Contemporary society

About: Contemporary society is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3991 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91755 citations.

Planning the unplannable: How local authorities integrate urban and ICT policy making

Abstract: The idea that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been dramatically changing many aspects of contemporary society is no longer new. The influence of such technologies on our dail...

Toward a Sensorial Urbanism

Abstract: In recent years, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has set to question at the assumptions on which architects operate. We have embarked on the study and revision of an undeclared territory of false assumptions, preconceptions, and attitudes in an attempt to evidence hidden agendas. We seek to investigate and explore the "grey zone" of contemporary culture, contemporary society, and contemporary architecture to critically expose its contradictions. The CCA's participation in the 2nd International Congress on Ambiances is inscribed inside a larger effort to study experience in a more critical and productive way. This effort is not directed towards finding or offering possible solutions but in revealing diverse directions and potentials. It is deliberately both a critique of our present conditions and a suggestion for alternative paths.

Critical Globalization Studies and the New Imperialism

Abstract: In recent years, the concepts of imperialism, global capitalism, and capitalist empire have become increasingly relevant to critical globalization studies. Within the context of this discourse, this article explores whether or not contemporary society can be characterized as a new form of the Marxist notion of imperialism. In an attempt to answer this question, I employ Vladimir Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as it relates to contemporary capitalism. I test Lenin’s theories with a macroeconomic statistical analysis of existing data.

The Role of Social Groups

Abstract: One of the most powerful theories in political science in recent years has been that of totalitarianism and this model of society has been taken to represent the reality of the USSR and States patterned on her. ‘Totalitarianism’ may be defined as a social system which ‘seeks to politicise all human behaviour and plan all human relationships’, its chief features include the obliteration of the distinction between State and society and the destruction of associations and groups which are interposed between the individual and the State.1 From the mid-1960s, however, thinking among specialists in the West has moved away from this model, which has been recognised as providing ‘a set of blinders to the perception of change’,2 to emphasise more the autonomous nature of various groups and their role in influencing the political authorities. As Ionescu has pointed out: No society, and especially no contemporary society, is so politically under-developed as not to continue, and reproduce within itself, the perennial conflict of power. No contemporary society can run all the complex activities of the state, political, cultural, social and economic, exclusively, by its own ubiquitous and omniscient servants, without collaboration, and bargains with, or checks by, other interest groups.3