Contemporary society

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

Critical Race Theory

Abstract: Critical race theory is a body of work that first emerged in American legal scholarship in the late 1980s and has since spread to other disciplines. It investigates a paradox: How does racism persist despite its nearly universal condemnation by state policy and by the norms of polite society? Rejecting the conventional liberal position that racism survives only as a relic from a less-enlightened time or as a characteristic of poorly educated or troubled individuals, critical race theorists take the position that racism is ordinary and normal in contemporary society, indeed perhaps integral to social practices and institutions.

The Americanization of sex

Abstract: 'One can deplore sexual indignity and exploitation without believing that the answer is 'less sex.' Far from turning the sexual clock backward, we need to turn the social clock forward...We are not going to behave decently in the sexual area until decent behavior becomes the general norm...Until we realize that, sexual progress is going to remain a forlorn hope'. With this rallying cry for sexual reinterpretation and social reform, Edwin Schur introduces his provocative evaluation of the meaning and practice of sexuality in contemporary American society. Covering some of the most controversial issues of our time, the author uses a combination of sociological, feminist, and Marxist perspectives to examine the specific features of American life that shape our sexual outlooks and behaviors.Asserting that sexual issues are social issues, Schur identifies certain characteristics of American society that shape both 'ordinary' sex and major sexual problems, including rape, harassment, prostitution, and pornography. The same themes that critics of American culture have addressed over the past half century are reflected, notes Schur, in modern American sexuality: superficiality and optimistic pragmatism; individualism and compulsive competitiveness; sexism and inequality; power-seeking and violence; a fixation with 'success'; entrepreneurial instincts; and, runaway consumerism.Focusing on three major tendencies depersonalized sexuality, sex as a commodity, and coercive sex the author examines how our cultural priorities and social structures 'organize' our sexuality and affect both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Arguing that sexual decency presupposes social decency, Schur determines that a meaningful sexual liberation will not be possible without basic sociocultural change. His study places current theoretical debates in a new perspective and reinterprets pressing issues of public policy. Author note: Edwin M. Schur is Professor of Sociology at New York University and author of "Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Social Control" (co-published by Temple).

Sacred spaces in public places: religious and spiritual plurality in health care

Abstract: Several intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as 'new', 'alternative', 'emergent' and 'progressive' spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high-paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients' beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3-year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of 'sacred' and 'place', exploring how the sacred - that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power - takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals.

Sustaining identities? Prolegomena for inquiry into contemporary foodways

Abstract: As an essential yet also mundane everyday activity, eating in all cultures is expressive of both belief-systems and social distinctions that exist within them. While this has been recognized in social science - and, particularly, anthropology - many questions concerning the meanings of foodways within the overall patterns of “post-modern” culture have yet to be tackled. We argue that a novel signification of food consumption is currently taking place: in a social context where attrition of customary practices creates an extended range of options (which, notably, also represents a constraint), some of the needs of self-conscious individuation that arise within such a context are met through eating practices based on personal choice rather than social habit. In this article, the concept of an “eater's career” is used to explore theoretical and methodological dimensions of inquiry into uses of food that are significant for identity formation and maintenance in contemporary society.