Path dependence or steps for major reforms? Pandemic-related social protection measures in ten OECD countries

This article examines with empirical evidence the social protection measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in ten welfare states in the Global North. We analysed the potential similarities and differences in responses by welfare regimes. The comparative study was conducted with data from 169 measures, collected from domestic sources as well as from COVID-19 response databases and reports. In qualitative terms, we redeveloped Hall's theory on the distinction between first-, second- and third-order changes. In accordance with the path-dependence thesis, we show systematically that the majority of the studied changes (91%) relied on a pre-pandemic tool demonstrating flexibility within social security systems. The relative share of completely new instruments was notable but modest (9%). Thematically, the social protection measures converged beyond traditional welfare regimes, particularly among the European welfare states. Somewhat surprisingly, the changes to social security systems related not just to emergency aid to mitigate traditional risks but, to a greater extent, also to prevent new risks from being actualised.

Towards a post-pandemic social contract

Social contract theories serve a twofold purpose: by addressing acute crises, they elaborate solutions to long-standing social paradoxes. The article reinterprets the stakes of the Covid pandemic from this perspective. Firstly, the long-lasting structural paradoxes of late modernity are linked to the acute crisis of the pandemic with the help of critical theories of late modernity. It is argued that the pandemic provides opportunity for revaluating those social contracts, which are based on universalist principles of justice. Secondly, two paradigmatic historical examples (Hobbes, Rawls) are overviewed in a meta-theoretical fashion, so that the dimensions of revaluation could be highlighted. Thirdly, the foundations of a post-pandemic social contract are outlined. As the pandemic is inseparable from the structural paradoxes caused by unconstrained systems based on universal principles of justice, the post-pandemic social contract aims at preventing the system paradoxes by revaluating their universal principles in a ‘trial of particularity' (Derrida, Levinas). © The Author(s) 2022.

"Society must be controlled” "Green Pass” and the experiment of a society of control in Italy

Purpose: The introduction in Italy in July 2021 of the "COVID-19 Green Certification”, known as the "Green Pass”, was a particularly important moment in the political and social history of the country. While its use for health reasons is debatable both logically and scientifically, its effects should be measured at the general sociological level. The "Green Pass” allowed Italian social life to be shaped according to a social and political profile that can be traced back to a "society of control”. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issue. Design/methodology/approach: This paper, of a theoretical nature, intends to verify such an interpretation through a critical survey of Gilles Deleuze's well-known Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle (1990) and relating the theories to it from cybernetic science, sociology of social systems and the continental philosophy, specifically Michel Foucault. After a short introduction on the history of the instrument's introduction, the paper, divided into parts reflecting the set-up of Deleuze's text, examines the systemic social effects of the "Green Pass” with regard to its logic, and concludes with a reflection on the program of the instrument's future developments. Findings: The "Green Pass” put into practice a model of a society of control as anticipated by Deleuze, verified with particular reference to some instances of Luhmann's theory of social systems, and in the perspective of a Foucault's "normalizing society” in the process of definition and affirmation. Social implications: The "Green Pass” has been a controversial tool that has caused forms of social discrimination and exclusion and has seriously questioned the architecture of the rule of law. The conceptual paper tries to reflect on the premises and implications of this instrument. Originality/value: The approach to the problem both in a critical key and according to concepts and theories of the sociology of social systems, cybernetics and continental philosophy. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

State and citizen responsiveness in fighting a pandemic crisis: A systems thinking perspective.

Management scholars have recognized organizational responsiveness among the essential capabilities of social organizations. It becomes essential for a social change to occur during a crisis, where the uncertainty or environmental dynamism is high. However, a social change cannot be successful unless constituent subsystems of a social organization exhibit responsiveness. Using systems theory, we conceptualize 'nation' as a social system and examine its responsiveness towards environmental uncertainly, taking an example of the COVID-19 pandemic. How can state and citizen community responsiveness help fight a pandemic crisis? We test these direct and moderating effects on data representing 14 countries. We perform a hierarchical regression analysis on the restructured, balanced country-wise panel data. Our findings highlight the importance of state and community interaction effects in controlling pandemic growth. Accordingly, we claim that only a collaborative approach by citizen communities with the respective governments will enable handling an uncertain situation.

UrbanPop: A spatial microsimulation framework for exploring demographic influences on human dynamics

Ensuring the social equity of planning measures in social systems requires an understanding of human dynamics, particularly how individual relationships, activities, and interactions intersect with individual needs. Spatial microsimulation models (SMSMs) support planning for human security goals by representing human dynamics through realistic, georeferenced synthetic populations, that a) provide a complete representation of social systems while b) also protecting individual privacy. In this paper, we present UrbanPop, an open and reproducible SMSM framework for analysis of human dynamics with high spatial, temporal, and demographic resolution. UrbanPop creates synthetic populations of demographically detailed worker and student agents, positioning them first at probable nighttime locations (home), then moving them to probable daytime locations (work/school). Summary aggregations of these populations match the granular detail available at the census block group level in the American Community Survey Summary File (SF), providing realistic approximations of the actual population. UrbanPop users can select particular demographic traits important in their application, resulting in a highly tailored agent population. We first lay out UrbanPop's baseline methodology, including population synthesis, activity modeling, and diagnostics, then demonstrate these capabilities by developing case studies of shifting population distributions and high-risk populations in Knox County, TN during the global COVID-19 pandemic. • Individual demographics, location, and activities influence population responses to transformational events. • Increased telework rates, school closures altered daytime population distributions early in the COVID-19 pandemic. • Spatial heterogeneity of high-risk individuals during COVID-19 pandemic during both nighttime and daytime. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Health beyond medicine. A planetary theory extension.

In Niklas Luhmann's vision of the modern functionally differentiated society, health presents one of the essential function systems, along with politics, law, economy and science. While he devoted much effort to elaborating the theoretical foundations of the latter function systems, his work on the health system was relatively sparse. This research gap has been rendered particularly acute by the recent COVID-19 crisis. In reconstructing and updating the Luhmannian analysis of this system, this article presents a three-dimensional concept of organic, psychic and social health and highlights the risks raised by a potential overexpansion of the health concept to the planetary level. The most important of these risks is shown to be the potential rise of totalitarian social control that exceeds classical forms of medical social control. The proposed argument not only contributes to the public criticism of the political responses to the COVID-19 crisis but also fills in some missing pieces of Luhmann's seminal elaboration of the health system.

Class, Capitalism and Inequality: Schooling and Education in Neo-Liberal, Neoconservative and Neo- Fascist COVID Times: A Classical Marxist Critical Analysis and Activist Programme

This article focuses on a particular group in capitalist society that is disabled, demeaned and denied by capitalism itself, through processes of economic exploitation, systematic and systemic class exclusion, and discrimination/ prejudice- that is- the working class. In doing so I recognise that the working class (defined as all those who sell their/ our labour power) is segmented horizontally into `layers', or strata (for example, the dispossessed, unemployed, unskilled, though to the supervisory. managerial level/ stratum) and also vertically, for example, by `race' and by gender, with particular ethnic groups, and women in general, disabled and oppressed and exploited to a greater degree than their/ our white, male sisters and brothers). Analysing from a Classical Marxist perspective I address the structures of the capitalist state through which this exclusion and 'subalternising' is imposed, through formal state structures such as education, media, the panoply of state force and class law, as well as through the material power of the capitalist class, expressed through, for example, wage suppression and enforced immiseration of the majority of the working class. In doing so I address two types of neo-Marxist analysis- 'Structuralist neo-Marxism' and 'Culturalist neo-Marxism', and the dialectical relationship between them. They differ on such matters as: the degree of `relative autonomy' for resistant agency, the relative impact and import of cultural-ideological as against structural- material analysis, and the salience or not of social class analysis, the Capital-Labour relation, vis-a vis other forms of oppression such as `race, and gender', and their implications for political resistance and organisation at the cultural-ideological level and at the level of power, the material power to reform and revolutionise economic and social relations of Capital. I propose an activist programme of resistance at two levels. Firstly, societal level, looking at Marxists such as Marx and Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky and the dialectical relationship between Reform and Revolution. Secondly, at the level of Education, both formal and informal (through social movements, political parties, trade unions, through public pedagogy for example). Within the formal education structures, I advance specific proposals regarding schooling and teacher education. This is a panoptic paper- the issues above are linked in terms of Classical Marxist analysis of capitalism, class exploitation and oppression, and the implications of such analysis for the praxis and politics of resistance.

Social–ecological systems approaches are essential for understanding and responding to the complex impacts of COVID-19 on people and the environment

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is dramatically impacting planetary and human societal systems that are inseparably linked. Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 expose how human well-being is inextricably interconnected with the environment and to other converging (human driven) social–ecological crises, such as the dramatic losses of biodiversity, land use change, and climate change. We argue that COVID-19 is itself a social–ecological crisis, but responses so far have not been inclusive of ecological resiliency, in part because the "Anthropause” metaphor has created an unrealistic sense of comfort that excuses inaction. Anthropause narratives belie the fact that resource extraction has continued during the pandemic and that business-as-usual continues to cause widespread ecosystem degradation that requires immediate policy attention. In some cases, COVID-19 policy measures further contributed to the problem such as reducing environmental taxes or regulatory enforcement. While some social–ecological systems (SES) are experiencing reduced impacts, others are experiencing what we term an "Anthrocrush,” with more visitors and intensified use. The varied causes and impacts of the pandemic can be better understood with a social–ecological lens. Social–ecological insights are necessary to plan and build the resilience needed to tackle the pandemic and future social–ecological crises. If we as a society are serious about building back better from the pandemic, we must embrace a set of research and policy responses informed by SES thinking.

Big data technology in infectious diseases modeling, simulation, and prediction after the COVID-19 outbreak.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, the interaction of infectious disease systems and social systems has challenged traditional infectious disease modeling methods. Starting from the research purpose and data, researchers improved the structure and data of the compartment model or used agents and artificial intelligence based models to solve epidemiological problems. In terms of modeling methods, the researchers use compartment subdivision, dynamic parameters, agent-based model methods, and artificial intelligence related methods. In terms of factors studied, the researchers studied 6 categories: human mobility, nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), ages, medical resources, human response, and vaccine. The researchers completed the study of factors through modeling methods to quantitatively analyze the impact of social systems and put forward their suggestions for the future transmission status of infectious diseases and prevention and control strategies. This review started with a research structure of research purpose, factor, data, model, and conclusion. Focusing on the post-COVID-19 infectious disease prediction simulation research, this study summarized various improvement methods and analyzes matching improvements for various specific research purposes.

Towards a post-pandemic social contract

Social contract theories serve a twofold purpose: by addressing acute crises, they elaborate solutions to long-standing social paradoxes. The article reinterprets the stakes of the Covid pandemic from this perspective. Firstly, the long-lasting structural paradoxes of late modernity are linked to the acute crisis of the pandemic with the help of critical theories of late modernity. It is argued that the pandemic provides opportunity for revaluating those social contracts, which are based on universalist principles of justice. Secondly, two paradigmatic historical examples (Hobbes, Rawls) are overviewed in a meta-theoretical fashion, so that the dimensions of revaluation could be highlighted. Thirdly, the foundations of a post-pandemic social contract are outlined. As the pandemic is inseparable from the structural paradoxes caused by unconstrained systems based on universal principles of justice, the post-pandemic social contract aims at preventing the system paradoxes by revaluating their universal principles in a 'trial of particularity' (Derrida, Levinas).

Visuomenės ir ekspertų rizikos suvokimo skirtumai Lietuvoje: lokalūs rūpesčiai ir globalūs kontekstai 1

Šiuolaikiniame pasaulyje rizikos yra kompleksinės ir sisteminės, jų poveikis susijęs su transformacijomis įvairiuose socialinių sistemų sluoksniuose. Globalios problemos nebūtinai aktualizuojasi lokaliuose kontekstuose, o gyventojų suvokimas apie rizikas gali stipriai skirtis nuo ekspertinių vertinimų. Straipsnio tikslas - atskleisti Lietuvos gyventojų ir ekspertų nuomonių skirtumus apie ekonomines, ekologines, technologines, geopolitines bei socialines rizikas ir palyginti su Globalių rizikų ataskaitų vertinimais. Straipsnyje pristatomi reprezentatyvios Lietuvos gyventojų apklausos ir savivaldybių ekspertų internetinės apklausos rezultatai. Tyrimas atskleidė, kad ekspertų ir gyventojų vertinimai gana dažnai sutampa, ypač socialinių ir ekonominių grėsmių atveju. Didžiausi neatitikimai, kai ekspertai rizikas vertino kaip didesnes nei gyventojai, atskleisti COVID-19, potvynių, miško gaisrų, energijos sutrikimų, karo minų palikimo atvejais. Gyventojai didesnes rizikas nei ekspertai įvardijo eismo įvykių, asmenų neteisėto sekimo, neteisėto pasinaudojimo banko sąskaitomis ar kortelėmis, Astravo atominės elektrinės (AE) ir kainų kilimo klausimais. Lietuvos gyventojų ir savivaldybių ekspertų rizikų suvokimo tyrimas parodė, kad 2020-2021 m. dominavo ekonominės bei socialinės rizikos, o globalios, ilgalaikį poveikį turėsiančios rizikos, kaip ekologinės ar geopolitinės, neatsispindėjo lokaliame vertinime.Alternate :In the modern world, risks are complex and systemic, and their effects are interconnected with the transformations in different layers of social systems. Global issues are not necessarily reflected in local contexts, and public perceptions of risks may differ significantly from expert assessments. The aim of the article is to reveal the differences between the opinions of the Lithuanian population and experts on economic, environmental, technological, geopolitical and social risks, and to compare the differences between the opinions of local experts and Lithuanian public and the assessments of experts from the Global Risk Reports. The article presents the results of a representative survey of the Lithuanian population and an online survey of municipal experts. The results of the study show that expert and population perceptions quite often coincide, especially in the case of social and economic threats. The biggest discrepancies, when the experts assessed the risks as higher than the population, were revealed in the cases of COVID-19, floods, forest fires, energy disruptions, and the mines from war legacy. Public identified higher risks than experts in the case of traffic accidents, illegal tracking of persons, illegal use of bank accounts/cards, Astravets NPP, and increase in prices. In the perception of risks of Lithuanian population and municipal experts in 2020-2021 economic and social risks dominated, and global risks with long-term effects, such as ecological or geopolitical, were not reflected in the local perceptions.

COMPULSORY VACCINATION AND FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENTIATION: THE LAW SOCIAL SYSTEM IN THE INCLUSION/ EXCLUSION PROCESSES ALONG THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Objective: this article aims to highlight the way in which the Law System acts in the inclusion / exclusion processes of individuals from social benefits from different spheres of world society. Methodology: the methodology to be used is the Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems Theory (2016), the basic theory for all the proposed observation. The indirect documentation search technique will be used, with a review of foreign national bibliography, and the qualitative analysis of judicial decisions. Results: as one of the results obtained, the means of the proposed analysis demonstrated how the System of Law plays a fundamental role in the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion, both in the processes of guarantee of inclusion (access to justice and guarantee of the right to health), and in the legitimation of exclusion processes determined by the State, with a view to compel the citizen to vaccinate (compulsory vaccination), in order to reduce the risks that the contraryness to this act may generate in the Health System. Contributions: the study brings as a contribution, after a comparison between hypotheses of determination or legitimation of inclusion and exclusion by the System of Law, a balance between these decisions with the scope, above all, of highlighting the imprescindibility of a broader social observation for the understanding and resolution of the current problems of constitutional law. In the specific case of the research, the determining role of the Health System in the decisions of the Judiciary in the case of Covid-19 is evidenced. © 2022, Centro Universitario Curitiba - UNICURITIBA. All rights reserved.

Building universal social protection systems for all: What role for targeting?

The consensus on the need to build universal social protective systems to provide income security and health protection for all has been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis that shook the world over the past two and a half years not only revealed large gaps in coverage, adequacy and comprehensiveness of social protection systems but also drove the message home that a universal social protection system reaching everyone is automatically primed to protect all those affected by a systemic shock. In the face of complex and fast-moving crises, universalism is preferable to targeted approaches, especially where the administrative capacity to target is limited and a very high proportion of the population is vulnerable. Universalism makes more practical sense than ad hoc efforts to 'effectively' target, the limitations of which are well documented.

Social Systems in Higher Education: Collectivities and Technology

This study investigates the core concepts and views that underlie the theories of social systems as explained by four theorists. It critically assesses and analyzes the role of the higher education system within society, as well as the role of the educator within this social system as defined and articulated by Durkheim (1956), outlined and explained from a hierarchical perspective by Parsons (1951), identified as an integrative process by Bertalanffy (1968), and viewed as a web of relationships by Capra (1996). Major themes from each theorist are analyzed with respect to what role social systems play in higher education and how educators are affected by internal social subsystems and collectivities. An example is presented on how collectivities exist online and use technology to continue at a university during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Web Knowledge-Driven Multimodal Retrieval Method in Computational Social Systems: Unsupervised and Robust Graph Convolutional Hashing

Multimodal retrieval has received widespread consideration since it can commendably provide massive related data support for the development of computational social systems (CSSs). However, the existing works still face the following challenges: 1) rely on the tedious manual marking process when extended to CSS, which not only introduces subjective errors but also consumes abundant time and labor costs;2) only using strongly aligned data for training, lacks concern for the adjacency information, which makes the poor robustness and semantic heterogeneity gap difficult to be effectively fit;and 3) mapping features into real-valued forms, which leads to the characteristics of high storage and low retrieval efficiency. To address these issues in turn, we have designed a multimodal retrieval framework based on web-knowledge-driven, called unsupervised and robust graph convolutional hashing (URGCH). The specific implementations are as follows: first, a "secondary semantic self-fusion" approach is proposed, which mainly extracts semantic-rich features through pretrained neural networks, constructs the joint semantic matrix through semantic fusion, and eliminates the process of manual marking;second, a "adaptive computing" approach is designed to construct enhanced semantic graph features through the knowledge-infused of neighborhoods and uses graph convolutional networks for knowledge fusion coding, which enables URGCH to sufficiently fit the semantic modality gap while obtaining satisfactory robustness features;Third, combined with hash learning, the multimodality data are mapped into the form of binary code, which reduces storage requirements and improves retrieval efficiency. Eventually, we perform plentiful experiments on the web dataset. The results evidence that URGCH exceeds other baselines about 1%-3.7% in mean average precisions (MAPs), displays superior performance in all the aspects, and can meaningfully provide multimodal data retrieval services to CSS.

Imaginaries of the Pandemic in Chile: A Conceptual-Empirical Discussion.

This article aims to reconstruct the social imaginaries of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Chile. We seek to understand how families interpret their experience confronting the pandemic by identifying four main aspects: (a) the COVID-19 pandemic, (b) working and learning, (c) health and (d) family life. Following Habermas' distinction between lifeworld and social systems, we consider these issues as constituting the social imaginary of lifeworld, different but related to the imaginaries of social systems. The qualitative empirical data was gathered through a sample of 38 families interviewed online between September 2020 and January 2021 in four Chilean cities: Iquique, Valparaíso, Santiago and Concepción. Other complementary sources of information are multimodal ethnography (digital diaries), press articles and state reports.

Aproximaciones a las políticas educativas en la escena global de la postpandemia COVID-19: Órgano Divulgativo del Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Políticos y Administrativos de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad del Zulia

The COVID 19 pandemic had an unusual multidimensional impact on humanity as a whole, creating or recreating new or renewed forms of relationship between people, communities and the state, as an articulating entity of social relations and spaces of human development. In this context, the general use of ICTs in teaching-learning processes at all levels of the educational system is common, to the detriment of the person-to-person encounter affected by social distancing. The objective of the article is to describe a useful conceptual framework to redefine educational policies in accordance with the new realities that characterize post-pandemic scenarios in Ecuador. Methodologically it is a documentary, analytical and prospective research. The authors conclude that investment in education is considered urgent since its material and symbolic spaces mean for the majority of young people the most legitimate opportunity to train, achieve better opportunities and ascend socially, a situation that reduces the dynamics of social conflict.Alternate :La pandemia de COVID 19 tuvo un impacto multidimensional inusitado en la humanidad en su conjunto creando o recreando en su decurso nuevas o renovadas formas de relación entre las personas, las comunidades y el estado, en tanto ente articulador de las relaciones sociales y de los espacios de desarrollo humano. En este contexto, es usual el uso general de las TICs en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje en todos los niveles del sistema educativo, en detrimento del encuentro persona a persona afectado por el distanciamiento social. El objetivo del artículo consiste en describir un marco conceptual útil para redefinir las políticas educativas acordes con las nuevas realidades que caracterizan en Ecuador los escenarios postpandémicos. Metodológicamente se trata de una investigación documental, analíticas y prospectiva. Los autores concluyen que la inversión en educación se plantea como urgente ya que sus espacios materiales y simbólicos significan para la mayoría de los jóvenes la oportunidad más legitima para formarse, alcanzar mejores oportunidades y ascender socialmente, situación que reduce las dinámicas de conflictividad social.

The effect of co-location on human communication networks

The ability to rewire ties in communication networks is vital for large-scale human cooperation and the spread of new ideas. We show that lack of researcher co-location during the COVID-19 lockdown caused the loss of more than 4,800 weak ties—ties between distant parts of the social system that enable the flow of novel information—over 18 months in the email network of a large North American university. Furthermore, we find that the reintroduction of partial co-location through a hybrid work mode led to a partial regeneration of weak ties. We quantify the effect of co-location in forming ties through a model based on physical proximity, which is able to reproduce all empirical observations. Results indicate that employees who are not co-located are less likely to form ties, weakening the spread of information in the workplace. Such findings could contribute to a better understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of human communication networks and help organizations that are moving towards the implementation of hybrid work policies to evaluate the minimum amount of in-person interaction necessary for a productive work environment. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.

The angst of the Dehumanized: Ubuntu for Solidarity

This article attempts to delve into the multiple forms of violence experienced by South African women, within the theoretical framework of the ecological model of abuse proposed by Lori L. Heise (1998). The objective of the article is to explore how the communitarian dimension of ubuntu is absent when the womenfolk is in question. Their existence itself appears to be insignificant compared to their counterparts. Ubuntu cannot be lived or practiced while some are excluded from this concept. Gender inequality and inequitable status of existence cannot be part of ubuntu, as "I am, because you are" or the meaning of ubuntu cannot be fully experienced in such unbalanced circumstances. The violence against women by members of the same community and family is quite alarming. It is evident in such instances that women are commodified for the benefit of men due to their patriarchal nature. The subtle ways in which patriarchy operates, silence women and make them incapable of standing for their rights or resisting the oppression. The article thus discusses the oppressive social systems that exist in South Africa and their implications for the practical living of ubuntu.

Internationalization in Higher Education: Equity, Affordability, Epistemic Democracy? or Social Reproduction and World-Systems Stratification?

This autoethnographic paper exposes the multiple barriers encountered by an international doctoral female student in the United States: health issues especially Covid-19, institutional, political, geopolitical, knowledge production and economic factors. Reproduction theory, the world-system analysis and intellectual imperialism are used to examine these factors exposing the illusion of equity in international higher education and its role in perpetuating the imbalances and exclusion of large groups of people and entire countries. Contrary to the narrative, international students are often part of these large excluded groups of people but are not regularly included in the discussion.