Contemporary society

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

The Past in Contemporary Society: Then, Now.

Abstract: In the beginning... preservation to re-creation pasts with people living with the past celebrating the past a day in the life of the past days-out in the past past workings managing the past past practicalities using the past touring the past exploiting the past past projections then, now and future.

Women, Religion and Space; Global Perspectives on Gender and Faith

Abstract: Karen M. Morin and Jeanne Kay Guelke (eds.), Women, Religion and Space; Global Perspectives on Gender and Faith (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse: 2007), 216 pp.First, a disclaimer: I am not a geographer. My interest in space as an analytic category is secondary to my interest in social and political critique, including feminist critique, of Judaism and Israel, and of human societies and their cultural history at large. It follows that I am impressed by the centrality of space as an analytic category not in itself, but only to the extent that it strikes me as a central concept that throws new light on the topic it deals with. Thus, I found that geographers such as Oren Yiftachel (1997) have indeed advanced the academic discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by standing previous research on its head and making the issue of space-the control of territory-the major prism for reexamining well- known facts. A different narrative has emerged and aroused new controversies.Can the same be said about the present collection of articles, that bring the concept of space to the study of gender and religion? In all honesty, I think not. When I weigh the Israeli-Palestinian power conflict against the men-women power conflict, I see a significant difference: whereas the former is about the control of a particular space, the latter is about something else, and the conflict over the control of certain spaces is merely an expression of that conflict, not its cause. This does not mean that space is not worthy of examination in the context of gender power conflicts, nor that it is not a central expression of that conflict; but I find it important to preface my account of the reading of this book with this distinction. And I should mention here that at least on one occasion my own research took me away from the gender-and-space conjunction as an explanatory angle, towards the ethnocracy- and-space conjunction. Puzzling over the inability of Israeli society to contain the group of Women of the Wall for so many years, I came to the conclusion that issues of control of the space in question (the Jewish prayer plaza in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem) could only make sense if looked at through the prism of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, and that once women try to assert their right as active partners in the fight over control of that space, their attempt to define the conflict as "women's rights are human rights" is a non-starter, because in this case the territorial issue is a national issue and gender is subjected to it, rather than a category that stands alone (Shakdiel, 2002).The articles gathered in the book under review cover a variety of locations-East Africa and South Africa, Jerusalem and Istanbul, Pakistan and the United States. Some of the research included here looks at contemporary societies, and some of it looks into the past, the era of colonialism and missionary work. All articles are packed with interesting accounts of women's lives: I admit that I personally was intrigued above all by Jennifer Kopf's account of Muslim women's movements in colonial Tanganyika that were repressed by the German colonial regime by restricting their access to the sites of their worship, simply because this was new territory to me, and the pun is intended. But does the book offer an overall perspective on the title issue, about women, religion and space? Or at least, if the book's editors organized the articles "by three distinct yet linked themes: women in colonial regimes, religion and women's mobility, and new spaces for religious women" (p. xviii), are any new insights offered into each of those three themes? I am not sure.One thought that occurred to me was the need to accentuate the disparity between the assumptions about public space as constructed by Western modernism, on the one hand, and traditional patriarchal societies, on the other hand. Indeed, this concern is mentioned by Anna Secor in her afterword to the book:Why is freedom measured in terms of mobility instead of enclosure? …

Adaptive justice: Local distributive justice in sociological perspective

Abstract: Issues of distributive justice arise in many areas and at all levels of society: whenever resources are scarce and cannot be given to all who lay a claim on them. They have attracted generations of scholars in the social sciences and probably received more attention than any other subject area. Yet there remain substantial gaps in their treatment in the existing literature. Accounts of distributive justice have traditionally focused on (i) normative questions, i.e., the justification or defense of one or more distributive principles that ought to be applied within a given society or societal context,1 (ii) perceptual and judgmental matters, i.e., the beliefs that people hold about norms of distributive justice and their appropriate application in different domains of social life,2 and (iii) consequences, i.e., the observed or expected distributive outcomes of given societal arrangements or potential revisions thereof.3 What has not been analyzed in any detailed and systematic way, however, are the processes and decisions whereby most social goods are distributed in contemporary society. Almost all institutional sectors of society are regularly or occasionally faced with the choice of how to allocate a given number of material or immaterial, positive or negative goods at their disposal or within their responsibility. Examples include, among numerous others, the allocation of scarce medical resources, the admission of students to universities, the promotion or laying off of workers, and the selection of soldiers for military service. But although many such choices have significant impacts upon the life chances of affected persons, very little is known about how they are made. There are a number of valuable case studies in single areas, but, as Jon Elster notes, "virtually no attempts" have been made to develop a conceptual and theoretical framework that allows us "to study the whole range of questions of this kind."4 His concept of "local justice," advanced in a number of essays and systematized in a recent book, is a first major step in that direction.5

Education, Inequality, and Active Citizenship. Tensions in a Differentiated Schooling System

Abstract: In this essay I analyze the problems that differentiated educational systems, like the Dutch, face in preparing youth for contemporary society. I discuss the implications of three broad societal trends for education: a changing labour market, an increasing call for selection and excellence, and increasing diversity and individualization. The implications of these trends are examined for what I see as the four central tasks of education: to prepare for the labour market, to select and sort students efficiently on the basis of their capacities and interests, to promote equality of opportunity, and to prepare for active citizenship. I conclude with a description of the cheers and challenges of the Dutch educational system, leading to recommendations for Dutch educational policy.

Futures in the Making: Contemporary Practices and Sociological Challenges

Abstract: The paper explores sociological approaches to the future from early beginnings of the discipline to the present. It uses Max Weber’s methodological writings on futurity to focus the discussion on some of the central tensions and difficulties that arise when sociologists engage with the ‘not yet’. The paper thus begins to open up issues for consideration and debate and makes a case for the need take the temporal extension of contemporary society to the heart of sociological inquiry, that is, to seriously engage with the social future.