{"id":1133,"date":"2012-09-20T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/past-present-and-future\/"},"modified":"2012-09-20T21:19:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T21:19:00","slug":"past-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/past-present-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Past, present and future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two things, one from the past and one from the present weigh heavily on me during this present reading and even as I write now.\u00a0 Having had very little exposure to the study of social theory in the past, the initial reading of ’ Contemporary Social Theories’ by Anthony Elliot was a little tough but captivating nevertheless.\u00a0\u00a0 Personally I have always tried to understand human behavior from the background of history with the understanding that human responses, relationships and interactions are conditioned by historical context and critical historical events.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

My current Old Testament daily readings are from the book of Judges.\u00a0 The narrative is replete with battles, capturing of land and slaughtering of people.\u00a0 The Narrative is also lop sided .\u00a0 It does not describe in anyway the struggles of the captives except in the case of the \u201cpeople of God\u201d.\u00a0 The book is also filled with narratives of gender imbalance.\u00a0 Deborah who was a judge and led the people in battle is the only exception.\u00a0 These stories from the Bible have been a part of my faith upbringing all along.\u00a0 It is quite a challenge to fit these kind of narratives into the framework of modern social theories I am reading now. <\/span><\/p>\n

The other emotional struggle that I face at the moment is the increasing ethnic conflicts and violence in India.\u00a0 Last month more than 6,000 young people from the North Eastern states were forced to return home from different parts of India on account of threat to their lives. It was the result of an ethnic conflict. \u00a0\u00a0Indian Society is gradually becoming fragmented on the basis of language, culture, ethnicity and religion.\u00a0\u00a0 Last year there was a huge \u00a0uprising against the people of Bihar living in Mumbai.\u00a0 Again thousands of Biharis living in Mumbai had to flee and return to their native state. \u00a0\u00a0I remember the time when there was pride in India as a land of \u2018unity in diversity\u2019.\u00a0 Not anymore.\u00a0 A closer look around the world will help us understand that this is becoming increasingly universal. When and how will we progress toward greater acceptance of diversity and a higher level of understanding of things that are different. \u00a0What is it that will lead us in that path and direction?<\/span><\/p>\n

Anthony Elliot\u2019s book \u201cContemporary Social Theory\u201d\u00a0 draws on several significant \u201ckey themes\u201d.\u00a0 The first is the thorny\u00a0 one describing the interaction of individual and society bearing on the question whether the individual comes first or society.\u00a0 Is it the individual and his or her action or society.<\/span> CITATION Ant l 1033\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Elliot n.d.)<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

What is interesting and distressing at the same time is that beginning with Marx and moving on to the Frankfurt school of Social Theory with Adorno\u2019s \u2018administered society, \u00a0the \u2018one-dimensional society\u2019\u00a0 of Herbert Marcuse the book seems to be a discovery that human kind is not making progress.\u00a0 Though there exist diverse explanations for enlightenment there doesn\u2019t seem to be true \u2018enlightenment\u2019. Adorno and Horkheimer\u2019s words sum it all up very well: \u201cThe flood of precise information and brand-new amusements make people smarter and more stupid at once\u201d<\/span> CITATION Ant l 1033 <\/span>\u00a0(Elliot n.d.)<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

My current reading leads me to think that contemporary Social Theory is conditioned by time and cultural history and therefore it is difficult to be accepted as universal.\u00a0 No matter how it is described, whether structure or language as described by Saussure are evolving and with it the manner in which people relate and interact with one another will change and evolve.\u00a0 My question is will it be for the better or the worse.\u00a0 Of course I measure better and worse from a Biblical perspective and the \u201cabundant life\u201d that John 10:10 describes.\u00a0\u00a0 The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are the guiding light and I would rather have the Great\u00a0 \u201c I Am\u201d \u00a0as the figurative watchman\u00a0 in the panopticon of Foucault. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is where I feel the responsibility as a Christian leader to call people to the Light and Liberty. \u00a0Sadly, social theory does not seem to take into account the spiritual dimension.\u00a0 But then, it is only a meager attempt to explain why people behave the way they do and it is not a guiding principle.\u00a0 I am now eager to go through the remainder of the book.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two things, one from the past and one from the present weigh heavily on me during this present reading and even as I write now.\u00a0 Having had very little exposure to the study of social theory in the past, the initial reading of ’ Contemporary Social Theories’ by Anthony Elliot was a little tough but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,196],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-elliot","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}