Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1: Social media and COVID-19: Taking humour during pandemics seriously -- 2.Social media memes as commentary in health disasters in South Africa and Zimbabwe -- 3.Viral jokes: Humour and grace as critical devices in memes about the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil -- 4. 'Coromentality': Nigerians' use of memetic humour during the COVID-19 lockdowns -- 5. Playfulness, or a subversion of hegemonic scientific knowledges? Analysing Internet memes and discourses on traditional medicines as remedies for COVID-19 in Zimbabwe -- 6. "Can we uninstall 2020 and install it again? This version has a virus!": Humor and misinforming during COVID-19 pandemic on social media -- 7. Social media audience's interpretation of selected humour memes on coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria -- 8.Coronavirus satire: A dissection of feminist politics and humour -- 9 'A nation that laughs together, stays together': Deconstructing humour on Twitter during the national lockdown in South Africa -- 10 Fear and loathing and laughter: Covid 19 as an expression of decolonial love -- 11 #VoetsekANC and Covid Corruption: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of "A Song for the ANC" -- 12 Humour in the time of COVID-19 pandemic: A critical analysis of the subversive meanings of WhatsApp memes in Zimbabwe -- 13 Humour in the age of contagion: Coronavirus, 'Janata Curfew' meme, and India's digital cultures of virality -- 14 The use of meme and hashtags on Twitter towards government response during the COVID-19 curfew announcement from 1st June -14th June 2020 -- 15 Dark humour, ubuntu and the COVID-19 pandemic: A case of subaltern humoring of political elite deaths on social media.

This book uncovers an unfamiliar vision of political violence that nonetheless prevailed in modern French thought: that through "redemptive violence" the people would not rend but regenerate society. It homes in on invocations of popular redemptive violence across four historical moments in France specifically: the French Revolution, Algeria's colonization, the Paris Commune, and the eve of the first World War. In each of these cases, the book reveals how French thinkers experienced democratization as social disintegration. Yet, before such danger, they also proclaimed that virtuous violence by the people could repair the social fabric. The path leading from an anarchic multitude to an organized democratic society required, not violence's prohibition, but its virtuous expression by the people.

This report contains research and proposals resulting from a semester-long study of the housing crisis in Brazil, as seen through the lens of urban social movements.The studio's proposals and larger vision targets the upliftment of those worst affected by Brazil's qualitative and quantitative housing shortage – those in the 1 to 3 minimum wage bracket, the lowest earning members in Brazilian society. Research is focused through the struggles of urban social movements who have been protesting and negotiating with the government for increased housing supply for decades. Using their needs and demands as a base of understanding ground realities for the poorest of the poor in Brazil, this studio went about its research.

This article makes an attempt to assess the process and outcomes of faith-based non-governmental organizations' (FBNGOs) interventions toward community empowerment in social development. Data are derived from contemporary literature using a Qualitative Interpretative Meta-Synthesis (QIMS). Results show that there are very few publications that directly examine the contributions of FBNGOs toward community empowerment. There are some publications which indirectly examine the role of the components of community empowerment, such as community participation, community capacity building, local leadership development, or community resource mobilization, though these are mostly concentrated in Western and African countries. After 9/11, much literature has shown that the role of Islamic NGOs has emerged as a significant aspect in social development discourse. The findings will be of interest to policymakers, donors, and development practitioners.

Surface Tensions is an expansive, yet intimate study of how people remake themselves after catastrophic bodily change--the loss of limbs, the loss of function, the loss or replacement of organs. Against a sweeping cultural backdrop of art, popular culture, and the history of science and medicine, Manderson uses narrative epistemology based on in-depth interviews with over 300 individuals to show how they re-establish the coherence of their bodies, identities, and biographies. In addition to offering important new insights into the care, rehabilitation, and rehabituation of post-trauma patients.

Sustainable development most prominently entered the global political arena in 1987 in a report from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland report. In response to the concept of sustainable development, a vast array of ideas, concepts, methods and tools to aid organizations and governments in addressing the socio-ecological problems has been developed. Though helpful in many contexts, the multitude of such support also risks creating confusion, not the least since there is no generally endorsed overriding and operational definition of sustainability. Thus, there is a growing need for such a definition and for an understanding of how these ideas, concepts, methods and tools relate to sustainability and to each other. A framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) has been developed over the last 20 years to create such a unifying structure. The aim of this research is to contribute specifically to the social sustainability definition of this framework. The research follows the Design Research Methodology. First, the social dimension of the FSSD as it stands currently was examined and described as was the general field of social sustainability. Then, a new approach to the social side of the FSSD was created. The studies revealed that the field of social sustainability, in general, is vastly under-theorized and under-developed, and that a clear framework is important and desired. They also laid out in which ways specifically the structure of the FSSD could be used to further develop the social dimension of strategic planning and innovation, and that currently this aspect of the FSSD is relatively under-developed. This assessment was followed by a first attempt at a clearer definition of social sustainability. Based on these explorations, this research suggests five principles as a hypothesis to be used as a definition of social sustainability, the key-terms of which being 'integrity', 'influence', 'competence', 'impartiality' and 'meaning'. For validity purposes the results were cross-checked with other approaches and theories. The validity check shows that similar key-terms have been found by other researchers. In conclusion, this research contributes with a hypothesis for a clearer definition of social sustainability, which is general enough to be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to guide decision-making. This is a contribution to systems science in the sustainability field and it is a step to creating an enhanced support for strategic planning and innovation for sustainability. Further testing and refinement of this theoretical foundation, and bringing it into practical use, will be the subject of the continued studies.

Mass construction of cooperative homes in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia at
the end of the WWII represented a first step in the general socialist
transformation of villages. As the engines of social and cultural life in
rural regions, these facilities were situated in central locations in
settlements. These were the first multi-purpose buildings, and their
architecture reflected the values of socialist ideology that was supposed to
be adopted in the following period. Later, when these values became obsolete,
it was considered that all principles of the socialist model of planned
organization of rural settlements should be rejected, thus letting the
heritage of this period of time, regardless of its contribution, fall into
disrepair. Cooperative homes represented the linchpin of the planned
organization of rural settlements, belonging to the practice of fast and
reckless urbanization of villages. A large number of these buildings built
throughout ex-Yugoslav republics today represent a specific challenge from
the aspect of their repurposing. This research paper, hence, aims to review
the options for their potential redeployment and inclusion in modern social
trends.

"It can be said that history is poor sociology that does not account sufficiently for present social circumstances, while sociology is bad history in that it does not go back in time. This volume in the Religion and Social Order series sets out to address these conjoint problems of history and sociology within the disciplinary boundaries of the sociology of religion. History has such a fickle nature that it has seen religion hold varied and different places within the timeline of sociological thought. Religion had a high level of importance among the early founders of sociology. A perceived decline of significance for religion by sociology in the latter half of the twentieth century mirrored the changing social location of religion. The increase in world fundamentalisms, religious movements, private spiritualities and other indicators in the millennial age have brought a renaissance to this longstanding subdiscipline and shown that religion is far from extinction." --

Abstract Social innovation (SI) impacts are long-term changes that affect different dimensions of territorial capital (i.e., economy, society, environment, governance) for the territory in which SI occurs. Yet, systematic empirical evidence and theoretically sound assessments of the impacts of SI are scarce. This paper aims to fill the gap and assess the different aspects of SI's impacts in European and Mediterranean areas that are characterized by marginalization processes. To assess the impacts of SI in marginalized areas, we use the evaluation framework developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) Horizon 2020 project and apply it to nine SI initiatives related to the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development. Our findings show that SI produces cross-sectoral (societal, economic, environmental, and governmental) and multi-level impacts (on individuals, community, and society), which have improved the societal well-being, and contributed to the reduction of certain forms of marginality, mainly inside the territory in which SI occurred.

The task of social psychology is to explain the flexibility of human beings in creating and relating to their social worlds. Social identity and self‐categorization theories provide a thoroughgoing interactionist framework for achieving such a task. However, in order to do so, it is necessary to avoid reductionist misreadings of the theories that would explain human social action simply by reference to psychological processes, without examining how the play of process depends on the cultural and structural settings in which they occur. More specifically, to the extent that self‐categories shape social action, flexibility is achieved through the categories to which we belong, the others with whom we compare ourselves, and the dimensions along which such comparisons occur. These are not a fixed aspect of the human condition but are a focus for argument precisely because of their world‐making consequences.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the connection between processes of neoliberalization and the advancement and transformation of technoscience. Drawing on a range of theoretical insights, it explores a variety of issues including the digital revolution and the rise of immaterial culture, the rationale of psychiatric reforms and biotechnology regulation, discourses of social threats and human enhancement, and carbon markets and green energy policies. A rich exploration of the overall logic of technoscientific innovation within late capitalism, and the emergence of a novel view of human agency with regard to the social and natural world, this volume reveals the interdependence of technoscience and the neoliberalization of society. Presenting the latest research from a leading team of scholars, "Neoliberalism and Technoscience" will be of interest to scholars of sociology, politics, geography and science and technology studies.

The definition of food security provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) includes the quality of agricultural products as a principal pillar, intended as the production of nutritious food to allow people to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. In a world that is undergoing major physical, social, and economic transitions, the achievement of global food security is undermined by the projected increase of human population to 9 billion people by 2050. Nowadays, even if the current total food production would be capable to provide humankind with enough calories, the latest FAO statistics estimate that hundreds of millions of people live in hunger or lack a suitable supply of food. This is why the world governments are acting to meet the need of higher quality diets as a main objective. The challenge to improve the quality and the nutritional value of crop productions is also threatened by the climate change issue, with agriculture representing the most vulnerable economic sector due to the deep influence of weather conditions on the performances of cropping system. The only viable solution to gain information on the future trends of the qualitative aspect of crop production and to provide farmers and stakeholders in agriculture with effective adaptation strategies is the use of process based simulation models, which are capable to reproduce the responses of biophysical systems to changing boundary conditions. This doctorate gives answers to these research questions, by developing a reference methodological framework to assess the quality of rice (Oryza sativa L.) –the first staple food crop in the world – in current and future climatic conditions. The first chapter presents a software library of models to simulate the dynamics of the main aspects of rice grain quality as a function of agro-meteorological conditions. This research product is released as a framework independent component, fostering extension with new models and reuse by third parties intended as collaborations between research entities. In the second chapter the performances of the rice quality models in reproducing observed field data of milling quality and functional properties of grains are tested in a multi-site and multi-year evaluation, prior to be used to assess climate change impacts. The third chapter deals with the development of a forecasting system targeting the simulation of qualitative and quantitative rice productions in Northern Italy, the main European producing area. This pilot study is realized by coupling the WARM rice model with rice quality models, taking the head rice yield, i.e., the percentage of entire grains as a case study. The fourth chapter presents the complete workflow to assess the climate change impacts on crop productivity in the Lombardy plain via the application of process based models at a fine spatial resolution. An exploratory analysis of the impacts of climate change on giant reed crop is performed to illustrate the potentialities of the methodology. This work led the basis to the last chapter, where a comprehensive evaluation of the impacts of climate change on rice milling quality and technological suitability is performed in Europe. The main sources of uncertainties in climate change projections were taken into account, i.e., General Circulation Models and emission scenarios, to give an ensemble of future weather scenarios as input data to the models. The implementation of remote sensing to detect rice sowing dates and the assimilation of local farmers management led to a tight adherence between simulated and real system. The main perspective of this work is the application of the methodological framework developed here in top producing rice countries, in order to allow moving a step forward the mere focus on the quantitative trends of crop production in a changing climate.

1. Introducing Responsible AI in Africa -- 2. Epistemic Just and Dynamic AI Ethics in Africa -- 3. Responsible AI in Africa - Challenges and Opportunities -- 4. Working with robots as colleagues: Kenyan perspectives of ethical concerns on possible integration of co-bots in workplaces -- 5. Artificial Intelligence in Africa: Emerging Challenges -- 6. The Use of Gendered Chatbots in Nigeria: Critical Perspectives -- 7. AI Policy as a Response to AI Ethics? Addressing ethical issues in the development of AI policies in North Africa -- 8. Towards Shaping the Future of Responsible AI in Africa.