Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/sor.2023.a901708
Mischa Gabowitsch
Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between the materiality of signs, crowds, and community, focusing on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The first part traces how emblems of authority carried in crowds have evolved from medieval war flags and gonfalons to twentieth-century military distinctions. The ease of production and distribution in the post-Soviet era ushered in symbolic inflation, prompting state attempts to reestablish control over the meaning of such signs. The second part looks at material markers of dissent since the late imperial era, and argues that the individualized production of protest signs in the twenty-first century has fractured protest communities, and discusses recent examples of collective sign-making as attempts to reestablish protest communities in new form.
{"title":"Emblems of Authority, Symbols of Protest: Crowds and the Materiality of Their Signs","authors":"Mischa Gabowitsch","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.a901708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.a901708","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between the materiality of signs, crowds, and community, focusing on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The first part traces how emblems of authority carried in crowds have evolved from medieval war flags and gonfalons to twentieth-century military distinctions. The ease of production and distribution in the post-Soviet era ushered in symbolic inflation, prompting state attempts to reestablish control over the meaning of such signs. The second part looks at material markers of dissent since the late imperial era, and argues that the individualized production of protest signs in the twenty-first century has fractured protest communities, and discusses recent examples of collective sign-making as attempts to reestablish protest communities in new form.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"61 1","pages":"337 - 372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74831772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/sor.2023.a901705
Sara Vestergren, Yasemin Gülsüm Acar
Abstract:Historically, social psychologists have conceptualized the crowd and its members as mindless and irrational. More recent research has emphasized the crowd as an agentic space that offers both emergence and endurance of psychological transformations, as related to social identity. Using a social identity approach, models have taken the social context (inter- and intragroup interaction) into account to explain transformations through crowd participation. We argue for the need to include wider contextual dimensions (including physical, political, and economic) to understand crowd participation and transformative dynamics through collective action across geographical, ideological, and state contexts.
{"title":"The Dynamic Context of Transformations through Crowds and Collective Action","authors":"Sara Vestergren, Yasemin Gülsüm Acar","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.a901705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.a901705","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Historically, social psychologists have conceptualized the crowd and its members as mindless and irrational. More recent research has emphasized the crowd as an agentic space that offers both emergence and endurance of psychological transformations, as related to social identity. Using a social identity approach, models have taken the social context (inter- and intragroup interaction) into account to explain transformations through crowd participation. We argue for the need to include wider contextual dimensions (including physical, political, and economic) to understand crowd participation and transformative dynamics through collective action across geographical, ideological, and state contexts.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"12 1","pages":"271 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91531255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/sor.2023.a901709
R. Samet
Abstract:There are strong continuities between crowd theory, which flowered during the early twentieth century, and theories of populist mobilization. Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1960) bridges these two literatures. Canetti gives us two relatively underappreciated ideas—the sting of command and the impulse for survival—that explain how populist movements change over time. To demonstrate how Canetti's work speaks to theories of populism, I draw on my fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution was, arguably, the most progressive political movement of the twenty-first century, but it veered wildly off course. Crowd theory gives us tools to track this transformation. Rather than imagining that populist movements are vacuous from the outset, Canetti directs attention toward their animating grievances. This article considers how the grievances that fed the Bolivarian Revolution eventually consumed it; this is a modest attempt to understand how one of the most promising political movements in recent memory ended up such a long way from where it started.
{"title":"Crowds and Popular Power: Reading Elias Canetti in Caracas","authors":"R. Samet","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.a901709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.a901709","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:There are strong continuities between crowd theory, which flowered during the early twentieth century, and theories of populist mobilization. Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1960) bridges these two literatures. Canetti gives us two relatively underappreciated ideas—the sting of command and the impulse for survival—that explain how populist movements change over time. To demonstrate how Canetti's work speaks to theories of populism, I draw on my fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela. Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution was, arguably, the most progressive political movement of the twenty-first century, but it veered wildly off course. Crowd theory gives us tools to track this transformation. Rather than imagining that populist movements are vacuous from the outset, Canetti directs attention toward their animating grievances. This article considers how the grievances that fed the Bolivarian Revolution eventually consumed it; this is a modest attempt to understand how one of the most promising political movements in recent memory ended up such a long way from where it started.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"44 1","pages":"407 - 431"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78271165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/sor.2023.a901710
N. Chowdhury
Abstract:Aggrieved crowds throw objects in protest that dole out insult and injury in equal measure. Despite the motley things in a crowd's arsenal, there is a pattern to pelting and the range of causes for which rocks, tomatoes, eggs, pies, milkshakes, shoes, and water bottles are thrown with regularity. Pelting overcomes distance by touching the body of a powerful enemy by proxy. In hitting the sublime body with "matters out of place," the crowd relocates the sovereign aura within itself while transgressing the boundaries of high and low. This essay considers pelting in all its joyous, violent, fun, furious, and law-breaking glory and, therefore, as a medium and metaphor of the crowd.
{"title":"On the Importance of Throwing Things: Pelting as Popular Politics","authors":"N. Chowdhury","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.a901710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.a901710","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Aggrieved crowds throw objects in protest that dole out insult and injury in equal measure. Despite the motley things in a crowd's arsenal, there is a pattern to pelting and the range of causes for which rocks, tomatoes, eggs, pies, milkshakes, shoes, and water bottles are thrown with regularity. Pelting overcomes distance by touching the body of a powerful enemy by proxy. In hitting the sublime body with \"matters out of place,\" the crowd relocates the sovereign aura within itself while transgressing the boundaries of high and low. This essay considers pelting in all its joyous, violent, fun, furious, and law-breaking glory and, therefore, as a medium and metaphor of the crowd.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"31 1","pages":"433 - 456"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77508175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In the final stage of the tenure track procedure in Poland, after a candidate has been recommended by a tenure commission, the Polish president must sign the candidate's nomination. In several recent cases, this final act has been delayed, revealing how politicians in Poland are able to control academic careers. This article analyzes the complex relationship between academics and politicians in Poland and how this relationship challenges academic freedom. Autocensura (self-censorship) is one of the key consequences of this relationship.
{"title":"Presidential Professorships: The Tenure Process in Poland","authors":"I. Wagner","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the final stage of the tenure track procedure in Poland, after a candidate has been recommended by a tenure commission, the Polish president must sign the candidate's nomination. In several recent cases, this final act has been delayed, revealing how politicians in Poland are able to control academic careers. This article analyzes the complex relationship between academics and politicians in Poland and how this relationship challenges academic freedom. Autocensura (self-censorship) is one of the key consequences of this relationship.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"304 1","pages":"189 - 214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79793247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, social science was underrepresented in shaping government health policy. There are several reasons for this, which reflect the perceived low status of social science in health science. Nevertheless, social science is important to health science in confronting misinformation about the pandemic.
{"title":"Social Science in the Time of COVID-19","authors":"Michel Wensing","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, social science was underrepresented in shaping government health policy. There are several reasons for this, which reflect the perceived low status of social science in health science. Nevertheless, social science is important to health science in confronting misinformation about the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":" 6-7","pages":"175 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91413779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
the sars-cov-2 pandemic upended most aspects of human existence, disrupting national and global economies, requiring severe lockdowns and the shutting of schools and universities, and severely impacting human health. While official figures indicate that more than 6 million human beings lost their lives to the pandemic, as further national analyses of excess deaths are made, this is almost certainly an undercount. In South Africa, for instance, it is estimated that the mortality figures are underestimated by a factor of 3. This represents deep human suffering with continuing, severe long-term effects. Science was drawn into the fray to answer the urgency for solutions to address the pandemic, a call for “speeded-up” science. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said in an interview with Ian Sample of the Guardian, “It has been utterly exhausting at times. I’ve been involved in plenty of intense scientific competitions but this is different. You have this sense that every day counts, that what you are working on may save some lives and that you cannot make mistakes, you cannot afford to give anything less than 100%” (Sample 2020). The pandemic also drove the “industrial” use of new technologies, some of which were previously restricted to research laboratories. Though slow at first, the social sciences were mobilized in many parts of the world to address the behavioral aspects of the response to the pandemic, the socioeconomic implications of the policy options adopted by governments, and the long-term psychosocial effects of infection. The individual and social costs of the pandemic’s devastating impact on schools have yet to be understood.
{"title":"Guest Editor's Introduction","authors":"A. Bawa","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.0011","url":null,"abstract":"the sars-cov-2 pandemic upended most aspects of human existence, disrupting national and global economies, requiring severe lockdowns and the shutting of schools and universities, and severely impacting human health. While official figures indicate that more than 6 million human beings lost their lives to the pandemic, as further national analyses of excess deaths are made, this is almost certainly an undercount. In South Africa, for instance, it is estimated that the mortality figures are underestimated by a factor of 3. This represents deep human suffering with continuing, severe long-term effects. Science was drawn into the fray to answer the urgency for solutions to address the pandemic, a call for “speeded-up” science. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said in an interview with Ian Sample of the Guardian, “It has been utterly exhausting at times. I’ve been involved in plenty of intense scientific competitions but this is different. You have this sense that every day counts, that what you are working on may save some lives and that you cannot make mistakes, you cannot afford to give anything less than 100%” (Sample 2020). The pandemic also drove the “industrial” use of new technologies, some of which were previously restricted to research laboratories. Though slow at first, the social sciences were mobilized in many parts of the world to address the behavioral aspects of the response to the pandemic, the socioeconomic implications of the policy options adopted by governments, and the long-term psychosocial effects of infection. The individual and social costs of the pandemic’s devastating impact on schools have yet to be understood.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"3 1","pages":"ix - xv"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81315874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay explores why science and technology have been questioned in recent years. It tracks doubts about the veracity of science and the motives of scientists since the Second World War. It also explores ways that nation-states have used and abused the veracity of scientific opinion during the contemporary health crisis.
{"title":"Science and Scientists in Distress","authors":"A. Sitas","doi":"10.1353/sor.2023.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sor.2023.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores why science and technology have been questioned in recent years. It tracks doubts about the veracity of science and the motives of scientists since the Second World War. It also explores ways that nation-states have used and abused the veracity of scientific opinion during the contemporary health crisis.","PeriodicalId":21868,"journal":{"name":"Social Research: An International Quarterly","volume":"103 1","pages":"1 - 10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84828848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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