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Topic Review
Androcentrism
Androcentrism is a cultural and societal phenomenon characterized by the prioritization of male perspectives, experiences, and values over those of women. It manifests in various aspects of society, including language, media representation, and institutional practices, perpetuating gender inequalities and reinforcing patriarchal power structures.
  • 6.0K
  • 08 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Commune (Model of Government)
The commune, as a model of government, is generally advocated by some communists, revolutionary socialists, and anarchists. Communes are an organizational community with social cohesion derived from a shared culture. As a governing community, a commune often entails some degree of local governance, communal ownership, and cultural cohesion. However, models that do not include all three aspects may still be described as communes. At its core, a commune is just an organization which creates social conditions that prioritize the primacy of the collective over the individual. Many different forms of commune-based governments are possible, such as a local and sovereign community which is both a microstate and a nation-state, a federated commune which lacks a degree of sovereignty under the rule of a larger state, or a larger national community which focuses more on aspects of communal ownership rather than communal governance.
  • 5.9K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Social Group
In sociology, a group is a social entity composed of two or more individuals who interact with one another, share a sense of identity, and are bound by a common purpose or goal. These social groups can range from intimate and small-scale, such as families, to larger and more complex structures like organizations or communities. The study of groups in sociology provides insights into human social behavior, dynamics, and the influence of collective processes on individuals within the societal framework.
  • 5.9K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Courtship
Courtship is the period of development towards an intimate relationship wherein a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement, followed by a marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female, thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a marriage proposal.
  • 5.8K
  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Technology and Society
Technology society and life or technology and culture refers to the inter-dependency, co-dependence, co-influence, and co-production of technology and society upon one another. Evidence for this synergy has been found since humanity first started using simple tools. The inter-relationship has continued as modern technologies such as the printing press and computers have helped shape society. The first scientific approach to this relationship occurred with the development of tektology, the "science of organization", in early twentieth century Imperial Russia. In modern academia, the interdisciplinary study of the mutual impacts of science, technology, and society, is called science and technology studies. The simplest form of technology is the development and use of basic tools. The prehistoric discovery of how to control fire and the later Neolithic Revolution increased the available sources of food, and the invention of the wheel helped humans to travel in and control their environment. Developments in historic times have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale, such as the printing press, telephone, and Internet. Technology has developed advanced economies, such as the modern global economy, and has led to the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce by-products known as pollution, and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earth's environment. Innovations influence the values of society and raise new questions in the ethics of technology. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar reactionary movements criticize the pervasiveness of technology, arguing that it harms the environment and alienates people. However, proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition.
  • 5.6K
  • 24 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Environmental Awareness and Individual’s Altruism
Environmental awareness is the level of how much people are interested in or care about environmental issues. Environmental awareness can be either local or global one depending on the type of environmental problem. Studies have argued that this awareness tends to be related to an individual’s altruism, which is one’s action that benefits others without expecting some kind of external reward. The connection between environmental awareness and altruism is getting attention from scholars since both concepts are prosocial ones but it is uncertain if people who are highly aware of environmental issues may not be always acting altruistically. However, it is likely that altruistic people are more likely to have high environmental awareness.
  • 5.2K
  • 28 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Social Complexity
Social complexity refers to the intricate and interconnected nature of social systems, where various elements such as institutions, individuals, and cultural dynamics interact in non-linear and unpredictable ways. It involves the recognition that social phenomena often exhibit emergent properties that cannot be fully understood by analyzing individual components in isolation, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary approaches to grasp the complexity of social structures and behaviors.
  • 5.1K
  • 26 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Philosophy of History
Philosophy of history is the philosophical study of history and the past. The term was coined by Voltaire.
  • 5.0K
  • 19 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Commodity Fetishism
Commodity fetishism is a concept introduced by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy, particularly in his seminal work "Capital, Volume I." The term is used to describe a phenomenon where the social relationships among people are obscured and displaced by the relationships between commodities and the value they represent in a capitalist society. In a capitalist system, commodities are goods or services produced for exchange in the market. Marx argued that the social relations involved in the production and exchange of commodities become mystified, and the commodities themselves take on a quasi-magical quality. This fetishism arises when people attribute inherent value or power to commodities, seeing them as possessing qualities independent of the social relations that produced them.
  • 4.8K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Social Media and the Arab Spring
The role of social media in the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012, remains a highly debated subject. Uprisings occurred both in states with very high levels of Internet usage (such as Bahrain, with 88% of its population online in 2011) and in states with some of the lowest levels of Internet penetration (such as Yemen and Libya).
  • 4.8K
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Sustainability Green Industry 4.0
The Sustainability Green Industry (SGI) 4.0 framework captures the relations of Industry 4.0, green processes and sustainability in manufacturing. The framework is structured into three vertical levels: technological, process and development, integrated through the circular economy. The SGI 4.0 framework’s purpose is to explain how Industry 4.0 technologies create sustainability outcomes through green processes. The facilitating, enabling and supporting functions of green processes allow to understand how modern technologies can be linked to the concept of sustainability. In the literature we can find various concepts connecting Industry 4.0 and sustainability, however, the key role of green processes is not mentioned.
  • 4.8K
  • 25 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Socialist State
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. The idea of a socialist state stems from the broader notion of state socialism, the political perspective that the working class needs to use state power and government policy to establish a socialised economic system. This may either mean a system where the means of production, distribution and exchange are nationalised or under state ownership, or simply a system in which social values or workers' interests have economic priority. However, the concept of a socialist state is mainly advocated by Marxist–Leninists and most socialist states have been established by political parties adhering to Marxism–Leninism or some national variation thereof such as Maoism, Stalinism or Titoism. A state, whether socialist or not, is opposed the most by anarchists, who reject the idea that the state can be used to establish a socialist society due to its hierarchical and arguably coercive nature, considering a socialist state or state socialism as an oxymoron. The concept of a socialist state is also considered unnecessary or counterproductive and rejected by some classical, libertarian and orthodox Marxists, libertarian socialists and other socialist political thinkers who view the modern state as a byproduct of capitalism which would have no function in a socialist system. A socialist state is to be distinguished from a multi-party liberal democracy governed by a self-described socialist party, where the state is not constitutionally bound to the construction of socialism. In such cases, the political system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism. Socialist states in the Marxist–Leninist sense are sovereign states under the control of a vanguard party which is organizing the country's economic, political and social development toward the realization of socialism. Economically, this involves the development of a state capitalist economy with state-directed capital accumulation with the long-term goal of building up the country's productive forces while simultaneously promoting world communism. Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first representing the Soviet Bloc and the latter representing Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties such as Britain, France, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others.
  • 4.7K
  • 24 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Social Control
Social control refers to the mechanisms, norms, and practices through which societies regulate individual behavior and maintain order. It encompasses both formal institutions such as laws and regulations, as well as informal social norms and expectations. Social control mechanisms serve to reinforce conformity to societal norms, values, and expectations, while also deterring deviant behavior through sanctions and rewards.
  • 4.7K
  • 26 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Mindsponge Mechanism
The mindsponge mechanism (mindsponge framework, mindsponge concept, or mindsponge process) provides a way to explain how and why an individual observes and ejects cultural values conditional on the external setting. The term “mindsponge” derives from the metaphor that the mind is analogized to a sponge that squeezes out unsuitable values and absorbs new ones compatible with its core value. Thanks to the complexity and well-structuring, the mechanism has been used to develop various concepts in multiple disciplines. One such concept is "cultural additivity" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0189-2). Recently, the mindsponge mechanism has been developed into mindsponge theory based on various evidence from natural sciences.
  • 4.6K
  • 01 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Algorithmic Journalism
A term that attempts to describe the procedures that have been brought about by recent technological changes in the field of journalism. Characterized by researchers as “the process of using software or algorithms to automatically generate news stories" (Graefe 2016) and “the combination of algorithms, data, and knowledge from the social sciences to supplement the accountability function of journalism” (Hamilton and Turner 2009).
  • 4.5K
  • 03 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Lifestyle (Sociology)
Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, The Case of Miss R., with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban metropolis. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborhoods' degrees of affluence and proximity to natural and cultural environments. For example, in areas near the sea, a surf culture or lifestyle can often be present.
  • 4.5K
  • 13 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Iron Cage
The concept of the "iron cage," introduced by sociologist Max Weber, metaphorically describes the rationalization and bureaucratization of modern society, wherein individuals become trapped by rigid systems of rules, regulations, and rationalized institutions. It signifies the loss of individual autonomy and creativity as bureaucratic structures increasingly dominate social life, constraining human agency within the confines of rationalized systems.
  • 4.4K
  • 08 Feb 2024
Topic Review
Mass Media
Mass media refers to a diverse range of communication channels that transmit information and entertainment content to a large audience. This encompasses traditional mediums such as newspapers, television, and radio, as well as modern digital platforms like the internet and social media. Mass media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion, disseminating news, and influencing societal norms on a global scale.
  • 4.2K
  • 25 Jan 2024
Topic Review
Diffused Religion Beyond Secularization
Diffused religion theory concerns the capacity of a dominant religion in a country to remain solid for centuries.
  • 4.1K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Normative
Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible. A norm in this normative sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. Normative is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term normative to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical. Normative has specialised meanings in different academic disciplines such as philosophy, social sciences, and law. In most contexts, normative means 'relating to an evaluation or value judgment.' Normative propositions tend to evaluate some object or some course of action. Normative content differs from descriptive content. One of the major developments in analytic philosophy has seen the reach of normativity spread to virtually all corners of the field, from ethics and the philosophy of action, to epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. Saul Kripke famously showed that rules (including mathematical rules, such as the repetition of a decimal pattern) are normative in an important respect. Though philosophers disagree about how normativity should be understood, it has become increasingly common to understand normative claims as claims about reasons. As Derek Parfit explains:
  • 4.1K
  • 14 Oct 2022
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