic age. The tikkun understanding of the Reformist movement evolved to more universal realm by embracing the non-Jewish people, as well. Over the last two decades, successive presidents of the U.S. who attended in the ceremonies of Jewish religious days and Jewish assemblages have contributed to the prevalence and usefulness of tikkun olam by mentioning the phrase of tikkun olam in Hebrew, expressing that this is an essential principle of Judaism and addressing that this has a central role in Jewish tradition and thought. On the other hand, this concept does not have an important or a central place in Rabbinic Judaism and even in Orthodox Jewish communities which are the current representatives of Rabbinic Judaism. Moreover, Reformist, Conservative, and Reconstructionist American Jews who are considered on the liberal side of the politics has put the concept on the current use and the world’s agenda. Thus, the phrase of the tikkun olam is more popular in non-Judaic milieux in the U.S. than the Jews in Israel. In Israel where the Orthodox doctrine is dominated and shaped the people, tikkun olam is regarded as a western value and is ignored. (shrink)

How important is atheism for Jewish history and Jews for the history of atheism? Modern Jewish histories have tended to focus on Jewish secularization rather than atheism, and historical surveys of atheism in the West have tended to neglect the Jewish experience which is subsumed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible to make the case that the secularization narrative privileges social change over Jewish intellectual engagement with non-belief, and that just as Jewish and Christian conceptions of theism (...) differ, so do their atheisms. Jewish historical attitudes towards atheism are complicated and have shifted over time. Here, skeptical tendencies, that is, attitudes and ideas that would be associated later with atheism, will be considered alongside claims about atheism per se. (shrink)

This article exposes comparable social mechanisms that have generated the social construction of threatening immigrants in Europe in the thirties and in the eighties. The analysis is building on Bourdieu 's theory of the construction of social space and the genesis of social groups. This semiotic-praxiological approach is used to explain why the specific historical and socio-economical conditions in the thirties and eighties have lead to the construction of Jews and Muslims as threatening immigrants. Our discussion (...) focuses on the exemplary caseof the 'migrant problem' in historical and actual political discourse in Flanders. Where at the end of the thirties the notion 'immigrant' referred exclusively to Jews, in the eighties it is used for Turkish and Maroccan 'guestworkers'. In spite of the specific historical and social situation of Jewish and Muslim immigrants parallel social mechanisms and discourses emerge in the redrawing of the social space by creating 'theatening' immigrants/strangers. These mechanisms are a religious anti Judaism/anti-Islamism, rapid social economie change fueling an economical argumented antiJew/anti-muslim and racism legitimized by an internationally disseminated ethno-nationalism. (shrink)

A recent spate of books on the life and legacy of the political philosopher Leo Strauss, notably Steven B. Smith's Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, and Judaism , suggests a desperate effort to salvage Strauss and the Straussian school of political philosophy from the wreckage of American neoconservatism. Although a number of these works are quite thoughtful and helpfully counter many of the more extreme (and uglier) charges made concerning the meaning of Straussianism and its political influence, their general drift (...) in fact confirms what the more responsible critics of this school have long maintained about its tendency to oppose positions that would help advance meaningful social change and social justice. Key Words: Leo Strauss • Straussianism • Platonism • esoteric writing • zeteti-cism • Socratic • skepticism • relativism • fideism. (shrink)

Cultural, social and religious diversity is one of the most valued and most valuable aspects of our contemporary, globalized world. Sometimes it even tends to be described as a gift and invitation to dialogue instead of conflict and confrontation, as numerous authors – Samuel P. Huntington, Mary Habeck, Paul Berman, Bruce Bawer and many other – would have us to believe. Especially dialogue among religions – Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam – is an object of peculiar interest, expectations and (...) hopes. Within the paper recent dialogic tendencies in cultures and societies are presented as one of the most important manifestations of humanism (both religious and a-religious), which is reconstructed in reference to social change, modernization, enlightenment, toleration and pluralism as phenomena analyzed and deliberated by Fracis Bacon on one hand and contemporary Macedonian philosopher and Muslim theologian, Ismail Bardhi, on the other. Is enlightenment without secularization possible? Does religious passion and zeal always lead to suspension, “overcoming”, elimination of reason? In the conclusion of the paper the significance of works by young Polish artist, Joanna Rajkowska, is being highlighted as an example of humanism and dialogism which struggle with recent waves of islamophobia in Europe. (shrink)

Theories of Social Change played a central role in explaining the development of modern societies. There are two classes of such approaches: structural (i.e. evolutionary and functionalistic) theories and individualistic theories (based for instance on learning, psychoanalytic or rational choice theories). The question is to what extend these theories fit the framework of Methodological Individualism. The answer is given in two steps: First, the article describes the logic of micro-foundational explanation that Methodological Individualism presupposes. Second, presenting some paradigmatic (...) theories of social change it is argued that none of these theories does fulfill the requirements of this explanatory model; the reasons for these insufficiencies are discussed. (shrink)

The distinctness of each person’s life and experience is an important consideration in dominant accounts of how democratic institutions should distribute basic rights and liberties. Drawing on recent social movements, philosophers like Iris Marion Young, Miranda Fricker, and Axel Honneth have nonetheless drawn attention to the distinctive claims and challenges that plurality and difference entrain in democratic societies by analysing how the dominant discourses on rights and justice tend to elide, obscure, or reify the lived experiences of individuals belonging (...) to disadvantaged and oppressed groups. In this essay, I offer an independent justification for why we should take such lived experiences seriously. I show how the lived experiences of disadvantaged and oppressed individuals can be a resource for deep and meaningful social change. I propose a distinctive kind of social change in which the disadvantaged and oppressed themselves drive the process of transformation whereby they change the oppressive frames of difference relating to their race, class, sex, or ability. I call this kind ‘organic social change’. I also show that organic social change is distinctively important in that the disadvantaged and oppressed get to enact an empowering mode of cooperation that harnesses their singularities when they are the ones driving the process of their own and one another’s transformations. (shrink)

Education and Social Change sheds a new light on Florian Znaniecki's most original program of the sociology of education. The volume contains newly discovered reports from the research under the auspices of the Columbia University in the thirties, focused on educating to participate in democratic social order and cultural innovation. Preparation for cooperative interactions with leaders lies at the core of the analysis. Included are several texts published in English which clearly expound Znaniecki's analysis of social (...) processes in education. The key idea of transforming educational systems in the direction of self-education still proves relevant. (shrink)

The distinctness of each person’s life and experience is an important consideration in dominant accounts of how democratic institutions should distribute basic rights and liberties. Drawing on recent social movements, philosophers like Iris Marion Young, Miranda Fricker, and Axel Honneth have nonetheless drawn attention to the distinctive claims and challenges that plurality and difference entrain in democratic societies by analysing how the dominant discourses on rights and justice tend to elide, obscure, or reify the lived experiences of individuals belonging (...) to disadvantaged and oppressed groups. In this essay, I offer an independent justification for why we should take such lived experiences seriously. I show how the lived experiences of disadvantaged and oppressed individuals can be a resource for deep and meaningful social change. I propose a distinctive kind of social change in which the disadvantaged and oppressed themselves drive the process of transformation whereby they change the oppressive frames of difference relating to their race, class, sex, or ability. I call this kind ‘organic social change’. I also show that organic social change is distinctively important in that the disadvantaged and oppressed get to enact an empowering mode of cooperation that harnesses their singularities when they are the ones driving the process of their own and one another’s transformations. (shrink)

Social Change in a Material Worldoffers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author's earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book (...) argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change. (shrink)

Social attitudes toward usury (here defined using the archaic meaning as the taking of interest on loans) have changed dramatically over the centuries. From antiquity until the Protestant Reformation, usury was regarded as an inherently evil activity. Today, with few exceptions, usury is met with moral indifference. Modern objections to usury are limited to protest against "excessive" interest rates rather than interest per se. With this change in focus, the very meaning of the term "usury" has also changed. (...) Many early pronouncements against the taking of interest emphasized the plight of the poor, but ironically, the poor actually pay the highest rates of interest in the modern American economy. Despite the universality of usury, some socio-economic subcultures still manage to avoid the taking or giving of interest. Orthodox branches of both Judaism and Islam have maintained bans on usury throughout the centuries and up to the present time. This is especially interesting in the case of Judaism, given the popular cultural image of the Jew as usurer. Jewish free loan systems may actually offer a model for modern loan programs that can be designed to aid poor borrowers, who are frequently shut out of mainstream financial services. (shrink)

The ethical challenges of caring for the chronically ill are of increasing concern to nurses as they attempt to create humanitarian environments for long-term care. This article suggests two ethical perspectives to guide the agenda of the nursing profession to achieve social change in the care of the chronically ill and aging. First, a reemphasis on the public duties of the professions is recommended which extends beyond serving the interests of the nursing profession to recognizing the need to (...) serve the common good. Second, the limitations of the autonomy paradigm are explored and the foundation for the development of a new moral paradigm is analyzed in terms of its' potential usefulness in addressing ethical problems of chronic illness. Several initiatives that nursing must undertake to facilitate the emergence of this paradigm are proposed. (shrink)

This article describes four doctoral students' process of coming together to support each other's work. What emerged was a powerful space of learning and a framework on research for social change. The authors hosted a 2-hour reflection session, which was recorded and transcribed. Text of that session appears in this article along with discussion of (a) key principles of the social change framework, (b) the ways the students came to take ownership over their work and to (...) collaborate, and (c) guidance for other researchers working against the isolation and competition that is too common in the academy. (shrink)

While temporality has been addressed in the context of child welfare, the temporal dimensions of differentiation and othering remain unacknowledged. This article draws on material from a Swedish child welfare agency and is theoretically inspired by postcolonial and queer theories and critical childhood studies. It is based on an analytical juxtaposition of care order applications recommending immediate child welfare interventions versus interventions that are recommended after long ongoing assessments. Such recommendations are addressed as unequal in terms of timing. The article (...) discusses temporal themes related to permanency versus temporary, which guide assessments of changeability. I show how immediate interventions respond to chronicity—the temporality of incurability, permanency, and underdevelopment. However, social problems in long ongoing assessments are assessed as permanent only after long ongoing observations or passage of time. The article discusses how ideas about change reproduce wider societal and intersecting inequalities. This becomes visible when considering time as allocated to parents and their potential to bring about change. I argue that even though permanency differs from chronicity, it still limits a discussion about change as societal, and the detection of problems remains within a developmentalist and neoliberal framework. In the concluding remarks, I offer an alternative reading of allocated time that can maneuver developmentalist logics, while balancing responsibilisation between the individual and the society. (shrink)

Critics of social injustice argue that the agent of transformative social change will (or should) be a mass agent; namely, an agent that is large, complex, and geographically dispersed. Traditional theories of collective agency emphasize the presence of shared intentions and common knowledge, but mass agents are too large for such cohesion. To make sense of mass agency, I suggest a new approach. On the solidarity theory of mass agency, a mass agent is composed of (a) organizers (...) who intend to fight for social change and (b) supporters who are in solidarity with organizers. (shrink)

This book gathers international and interdisciplinary work on youth studies from the Global South, exploring issues such as continuity and change in youth transitions from education to work; contemporary debates on the impact of mobility, marginalization and violence on young lives; how digital technologies shape youth experiences; and how different institutions, cultures and structures generate a diversity of experiences of what it means to be young. The book is divided into four broad thematic sections: Education, work and social (...) structure; Identity and belonging; Place, mobilities and marginalization; and Power, social conflict and new forms of political participation of youth. (shrink)

_Queer Theory and Social Change_ argues that there is a crisis within Queer theory over whether or not its theories can actually deliver change. Max Kirsch presents a challenging alternative to the current fascination with post-modern analyses of identity, culture, and difference. It emphasizes the need for a discussion of the importance of communities and the role of globalization on queer movements.

_Queer Theory and Social Change_ argues that there is a crisis within Queer theory over whether or not its theories can actually deliver change. Max Kirsch presents a challenging alternative to the current fascination with post-modern analyses of identity, culture, and difference. It emphasizes the need for a discussion of the importance of communities and the role of globalization on queer movements.

M. Clifford-Vaughan; VII—Social Change and Legal Norms, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 103–110, https://doi.org.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the several ways in which Atlas Shrugged is related to social change. It explains both how characters such as entrepreneurs and strikers introduce change in the novel as well as how Atlas Shrugged itself can be employed as a tool for bringing about change in the real world. The potential effects of the novel on readers are examined, as are the efforts of social movements that have embraced (...) and incorporated the ideas found therein into their own philosophy. (shrink)

This paper examines sustainable agriculture’s steady rise as a legitimate farm management system. In doing this, it offers an account of social change that centers on trust and its intersection with networks of knowledge. The argument to follow is informed by the works of Foucault and Latour but moves beyond this literature in important ways. Guided by and building upon earlier conceptual framework first forwarded by Carolan and Bell (2003, Environmental Values 12: 225–245), sustainable agriculture is examined through (...) the lens of a “phenomenological challenge.” In doing this, analytic emphasis centers on the interpretative resources of everyday life and the artful act of practice – in other words, on “the local.” Research data involving Iowa farmers and agriculture professionals are examined to understand how social relations of trust and knowledge are contested and shaped within and between agricultural social networks and organizational configurations. All of this is meant to further our understanding of what “sustainable agriculture” is and is not, who it is, and how these boundaries change over time. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022.

Existing social disparities in the United States are inconsistent with Lincoln’s promise of democracy; therefore, there is a need for a critical conceptualization of the first principles that undergird American democracy and the genesis of democratic social change in America. This study aimed to construct a grounded theory that provides an understanding of the process of American democratic social change. The result was the construction of two frameworks: the demoralization process that triggers social (...) class='Hi'>change, and a formal grounded theory that could explain democratic social change endeavors across different domains and levels of analysis. This democratic social change grounded theory answers the research question: How do the principles of the American founding documents provide an understanding of the process of American democratic social change? (shrink)

This essay recovers Jane Addams's practice of constituent storytelling as a resource for contemporary social-change-nonprofit professional practice and activism. Whereas feminist theorizing is rich with resources for theorizing about constituent storytelling, Addams, as both a publicly engaged philosopher and a social-change-nonprofit professional, is uniquely situated to provide practical ways forward for social-change practitioners navigating the lived complexities of speaking for others in light of spatial stratification, subordinating structures, and epistemic exclusion. As a hybrid activist-scholar (...) situated across diverse spaces, Addams serves as a bridge between feminist theorizing about speaking for others, and practices of it among social-change-nonprofit professionals and activists. I show that Addams reveals new ways of thinking about the practice of constituent storytelling for social-change-nonprofit professionals. Namely, in this lived context, speaking for others entails speaking for them through one's own story. Responsible constituent storytelling names oneself as a speaker, owns one's own social standpoint in this rhetorical naming practice, and orients the story through one's own journey—a journey inevitably riddled with failures and faulty assumptions—toward democratic neighborship with the Other across difference. (shrink)

In this response to Christian Smith's What Is a Person?, I raise questions about his conception of the human life as a narrative quest and his account of change in social structures and institutions. The metaphor of life as a quest suggests a solid, isolated, and integrated moral agent. I wonder whether the experiences of most moral agents render a different picture—one where life is fragmented and characterized by complex webs of relationships. Smith provides a detailed account of (...) how social institutions change. I pose examples of more subtle and complex types of change as a way to press him to think about whether his account of change is too linear. (shrink)

This work provides an overall review and analysis of the history of education and of its key research priorities in the British context. It investigates the extent to which education has contributed historically to social change in Britain, how it has itself been moulded by society, and the needs and opportunities that remain for further research in this general area. Contributors review the strengths and limitations of the historical literature on social change in British education over (...) the past forty years, ascertain what this literature tells us about the relationship between education and social change, and map areas and themes for future historical research. They consider both formal and informal education, different levels and stages of the education system, the process and experience of education, and regional and national perspectives. They also engage with broader discussions about theory and methodology. The collection covers a large amount of historical territory, from the sixteenth century to the present, including the emergence of the learned professions, the relationship between society and the economy, the role of higher technological education, the historical experiences of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the social significance of teaching and learning, and the importance of social class, gender, ethnicity, and disability. It involves personal biography no less than broad national and international movements in its considerations. This book will be a major contribution to research as well as a general resource in the history and historiography of education in Britain. (shrink)

Americans increasingly cite moral values as a factor in how they vote, but when we define morality simply in terms of a voter's position on gay marriage and abortion, we lose sight of the ethical decisions that guide our everyday lives. In our encounters with friends, family members, nature, and nonhuman creatures, we practice a nonutilitarian morality that makes sacrifice a rational and reasonable choice. Recognizing these everyday ethics, Anna L. Peterson argues, helps us move past the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts (...) of culture and refocus on issues that affect real social change. Peterson begins by divining a "second language" for personal and political values, a vocabulary derived from the loving and mutually beneficial relationships of daily life. Even if our interactions with others are fleeting and fragmentary, they provide a viable alternative to the contractual and atomistic attitudes of mainstream culture. Everyday ethics point toward a more just, humane, and sustainable society, and to acknowledge moments of grace in our daily encounters is to realize a different way of relating to people and nonhuman nature—an alternative ethic to cynicism and rank consumerism. In redefining the parameters of morality, Peterson enables us to make fundamental problems such as the distribution of wealth, the use of public land and natural resources, labor and employment policy, and the character of political institutions the preferred focus of debate and action. (shrink)

This scholarly synthesis of biblical studies and Christian social ethics is designed to provide a biblical argument for intentional institutional change on behalf of social justice. Stephen Charles Mott provides a biblical and ethical guide on ways to implement that change. The first part of the book, providing the biblical theology of intentional social change, deals with the central concepts in biblical and theological ethics: grace, evil, love, justice, and the Reign of God. Christian (...) social change must be rooted not only in justice, but in the grace received through the death and resurrection of Christ. The second part evaluates ethical and theological methods for carrying out that intentional social change. It offers a study of evangelism, counter community, civil disobedience, armed revolution, and political reform. It shows the contribution of each as well as the strong limitations of each used in isolation. A recurring theme of the book is the scriptural insistence on the priority of justice as taking upon oneself the cause of the oppressed. Justice is understood on bringing back into the community those who are near to falling out of it. Political authority has a vital role in social change for justice. It is essential that a Christian use all available and legitimate means of meeting basic needs by providing for all what is essential for inclusion in society. In this revised edition, Mott updates the contemporary illustrations and includes his own further reflections in the last thirty years on this topic. (shrink)

The articles collected in this volume point out that society as a whole is changing. Social change is due not only to changes in technology and economy, but also to the changing strategies and discourses of social scientists. To what exactly will this change lead in the 21st century? What kind of society lies ahead? In this book the reader will find many arguments and hints pertaining to these questions. She/he will be confronted by a plethora (...) of enriching conceptions of the relationships between social sciences and social changes. (shrink)

Individual experience and social change: Herbert Marcuse as interpreted by Mark Fisher and the democratic utopia of everyday life In his last lectures, Mark Fisher re-evaluates the work of Herbert Marcuse and the entire tradition of the 1960s counterculture. He emphasizes that social change is not only a matter of objective conditions, but also a transformation of consciousness and culture. These remarks serve as a starting point for reflection on the role of everyday life and individual (...) experience in social change. Everyday life is a key category from this perspective, because it is the center of emancipatory activities, but also of the awareness of the need to fight for a better, more just world. Thus, the article shows the historical significance of Herbert Marcuse's concept and its relation to the present day as interpreted by Mark Fisher. The last part presents an outline of the democratic utopia of everyday life, which refers to the theoretical ideas of Herbert Maruse, but aims to change democracy in such a way that it would be resistant to the temptations of populism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

The neoliberal globalization project of expanding and maintaining capitalism globally requires the shaping of neoliberal nation-states that will entrench its ideology, political structures, and practices. In that sense, the neoliberal nation-state provides an appropriate conceptual site for investigating the local-global nexus in the dynamics of global capitalism. Using the Philippines as an example, this paper investigates the various factors or dimensions in the making of the Philippines as a neoliberal nation-state from the colonial era to the supranational structures that exert (...) external control on the Philippine political economy: the global power of transnational corporations, the IMF, American and Chinese imperialism, including the American military aid that supports militarization and counter-insurgency against movements that challenge the neoliberal agenda of the past and current regimes. In addition, this paper offers implications for policy changes and strategies for global resistance that anti-globalization movements can consider. (shrink)

Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and (...) travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century. (shrink)