SocietyPub Date : 2024-05-21DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00988-4
Eugen Pissarskoi, Leiyo Singo
{"title":"Neglected Components in Dominant Accounts of a Good Life? — Disagreements among Maasai Pastoralists","authors":"Eugen Pissarskoi, Leiyo Singo","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00988-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00988-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141116472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-05-13DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00989-3
Ori Swed, Daniel Jaster, Mary Adami
{"title":"Dividing the Nation: The Weaponization of “Terrorism” in Russian Influence Operations in the USA","authors":"Ori Swed, Daniel Jaster, Mary Adami","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00989-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00989-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The term terrorist represents the ultimate enemy: someone that is evil, illegitimate, and outside of the social order. Branding political rivals as terrorists delegitimizes them, transforming them from political adversaries into enemies or irrational actors. One does not negotiate with enemies, but rather eradicates or neutralizes them. Terrorism’s ill-defined qualities and multitude of definitions have transformed it into a potent stigmatizing floating signifier, one that retains the negative valence without clear boundaries. Such a term can be weaponized by entrepreneurial actors intent on dividing society along internal cleavage points. We illustrate this through the Russian trolls’ usage of the term “terrorist” on Twitter during the 2016 influence operation in the US Presidential Election. We code hundreds of tweets associated with the Russian disinformation operation, identifying the way the term was used and its target audience. Russian operatives weaponized the term to polarize the American public, marking entities and individuals as “terrorist” with the intent of increasing distrust across communities. Our results introduce important implications on the influence of leaders on the dynamics of floating negative signifiers like terrorists, especially regarding their weaponization for political reasons.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140935594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-04-19DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00983-9
Stefan Schwarzkopf, Sine Nørholm Just, Jannick Friis Christensen
{"title":"Stairway to Heaven: LGBTQ+ Gatherings as Civil-Religious Rituals","authors":"Stefan Schwarzkopf, Sine Nørholm Just, Jannick Friis Christensen","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00983-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00983-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper applies ritual theory to study public LGBTQ+ gatherings, including Pride parades, silent vigils, and commemorative litanies. The analysis of public LGBTQ+ rituals has often focussed on Pride parades and their carnivalistic exuberance. We call instead for more attention to the whole nexus of public rituals that this movement consists of, and we argue that these rituals are central to LGBTQ+ community building and meaning-making in this social movement. Using participant and non-participant observation, as well as publicly available data, the paper studies assembly forms, ritual scripts, symbolic interactions, sites, and objects that link the various public rituals within the LGBTQ+ movement. We find that, over the last five decades, these ritual elements have coalesced to provide members of the LGBTQ+ community access to the sphere of transcendence. Our findings suggest that this community might be slowly changing its character from social (protest) movement to becoming a viable civil religion.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140629775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-04-12DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00984-8
George Crowder
{"title":"Isaiah Berlin and Feminism: Liberty and Value Pluralism","authors":"George Crowder","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00984-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00984-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Isaiah Berlin’s account of freedom is more useful for feminists than is generally recognized, especially when seen in the context of his value pluralism. Focusing on the work of Nancy Hirschmann and Sharon Krause, I argue, first, that Berlin’s concept of negative liberty can be used to resist patriarchy when his notion of the ‘conditions’ of negative liberty is taken into account. Second, positive liberty is also useful to feminists, but Berlin does not, as some feminist (and other) writers suppose, simply reject positive liberty; on the contrary, he sees it as a fundamental human value of great importance. Third, Berlin’s value pluralism makes a crucial contribution. It explains why he distinguishes negative liberty from its conditions and why he does not reject positive liberty as a value. It also explains how feminists can see the value in both negative and positive liberty without trying, paradoxically, to fit them both into a single concept. Further, my liberal-pluralist extension of Berlin’s pluralism locates all these insights within a complex but coherent political outlook which provides a sympathetic resource for feminism.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140578130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-03-22DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00980-y
Kevin Power
{"title":"Jed Esty, The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits","authors":"Kevin Power","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00980-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00980-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140219371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-03-22DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00978-6
Alan Thomas
{"title":"Thomas Nagel, Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress","authors":"Alan Thomas","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00978-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00978-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140216288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-03-07DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00969-7
Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen
{"title":"The Voice of the People: Populism and Donald Trump’s Use of Informal Voice","authors":"Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00969-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00969-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many studies have examined characteristic verbal aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political communication, from his authoritarian rhetoric to his preference for short words and simple sentences, as expressions of his populism. This article focuses on his use of non-verbal voice quality. In analyzing the “Trump rallies” and other materials from his successful campaigning before the 2016 United States presidential election, I argue that Trump’s evocative and meaningful uses of pitch, amplitude, speech rate, rhythm, and other vocal measures combine to make his paralanguage exceptionally and counter-normatively informal, and that this informality amplifies his explicitly populist messaging. I conclude by suggesting that Trump’s informal voice solves an important problem for him: It allows him to express his populism with a deeply personal undertone, and thereby potentially to make his claims to popular identification ring intuitively true.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140053833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-02-29DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00975-9
Quassim Cassam
{"title":"Can Terrorism Ever Be Morally Justified?","authors":"Quassim Cassam","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00975-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00975-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140017635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-02-27DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00972-y
Eyo O. Mensah
{"title":"Point-n-Kill: Label Metaphors in Heterosexual Peer Networks in Nigeria","authors":"Eyo O. Mensah","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00972-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00972-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SocietyPub Date : 2024-02-15DOI: 10.1007/s12115-024-00970-0
Samuel Guttenplan
{"title":"Philip Goff, Why? The Purpose of the Universe","authors":"Samuel Guttenplan","doi":"10.1007/s12115-024-00970-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-024-00970-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47267,"journal":{"name":"Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139834979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}