Society最新文献

This paper provides a framework to make moral sense of terrorism. The framework consists in a test, referred to as the MODAL test, which is an acronym standing for five tests or principles for determining the moral defensibility or indefensibility of terrorism. The five principles concern the motives for terrorism, its objectives, destructiveness, availability of alternatives, and likelihood of success. This approach makes it conceivable but highly unlikely in practice that a terrorist act is morally justified. The MODAL test does not claim to be an exhaustive framework for analysing the moral legitimacy or illegitimacy of terrorism but rather a practical analytical tool aimed at securing a reliable grasp of the tricky question of the relation between morality and terrorism.

Male and female partners in heterosexual peer networks in Calabar metropolis, Cross River State, south-eastern Nigeria, use reciprocal label metaphors to characterize each other in negative (or positive) ways. This article explores how sexual metaphors, banters, and teasing are used to satirize young people’s heterosexual behaviors and practices to develop consensual sexual morality. The study is anchored on Charteris-Black’s (2004) critical metaphor analysis (CMA) which highlights the social influence of ideology and asymmetry power relations which are communicated by metaphors from semantic, pragmatic, and cognitive dimensions. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data sourced through focus group and semi-structured interviews with 30 participants who were purposively sampled, I argue that categories of metaphors used in labeling the significant other provide platforms where sexuality and intimate bonds and relations are (re)imagined and (re)constructed in the context of the lived experiences of young sexual actors. The study concludes that reciprocal labeling of sexual partners among the sampled population in this study facilitates the enthronement of hegemonic ideologies and heterosexual capital such as the reproduction of male power, as well as the subversion of such power and control through female agency. In this way, label metaphors provide prominent social instruments of regulation of peer sexual behavior and in bridging the gender divide.

This essay discusses the critique of writing that Socrates presents in Plato’s Phaedrus. It argues that because he conceives of writing as a kind of technology (in Greek, a technê), this passage prefigures many of the conversations now taking place about our own most recent technological advances: the internet, the smartphone, and artificial intelligence.

Abstract

Within the British conservative movement, the hard right is identifiable and significant. The hard right tends to believe that Britain’s cultural institutions, such as the BBC, have an embedded anti-conservative bias. For them, the Corporation represents everything that is wrong with the ‘liberal metropolitan elite’ that, they believe, controls key institutions. This article explores the contribution to this narrative made by the popular historian and combative political commentator Paul Johnson, a prominent public figure in the UK and USA for many decades. Johnson’s potent melding of social, political, and economic critiques of the Corporation represented a significant deepening of an ‘anti-BBC mood’ on the British right. This article contextualises the cultural logic explicit in Johnson’s critique of the BBC and the wider ‘liberal establishment’. It does so by contrasting Johnson with the influential cultural theorist Richard Hoggart, who shared Johnson’s view that, during the latter part of the twentieth century, the original mission of the BBC was severely eroded. Examining Johnson’s thought provides important insights into the character, strengths, and weaknesses of the hard right view. What emerges is a profound disjunction between the certainty and forcefulness with which hard right narratives are put forward and their deep contestability.

The article discusses the development of a new measurement called the World Love Index, which aims to evaluate people’s capacity to care for others and the world as an indicator of well-being. Drawing inspiration from appeals by intellectuals to shift towards a new form of humanism, the proposed new index aims to mark the transition towards a new social ecology, and it emphasizes the importance of social connections and relationships. In this way, it tries to capture the challenge of the quest of hope in the post-pandemic era. The study integrates data from the Gallup World Poll and World Values Survey to create this index, focusing on dimensions like overabundance of giving and care for others. The research identifies different clusters of countries based on their orientation towards environmental concern or humanitarian support, revealing how social love varies across income levels. The study argues that focusing on social love as a measure of well-being can lead to transformative policies that emphasize community-building and solidarity, offering a new narrative of progress centered on caring for one another and the environment. Against the backdrop of the post-pandemic era’s socio-economic challenges and echoes of historical crises, the study advocates for a paradigm shift away from traditional GDP-centric metrics, advocating for a comprehensive approach to measuring well-being that considers diverse dimensions of human experience. Ultimately, the World Love Index presents an innovative way to assess societies’ propensity for compassion and offers a fresh perspective on fostering hope and transformation through community-building and caring relationships.