Social atrophy, social infrastructure, and the commons

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorStein Lubrano, Sarah
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-22T18:41:01Z
dc.date.available2025-01-22T18:41:01Z
dc.date.issued2025-01-21
dc.description.abstractIn this short talk, Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano will describe the important problem of social atrophy, a diminishing of social ability and judgement that occurs when people are socially isolated. Cognitive and neuroscientific research demonstrates that social atrophy weakens people's ability to engage in social life and makes them more withdrawn and even paranoid, creating a spiraling negative effect on both individuals and societies. Dr. Stein Lubrano will then argue that these key features mean that social atrophy is a better way of framing and understanding the problem of social isolation in the 21st century compared to the more popular description, a "loneliness epidemic." And understanding this problem well matters greatly, as social isolation is currently at a 50-year high in many Western countries. Dr. Stein Lubrano will then describe a crucial measure to counteract this problem: the creation of social infrastructure. Social infrastructure provides the means for people to regularly and easily gather and can counteract the trend towards social atrophy. Furthermore, Dr. Stein Lubrano will hypothesise that social infrastructure and the "social capital" it generates are best understood as commons, that is, as types of wealth that either only can or only should be owned collectively, and which therefore may need different legal frameworks than most private property. Finally, Dr. Stein Lubrano will consider the political significance of social infrastructure, the inability of online spaces to provide some of its crucial functions, and whether this social and legal problem might be tied to related questions about the right for people to not only gather together to speak about political issues but also act together, drawing on the work of legal theorist Stanley Ingber.
dc.description.reviewstatusUnreviewed
dc.description.scholarlevelFaculty
dc.description.sponsorshipUVic Graduate Student Law & Society Research Group
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/20972
dc.language.isoen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesLegal Design Series; 4
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectsocial atrophy
dc.subjectsocial infrastructure
dc.subjectthe commons
dc.subjectlegal design
dc.titleSocial atrophy, social infrastructure, and the commons
dc.typeRecording, oral
dc.typeVideo

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
SteinLubrano_Sarah_SocialAtrophy_2025.mp4
Size:
125.04 MB
Format:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
SteinLubrano_Sarah_SocialAtrophy_2025_audio.mp3
Size:
23.08 MB
Format:
Unknown data format
Download
Thumbnail Image
Name:
SteinLubrano_Sarah_SocialAtrophy_2025_slides.pdf
Size:
1.69 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.62 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download

Collections

UVic Graduate Student Law & Society Research Group Publications
 
University of Victoria Libraries

We acknowledge and respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.