Recent Trends in Social Studies

The article has been written to do a theoretical exploration of Indian cuisine as a symbolic system that reflects India's complex historical paths and its hierarchical social order. Food in India is not just for eating. It works like a language. Every dish, ingredient, and cooking method carries meaning. This paper places the cuisine as a type of text at the intersection of cultural anthropology, sociology of food, and postcolonial life, informing us that this is not simply something to be eaten, but it carries with it the meaning of social and cultural power relations and historical influences that it has experienced.

Does digital administrative reform boost the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)? This paper exploits the staggered rollout of the "Maximum One-Time Visit" (MTV) reform across counties in Zhejiang Province, China, to provide causal evidence. Using a county-by-year panel dataset constructed entirely from publicly available statistical yearbooks for the period 2016–2018, we find that the reform significantly increased private-sector employment—a key proxy for SME expansion—by approximately 4.8% within the first year of implementation.

This article explores the critical role of social cohesion and community resilience in preventing radicalization and violent extremism. While traditional counterterrorism strategies have primarily relied on military operations, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement interventions, growing evidence suggests that community-based approaches offer more sustainable and long-term solutions.

Since its inception in 1947, the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has functioned as a socially constructed barometer of civilisational risk, translating complex scientific, geopolitical, and technological threats into a universally legible symbolic chronometry. As of January 2026, the Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight, its most alarming position in nearly eight decades of operation.

Background: The proliferation of digital platforms has fundamentally transformed how social cause organisations communicate with their target audiences. Storytelling has emerged as a strategic tool for driving emotional resonance and behavioural change among young adults a demographic that is both digitally native and increasingly socially conscious. This study investigates (1) how storytelling in social media–based social cause campaigns influences the digital interaction behaviour of young adults, and (2) whether such storytelling shapes their behavioural intentions toward supporting social causes in real life. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed. In Phase 1, a structured quantitative survey (n = 100 young adults aged 18–35) was administered to measure engagement patterns and behavioural intentions.

The present study deals with the interface of the modern technologies especially the information and communication technologies that have greatly influenced the societies especially the rural society in Punjab. In this, we have delved deeper to understand the idea that how television has influenced the daily routine life of the rural people in Punjab and how under the influence of the content shown over the screen leads them to draw their perspective towards the situations occurring in the outer world.