These are rapidly changing times and thought it might be thought provoking to start a thread concerning the revolutions that have swept the Arab regions recently.
I'd like to start a little dialogue re: the revolutions taking place in Africa and the MidEast. How do you folks feel this will play out, what theories can we use to better understand this phenomena etc...
A wonderful thing about this process is that concepts like the Mass or the class society, so connected to modernity and its great narratives, seems to be obsolete, or at least have they lost their primacy. We do need to address other questions to the mode and means of communication, and maybe as a first step liberate ourselves from thinking chrolologically, or in stages, e.g.: first we got the press, then telegraph, telephone, radio, tv, video, internet, mobile phone and what comes next in this row of modern media. The technology appears both as "pure and innocent" and, at the same time, as a result of technological determinism. It is present in countries which are premodern, modern and postmodern simultaniously. Are social forces with "pure" technology in its hands, but without ideology, something we should embrace or fear? Also, what impact do the technology, as a vehicle of social forces that we have never seen before, have on religious norms and fundamental belives?
Re: tech.determinism, i'd say that we select as a society the technologies that suit us only later to be dominated by them, however the market can act as the surrogate determining force nowadays e.g.: we got VHS instead of BETA, gas cars instead of electric, etc. : the best doesnt always win...more and more the market is determining techs. as it determines through advertising social perspective. Kind of a frankenstien effect. I dont know of any
"pure" social forces without ideology...except maybe the scientific community but even that only exists in the lab.....
Sure, in an academic discourse there is nothing like "ideology-free-zones", i.e. if you stick to modernist theorists or Marxian dito. I thought your point was to go beyond ...
my bad, I see your talking about how facebook and social media in re: to the uprisings...good point of focus. Is this pure tech. driven society absent of ideology, kind of a scenario where humanity becomes drones? But these folks appear to have distinct ideology behind their movements...
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Social Science
- Sociology