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Corruption has been a prevalent phenomenon in South Africa for an extended period, but it was during the presidential reign of Jacob Zuma that corruption evolved into state capture. South African whistleblowers were instrumental in detailing the breadth and depth of state capture during Zuma's presidency. Their disclosures brought the epidemic of state capture into the public eye, making citizens aware of the crippling of stateowned enterprises and the brazen looting of state resources. The whistleblowers, however, did not expect the backlash they would receive from the wrongdoers and their employers. This article presents the experiences of these whistleblowers, emerging from semi-structured interviews conducted with whistleblowers and civil society, as well as document analysis of relevant sources. The whistleblowers' disclosure experiences were marred by various forms of retaliation: work-related retaliation; social retaliation; physical retaliation; and a form of retaliation identified from the narratives of South African state capture whistleblowers--retaliatory lawfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the issue of handmade – a form of individual manual labor to create original applied or artistic products – as a resource of the social and cultural life of modern society. The relevance of the research is determined by the need for a person to have ways to show their uniqueness in the conditions of total mass production and social interactions. Based on the results of a sociological survey, the activity, motivational, psychological, economic and communication aspects of handmade have been clarified. The main conclusions of the research are the following: the possibilities of handicraft work in the utilitarian-applied and artistic-aesthetic fields of activity are most clearly manifested; handmade is a significant element for a large number of people in the organization of a positive communication space; in a mass society, needlework is a way of constructing and representing personal identity. The most significant function of handmade is the function of changing the type of activity in order to prevent emotional burnout in the conditions of concentrated information flows and the rapid pace of production and economic life.

PurposeChanging from "People" to "society" requires a unity of interests and a nation that connects the building blocks of the Iranian people. The present paper concerns the relationship between social changes and public law. The sociological approach to law by deepening the social roots of laws, links "theories" to "facts". Therefore, this article can be classified under interdisciplinary studies of law and sociology. This study goes beyond the traditional classification of public law in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, financial law, and labor law and can be categorized under the field of socio-legal Studies.The purpose of the paper is to show how the sociology of law affects the theory of state, as a multidisciplinary field of study.Design, Methodology, and ApproachThis article is a library-oriented study in terms of the method of data collection, and descriptive-explanatory-prescriptive in terms of research method.The method of data collection in this research is library research, and the data obtained has been studied through descriptive and explanatory methods with an interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary studies are currently a hot topic in legal academia and we must differentiate between the four types in which the sociological approach to law has been classified as disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary studies. In the author’s view, public law and sociology are strongly interconnected but we can speak about the possibility of the sociology of law being multidisciplinary. In our paper, we illustrate that different methods can be used in the research of law and legal concepts, and how the methodology of controversial issues and debates in sociology is relevant to the study of law.Therefore, the article can be classified under interdisciplinary studies of law and communication.FindingsBased on the results of this article, the most important characteristic of a co-benefit society for citizens is that a sense of belonging and membership in the society is created and the main legal advantage of a government overseeing it is in its capacity and ability to solve problems. we must first appreciate that law does not generally influence individual behavior in a vacuum, devoid of social context. Instead, how people interact with the law is usually shown in their social life. Evidence from different studies demonstrates that, if we insist on the systematic imposition of values in a diverse society, we create dualities, numerous conflicts, and contradictions, and we will produce many social problems. Consequently, we will send a message to society which indicates the incompetence and inefficiency of the government. In fact, the value of the government is in its ability to efficiently manage conflicts that result from contrasting moral plans.The understanding of the state and theories of state should be firmly grounded in their social context. The state, being an artificial construct, has emerged from a complex interplay of diverse attitudes, beliefs, and values held by individuals. By recognizing the state as a product of human society, we can unveil a profound connection between its "man-made nature" and the underlying "theory of state."Against this background, in this article, I will try to use a socio-legal approach to explain “Pluralistic Society” as the social context of the formation of the democratic state. The use of the sociology of law is because it describes social changes and explains relationships with legal structures, norms, and mechanisms in the search of achieving utopia.this study finds that changes in social values and attitudes inevitably lead to irreversible plurality which is just the situation in the Contemporary Iran. Iran is so diverse in different aspects, meaning that, it has a society that gives different answers to similar questions. The desirable reaction to this cultural diversity should be tolerance and respect for different values because the changes in “citizens' beliefs” form sociocultural forces that shape democracy. Just as many social evolutions in Iran after the Islamic Revolution have arisen from changes in the social forces shaped by the public opinion. Therefore, as long as social changes gravitate toward diversity, we can hope that the best is yet to come.Originality and ValueThis article has reviewed some of the empirical and theoretical research on social norms and law and is one of the first attempts to address the role of social change in the formation of law in contemporary Iran. it has tried to provide a basic understanding as it examines the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws.

The paper aims to reflect on the crisis of the capacity of media and cultural industries to participate in the construction of a shared memory, which is constituted as the basis of a collective imaginary capable of activating a common cultural identity. The reflection starts from the observation that the radical evolutions of an increasingly hybrid media system, in the direction of convergence, transmedia and platformization, have contributed to erode, to the point of erasing in some traits, the construction of a shared imaginary that can act as a bridge not only between individuals and communities belonging to different generational intervals, but also to those belonging to the same generation. Starting from Alberto Abruzzese's reflection on the relationship between art, society and the cultural industry in the light of the evolution of technology, the paper aims to analyse the impact of the evolution of media and the crisis of educational agencies on the ability to activate cultural innovations, merely representing them. The paper then proposes the results of the first phases of a research aimed at understanding the approach of new generations to cultural consumption from the perspectives of access to and selection of media content; practices of sharing, enjoyment and participation with respect to such content; and finally knowledge and consumption/non-consumption. As a result, a model of approaching cultural objects, products and consumption seems to be taking shape that is increasingly disconnected from the roots of narratives and, as a paradoxical consequence, increasingly linked to their representations, deprived of meaning. A mass imaginary that evolves in a mass of imaginaries, linked together in a "long tail" of volatile consumption, which makes it improbable to reaffirm a shared memory that can give rise to a shared imagination capable of delineating a new model of intellectual and social formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the so-called "digital revolution" has massively driven individuals to move the main activities they perform in their daily lives within entirely digital spaces. This is obviously leading to significant cultural and social consequences, and mass culture is one of the areas that has been most affected by these consequences. It is therefore relevant to wonder how the arrival of the digital world has changed the nature and functioning of mass culture. It is difficult to develop a detailed analysis of the changes that have taken place within the framework of a (necessarily short) journal article, but it is nevertheless possible to try to summarily "map" these changes. Furthermore, it is also possible to attempt to focus on the most relevant characteristics to mass culture in the current digital age. The article also attempts to consider two particularly important features of mass culture in the digital age. The first concerns the progressive lowering of the quality of the expressive aspects of languages, while the second relates to the growth of what sociologist Franois Jost (2013) called the "cult of the trivial" a few years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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An instructive comparison can be drawn between Jacques Ellul's 1936 Esprit article portraying "Fascism as Liberalism's Child" and Georges Bataille's 1938 lecture on "The Sacred Sociology of Today's World". Both rely on Durkheim's sociology in assuming modernity's amorphousness, leaving passive masses of atomized individuals susceptible to mobilization into totalized entities by charismatic leadership. Bataille welcomes the postwar intensification of social aggregates but criticizes their militant, militaristic regimentation as not violent and sacred enough, whereas for Ellul, the resurgent social sacred (whether orgiastic or dictatorial), as the active mass, is the enemy of the free person as the sole meaningful whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education (JEDUS) is the property of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study addressed how history learning contributes to developing futures foresight and the ability to envision a preferable future by implementing a history lesson based on Hicks's Citizenship for the future: A practical classroom guide. This included teaching future skills in a "Modern and Contemporary History" course at a Japanese high school. The study analysed two types of data to examine the relationship between history learning and futures foresight: (1) a comparison of student responses to pre- and post-lesson questionnaires, and (2) worksheets used in the lesson. An analysis of these materials clarified that history learning contributes to envisioning a preferable future, by raising students' interest in the futures and their keenness towards contemporary issues, and helping them realize the temporal connection between the past, present, and future. I also argue that futures foresight-based learning should be viewed from the perspective of social studies education because it motivates students to take action to solve problems and consolidates the positioning of learning history, geography, and civics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses the 2021 Oprah with Meghan and Harry television special as a case study to discuss pseudo-events and news cycles, which are represented as an antidote to boredom despite their lack of newsworthiness. I trace back today's pseudo-events to the beginnings of the Graphic Revolution, during which news was transformed into a commodity, and its entertaining value gained major significance. As a result, the figure of the entertaining newsman has become more important than the relayed story. In response to the fear of boredom, which grips mass society, instead of only reporting current events, the media started making news, that is producing pseudo-events, which are planned and marketed. In order to explain this process, I discuss Oprah, a talk show giant, as a human pseudo-event and the main reason that 49.1 million watched the special. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present a novel tripartite framework for understanding civil society organisations' engagement with services in the MENA region. • We argue that services play a crucial, yet highly varied, role in CSOs' efforts to mobilise and build legitimacy. • Service provision has a mixed role because it can be used to bolster the legitimacy of both CSOs that are critical of existing powerholders and those that are supportive of them. • Inadequate service provision acts as an important focal point for protests that challenge the status quo. • These patterns suggest that CSOs' engagement with services has potentially important impacts on peace and conflict dynamics. How and why do civil society organisations (CSOs) engage with service delivery and with what consequences for political change in conflict-affected contexts? Most existing work in this area focuses on specialist NGO service provision, concluding that this remains a relatively apolitical sphere of activity with little relevance for peace and conflict dynamics. By examining the experience of CSOs in three countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we show that engagement with services plays a crucial, yet highly varied and hitherto under-studied, role in these organisations' efforts to build legitimacy and pursue their political goals, with potentially important implications for peace and conflict dynamics. By bringing literature on social movements into conversation with research on NGOs and civil society in conflict settings, and drawing on interviews with key informants, we develop a novel tripartite framework for understanding civil society engagement with service delivery. We identify three main patterns where CSOs' engagement with services contributes to political change and highlight the dynamic interaction between these three patterns: providing to initiate a challenge (where services provision is used as a means of establishing new organisations that are critical of the status quo by bolstering community-level legitimacy), protesting (where services are used as a focal point for critical groups' mobilisation and coalition building) and providing to reinforce (where groups that are supportive of the status quo use civil society service provision to shore up support). We show that in the MENA region, civil society's engagement with service delivery makes an important but mixed contribution to political change. While it can contribute indirectly to political transformation by cultivating the legitimacy of new civil society groups or provide a focal point for a wider critique of the status quo, it can also undermine a shift towards political transformation by entrenching the position of existing elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Neue Politische Literatur is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Erciyes Communication / Erciyes İletişim Dergisi is the property of Erciyes University, Faculty of Communication / Erciyes Universitesi Iletism Fakultesi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Basing on the examination of sufficient amount of scientific literature, the article attempts to define the concept and highlight the characteristics of the information society. It is proved that the information society is a qualitatively new historical stage of civilizational development. It is argued that the information society is based on the global spread of information and communication technologies, the fundamental processes of mass generation, processing, transmission, and use of information. It is established that the information environment contributes to a significant increase in the impact of information and knowledge on all areas of human activity. The substantiation of the paradigm of communication in the information society and its implementation with the help of the newest information technologies of the Internet is given. The peculiarities of the functioning of Internet communication in the information society are studied. It is substantiated that such communication has specific features, provides some training, establishes unique implementation forms, and actualizes the dialogic nature of a society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite knowing that perfection is an unsteady concept, mass society is unlikely to escape normalising pressures and be susceptible to negative differentiations of bodies, such as those with functional diversity. However, in co-creative design processes, these bodies can be understood as extreme-users and are welcomed for their diversity and empowerment. Artefacts similarly undergo inclusion and exclusion in creative and productive processes. Therefore, the stigmatisation and standardisation of human and artificial bodies are made explicit in extreme-users, whose importance in design processes lies in addressing them with no negative differentiation with respect to ordinary users, implying that objects' flaws would be embedded as identity and semantics. This paper questions the dualism of perfection/imperfection attributed to bodies and artefacts by normalising domains, and expects to corroborate design as a social activism tool for catalysing the paradigm of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses one of the 'worst movies ever made', Robot Monster (Tucker 1953), demonstrating how the text, through weirdness, pulpy absurdity and cinematic ineptitude, examines and mediates on the existential anxieties of modern America during the Cold War. Through the strange language of gorilla-robots and alien invasion, the text articulates those existential anxieties that arise from our awareness of freedom vs. the need to be contingent under increasingly interconnected societal conditions. As such, Robot Monster is also posited as a contribution to contemporary intellectual currents of the 1950s. This article will investigate the sense in which the key aspects of the film: Ro-Man society as mass society; Ro-Man as conflicted between 'must' and 'cannot'; Ro-Man as a gorilla-robot; the perspective of Johnny's dream, articulate and mediate on those anxieties. An examination of Robot Monster allows us to appreciate the ways in which 'bad' cinema creates alternative ways of seeing the problems and existential anxieties of contemporary American modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The totalitarian polity is basically one of coercion focused on executing a narrow and uncompromising ideological vision by means of mass terror. Setting up any kind of organization is not possible without the acceptance of the state and thus no grass-roots organizations can exist in a totalitarian state. In other words, any form of civil society (understood as both autonomous from the state and capable of generating social capital) is not possible under totalitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Athenaeum: Polskie Studia Politologiczne is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Security Studies Nicolaus Copernicus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most recent research on the first three decades of the PRC has avoided theoretical reflection on the period, instead claiming an empiricist fidelity to the heterogeneity of lived experience. Yet the refusal of theory allows unexamined conceptualizations to structure the findings—conceptualizations whose plausibility arises not from the archive but from the historian's own historically situated sensibilities. This article identifies a deep orientation at work in an otherwise highly diverse set of scholarship on the early PRC. A research paradigm privileging the individual over the collective, civil society over the state, diversity over homogeneity, contingency over necessity, and fragmentation over totality has achieved important advances, but it has also foreclosed essential new directions for research. The article then sketches an alternative approach that does not simply reverse these binaries but aims to encompass both sides through a reappropriation of classical social theories such as those of Marx, Durkheim, and Freud. Building on long-neglected aspects of these theories, such as their varied approaches to a co-constitutive relation between social appearance and essence, would not displace careful empirical investigation but deepen it by revealing the full complexity of the sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although its relevance is widely recognised, the contribution of Umberto Eco's semiotic theory and cultural analyses to the field of Cultural Studies has yet to be studied extensively. This article claims that Eco's appropriation of the legacy of Antonio Gramsci, forerunner of Cultural Studies, plays a key role in this contribution. The connections between Eco and Gramsci have gone almost unexplored despite them being two key figures in the development of Italian critical theory. These connections can be found in their shared interests in mass culture and the role of the intellectual in mass society. This article highlights how, in his work of the 1960s and 1970s, Eco de-ideologises Gramsci and substantiates his cultural analyses through the methodologies of structuralism and interpretative semiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of this scientific work is social masses and the mass society. The subject of research will be reduced to the definition of the notions of "social mass" and "mass society" and finding similarities and differences between them. The author starts from the initial assumption that social masses and mass societies are two similar, but also quite different notions. The following methods were used in the paper: observation, content analysis, developmental method, structural approach, comparative method, analytical approach etc. The scientific justification of the research derives from the establishment of similarities and differences between these two notions, which makes a significant contribution to the construction of the Sociology of the Masses as one of the scientific disciplines of Sociology. The social reach of the research is founded on questioning social masses and the power of the impact of the mass society on contemporary social trends.

Copyright of Trabajos y Comunicaciones is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study, which focuses on football fans subculture, was evaluated within the framework of 'Network Society Theory'. In the qualitative research approach, discourse analysis was carried out by focusing on the texts in fanzines, which are considered as independent publications of fans. Texts in the research include the analysis of individuals from various age groups in the fan groups deployed in stadiums. It was observed that the fanzines in the study form counter-public spaces. The elements in mass society and network society typology were compared. In this comparison, themes were created in sections by means of codes in the theoretical framework of the study. These themes were discussed and interpreted. The results revealed that fan groups were shifting from the mass society to the network society with the increasing marketization of football. This situation displayed that although social media organizations created a power to increase communication channels, they caused total damage to the fan culture. Fans pointed out both positive and negative sides of new media technologies. The evaluation made in the context of the texts showed that the modernity practices in the stands created negative feelings in the subjects of production, sharing and ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]