The article examines examples of sociocultural practices in advertising and PR, music, cinema, gamification, tourism, and art. Analyzing the proposed topic, the dependence of transformation of sociocultural practices on technologization and informatization of society, on merging of different spheres of creative industries (on the example of advertising and content), and interdependence of society and the process of content creation were established. The sphere of “project activity” as a way of combining traditional and innovative foundations to improve and (...) enrich culture, effectively draw attention to social problems, and involve new people in the creative industry was considered separately. To carry out this research the author used the following methods: comparative-historical, hermeneutic method of generalization. At the end of the article, the author concludes that in the era of globalization with different topical problems in the creative sector of the economy there is a certain way out. This sector of the economy combines economy and culture, develops small and medium-sized businesses, reduces unemployment, and monetizes human ideas and creativity. Today sociocultural practices are required to be mobile, digitalized, merging different directions within the sphere, flexible, unique content, subordinated to economic indicators, and attracting attention to a particular event or problem. (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

The article analyzes the processes of universalization and localization of the Eurasian socio-cultural space, factors determining the transitive state of culture and sociality of local communities. The processes of socio-economic modernization have a dominant influence on the formation of socio-cultural meanings and motives formed in the course of evolution and changes in the life structure of local communities, determining the confrontation between tradition and innovation. In the process of interaction and mutual influence of locality and globality, a system of (...) socio-cultural markers, archetypes, generating norms of behavior, goals, foundations, values, determining the processes of integration and disintegration is formed. The progressive unification of the socio-cultural environment becomes the prevailing trend in the development of local communities, being reflected on the evolution of socio-culture, programming a break with traditional norms and meanings and the dominance of innovations in the socio-cultural space. (shrink)

The object of the study is clothing as a sociocultural phenomenon, a product of material and spiritual cultures. The evolution of clothing is closely related to sociocultural changes in society. The subject of the study is the transformation of clothing in China under the influence of political, economic, social, and aesthetic factors after the beginning of Chinese economic reform and opening up policy. The significant changes have taken place in Chinese clothing, the main of which was the transition (...) from a uniform style of clothing for the whole country to a variety of fashion and styles, as well as the revival of traditional clothing. The transformation in the style and production cycle of clothing in China is based on objective (technology development, market laws, global fashion trends) and subjective reasons (psychology, personal preferences and aesthetic tastes of consumers). There is always a concept behind the behavior in clothes, and the desire for beauty is the main driving force behind the development of clothing. The social psychology of imitation and difference contributes to the spread of fashion trends in clothing. The author's special contribution to the topic is a detailed examination of the impact on the transformation of clothing of political, economic, sociocultural, aesthetic factors, as well as cultural exchanges and folk traditions. The author traces the sequence of fashion trends in China in recent decades. Сontemporary changes in Chinese clothing culture are not limited to simply borrowing Western trends, but are accompanied by the emergence of postmodern ideas and the promotion of the globalization process, which leads not only to the technological and design enrichment of clothing characteristics in China, but also to the growth of cultural awareness and the revivalization of traditional and local cultures. (shrink)

The article examines the cultural and philosophical and socio-philosophical significance of polycentric urban planning strategies in the framework of the historical process of urbanization. Network and polycentric urban planning began to develop in the 19th century, was associated with a new course for the conscious and planned development of cities and assumed an even distribution of public facilities and communications, the unification of urban space with connecting axes, the integration of transport and engineering infrastructure. These trends in urban planning (...) were caused by interrelated technological, economic, social and political factors, such as scientific and technological progress, the industrial revolution, rapid urbanization. The purpose of the article is to determine the social and cultural significance of urban planning strategies implemented in some European capitals of the XIX century in the context of the general process of urbanization. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the correlation of the topic under consideration with the problems of modern urban structures. The article is based on an interdisciplinary, complex and systematic theoretical approach. A theoretical analysis of urban planning strategies and urban space development was carried out in order to identify the most promising and progressive trends in urban planning that anticipated the modern principles of urban space formation. The conclusions of the article include the characterization of the influence of polycentric urban development on the formation of a psychosocial environment and typical characteristics of the spiritual life of citizens. A review of studies on socio-cultural and philosophical problems of urbanism helps to identify the impact of polycentric urban planning, including on modern society, residents of modern cities. (shrink)

This landmark volume articulates and develops the argument that new directions in sociocultural theory are needed in order to address important issues of identity, agency, and power that are central to understanding literacy research and literacy learning as social and cultural practices. With an overarching focus on the research process as it relates to sociocultural research, the book is organized around two themes: conceptual frameworks and knowledge sources. *Part I, “Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks,” offers new theoretical lenses for (...) reconsidering key concepts traditionally associated with sociocultural theory, such as activity, history, community, and the ways they are conceptualized and under-conceptualized within sociocultural theory. *Part II, “Rethinking Knowledge and Representation,” considers the tensions and possibilities related to how research knowledge is produced, represented, and disseminated or shared—challenging the locus of authority in research relationships, asking who is authorized to be a legitimate knowledge source, for what purposes, and for which audiences or stakeholders. Employing the lens of “critical sociocultural research,” this book focuses on the central role of language and identity in learning and literacy practices. It is intended for scholars, researchers, and graduate students in literacy education, social and cultural psychology, social foundations of education, educational anthropology, curriculum theory, and qualitative research in education. (shrink)

The temporal orientations of any sociocultural grouping are major factors comprising its central identity. The manner in which the past (memories), the present (perception), and the future (anticipation/expectation) are commonly articulated also concern cultural identity. The identity of a cultural group is altered by developmental changes in time keeping and related objective, scientific temporalities.Three modes of temporality, objective, narrative, and transcendental, congruent with different kinds of brain processes, are common throughout our planet. Objective temporality tends to alter and replace (...) traditional narrative and transcendental (spiritual) time, timing, and tempos. Objective temporality is concerned with what is transitory, modern and “progressive”. Objective time is not a traditional form of cultural time; it is a derived Westernized scientific imposition, rather than any cultural formation. This essay develops a new conception of how semiosis occurs. All information is essentially rhythmic, transduced through sensory systems as signals in a space-time domain, but deposited for use into a spectral thermodynamic domain in the human cortex.A “chronemic” perspective, (temporality as it is based in semiotic processes related to human communication) is assumed throughout. Such a perspective appears to be somewhat novel in both communication and semiotic studies. (shrink)

The concept of "ecological niche" is frequently employed in sociocultural anthropology, but there have been few systematic applications of it. This paper examines the utility of the concept for the analysis of social interaction and change, with special reference to complex societies. In a small agricultural valley of northern California, competition between two status groups over a scarce resource--land--has led to displacement and changing patterns of resource use. "Niche" describes the aggregate outcome of underlying processes of competition on the (...) individual level. (shrink)

Introduction. The emerging paradigm of socio- cultural development of the Russian Federation’s local communities is conditioned by the trans- formation of production and economic practices based on the concept of a multi-layered economy and multifunctionality emerging under the pressure of globalization on the development of localities. The desire to preserve and maintain socio-cultural traditions, customs, and values is an axiological guideline for developing local communities. The growing social vulnerability of communities creates certain conditions for losing identity, ability for self-identification, and (...) leads to the destruction of socio-cultural identity. The purpose of the study. The article analyzes the problem of socio-cultural evolution when modern- izing production and economic activity generating factors causing the transformation of culture and sociality of local communities, thus determining the processes of integration and disintegration of socioculture. Methods. Sociocultural analysis provides an op- portunity to reveal the main directions of sociocul- tural development of local communities, to explain the essence of interaction, mutual influence and unification of local communities into an interactive socio-cultural space with compatible formations and components. Scientific novelty of the research. The author dis- plays the models of culture and sociality transfor- mation reflecting the processes of modification of the local communities’ lifestyle that determine the transition from the paradigm of sustainable tradi- tional socio-cultural development to the paradigm of innovative transformations. Results. The problem of sociocultural integration and disintegration is associated with globalization processes that generate contradictions of globality and locality. The processes of integration/disin- tegration of the local communities’ sociocultural development are conditioned by the culture and sociality evolution of the constructing model of socio-cultural behavior. The pressure of globaliza- tion plunges the socio-cultural space into a state of diffusion, instability. Historically established traditions, norms, values are transformed into intermediate forms that help to adapt to new living conditions, neutralize the negative consequences of modernization. Territorial sociocultural formations are being formed, within the framework of which attempts are being made to preserve the tradition- al socio-cultural environment. Conclusions. The dynamics of sociocultural pro- cesses determines the emergence of multidirec- tional poles of sociocultural life: from the desire to preserve the traditional socio-cultural environment, to the full acceptance of the meaningful qualities of liberal socio-culture, which destroys the sociocul- tural identity of local communities. (shrink)

Dance is addressed as making significance for what Elias terms the civilizing process of early modernity through its contribution to the ennoblement of warriors and the pacification of merchants. The grounds for this are drawn from McNeill's contention that expenditure of muscular energy rhythmically in dance, as in military drill, but with different sociocultural consequences, is a fundamental human device for consolidating community feeling by facilitating cooperation by arousing a warm sense of togetherness. The significance of dance as (...) a sociocultural practice in early modernity is discussed critically through contemporary writings from the 16th and 17th centuries, with particular consideration given to the description of dance as an allegory for moral order in Elyot's manual on the education of the ruler. (shrink)

The debates now in progress about the interactions of science and art compel one involuntarily to recall that such discussions have been held more than once and were, a long time ago, perhaps no less heated. It suffices to cite virtually at random certain statements of Pisarev, for example , for us to see, as in a cloudy mirror, both today's advocates of scientism and the romantics of art. Does this mean that all we need is to bear in mind (...) the wise words of the past in order to advance, as is believed by Iu. I. Kagarlitskii ? Obviously, that is not the case. The problem of the interactions of science and art is a philosophical one, not one of natural science; and the results achieved in debates of the past do not eliminate the questions of world view that constantly arise anew. Philosophy has no axioms such as exist in mathematics. It is therefore difficult to imagine that subsequent history has added nothing whatever to the understanding of past debates. Yet reference to these debates would appear to be essential today to clarify at least one of the factors of the problem we have posed. It might appear that this factor has been pointed to, but it has constantly been beclouded by the explanations of how science influences artists, and how art influences scientists who are at the same time artists, by references to the unity of the creative character of science and art, and so forth. In my opinion, it is essential, however, to emphasize that the very problematics of the interactions between science and art depend on the social and cultural environment within which they exist and are discussed. Turning to the past, we can see that science and art are not realms of activity handed down to humankind "since the creation of the world." They develop in the "body," if one may put it thus, of a specific socium, a specific culture. It would, of course, be absurd to conceive of any direct contact between science and art without the mediation of human beings, of society, of culture. Moreover, the debates themselves are determined by the level at which science and art are found within a given sociocultural space, by virtue of which analysis of these debates may provide data to the researcher for an understanding of the direction of social development. The RST influences all spheres of human activity, including the esthetic. Today, however, particularly in the West, there is a tendency to elevate the significance of the RST to an absolute, to explain many processes by its direct influence on social consciousness independently of the social conditions in which it occurs. Therefore, it would seem to be methodologically important for today's debates to demonstrate, on the basis of some concrete historical material, the connection between those shifts in social consciousness that sometimes explain the direct influence of progress in science and technology, on the one hand, and certain sociocultural conditions, on the other. (shrink)

The article proposes a framework for the analysis of identity as produced in linguistic interaction, based on the following principles: identity is the product rather than the source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore is a social and cultural rather than primarily internal psychological phenomenon; identities encompass macro-level demographic categories, temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles, and local, ethnographically emergent cultural positions; identities may be linguistically indexed through labels, implicatures, stances, styles, or linguistic structures and systems; (...) identities are relationally constructed through several, often overlapping, aspects of the relationship between self and other, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice and authority/ delegitimacy; and identity may be in part intentional, in part habitual and less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation, in part a construct of others’ perceptions and representations, and in part an outcome of larger ideological processes and structures. The principles are illustrated through examination of a variety of linguistic interactions. (shrink)

The introduction of transgenic crops into centers of diversity or areas dominated by traditional agriculture threatens genetic diversity as well as indigenous knowledge and culture. It is further argued that the impacts go beyond genetic changes in heterogeneous native crop varieties to embrace effects on evolutionary processes such as gene flow between native crops and wild relatives, and erosion of local knowledge systems such as folk taxonomies and selection of varieties that thrive in marginal environments in which resourcepoor farmers live.

Introduction. The philosophical reception of the foundations of the social and the principles of war act as connected processes. A historically specific type of socio-cultural being generates a unique way of philosophical articulation about the nature of the order of society and culture, war and peace. The purpose of the study is explicating the connection between the type of conceptualizing war (classical, total, new war) and understanding the principles of social order. Methods. The author uses methods of the historical and (...) constructivist approach as the leading methodology in studying the problem of the war and the sociocultural order connection. Scientific novelty of the research. By highlighting the strategic principles of different theories of war (classical trinitarian war, the concept of total war and mobilization, the theory of “new wars”), the connection between the order of war and the fundamental foundations of society and culture at different stages of historical development is shown. Results. Consideration of the three theories of war allows us to present them as different projects for understanding the socio-cultural order of the Art Nouveau philosophy. The author highlights and analyzes the leading provisions of historically different theories of wars: “war as a continuation of politics”; “the totality of war and mobilization” as the basis of the socio-political order; “new war” as a concept of cultural turn. Conclusions. Modern studies of war are distinguished by an active appeal to understanding the connection between armed clashes and the concreteness of cultural life, which sets the context, way of thinking and actions of potential actors in military operations. The article shows that current theories and practices of war are characterized by a kind of coexistence of layers of social reality that are different in their historical depth. (shrink)

"The evolutionary vision" is a term coined by economist Kenneth E. Boulding to describe a unified view of evolution that encompasses all levels of reality, from the cosmic or physical through the biological, ecological, and sociobiological to the sociocultural. It focuses less on systems or any particular entity than on the processes through which they evolve. In this volume various approaches to the self-organization of matter and information are outlined by authors who are among the chief developers of this (...) new paradigm. They focus on the general laws governing evolutionary dynamics across all levels of evolution, including the evolution of humans and human systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 87-94 [Access article in PDF] Talk and the Nature of Delusions:Defending Sociocultural Perspectives on Mental Illness Eugenie Georgaca Keywords discourse, social constructionism, delusions, psychosis, mental illness, context It is very pleasing to see writers from philosophy, psychiatry and psychology, the three disciplines represented by this journal, debating the issue of delusions. The majority of the papers in this volume set out to (...) determine the underlying mechanisms responsible for delusions. As such, they offer themselves as discussions of the etiological factors of the formation and maintenance of delusions. My paper analyzes the interactional presentation and negotiation of statements that would be considered as delusional. This led some commentators (Ghaemi 2004; Sass 2004) to argue that the analysis of talk about delusions is useful, but cannot be extended to claims about the nature of delusions. In the following section, I discuss the ways in which analyzing interactions can be useful in clinical research and practice. Subsequently, I identify and critically discuss the assumptions about the nature of delusions that underlie these criticisms and the majority of the papers in this volume. The Usefulness of the Study of Interaction My paper can be seen as part of a growing body of studies that attempt to elucidate the role of interactional and discursive processes in the identification and management of disorders (Barrett 1988; Coulter 1975; Hak 1989; Pollner 1975; Smith 1978; Soyland 1994). Microsociological and ethnographic studies look at the properties of client-professional interaction with the aim of clarifying the tacit skills and knowledges used in such encounters. Palmer (2000), for example, argues that the recognition of disorder is a social and interactional issue both in the sense that the judgment of disorder is based on social criteria and in the sense that diagnosis is an interpersonal process with its own inherent social order. The aim, therefore, of analyzing professional-client interactions would be to articulate the properties of this implicit social order. Other researchers argue that diagnosis is not a process of identification or recognition of disorder, but rather a process of active construction of disorder and of transforming the person to a mental patient. Barrett's (1988) analysis of the transformation of a [End Page 87] person to a "person suffering from schizophrenia" and subsequently a "schizophrenic" through interviewing and report writing is an excellent example of this kind of work.The application of this approach to the field of delusions would attempt to address the issue of how delusions are diagnosed and managed through the interactions between the delusional patient and the clinician. In this paper and in previous work (Georgaca 1996, 2000) I showed that statements that have been diagnosed as delusional are presented and argued through using appropriate conversational strategies, drawing on socially meaningful systems of knowledge and applying appropriate rules of evidence. Moreover, I argued that there was no way in which these disagreements over competing versions of reality could be definitely settled conversationally, and that instances of breakdown in communication were due not to the delusional version being proven wrong, but to lack of explanatory frameworks within which the competing versions could be negotiated. At least in the exchanges analyzed, the criteria of implausibility, conviction, and incorrigibility were shown not to apply.Clinicians do not customarily investigate the truth of patient claims against empirical data (Maher 1992), which means that they have to judge claims on the basis of the patient's presentation in the diagnostic interview. Because there are no technical guidelines for the assessment of truth and falsity, plausibility and implausibility, rationality and irrationality, clinicians have to rely on personal judgment. The question then is on what grounds the clinician's personal judgment is granted the status of determining the truth of someone else's claim and in what capacity clinicians are called to make such decisions. I will not pursue this argument any further here. The point I want to make is that the analysis of professional-client interactions foregrounds the active role of professionals in clinical decisions and questions the criteria upon which decisions are... (shrink)

The global burden of obesity has risen due to various factors, including sociocultural aspects. Social representations (SRs) of obesity could help to understand the problem. Nowadays, social networks activate new social interaction processes and enable the construction of SRs. Tweets can identify mind-sets as cultural reflections of the times. This study aimed to identify widely shared obesity topics on Twitter-Argentina using Natural Language Processing. First, 134,766 Spanish tweets about obesity were collected from August 2021 to July 2022. Next, a (...) geolocation filter removed non-Argentinian messages, leaving 48,149 tweets. The body text was cleaned and prepared for analysis. K-means clustering model was applied and 21 clusters were identified after reaching theoretical saturation. Then, 10 tweets from each cluster were randomly selected to analyse word usage and identify cluster themes. Thus, the main themes were “Gender-related”, “Obesity and family”, “Hate speech and fatphobia”, “Body image, perceptions and feelings”, “Public health actions” and “Obesity as a health-disease process”. These aggregations allowed us to understand obesity as a sociocultural phenomenon, the Argentinian culture-specific discourses surrounding it, and their connections to health. We firmly believe that this valuable information will enlighten the planning of future social-political actions to address this health-disease process. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw out the consequences of the communal character of learning approach promoted by a sociocultural framework. This approach has both descriptive-analytical and prescriptive-guiding power: it helps to analyze existing practices be they traditional, exclusive, or innovative but, what is, probably, even more important, it also helps to guide practitioners in the design of more inclusive educational practices. In the first part of the paper, we will provide a framework for analyzing the case (...) of a shift from a traditional institutionalized perspective that understands learning as an individual process located in the head of the learner to the institutionalization of learning as a communal process — a regime which helps avoid constructing children in terms of a deficit model, disability, and academic failure. In the second part of the paper, we will discuss how treating learning as a communal process can guide an educational practitioner to develop a new pedagogical regime of a learning community of social activists that leads to inclusive pedagogy and eliminate “zones of teacher-student disability. (shrink)

By leveraging the case of Hindu sati, this paper elucidates the ways in which structure and culture condition suicidal behavior by way of social psychological and emotional dynamics. Conventionally, sati falls under Durkheim's discussion of altruistic suicides, or the self-sacrifice of underindividuated or excessively integrated peoples like widows in traditional societies. In light of the fact that Durkheim's interpretation was based on uneven data, nineteenth century Eurocentric beliefs, and a theoretical framework that can no longer resist modification and elaboration, by (...) reconsidering sati it is possible to sketch a new model that strengthens Durkheim's theory by making it more robust and generalizable. The following model is built on five principles. First, integration and regulation are not distinct causal forces, but overlapping contextual conditions. Second, to better explain the variation in suicidality across time and space, we must also pay attention to culture as it provides the underlying meanings of suicide that can increase the odds a person or class of persons become suicidal or are protected against suicidality. Third, structure still matters, but in many cases, the role power and power-differentials play must be considered. Fourth, understanding why and how people choose suicide depends on incorporating identity and status processes. Fifth, because the expression of social emotions like shame are patterned by structural and cultural conditions, to understand how suicidality is socioculturally patterned we must further explore the link between identity/status, social emotions, and structure and culture. (shrink)

This contribution reflects on Nicholas Rescher's discussion of “process and persons” in his book Process Metaphysics. Its main purposes are to offer conceptual commentary on some of Rescher's terms, and to suggest some options for process thinking more radical than Rescher's, partly motivated by recent developments in science and philosophy. First, a brief analysis of the relation between process and time is presented, emphasizing irreversibility and temporal holism as crucial for a processual worldview. Second, instability and (...) transiency are introduced as key concepts for a better understanding of notions such as creativity and freedom. Third, the importance of the sociocultural domain is pointed out in addition to psychological and biophysical factors for the constitution of personhood. And fourth, it is argued that such an extension can be endowed with ontological significance in the framework of a non-reductive and non-hierarchical ontological relativity. (shrink)

Economics and biology have long been overlapping and mutually enriching fields. We contribute to this cross-fertilization by spelling out the implications for economic theory of some recent insights from evolutionary neurobiology. We note that dynamic homeostasis, a core feature of life processes, has shaped social interactions at varied stages of evolution – from the patterns of competition and cooperation among early life forms to the complex process of human cultures. The resulting homeostatic perspective is not compatible with several leading (...) economic theories but does provide a biological footing for promising concepts such as ecological rationality, heuristics, heterogeneity of economic agents, and complex, self-organizing dynamics. (shrink)

The graduate teaching assistant prepares to enter a classroom for the first time as its instructor beset by feelings of incompetence: indeed, learning to successfully display a professional identity is often a terrifying experience, such that promising novices may abandon it prematurely. This hermeneutic phenomenological study asks one female doctoral candidate the following question: What is the experience of feelings of competence and incompetence in the process of becoming a professor? The core finding of this interview-based study is the (...) thematic demarcation of sequential stages in the participant’s experience of the process of becoming “member enough”. In the presentation of the findings, the identification of the central themes is validated with excerpts from the interview data, and their implications for the study of competence, the sociocultural study of identity development, and the mentoring of pre-service college faculty discussed. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , May 2010, Volume 10, Edition 1. (shrink)

The study focuses on the consideration of the symbolic nature of being, presented both at the level of the culture of society and at the level of the human symbolic nature. It is noted that the world cannot be understood exclusively empirically. It is symbols that can explain everything that cannot be explained by the laws of nature. After all, the essence of human knowledge is completely revealed through them. The focus of the article is on the study of the (...) ancient interpretation of the nature of symbolism. This tradition is most thoroughly revealed in Plato’s concept of eidos. Introduced into scientific circulation by the ancient tradition of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, symbolism establishes a philosophical coordinate system of thinking. This system reveals the real nature of being and highlights the epistemological potential of its analysis. Eidos, idea, form – those elements of symbolic reality that project the relief of the material world. Eidos, idea – is the ideal beginning, the archetype of a thing, which underlies all categories of being. Both “idea” and “eidos” represent aspects of the ideal-objective nature of meaning. However, if the idea is the archetype that we carry in our souls, then eidos is the logical structure of this idea. This means that eidos has a differential nature, and idea – an integral nature. Ideas-eidos are those constituents on the basis of which, according to Plato, the material world is born.Eidos form the world and are outside it. They manifest in time, but themselves are outside of time. They are unchanging, eternal, unlike things in the material world, which appear and perish. According to Plato, knowledge of the thing essence is not reduced only to sensuality – «correct thought» or «the connection of correct thought with content». In this sense, the process of cognition is revealed as communication (κοινόνία). That is, the interaction between the eidos of an object and the human soul, the result of which is the imprint of an idea in our soul – noema. Such Platonic reflection lays the foundations of the methodological platform within which the religious philosophical tradition unfolds. Within the framework of the latter, the semantic basis of being is “living knowledge” (G.Shpet, S.Frank), “holistic knowledge”, truth.In turn, man himself acts as a certain symbolic reality that responds to the ideal nature of being. Since it is through the symbol that the essence is revealed, and not the imprint of the world in the human imagination. Through the symbol, man discovers the world around him, and therefore himself. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a type-hierarchy approach to provide an intersubjective framework for the evaluation of evolutionary analogies. This approach develops David Hull’s and others’ attempts to provide full generalisation for selection processes, in order to show that sociocultural development and, particularly, scientific change can be considered as an instance of Darwinian selection. I argue that the recent work by Eileen Cornell Way on type hierarchies can offer the kind of generalisation needed to solve the main problems that (...) still affect Hull’s theory and to show that the evolutionary analogy is, after all, only a particular way of grouping phenomena together. If Hull’s main objective is a unified theory of selection, which supports the idea that science selection and natural selection obey the same laws, I also argue that the type hierarchy approach to models shows that this objective is unsustainable as it stands, and is in need of further development. I will firstly introduce the general outline of the type hierarchy approach to models. Then, after a brief recapitulation of Hull’s main points and difficulties, I will try and construct a hierarchy for a general abstraction of selection processes. Finally I will introduce the main criticisms that Hull’s work has faced from philosophers and scientists, and show how they compare with my proposal. (shrink)

On the example of the analysis of the content of films-leaders of the box office box office, the value dynamics of the symbols of success is revealed as an objectively occurring sociocultural process in film communication. Cultural production and consumption are being rethought as the self-communication of society, which has sustainable trends. The connections of the sociocultural process of symbolizing success with communicative, semantic and semiotic processes have been studied. The specificity of the dialectical contradiction between (...) sociocentric and personocentric symbols of success is described. The theoretical provisions that reveal the structural and functional side of the socio-cultural process of symbolizing success are presented, its objectivity is proved on the example of the analysis of an array of films, the dominant tendencies in the halo of the cultural space of the general film market are determined. The book is addressed to scientists, students and teachers interested in cultural dynamics, social communication, the role of cinema in modern society. (shrink)

Adorno's work “What does‘processing of the Рast’ mean” for the first time was presented as a report on November 6, 1959 before the Coordination Council on Christian-Jewish Cooperation. In this work Adorno considered the essence of social ideology prevailing in postwar Germany, which predetermined the strategies of social reconciliation with the political crimes of the former national-socialist power. According to the philosopher the social ideology of the consumer society uses a large number of appropriate means to stabilize its dominant position (...) in society. First of all this ideology tries to eliminate the collective historical memory of people about the horrors of the war period, trying to squeeze them out of the collective consciousness, in particular, through the memories of people about the “best times” of life under the “guardianship” of the previous totalitarian power. The philosopher marked as surrogate the identity of these people which socially integrated only through the authority of the power personality. They do not identify themselves with the victims of the totalitarian regime because of the influence on their consciousness of the cultural elements of this social ideology. Another consequence of this influence is the alienation of these people from the idea of democracy as a factor of properly sociocultural transformations. Adorno defined the new “democratic pedagogy” and the enlightenment as a “second education” as effective means to overcome this influence. They are practically implemented in a society as those educated people who have knowledge about the past crimes of the totalitarian regime. In this manner they cause within the educational process of the effective “re-education of the Past” through the formation of a personal understanding of an individual about social causes and the terrible consequences of rule of a totalitarian regime. This makes possible of his “political full-grown” and makes impossible of historic recurrence of the crimes of authoritarian power in Europe. (shrink)

Since 2000, research within positive psychology has exploded, as reflected in dozens of meta-analyses of different interventions and targeted processes, including strength spotting, positive affect, meaning in life, mindfulness, gratitude, hope, and passion. Frequently, researchers treat positive psychology processes of change as distinct from each other and unrelated to processes in clinical psychology. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for positive psychology processes that crosses theoretical orientation, links coherently to clinical psychology and its more dominantly “negative” processes, and supports practitioners (...) in their efforts to personalize positive psychological interventions. We argue that a multi-dimensional and multi-level extended evolutionary approach can organize effective processes of change in psychosocial interventions, by focusing interventions on context-appropriate variation, selection, and retention of processes, arranged in terms of key biopsychosocial dimensions across psychological, biophysiological, and sociocultural levels of analysis. We review widely studied positive psychology constructs and programs and show how this evolutionary approach can readily accommodate them and provide a common language and framework for improving human and community flourishing. We conclude that Interventions should start with the person, not the protocol. (shrink)

In general, understanding requires cognitive and linguistic skills, encompasses cultural, social, contextual and individual aspects, and is characterised by gradualness and dynamicity. In this study, the intertwined set of relevant components involved in the complex process of understanding space deixis will be analysed in the specific context of face-to-face interaction. In everyday conversation, this process is unavoidably mutual and may include misunderstanding (which often opens up a way to understanding), repairs, reformulations and negotiation cycles, all of which eventually (...) lead to understanding and mutual comprehension or to communication failure. Many scholars have already pointed out several elements that influence interactants’ understanding in a positive or negative way: on the one hand, shared physical context, cotext, common ground, shared knowledge and avoidance devices; on the other, ambiguity, speakers’ failures, and interactants’ asymmetric features with regard to language and culture. The interactional context, the cotext and the use of multimodal resources (resorted to as co-speech or to substitute language) play a significant role in the dynamic process of understanding spatial deixis, often helping to overcome the difficulties related to peripheral cases of spatial deictics and other causes of misunderstandings, which can either work as a starting point for understanding or lead to communication failure. (shrink)

Over the last decade, interest in the heritage of such national thinkers who have worked in the space of sociocultural and religious studies has become relevant. That is why, in our opinion, the appeal to Vyacheslav Lipynsky's creative work is justified. Today, his legacy can be used not only to understand the history of society and the state, but also to understand some aspects of our present. Therefore, you should listen more carefully to the thoughts of this thinker.

The public and commercial spheres constantly address the largest ethnic minority in the United States, people with ancestry or from a Latin American country, as a homogenous group under the ethnopolitical terms “Latinos,” “Hispanics,” and even “Mexicans.” This panethnic view, and the negative stereotypes associated with it, was especially visible during the 2016 presidential election. While the majority of Latinos found Donald Trump’s remarks on “Mexicans” offensive to the Latin community as a whole, a large number of people still supported (...) his opinions, even those belonging to the “Latino” community. Even more so, women of Latino heritage still supported a nominee that went against their own advance in society given his constant misogynistic comments. In this essay, I analyze the groundings for this apparent contradiction in the preference for said candidate. I argue that these women’s political preference is a tool with which they build their identity in the U.S. Besides, I explore the ways in which individuals linguistically construct their own identity in three ways by actively doing the identification instead of merely receiving it by an unknown agent; by choosing the self-representation of their preference, and by finding commonalities and bonding with other individuals they deem part of their group. Through this approach, I analyze semiotic processes, such as intertextuality, use of pronouns, and discourse alignment, that are used to construct identifications of the self that go beyond imposed categories, such as gender and ethnicity. (shrink)

The principles of classical and quantum holography are used to develop the theoretical basis for a non-phonemic method of detecting membership in secret social groups, such as cults, criminal gangs, drug cartels, and terrorist cells. Grounded in the basic sociological premise that every group develops a distinctive sociocultural order, the theory postulates that the primary features of a group's collective identity will be encoded, via a multilevel socio-psycho-physiological process, into the field of bio-emotional relations connecting group members. The (...) principles of classical holography (Gabor 1948) are used to describe how this information is recorded in the members' brains and communicated in interaction by a holographic-like process as a tacit signature of group affiliation —a constancy in group-related interactions. It is hypothesized that the identity signature is enfolded as a hologram in the energy spectra of vocal interactions among group members. The principles of quantum holography (Gabor 1946) are used to provide a description of the group's ongoing interactions as a dynamic process—a continuous, quantized series of snapshots (quantum holograms). Linked together, two forms of holography provide a model of how the group's collective identity evolves and is communicated over time to its members, as the group adapts to the ever-changing reality of its endogenous and exogenous circumstances. Using spectral analysis techniques, it should be possible to detect the group's identity signature in the recordings of relatively small samples of vocal interactions. In clandestine groups, the effort to remain hidden actually enhances the signal strength of the identity signature. It is predicted, therefore, that detection of unknown members can be achieved by using the spectral commonality identified in the analysis of recordings of vocal interactions among known members as a reference signature for comparison with those of the vocal spectra of suspected or potential members. (shrink)

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social–technical environment. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage (...) and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. These bots, scripts, tools, plugins, and dashboards make Wikipedia more efficient for those who know how to work with them, but like all organizational culture, newcomers must learn them if they want to fully participate. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I present thick descriptions of how governance and gatekeeping practices are articulated through and in alignment with these automated infrastructures. Over the past 15 years, Wikipedian veterans and administrators have made specific decisions to support administrative and editorial workflows with automation in particular ways and not others. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning—most principally arguing that scholarship and practice must go beyond trying to “open up the black box” of such systems and also examine sociocultural processes like newcomer socialization. (shrink)

Introduction. The increasing mediation of human life by medicine necessarily raises the question of philosophical understanding the phenomenon of culture medicalization, since today the vector of growing powerful influence of medicine on forming sociocultural processes has clearly emerged. Along with the positive phenomena of the medicalization of life, the volume of “excessive” phenomena of its medicalization is growing. The purpose of the article is to clarify the philo- sophical foundations of the progressive medicaliza- tion of modern culture. Methods. The (...) methodological basis of the study is presented by dialectical, epistemological, axiologi- cal, philosophical-anthropological, and socio-phil- osophical approaches. The study is based on E. Cassirer’s transcendental philosophy, the phenom- enological transcendentalism of E. Husserl; V.S. Stepin’s concept about the system of informational social codes; and P.D. Tishchenko’s concept on the transformation of bio-power in modern culture. Scientific novelty of the research. The author outlines fundamental foundations of modern cul- ture medicalization as a result of mutually similar processes of transforming bio-power and the progress of biomedical sciences. Results. Unfolding, culture compensated for the bodily weakness of a person with the power of his technical inventions, but today they have surpassed the intellectual capabilities of their creator - the individual has to permanently adapt to the grow- ing volume of mass technogenic innovations. The historically formed human need to master the world through its “humanization” is suppressed, and, as a result, the problem of a modern indi- vidual’s request for self-realization through the creative transformation of the social environment is actualized. In this regard, one of the philosophi- cal and anthropological foundations of modern culture can be recognized as a technogenically determined desire of a person to transform his own corporeality, aimed at expanding the capabili- ties of a natural person. Biomedical sciences, as a result of biotechnological progress, turned out to be exactly the social and scientific sphere, which, building up practical activities within the framework of healthcare, considers the person to be both the subject and the object of the biosocial transforma- tion demanded by cultural evolution. Conclusions. The process of medicalization of culture occurs on the basis of two reciprocal fundamental processes: first, the strengthening of the principles of bio-power as “care for all forms of life”; secondly, the progress and technologization of scientific medicine, which in practice provides a socio-cultural demand for a modern prosperous individual. (shrink)

The issue of violence and strategies for its attenuation present perennial conundrums for those seeking to reduce the quantity of avoidable suffering in the world. Despite the best efforts of committed practitioners, activists, and scholars, violence its various forms remain rife at all levels of social life. Paradoxically and tragically, at times, the proliferation of violence accompanies those very efforts aimed at its eradication or resolution. Education – understood in its narrower sense as a set of formal institutions as well (...) in its broader sense as a ubiquitous sociocultural process – is perhaps exemplary of this paradox, being cast variously as a cause or instrument of violence on the one hand, and as a panacea to violence on the other. In this essay review of Etienne Balibar's Violence and Civility: On the limits of political philosophy (2016), I draw on the author's imaginative attempt to theorise the relationship between different forms of violence and link this to existing scholarship on violence more broadly, and studies that consider the role of education within economies of violence more specifically. (shrink)

In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecological Psychology in Context: *traces the primary lineage of Gibson's ecological approach to William James's philosophy (...) of radical empiricism; *illuminates how the work of James's student and Gibson's mentor, E.B. Holt, served as a catalyst for the development of Gibson's framework and as a bridge to James's work; *reveals how ecological psychology reciprocally can advance Jamesian studies by resolving some of the theoretical difficulties that kept James from fully realizing a realist philosophy; *broadens the scope of Gibson's framework by proposing a synthesis between it and the ecological program of Roger Barker, who discovered complex systems operating at the level of collective, social processes; *demonstrates ways in which the psychological domain can be extended to properties of the environment rendering its features meaningful, publicly accessible, and distributed across person-environment processes; and *shows how Gibson's work points the way toward overcoming the gap between experimental psychology and the humanities. Intended for scholars and students in the areas of ecological and environmental psychology, theoretical and historical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. (shrink)

Mainstream cognitive science shows a strong tendency to explain the mind by postulating a level of analysis separate from the biological and the sociological, and by assuming that the idea of computation is essential. John Searle has challenged these assumptions and suggested a solution to the mind-body problem . I endorse his view that mental phenomena, consciousness and cognition, are genuine biological phenomena, but argue that Searle ignores some important entailments relative to essential features of the living phenomenon. First, these (...) entailments are in conflict with the objectivistic tradition on which Searle's work rests. This reveals a more serious problem underlying basic assumptions of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind: the inadequacy of ontological objectivism. Secondly, they point to the fact that biological naturalism ignores the very interactive and co-defining nature of biological systems that take place beyond the level of the individual. As a consequence it is incomplete in its foundations and limited in its ability to account for sociocultural processes as inseparable constituents of the mind. To overcome these difficulties a view is outlined that gives a coherent account of the mind and cognition without endorsing objectivism. This view emphasizes the non-separation between the mind and the medium in which it evolves, their biological co-definition, and also the supra-individual nature of the biology of mental phenomena. (shrink)

In the current research on multi-agent systems (MAS), many theoretical issues related to sociocultural processes have been touched upon. These issues are in fact intellectually profound and should prove to be significant for MAS. Moreover, these issues should have equally significant impact on cognitive science, if we ever try to understand cognition in the broad context of sociocultural environments in which cognitive agents exist. Furthermore, cognitive models as studied in cognitive science can help us in a substantial way (...) to better probe multi-agent issues, by taking into account essential characteristics of cognitive agents and their various capacities. In this paper, we systematically examine the interplay among social sciences, MAS, and cognitive science. We try to justify an integrated approach for MAS which incorporates different perspectives. We show how a new cognitive model, CLARION, can embody such an integrated approach through a combination of autonomous learning and assimilation. (shrink)

The literature on social interactions has shown that participants coordinate not only at the behavioral but also at the physiological and neural levels, and that this coordination gives a temporal structure to the individual and social dynamics. However, it has not been fully explored whether such temporal patterns emerge during interpersonal coordination beyond dyads, whether this phenomenon arises from complex cognitive mechanisms or from relatively simple rules of behavior, or which are the sociocultural processes that underlie this phenomenon. We (...) review the evidence for the existence of group-level rhythmic patterns that result from social interactions and argue that the complexity of group dynamics can lead to temporal regularities that cannot be predicted from the individual periodicities: an emergent collective rhythm. Moreover, we use this interpretation of the literature to discuss how taking into account the sociocultural niche in which individuals develop can help explain the seemingly divergent results that have been reported on the social influences and consequences of interpersonal coordination. We make recommendations on further research to test these arguments and their relationship to the feeling of belonging and assimilation experienced during group dynamics. (shrink)

The idea of Culture led by Social Sciences presents emotions as if they were difficult to measure, and consequently, from the point of view of the interpretation of Cultural Practices, bothering. The secondarysation (and even, the marginalisation) of emotions among the interpretaive arguments, is linked to a linear and diachronical perspective on the social fact, more than to a forgotten aspect. The traditional ethnographer’s incapacity on including emotional worlds in their reaserches produces traces of a fake objectivity and it is (...) the source of important inexactitudes (or even falsations). -/- Along three reaserches about Urban Culture, introduced in the context of the Sociocultural Process Workshop of the La Universidad del Zulia (“The Affective Dispositifs of Hugo Chávez’ Phenomenom”, “The Opprobium Laberynth: Sexual Chanceros in Maracaibo” and “Walking Throught the Night, Things Get Confused. Reflections about Transgendered, Body and Power in Maracaibo”), it is possible to see conditions for resolving some aspects obout meaning/sense and emotions/intellect tensions, using the body as an emotional territory and as an ethnographical resource. Those reaserches try to evaluate the affective consistence of the urban territory, from the transgendered’s street fronteers, from chanceros and from the “no deviated” society, until the Chávez’ phenomenom, throught the corporal imago between the subjects and the reaserchers. -/- At the end, it is possible to conclude about some useful principles of the idea of Culture that sees the body as a bridge to the missed subjectivity of knowledge. (shrink)

We elaborate the kind of metaphysical, ontological arguments and positions put forth by Martin and Sugarman in several ways, in an attempt to clarify that it is the assumption of psychological and sociocultural entities as fixed ontological categories that makes psychological—sociocultural dualism problematic, not the necessary distinction it draws between sociocultural and psychological processes. In so doing, we develop an emergent, mutable metaphysics and ontology for psychological and sociocultural processes that emphasizes their dynamic interrelation. We then (...) attempt to articulate and defend a neorealist hermeneutics as a viable epistemological accompaniment to this dynamic, interactionist metaphysics, and to indicate its appropriateness to psychological inquiry in particular. (shrink)

Müller's review of the neuroscientific evidence undermines nativist claims for autonomous syntax and the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. Generativists will appeal to data from language acquisition, but here too there is growing evidence against the nativist position. Epigenetic naturalism, the developmental alternative to nativism, can be extended to epigenetic socionaturalism, acknowledging the importance of sociocultural processes in language and cognitive development.

Resumen La globalización genera espacios multilingües de interacción donde existen conflictos en la interpretación de prácticas discursivas aceptables a nivel local, provocando una re-escalarización de lo local, nacional, regional y global. Este trabajo explora cómo en el fútbol internacional – en que interactúan jugadores, fanáticos y medios deportivos internacionales – se disputan estas prácticas discursivas y su significado. En un corpus de artículos periodísticos investigamos dos incidentes en los que enunciados en español fueron interpretados por hablantes de otras lenguas ­como (...) actos discriminatorios. Usando herramientas de análisis del discurso mostramos cómo se construyen comunidades axiológicas y posicionamientos ideológicos que legitiman marcos interpretativos regionales, relegando a un segundo plano la discusión sobre las prácticas discursivas discriminatorias a nivel local. Esta pugna por el derecho a la interpretación produce reflexiones metapragmáticas sobre la inestabilidad del significado a través de las diferentes escalas. Mostramos cómo lo que en una escala resulta inocuo, en otra es un índice de significados ideológicamente cargados que define a un individuo o grupo como racista u homofóbico. (shrink)

The set of symbols of success is a set of cultural determinants of activity and their functioning is connected with the fundamental functions of culture as a system of historically developing supra-biological programs of life. The relevance of considering the symbolization of success in modern cinema is due to several factors. First, according to the majority of art historians and film theorists, cinema remains the leading, most widespread form of art throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If we understand art (...) as a figurative comprehension of reality, its process and result, which is expressed in works, then the symbolization of success in cinema can be considered one of the most common practices for representing the determinants of activity through a figurative comprehension of reality. An analysis of this process in modern cinematography reveals the mechanisms of functioning of one of the elements of the totality of joint life programs as a segment of modern culture, limited by the boundaries of film communication. Secondly, the development of cinematography largely determines the fundamental changes in the culture of the 20th century. and there is no reason to believe that its influence is diminishing in recent times. Consequently, modern cinema remains one of the most important areas of cultural life, the study of which allows expanding scientific understanding of the patterns of changes taking place in culture. Thirdly, the development of information and communication technologies at the end of the 20th century. led to the fact that the value complexes of traditional cultures of different peoples of the world and expansive global neoplasms of a supranational nature (mass, elite, corporate, fandom, etc.) are simultaneously transmitted into the space of personal culture. Cinema in the new conditions only strengthened its position as the leading relay of value complexes. The special socio-forming qualities of cinema were noted both by its pioneers (L. Delluk, A. Dovzhenko, Ch. Chaplin, S. Eisenstein, etc.), scientists (B. Balash, V. A. Gottwald, E. M. Samuylenko, etc.) , and the ideologists of cultural revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. G. Turner, in particular, drew attention to the fact that “to achieve control over the everyday representation of the world for a nation means to acquire strong power over the representation of individuals about themselves and about each other”, referring to the threat to the integrity and coherence of an individual’s understanding of the world under the pressure of foreign cultural domination over film communication. In this regard, the search for ways to relevantly measure the trends in the development of modern culture by marking in cinema the cultural determinants of activity, which are the symbols of success, seems to be an urgent theoretical and scientific-practical task, the solution of which expands the predictive potential of culture and its projective possibilities. (shrink)

The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners, are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the (...) origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process–content distinction. (shrink)

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require (...) greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism. (shrink)

So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and configuring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are (...) not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designations; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analytical grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality. This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a theoretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by way of counterpoint. (shrink)

We consider the implications of analyzing teaching as a sociocultural form. We suggest that the internalization of mediations includes not only concepts but a complex of dimensions of mediations. These dimensions enable us to define a form. Each students, building on previously subjectivated microforms, tries to give a personal meaning to the transmitted knowledge and to his experiences. The theoretical and professional training enables however the elaboration of a subjectivated sociocultural form. Regarding teacher training, the process is (...) even more complex due to the different origin of the transmitted knowledge. We conclude by outlining some consequences resulting from taking into account this notion of form in teacher training. (shrink)

The article investigates the mechanisms shaping a new quality of social development in contemporary Russia amidst growing societal challenges. Four key mechanisms are explored: mediation, social dialogue, polysubjectivity, and convergence. These are analyzed for their role in fostering novel forms of social integration and development. The mechanisms serve as tools for studying and shaping the current interplay between tradition and innovation, cultural stasis and social dynamics across various sociocultural contexts and transitional processes. The paper draws upon works presented at (...) the All-Russian Scientific Conference “Individualization and Collectivism in Contemporary Russian Society,” offering an original interpretation that synthesizes and structures these studies. Notable contributions include V.A. Lektorsky’s concept of “the supra-individual as social universality,” which advances our understanding of socio-individual meaning formation and transcends the individual-society dichotomy. A.A. Auzan’s analysis of the dual-core structure of Russian culture aptly captures the unique challenges of social development in Russia. O.V. Aksenova’s examination of the contradictory nature of social action subjects in an increasingly technologized society illuminates the complexities of balancing freedom with necessity, and uniformity with diversity in social action. V.M. Rozin’s approach is considered for its potential to facilitate mediational social dialogue in Russian society. The author argues that neither the individualistic nor the collectivist cores of Russian culture can independently drive effective modernization. Instead, the concept of convergence is proposed as a means to transcend the extremes of ego-individualism and totalitarian collectivism. Three primary directions for implementing convergent strategies are identified: synthesizing individual and social aspects in social action and dialogue, optimizing center-periphery interactions in governance, and developing public-private partnership models as a form of economic convergence. The study emphasizes the need for new forms of social integration and concludes that Russia’s sustainable social development requires an integrative socio-individual model, combining elements of individual freedom and collective solidarity. (shrink)

Sociocultural changes associated with the development of information and digital technologies lead to structural shifts in society – a new format of heterogeneity of structural elements and the system of social relations between these elements is created. As a result, in the conditions of the modern information society, new class-forming stratification criteria of inequality arise, which relate to the presence/absence of digital resources and access to them. The existing level of digital capital of the agent of the social system (...) will be important in this sense. The influence of digitization and ICT technologies leads to the fact that “in the information society, classes are replaced by socially undifferentiated “information communities” (E.Masuda). “Small” economic forms are replacing traditional bulky corporations: individual activity at home, “electronic college” (O.Toffler), changes in traditional printing with “electronic books”, changes in ideology, transformation of unemployment into secured leisure (H.Evans)”. The purpose of the article is to develop the conceptual basis for the study of digital inequality in the conditions of a digitalized society. The methodological basis of the article is the structural-constructivist paradigm, the concepts of the information and network society of E.Masud, M. Castells, and O.Tofler, theoretical aspects of the scientific works of Z.Bauman, J.C.Ramo, M.Rogers. In the preparation of the scientific work, general scientific methods of cognition - analysis and synthesis, comparative studies, generalization and directly sociological method - secondary data analysis were used. This scientific work is dedicated to the study of the impact of digitalization on the processes of structuring Ukrainian society and the sociological conceptualization of a new mode of the stratification system - digital inequality. The article characterizes the main features of the information society, formulates markers of digital inequality, offers a conceptualization of the concepts of digital poverty and digital capital. The article has theoretical significance for the further development of empirical markers of fixing digital inequality in the study of structural dimensions of modern society. (shrink)