Social Sciences
S. Veisi; M.S. Zokaei; A. Entezari
Abstract
Justice is one of the most important issues in Iranian society. The main issue of the present study is epistemic justice and the gap between its definitions in everyday life and policy making domains. For that matter, we purposefully selected the pages of young users on social media networks of Instagram, ...
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Justice is one of the most important issues in Iranian society. The main issue of the present study is epistemic justice and the gap between its definitions in everyday life and policy making domains. For that matter, we purposefully selected the pages of young users on social media networks of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Telegram and then conducted their virtual ethnographic, thematic and semiotic analyses. Thereafter, policymaking texts were thematically analyzed, as well. While the findings of cyberspace confirmed the existence of hermeneutical (epistemic) injustice; we saw two types of otherization in space where the first is elitist and the second is based on reading of the dominant discourse of being the criterion that people are trying to confront with. The consequences of these otherizations include the contrast between official rulings and opinions of the people, the polarization of the society, being voiceless and probelmatization of difference. Epistemic justice at both national and transnational levels that are connected to each other manifested itself in the data. A review of relevant policy documents confirms the lack of opportunities for youth participation in macro decision-making, inattention to different lifestyles, otherization, pathological attitudes and policing and judicialization of issues. It seems that by eliminating the shortcomings of existing programs and operationalizing them, taking advantage of the academic capacity of universities and moving from abyssal thinking through radical plurality and de-linking, we can see the elimination of epistemic injustice, especially among the youth.
COVID-19 Crisis
M.S. Zokaei; S. Veisi
Abstract
The emotional structure of every society forms the dynamic cultural part of that society. Despite the profound and pervasive effects of these emotional networks on the social context and daily interactions, a systematic and analytical study of on structure of society's emotions is performed rarely in ...
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The emotional structure of every society forms the dynamic cultural part of that society. Despite the profound and pervasive effects of these emotional networks on the social context and daily interactions, a systematic and analytical study of on structure of society's emotions is performed rarely in the Iranian social sciences space. Over the past few months, the coronavirus pandemic has had significant effects on the emotional structure of the Iranian society, especially the two emotions of hope and anxiety. Cyberspace is a continuation of real space that well depicts these changes. Relying on virtual ethnography, semiotics and thematic analysis, the present paper shows that the spread of the Coronavirus, in cyberspace more than ever and in the continuation real emotional structures of society has put collective hope against public hope. Based on the results, criticism has tended towards utopian optimism as well as the carnivalization of space. Nevertheless, there are traces of agentic hope, which, of course, sometimes lead to deviation in that space. Anxiety, as an emotion that is inversely related to hope, and especially collective hope, has increased dramatically with the rise of the coronavirus pandemic. Since the increase in structural anxieties does not lead to agentic hope, it has added to frustrations and boredom and existential anxiety. Even the transformation of existential anxiety into visual once has not been able to reduce its severity. Eventually, the anxiety out of corona becomes an abomination to all members of the society and then increases it further.
