This chapter began by introducing the concept of a civil society. Chirico (128) described it as people organising outside of government channels to meet social objectives. She pointed out that social movements in the past have focused on communities within nations while the current movements focus more on involving people from diverse parts of the world in order to promote human welfare regardless of where in the World they happen to be. Chirico shared a quote from Simmel (128) that really resonated with me and, in my opinion, captured such a complex concept into a short and simple sentence. He said that “Humanity is the collective life, the same people who from other perspective are organized into societies, polities economies, families, and so on”. I take this to mean that we are all, basically, the same; we are all humans who are trying to make it through whatever life we have been given to live. People are just people. I think the concept of civil society is one that I wish more people would understand and embrace instead of holding on to prejudice, judgement, and ignorance. According to Chirico (128), individuals who help do so out of a sense of shared experience by recognising that everyone is a victim of global problems and that anyone can help. There are endless ways to participate whether it be through a formal organisation such as NGO’s, The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and The Peace Corps, through non-profit organisations and advocacy, or more individually by making donations, sponsoring a child, mentoring, volunteering in their communities. These are regular people who volunteer, and sometimes risk their lives, to fight for equal rights and treatment for all. We have been able to see such amazing acts of love... ... middle of paper ... ...y was first started it seemed almost as though it was a lost cause because of the lack of access to the appropriate officials, organisations, governments, and people to make it happen. After seven years of planning and working, with the help of global and domestic groups they were able to influence countries to change their policies towards landmines. In turn, those countries helped influence even more countries. Rutherford (141) explained that much of the success was due to changing global perceptions and norms; they succeeded because they had power to control the ways that landmines were perceived. In conclusion, I think the framework and concept of Civil and Global Civil Societies are wonderful but what is important is knowledge and awareness so that, as much as possible, those who are supposed to receive the aid and support actually see it and benefit from it.
Most of us would like to think that history is based on civil negotiations between representatives from around the world. The fact is, war has always been a disease that spreads not only in the battle field, and infects all those who come in contact with it. In the case of nuclear weapons, the United States, like many countries, raced to produce some of the most deadly weapons. Kristen Iversen shares her experiences surrounding a nuclear production facility in Boulder Colorado called Rocky Flats. The events at Rocky Flats are fuelled by secrecy and widespread hazards, it is the integration of these concepts to various aspects of her life that are at the center of Full Body Burden.
History has shown us that in order for a society to flourish there must be some commonality within the society. Sharing similar values, interests and cultures may be the basis for forming a community. The true test of a society is when communities can comprise, merging together as a larger, stronger, united society. For this process to even begin, there must be a common factor, be it foe, economic reasons, etc., a common goal amongst the communities. A prime example is the creation of a united American society. To truly appreciate the complexity of forming a united society you must first understand why these groups of people came to this strange new land. What similarities they shared, the differences which divided them and the force which unified them.
ABSTRACT: Totalitarian political systems in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe destroyed and repressed the civil society that used to exist in them. The authoritarian and totalitarian ethos was formed under a powerful influence of ideologies of the communist parties and politocracy in these countries so that the political ethos of politicians dominated the political ethos of the citizen. The breakdown of the real socialism and its unsuccessful attempts to complete accelerated liberal modernization of these societies caused turbulence of social values in addition to the general moral chaos. The moral crisis has deepened; anomie increased as well as the society’s inclination to commit crime. This makes difficult the creation of the cultural matrix of the civil society and its moral values. The liberation and development of the political ethos of the civil society as an element of the democratic political culture require structural and mental changes in these societies. They imply abandoning the value matrices of the traditional and political societies based upon collectivism, tribalism, authoritarianism, egalitarianism, ethnocentrism, etatisme and mythologization of the past. They require the use of the citizens’ active potential as well as that of their associations, their readiness for political commitment, self-initiative, respect of the general interest and a courageous defense of freedom and social justice.
...y also make clear not only the underlying selfish motives of common people, but also the abilities. In societies all around the world, people are initiating or resisting change as the Romans did. Every citizen has the power and the right to stand up for the causes they believe in; moreover, it is each citizen’s duty to do so. Each individual in the general public is not only a citizen, but also an active part of the government, because people have the responsibility to be the difference that they want to see in humanity, and change can start with just one person.
Global and local communities seek the greatest opportunities for prosperity and self-fulfillment, but there exists certain criteria that must be met in order to achieve those ends. The most successful communities incorporate the inherent values and virtues of a specific group of people. Communities ought to establish goals to be attained by their members, giving them a sense of cohesion and cooperation. Ideally, communities dictate a rule of law to lead them towards some elements of justice and mutual benefit.
“The only real nation is humanity” (Farmer 123). This quote represents a huge message that is received in, Tracy Kidder’s, Mountains Beyond Mountains. This book argues that universal healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Kidder’s book also shows the audience that every individual, no matter what the circumstances, is entitled to receive quality health care. In the book Kidder represents, Paul Farmer, a man who spends his entire life determined to improve the health care of impoverished areas around the world, namely Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. By doing this the audience learns of the horrible circumstances, and the lack of quality health care that nations like Haiti live with everyday, why every person has the right to healthcare no matter what, and how cost effectiveness should not determine whether or not these people get to live or die. Two texts that also argue this idea are Monte Leach’s “Ensuring Health Care as a Global Human Right,” and Darshak Sanghavi’s “Is it Cost Effective to Treat the World’s Poor.” Leach’s article is an interview with Benjamin Crème that illustrates why food, shelter, education, and healthcare are human rights that have to be available to everyone. He shares many of the same views on health care as Farmer, and the two also share similar solutions to this ongoing problem. Leach also talks about the rapidly growing aids epidemic, and how it must be stopped. Like farmer, he also argues that it is easier to prevent these diseases then to cure them. Furthermore, Sanghavi’s article represents many of the questions that people would ask about cost effectiveness. Yet similar to Farmer’s views, Sanghavi argues that letting the poor d...
...rrain: the need for self-realization in everyday life” (Melucci 1989, p. 23). What makes the contemporary movements distinctive from tradtional movements is that it is active on variuos levels within and outside of the political sephere. Moreover, (Melucci 1989, p. 75) argues that contomberary movements establish their collective idientity outside the political domain and “translate their action into symbolic challenges that overturn the dominant cultural codes”. The differences that characterized the contemporary social movements - the building of unity in the face of heterogeneity and differentiation, the creation of the symbolic challenges, and their political characters – make it difficult to be approached by the aforementioned theories which are politically reductionist and only analyse the outcomes of the actions ore movements (Barholomew & Mayer 1992).
Antipersonnel landmines kill thousands of people every year. Antipersonnel landmines do not recognize a cease-fire; they continue killing or maiming for many years after the conflict is over. Antipersonnel landmines do not discriminate between soldiers or civilians. On the contrary, more and more they are being used in an indiscriminate way, terrorizing civilians and transforming agricultural fields into killing fields. In addition, de-mining is a very slow and very expensive process, and after a war most countries are not prepared to cope with the constant health care demands imposed by the number of injured by landmines. Finally, landmines make it very difficult for refugees to go back to their cities and villages. As response to the landmine problem, the international community has come up with a treaty to ban landmines. On March 1, 1999, the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty came into effect; so far 134 countries have signed the treaty. Unfortunately, the U. S. is not one of them.
Paul Hawken, in the chapter “Blessed Unrest,” records the people of a new social movement, as well as their ideals, goals, and principles. He writes how they are connected, along with the diversity and differences they bring to make the social movement unique. Hawken communicates to the readers the various social, environmental, and political problems they will encounter in today’s world as well as similar problems of the past. Problems that these groups of organizations are planning to undertake with the perseverance of humanity.
Civility has taken on many meanings over history. In ancient Rome, it was considered civilized to put lions and Christians in a ring and have them fight to the death. Now, it has morphed into an idea about having an infrastructure, and set laws that are not always followed. The study of Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, and My Last Duchess prove this to be false. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of British boys are involved in a plane crash and end up stranded on an island and must establish a form of society in hope of being rescued. In Frankenstein, authored by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster responsible for a streak of killings. In the poem My Last Duchess, a Duke is walking through his house, trying to impress an Emissary, when he comes upon a portrait of his previous wife, who we found out was murdered by the Duke himself. Instead, the true definition of being civilized is derived from choices made within people’s minds, with no bearing by the pressures of society.
Looking at it from a societal perspective, society shapes humans from within an individual; it affects their role in a family; plays a part in a person’s class; extends out to influence one’s culture; and even shapes a generation. At the individual level one must concede that we need society – we are interdependent creatures. Adam Smith mentioned, “In civilized society [a person] stands… in need of cooperation and assistance of great multitudes” – in today’s context, we ar...
Since the discovery of gunpowder by the Chinese, the world as we know it has made more efficient and powerful weapons. Throughout the history of warfare from the medieval times to present day, explosives have been used as an Offensive and Defensive weapon. When a castle or army was under siege the attacking army would surround the objective and cut off all supply lines and try to starve the enemy into submission. With the invention of gunpowder it made the siege obsolete. This was empowered by the cannon and other forms of field artillery, which allowed the objective to be overthrown quickly. Military grade explosives are used for benign reasons also. Within the past few years an emphasis has been placed upon demining war torn countries that are ravaged by unclaimed and unaccounted mines emplaced by the host nation. This action is being undertaken to make the countries safer for the citizens of those countries. Throughout history stalemates have occurred during war, Engineers or Soldiers with knowledge of explosives were called upon to end the stalemate. This essay will cover one such incident during the Battle of Crater and the siege of Petersburg, Virginia during the American Civil War.
Civil society is both a way of describing aspects of modern society and an aspiration, an ideal of what a good society should be like. It has recently been revived to emphasize the capacity of societies to organize themselves through the active cooperation of their members. Unfortunately up to today we still don't have a universally recognised definition and the whole concept is still the core of a intense academic debate. That is why it seemed appropriate, for the purpouse of this paper, to analyse the historical evolution of the concept throughout the centuries.
...ience knowledge is a powerful resource for understanding and coping with the growing complexities, uncertainties and risks in our world” (Kazancigil, 2003, p379). Individuals are the parts which form societies as a whole. Individuals have a mutual relationship with societies. Both of them are under the control of social science; social science’s tool for overseeing them is legislation. Various rules shape diverse societies where individuals interact differently. It is not an option to be a part of society or not, since we were born we became a part of society. So, as long as we relate to societies, we should care and learn about social science. Through social science we learn the reasons of our actions and our manners. If we required modifying our behaviours in order to mature and boom our talents, social science is here to help us and show us the ways.
To be a social being is to be human. The very existence of society can be seen as proof that the ter...