http://sociologica.hse.ru en-us Copyright 2024 Sun, 19 Jan 2025 06:48:44 +0300 https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973693.html https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973788.html The study explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to address socio-cultural challenges in Saudi Arabia while promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using a structured narrative review method with a critical approach, the study highlights AI’s versatility in analyzing complex social phenomena, understanding human behavior, and optimizing urban infrastructure. With its unique socio-cultural challenges, Saudi Arabia aims for sustainable development through Saudi Vision 2030 and various smart city projects, emphasizing the importance of addressing challenges like gender equality, cultural preservation, an increasing youth population, rapid urbanization, and climate change. The study identifies ten AI applications and models to address these challenges and promote relevant SDGs across six areas: Predictive Analytics and Forecasting, Optimization and Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Generative AI, and Geospatial AI. These AI models can help address issues like gender equality, youth education, and employment, as well as optimize water management, energy use, and urban planning to address rapid urbanization and climate change challenges. By aligning AI development with the goals outlined in the SDGs, Saudi Arabia can unlock the potential of AI to create sustainable, resilient, and inclusive smart cities that effectively address socio-cultural challenges. However, the study emphasizes the necessity of customizing AI applications in smart cities based on Saudi Arabia’s religious and cultural values to ensure ethical and culturally sensitive implementations. The findings of this study hold relevance not only for Saudi Arabia but also for other countries facing similar challenges. The study provides practical recommendations for policymakers, urban planners, and technology experts to leverage AI effectively for sustainable development. It also outlines future research directions to address the limitations identified, such as exploring implementation challenges and ethical considerations. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973798.html This study examines the public perception of ChatGPT on Twitter, comparing approaches from Global South (India and Turkey) and Global North (United Kingdom and United States) countries. It utilizes a text-as-data approach, applying sentiment analysis, text analysis, and topic modeling techniques on tweets in English containing “ChatGPT” collected between January 1 and June 1, 2023. The VADER sentiment dictionary is used for sentiment analysis, while n-grams and BERTopic are employed for text analysis and topic modeling, respectively. Sentiment analysis reveals a predominantly positive perception of ChatGPT across both regions, with some concerns expressed regarding potential negative impacts. Text analysis and topic modeling indicate that discussions revolve around major technology companies and leading figures, with the Global North focusing more on sectoral applications and technical aspects, while the Global South evaluates ChatGPT within local language and cultural contexts. The findings demonstrate that socio-cultural differences and technological development levels between regions are reflected in the social perception of ChatGPT. The study contributes to understanding the early reception and perception of generative AI and highlights the importance of addressing privacy concerns, developing culturally compatible solutions, and examining the potential impacts of ChatGPT in various domains. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973808.html Originally intended as a tool to streamline governance and facilitate inclusion, Aadhaar has developed into an amalgam that engenders deeply concerning ramifications for Indian society. Enumerated as an inquiry into a technology-based public administration system, Aadhaar unveils a convoluted mechanism that poses pertinent questions regarding surveillance, governance, and identity. The study delves into the paradox of Aadhaar: how it acts as both a tool of governance and an instrument of identification surveillance, utilizing a combination of interviews, processing data analysis, and post-colonialism to unpack its workings within Indian society. Even while Aadhaar promises to make benefits accessible to people easily, practical possibilities present a challenge due to the presence of duplicate ID cards or living-active accounts of persons who died, for instance. This development consequently raises fears about mass surveillance and the privatization of public functions furthered by private companies such as OnGrid and Khosla Labs, which calls into great question issues of accountability and ethical consideration. In comparison with other global regimes such as the GDPR or the Social Security System, Aadhaar lacks strict mechanisms to protect an individual’s privacy and ensure accountability and all necessary levels of transparency. Aadhaar’s surveillance mechanisms, based on Foucault’s concept of the panopticon, normalize the state’s power to monitor and control its citizens through biometric tracking. This transcends inclusion into the realm of a new form of identity governance where those with lesser chances for acceptance-think migrants, poor people, and the unbanked-are again in a slightly more analytically navigable environment of exclusion. Hybridity, in the work of Bhabha, enables another way of comprehending the workings of Aadhaar in the post-colonial context: it is fluid and must be constantly redefined by surveillance. The critical post-colonial analysis outlined by Edward Said delineates how the Aadhaar has gone to mimic colonial systems of categorization while further fortifying power hierarchies and systematic, institutional exclusion. As Aadhaar increasingly shapes Indian identity, it does so not merely as a tool of inclusion, but as a system that systematically places citizens under surveillance — making identity synonymous with scrutiny and regulation, normalizing the power to monitor and control without consent or choice. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973819.html This study investigates how contemporary artificial intelligence image generation systems interpret and reproduce Indian cultural elements through a comparative analysis of three major platforms: Stable Diffusion, Flux, and Midjourney. While these systems have demonstrated remarkable technical capabilities, their handling of non-Western cultural elements remains understudied. We present a novel methodological framework that combines visual social semiotics with digital anthropology to analyse AI-generated images across multiple dimensions, including representational accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and power dynamics. Our systematic analysis of images generated through increasingly sophisticated prompts reveals significant patterns in how these systems mediate cultural representation. Results indicate that while platforms exhibit varying technical proficiencies, they consistently demonstrate concerning biases in human representation, particularly in their treatment of gender, class, and ethnic identities. The analysis reveals systematic simplification of complex cultural elements and the persistence of orientalist perspectives, despite advances in technical capabilities. These findings suggest that improved technical sophistication alone is insufficient for authentic cultural reproduction; rather, fundamental reconsideration of how these systems process and understand cultural information is necessary. This research contributes both theoretical insights into digital cultural representation and practical implications for developing more culturally sensitive AI systems, while highlighting crucial areas for improvement in the technical architecture of image generation models. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973832.html Despite rapid AI integration in education globally, the role of socio-cultural and demographic factors in shaping AI adoption in diverse settings like the UAE remains underexplored. This study explores the accessibility, usability, and applicability of generative AI (Gen AI) tools, such as ChatGPT, in higher education, focusing on Emirati university students. Employing a mixed-methods research design, data were collected from 83 students through demographic surveys and structured reflections based on Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (Gibbs, 1988). Quantitative analysis showed strong links between how Gen AI uses AI and demographic and educational factors, such as high school type, gender, and academic performance, with a slight trend seen for the father’s education level. Students from private international schools reported higher daily usage, while females showed greater weekly usage frequencies, emphasizing the influence of educational background and gender on technology adoption. Thematic analysis identified Gen AI accessibility as a key theme, with students highlighting the instant feedback and time-saving benefits of Gen AI tools. However, disparities in digital literacy and infrastructural challenges remain. The Gen AI Usability Study showed that students liked the detailed feedback and how it broke down complex ideas. However, they ran into problems like prompt sensitivity and the need to verify output. The Gen AI Applicability results emphasized ChatGPT’s help in creating content, improving language, and organizing academic material, but they also pointed out that it has trouble following assignment-specific rules. This study contributes to the literature by addressing socio-demographic factors influencing Gen AI adoption in a culturally diverse setting like the UAE. The results make it clear that Gen AI literacy and critical evaluation skills must be taught in schools, and strategies are necessary to ensure everyone has equal access (Ben Romdhane et al., 2023). Recommendations aim to help educators leverage Gen AI’s potential while mitigating its challenges in higher education. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973854.html In this thought leadership roundtable, the editors of the special issue, convened a critical dialogue between leading scholars in the fields of Sociology, Critical Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Management Studies, and Sustainability Studies to explore the challenges that Global South navigates in its adoption of AI. The conversation probes the power disparities between the Global North and the Global South narratives of AI and look forward to alternative forms of AI and AI Management in the Global South scenario. Highly critical and cautious of enthusiastic adaptations of AI in the Global South, the discussants prioritize the issues of Human Rights, ethics, equity, inclusivity, and resilience for the historically marginalized communities of the region. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973885.html “Social space” constitutes a key idea of Bourdieu’s sociology. According to this concept, social reality in its objectivist aspect can be fundamentally characterized by a multidimensional distribution of agents across social positions. The metatheoretical principle of Bourdieu’s sociology is expressed by the thesis that, by postulating the existence of spatial structure, one can overcome the epistemic difficulties associated with sociological concepts that support a flat ontology within the framework of object-oriented realism. Spatial structure can supply solutions to three major challenges: the first one concerns the tendency for the reification of social order and social phenomena, the second — attributivism, which reduces relationships to characteristics, and the third — the predominance of positivist methodology in sociology. Although Bourdieu claims that spatial structure can be interpreted in terms of a social survey as social space, he goes beyond the boundaries of empirical generalizations. The paper examines the ontology of the idea of “social space”. The authors argue that the postulated spatial structure, which calls for realistic treatment by sociologists, constitutes a metaphysical entity that does not lend itself to complete scientific confirmation. To maintain relative proximity of this metaphysical postulate to scientific practice, Bourdieu identifies the fundamental structure of social reality with topological structure, a concept borrowed from mathematics. Topological structure is perceived as a non-phenomenological law that describes relationships between social positions, interpreted as points in social space. The idea of social space claims the priority of topological structure over social positions, which do not exist before, or separately from, the structure. The article considers three layers in the ontology of “social space”: mathematical, theoretical, and empirical. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973904.html The paper characterizes the contribution made by Pavel Novgorodtsev, the Russian philosopher of law, to the establishment of the moral and ethical tradition of law, which, in turn, is the philosophical foundation of the doctrine of new liberalism and human rights. This tradition was influential both in late-imperial Russia and in Europe, to which Novgorodtsev immigrated in 1920 and where he founded the Institute (Faculty) of Law at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). The authors consider Novgorodtsev’s legal philosophy as an integral ethical doctrine, taking into account its development in the last period of the scholar’s life. For the first time in academic literature, it is argued that Novgorodtsev’s views should be interpreted in the context of both the liberal and religious philosophical approaches to the understanding of law, and that these approaches complement each other and have played a significant role in the history of political and legal thought both in Russia and in 20th-century Europe. Novgorodtsev’s contribution to intellectual thought in Russia and Europe was in his thoroughgoing criticism of social utopias, particularly, Bolshevism and Communism, which were characterized by their denial of law and legal tradition. The research is based on a wide range of sources, including P. Novgorodtsev's papers and personal documents, in particular, his correspondence. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973928.html Publications of recent years and decades demonstrate that, in addition to writing monographs and publishing collections of articles, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), throughout her academic career in the United States, actively used the lecture genre and non-fiction articles to clarify and popularize the ideas of her political philosophy and her approach to the problems of our times. The publication of these lectures provides us with a fresh perspective on important aspects of her ideas regarding the political world and the role of political freedom, as reflected in the words and actions of humans in their common world. The focus of this paper is on Arendt’s lectures from the 1960s, which were dedicated to clarifying her two key works from the second half of the 1950s and the early 1960 — “The Human Condition (1958)” and “On Revolution (1963)” — as well as interpreting the central concepts of her political philosophy: Action, Freedom, Politics and Revolution. The article pays special attention to Arendt’s interpretation of human freedom as a gift and a miracle, which is proposed in these lectures. Freedom’s negative contribution to the world of human actions and words is to interrupt the automaticity of inertial social reproduction, while its positive contribution is to “save” the common political world for future generations. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006973976.html Book review: Mearsheimer J. J., Rosato S. (2023) How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. — 304 PP. ISBN 978-0-30026-930-7. https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2024-23-4/1006974002.html Book review: Richard Sakwa (2023) The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War, Yale University Press: New Haven & London.