 Hello, learners. I welcome you all to this session on contemporary ideologies for social change. Let us first look into the meaning of contemporary ideologies. So, this is the outline of the topic for discussion today. First, we will discuss the meaning of ideology and social change. Then, contemporary ideologies, some of the main ones are neoliberalism, globalization, then postmodernism, feminism and multiculturalism. So, let us start by understanding the meaning of the term ideology. It is a set of beliefs or philosophies and ideas that form the foundation of a particular political or economic system. It is a way of thought and culmination of perspectives, principles that is associated with a particular group, a party, association or any socio-political institution. It is basically the way we look into certain social phenomena. It is the perspective that we form of looking into social problems. And what is social change? It is the human society that is dynamic and therefore social change is inevitable in our society. Social change is not uniform and with advancement of science and technology, ideologies and social values are changing. Therefore, this leads to changes in the functions of social structure, the social system, social order and institutions. So, what are social institutions? Social institutions are like religion, marriage, education system, the polity, the economy. These are social systems that form the entire social functioning. This alternation in the social order or the social systems is the meaning of social change. Now, let us come into this topic of contemporary ideology. So, what is the meaning of contemporary? And as we learnt, ideology is a collection of doctrines of ideas, beliefs shared by the members of a particular group. That is the perspective, the way we look into a particular social issue. Now, contemporary ideologies are the modern or the present times philosophical ideas or doctrines that form the perspective of the so-called worldview and the social phenomena or you can call it social issues or social problems that exist. These contemporary ideologies influence social change and therefore they are significant for the knowledge of social work professionals because as social work professionals, your main objective will be to bring about positive change in the society and without knowing what are the ideologies, the contemporary ideologies that are functioning in our society, it will be not easy to deal into the social problems. Therefore, our knowledge on the contemporary ideologies is very important here. Let us move into the first contemporary ideology that is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is also synonymously used or termed as modern colonialism which won its great victories not through any military or technological power but it created social hierarchies. Therefore, the transnational companies, that is the multinational companies therefore we see has taken over the national enterprises which most typically resulted in the destruction of jobs and disposition of workers in their ability to bargain. That is the local market suffered a lot because of the multinational companies that have come in. Now, neoliberalism as we know, liberalism is also closely connected with the concept of globalization that brings about the world market together. Therefore, neoliberalism is the novice concept where there is the modern colonialism it is as termed because it has created various hierarchies in the society. The intellectual property rights are emerging as important mechanism for taking away the living resources and biodiversity of the people that they have formed the corporate monopolies. Therefore, this corporate monopoly or the monopoly or the role of multinational companies to take over the local market has resulted in environmental devastation which is tragic in nature. Therefore, neoliberalism has various pros and cons. Now, closely connected to that is globalization. Globalization stands for greater integration of national economies into a world economy in which the market predominates. Therefore, it is an expansion of academic activities across the political boundaries of nation states. The different places located far off from each other can be interrelated or interconnected from the so-called or through the so-called global market place. The economic dimension is evident and most clearly which comprises the production as well as distribution of goods on a global scale. Therefore, what is produced locally can be exported to the world market. Globalization refers to the process of integration in which is intensifying the worldwide social relations that is it is bringing the world together and it is said the world is becoming a smaller piece because each region is connected economically to each other and also interdependency between the different nations. When one nation specializes in the production of a particular group or one region specializes in the production of a particular group another product then automatically interdependence is created among the different regions of the world or different nations. Therefore, it is a creation of a global society. The next one is postmodernism. Postmodernism describes modern ideas of science, justice and art, ideas carrying them from specific political agenda and ultimately unable to legitimize themselves as universal. Therefore, it is seen that postmodernism has brought about visibility to important ideology and structural forces like race, gender and class by acknowledging the question of power and value in the construction of knowledge and subjectivity. For example, we consider that the West is more influential in terms of knowledge, probably in terms of science and therefore the concept of white supremacy that has come in. Therefore, white supremacy is just an example of postmodernism thought where there is dominance of the larger group over the smaller groups. The postmodernist thinking has led to a multi-dimensional understanding of social stratification. It is the stratification that means the strata of the society. It is known as the social hierarchy based on race, gender, education, occupation and not merely on class. Therefore, we see that there is intersectionality of dominance of social hierarchy in the social order. Racism and Indian caste system are clear examples of social stratification based on ethnicity and culture. This has led to economic inequality as well. So, moving into the next one, the next contemporary ideology is feminism. Now, what is feminism? During the 19th century, basically it started in the United States of America. The liberalist ideology led to the emergence of liberal feminism which was the first feminist thought or school of feminism. Feminists differentiate between sex as a biological division between men and women and gender, the term gender as the socially unequal division into feminity and masculinity. Therefore, it cannot be said that only based on physical differences, there is disparity in the society based on gender. The sex is a biological term which can be either male or female or the third gender and gender is the social qualities or social connotations that we attach to the different sexes. Therefore, what are the characteristics that we always try to relate to feminity and masculinity? Feminism argues that the gender system subordinates women in a patriarchal society and where we are living is a patriarchal society. And patriarchal society, a patriarchal relations that exist over and above class relations. That means irrespective of any class, maybe a women from an upper class or a lower class will always be subjected to the men of that particular class or that particular caste. Therefore, it is said that irrespective of class and caste, women are always dominated by the male in a patriarchal society. The liberal feminist demanded legal reforms and equal opportunities, that means right to vote, education and employment of women also equal pay for equal work. Then Marxist feminists view that women's oppression can be linked to the capitalist mode of production that resulted in the spatial divide, spatial means of space. That means your workspace and the domestic space and wage and work and label them as non-productive. And therefore it was determined that whether the domestic work that the women does is considered to be a form of production whether it is being non-productive or being productive. So that was the debate that was put forth by the Marxist feminists. Feminism advocated for social inclusion of women not only in politics, in decision making, also in the economic sphere and the social sphere. And now let us discuss the waves of feminism. What is the meaning of waves? Waves are thoughts or the phases of time where the thoughts evolved on feminism. So as we learn feminism talks about the women's rights and the demand for equality and also justice. Therefore the waves means the different phases, the time phases that can be divided to the and it can be related to the development of the ideology of feminism. The first wave started in the 1830s and it lasted to nearly around 1900. Women's right to vote, political participation, property rights were advocated. So it first started in the United States of America and then it spread to Europe and slowly slowly it started spreading to the other parts of the world. And therefore the women's suffrage that is fighting for the rights of the women to vote and then political participation and then right to property was all highlighted in this particular first wave. In the second wave we will see that this comes after the world war II. It focused on right to economic participation. That means what happened is during the world war II men were asked to join the war as army and then after the world war got over and they returned to their workplace the women who had replaced the men working in the factories were suddenly asked to go back to their home and quit their jobs. That is when the second wave of feminism started where they demanded the right to work and also this phase talked about reproductive rights. It highlighted the social issue of domestic violence, marital rape and also since they demanded that they should have the right to work therefore they focused also on workplace safety. Another important perspective of second wave is that what we read today is that women should not be badly portrayed in the media. This was highlighted in the second wave of feminism. So here they have talked about popular media like films, then art, drama and then media where women are always shown as objects of sex only but they are not given their due identity and individuality therefore this was the right that the second wave fought for. Also the third wave then started in the 90s in the 20th century and it lasted to around early 2000. It has to be 1990s. The third wave started in the 1990s and it lasted till over the early 2000s. So the fight for equal work, for equal pay that started in the second wave itself was carried forward in the third wave as well. The issues highlighted in the second wave had to be carried forward in its advocacy and in the second wave it talked about economic right then against domestic violence, against marital rape and for workplace safety then abolishing bad image or sexual objectification of women in the media. Therefore this was all carried forward in the third wave that started actually from 1990s. There is a mistake in this particular date that is shown here. It has to be 1990s and it lasted till early 2000. The third wave shuns or does away with the categories of identity, gender and sexuality but it said that fighting for the gender rights everyone has to stay united. So basically in the third wave we see that the concept of LGBT or the queer group that is the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender were also included in the fight for gender rights and in the fourth wave which is said to be beginning at around 2012 is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women and the use of internet tools and centered on intersectionality. Intersectionality means fighting for gender rights across class, gender and caste. Therefore all those who are discriminated based on gender will come together irrespective of color, irrespective of gender, irrespective of any class or caste. Therefore we say that men can also be feminists because this fight for the rights of women or rights of the third gender or the right fight for the male gender also it shows that there is a unity among the people who fight for the rights of this of the particular people who are discriminated. And a great milestone that we see in the fourth wave was the Me Too movement though there is lot of criticism and also debate on the Me Too movement we see this important dimension taking place in the fourth wave of feminism. The Me Too movement talked about all the sexual harassment at place and other places which were based on power relations. So Me Too movement brought about a change and exposed many people who were actually victims and perpetrators of harassment. The fifth wave of feminism is actually existing now and it talks about activism of every kind is considered essential in this particular wave. So the fifth wave is actually existing now and it focuses on activism. What is activism? Activism is fighting for the rights of the gender which is based on pure social action or you know advocacy through media through physical protest and you know writing in the popular media so all kind of activism is actually encouraged in this fifth wave of feminism. So these are the five waves of feminism that have evolved and in all the waves of feminism we see that there have been different changes in the way of thought on women's rights and gender rights. Earlier it was only about white women when the first wave started then it gradually also included the black women and then also it included the third gender as the wave of feminism advanced. Now looking into the last form of contemporary ideology is multiculturalism. Multiculturalism focuses on existence of different cultural groups while maintaining the ideology and identity of each group. So multiculturalism brings together issues that refers to the need for community a sense of belonging to it, the importance of a secure sense of identity of status and recognition of particular group and the need to recognize and maintain difference with others is also important. So it's not like that the dominant cultures try to you know dominant the groups of, suppose the cultural group of a particular religion is more in number in a particular regional area and then it overpowers the other minority groups that is not multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is respecting the different cultural and religious sentiments and practices and ideologies of a particular area or a particular group. They live together in a united way but also each individual identity is purely restored. So multiculturalism believes that both sameness and difference can be a source of inequality and justice. We must neither be discriminated on account of particular features of religion and culture nor as a condition of citizenship. Therefore most of the nations of this globe is actually following this ideology of multiculturalism where they are also giving citizenship the so-called non-local or the migrants also who actually have migrated to a particular region. So therefore you see that it must be compelled to be set inside our cultural particularity. Therefore there is culmination of the different cultural groups. Multiculturalism is a move away from modern ideology with concern in itself from freedom than equality justice given up pronouns individualist coloring. That means though in a particular culturally dominant area there might be the dominance of a particular group but the minorities can in a secured way restore and preserve their cultural beliefs and ideas in a given geographical area. That ideology is known as multiculturalism. So I hope you all have been clear now with the concepts of ideologies that I have discussed here. So therefore we see that why understanding contemporary ideologies is important for social workers because you will be getting into the field and getting into the society and for that understanding these ideologies that operate in our society is important here for every professional social worker. So these are the ideologies that important ideologies that we have discussed here and we have seen how social change is brought about through the different ideologies that exist in our society. Thank you so much.