Due to the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias), the overall level of violence is decreasing; yet its transforming patterns persist. The article aims at examining the contemporary structures and mechanisms ...responsible for violence control, while also exploring the newly emerging, naturalized patterns of cruelty. Firstly, René Girard’s mimetic theory is overviewed: while in archaic societies, mimetic crisis is controlled by sacrificial rites, modernization reconfigures this paradigm. Secondly, these transformations are mapped: mimetic desire is channelled into the market processes, while mimetic crisis is managed by the state monopolizing violence. Thirdly, the structural transformations of late modernity upsetting the fragile balance of state and market are analysed: secular scapegoating becomes part of the political toolset, while the private sphere is overwhelmed by undetectable new forms of hurting and self-harming. As a culture of cruelty is naturalized, mimetic crisis becomes a continuous threat, which generates a need for the functional equivalents of sacrificial violence control.
Questions of modernity, globalization, and transnationalism have occupied the thematic focus of African literature in the past three decades. In this paper, I argue that the adverse consequences of ...modernity, globalization, and transnationalism are at the heart of risk and uncertainty in Pede Hollist's novel So the Path Does not Die. I pursue Ulrich Beck's understanding of the consequences of the victories of modernity as risks in the novel. Risks in the novel can be read at macro-levels of normative values and the socio-psychological frame of collective fear, that derive from choosing from multivariate mediating institutions, traditions, and social standards; on the meso-level of family or group disarray; and on the individual level of existential anxiety. In these three stages, the novel deals with the questioning and changing status of tradition in the social order and the transnational problems of risk in a world in which individuals have to share the consequences of dangers and threats that may have been produced elsewhere through policies and social frameworks. This novel interlinks the complexities of postcolonial fictionality with ongoing late-modernity dynamics to depict the risks of late modernity.
In this essay, we explore the notions of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ for management studies. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we argue that there is no intrinsically accurate language in ...terms of which to refer to reality. Language, rather, is a tool that enables agents to grab hold of causal forces and intervene in the world. ‘Alternative facts’ can be created by multimodal communication to highlight different aspects of the world for the purpose of political mobilization and legitimacy. ‘Post-truth’ politics reveals the fragmentation of the language game in which mainstream politics has been hitherto conducted. Using the communicative acts of businessman-turned-politician President Trump and his aides, as a prompt, we explore the implications that ‘alternative facts’ and ‘post-truth’ have for today’s management scholarship. We argue that management scholars should unpack how managers navigate strategic action and communication, and how the creation of alternative realities is accomplished in conditions of informational abundance and multimodal communication.
The article describes the dialectic of the process of individualization in modernity and late modernity from the perspective of critical theory, particularly in its classical form (Frankfurt School). ...This dialectic consists in the transformation of individualization as a medium of emancipation into individualization understood not only as an ideology but most of all as a productive force of neoliberal capitalism, as a principle of its functioning. The article discusses the social-cultural determinants of this transformation, and subsequently the way in which late-modern individualism in the form of self-realization is functionalized by the market and subjected to the requirements of profit and efficiency in individual areas of economic and social life in the neoliberal world. The article refers to the methodology of qualitative sociology.
Based on a content analysis of 32 pilgrim travelogues it was assumed that certain values resulting from the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage would tend to be persistent, and these rather meaningful and ...memorable experiences may result in changes to a pilgrim’s personal hierarchy of values. To explore these assumed transformative aftereffects an online survey (n = 500) was carried out to examine self-reported value changes using the Short Schwartz’s Value Survey. The greatest increase post pilgrimage showed the importance of values that emphasise concern for the welfare and interests of others (universalism, benevolence). The only and quite substantial decreases we measured was in the importance of values that emphasise the pursuit of self-interest and relative success together with dominance over others (power, achievement). A slight increase was evident in openness to change and interestingly, also conservation. Since spirituality shares a pro-social tendency with religiosity, while conservation is not the emphasis, openness to change is important. We suggest therefore, that value-shift reflects pro-social tendencies and is associated with both religiosity and spirituality.
In responding to the debate about the theory of mediatization, we reject criticisms that foreclose prematurely on this set of new ideas potentially worthy of further exploration, and we give more ...attention to the fundamental questions that critics have asked about mediatization. We note that controversy centres on the claim that mediatization is a societal metaprocess of the order of globalization, individualization and commercialization. Substantiating this claim would require an ambitious, evidenced account of socio-historical change over centuries, along with recognition of mediatization research as a valuable contribution to the analysis of modernity on which scholars of other supposedly mediatized domains now draw. We invite sceptics of mediatization to articulate their critique by reference to the now sizeable body of writing on this concept. We call on proponents of mediatization – along with others keen to understand social and media change within the history of modernity – to consider: (1) whether and how existing research on media’s changing role within a variety of domains can be productively reinterpreted within a mediatization frame; (2) the implications of such work for existing theories, including those of other disciplines; and (3) how to advance analysis of the relations between mediatization and the other metaprocesses of modernity.
This essay aims to correct the established idea that the cypherpunk movement was organically embracing libertarianism. By addressing the cypherpunk movement, the intellectual roots of many of the ...concerns about freedom and about a surveillance society that dominate this internet age come to light. The cypherpunks, a heterogenic group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area, argued in the nineties that the Internet would make more pervasive the phenomenon of surveillance of individuals. In the context of this increasing process of surveillance, individual autonomy would be dismissed as an obsolete fiction and social engineering would be elevated to totalitarianism. This article frames the cypherpunks as a movement in opposition to an emerging technocratic authoritarian order.
Late modern existence is built around ambivalences: subjects experience the structural paradoxes of global capitalism or information society as social suffering; yet they follow behaviour patterns ...reinforcing the unsustainable trajectories. The article explores the discourses justifying such structural paradoxes, while normalizing the related suffering. First, the pragmatic theory of justification (Boltanski, Thévenot) is reinterpreted from a modernization theoretical perspective: a distinction is drawn between traditional, classic and late modern ‘tests’, ‘critique’ and ‘cités’. In the second and third sections, the gradual emptying of critique is analysed: as disillusionment reaches the sphere of subjective experiences, not even personal suffering can ground critique any more (Berlant), thus the impossibility of critique is demonstrated in a cynical manner (Sloterdijk). In the fourth section, the various cynical modalities of justification fitting the ambivalent contemporary existence are overviewed. Finally, a way out from the naturalized, quotidian cynicism is sketched: by turning cynicism’s logic against itself, the dialectics of justification can move forward.
This article explains the transition process and youth strategy in Yogyakarta in the era of late modernity. Departing from the context of late modernity in Indonesia, this article applies the concept ...of mobility as a strategy and reflexive capacity of youth in transition. This article explores the biographical narratives of the four young final-year students in Yogyakarta. By using qualitative methods, this research applies observation techniques and in-depth interviews. The phenomenon of youth studying while preparing for the future, mainly work or/and capital accumulation towards work is a common occurrence of the youth transition in Yogyakarta. Young people respond to the uncertainties of the future and unpredictable consequences of risk through mobility and reflexive capacity as forms of capital. Thus, based on empirical data, those two components become essential and valuable wealth to be accumulated by young people.
Across three key texts, the historian Alan Atkinson has projected an unease with twenty-first-century Australia into the past development of the Australian nation. Atkinson traces a 'singularity' ...from the 'age of Australian Federation ... fixed on the Centre as the pivot of a new national domain'. By the early twenty-first century, for him, the nation had become an all-consuming focus of identity, degraded by globalisation. Atkinson's 'single Australia' is a claim with significant implications for the historiography of the emerging Australian Commonwealth and historicising the nature of late modern Australia. Atkinson's focus on late modernity addresses a theme developed in international scholarship but one largely absent in Australian historiography. Assessing Atkinson's narrative construction of singularity offers insights into the relationship between past and present described in historical narratives.
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