Global Modernity From Coloniality To Pandemic

This book poses questions about viewing modernity today from the vantage point of traditionally disparate disciplines engaging scholars from sociology to science, philosophy to robotics, medicine to visual culture, mathematics to cultural theory, etc., including a contribution by Alain Touraine. From coloniality to pandemic, modernity can now represent a global necessity in which awareness of human and environmental crises, injustices, and inequality would create the possibility of a modernity-to-come.

This book brings together studies from various locations to examine the growing social problems that have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 outbreak. Employing both qualitative, theoretical and quantitative methods, it presents the impact of the pandemic in different settings, shedding light on political and cultural realities around the world. With attention to inequalities rooted in race and ethnicity, economic conditions, gender, disability, and age, it considers different forms of marginalization and examines the ongoing disjunctions that increasingly characterize contemporary democracies from a multilevel perspective. The book addresses original analyses and approaches from a global perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic, its governance, and its effects in different geographies. These analyses are organized around three main axes: 1) how COVID-19 pandemic worsened social, racial/ethnic, and economic inequalities, including variables such as migration status, gender, and disability; 2) how the pandemic impacted youth and how younger generations cope with public health alarms, and containment measures; 3) how the pandemic posed a challenge to democracy, reshaped the political agenda, and the debate in the public sphere. Contributions from around the world show how local and national issues may overlap on a global scale, laying the foundation for connected sociologies. Based on qualitative as well as quantitative empirical analysis on various categories of individuals and groups, this edited volume reflects on the sociological aspects of current planetary crises which will continue to be at the core of our societies. A wide-ranging, international volume that focuses on both unexpected social changes and new forms of agency in response to a period of crisis, Inequalities, Youth, Democracy and the Pandemic will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of health, social problems and inequalities.

This book poses questions about viewing modernity today from the vantage point of traditionally disparate disciplines engaging scholars from sociology to science, philosophy to robotics, medicine to visual culture, mathematics to cultural theory, etc., including a contribution by Alain Touraine. From coloniality to pandemic, modernity can now represent a global necessity in which awareness of human and environmental crises, injustices, and inequality would create the possibility of a modernity-to-come.

"Modernity and the Pandemic: Decivilization, Imperialism, and COVID-19 applies the tools of critical social theory to make sense of the COVID-19 crisis and presents a critical sociological analysis of aspects of the political and community response to the pandemic. The book focuses on key themes integral to a sociology of pandemics in the 'global' age. Firstly, Creaven argues that cultures of individualism and consumerism, and of pervasive and deeply entrenched social inequalities (i.e. decivilization) significantly weaken the cause of public health by weakening the compliance of people with state-mandated non-pharmaceutical interventions (including and especially physical distancing rules) and encouraging vaccine hesitancy. Secondly, Creaven examines how interstate competition and imperial politics has undermined an effective global policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy failure with regard to the management of the pandemic is interpreted as being rooted in the dominance of neoliberal ideology and governance in the politics of international relations, particularly in the politics of the leading state actors, by protection of corporate interests at the expense of public health, and in the constraints imposed on state actors by the competitive dynamic of multinational capitalism in the 'global' age. Modernity and the Pandemic will appeal to scholars in the humanities and social sciences with interests in neoliberalism and its social, cultural and epidemiological impacts"--

Beyond hegemonic thoughts, the Post-Western sociology enables a new dialogue between East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) and Europe on common and local knowledge to consider theoretical continuities and discontinuities, to develop transnational methodological spaces, and co-produce creolized concepts. With this new paradigm in social sciences we introduce the multiplication of epistemic autonomies vis-à-vis Western hegemony and new theoretical assemblages between East-Asia and European sociologies. From this ecology of knowledge this groundbreaking contribution is to coproduce a post-Western space in a cross-pollination process where “Western” and “non-Western” knowledge do interact, articulated through cosmovisions, as well as to coproduce transnational fieldwork practices.

This book is a sociological description and analysis of urban collective actions, protests, resistance, and riots that started in the 1990s and continue in different forms to this date in Rome, Italy. Through participant observation, ethnographic study, and in-depth qualitative interviews—often occurring during times of protest or even violent action—this book studies a variety of urban realities: grassroots movements, anti-migrant district riots, and the daily lives of the fluid and fluctuating multi-ethnic groups in the city. Ultimately, this book gives voice to some of the protagonists involved, proposing interpretations to each reality described, but also making cross-connections with politics and migration when pertinent. It offers a new understanding of urban collective actions cognizant of the 'common goods', but also of the emergence of new right-wing populism.

Based on the work of George Herbert Mead, Han Joas, and Axel Honneth, as well as the author’s own personal and academic identities and journeys, Self, Identity, and Collective Action argues that the self and action are strictly related. Reading these authors provided Francine Tremblay with the theoretical ground to stand on while thinking about identity and how it is linked to civic participation. She posits that Mead’s work and its link to action must be revisited and given its rightful place in sociology, and thatsociology must be radical, committed, and passionate.

The drastic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted many of society’s systemic inequalities. In this timely and prescient book, Taina Pihlajarinne, Jukka Tapio Mähönen and Pratyush Nath Upreti explore the importance of intellectual property rights (IPRs) post pandemic and argue for a pressing revision of the current IPR system to build a more globally sustainable and just regime.