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Social World (social + world)
Selected AbstractsFRAGMENTED INTIMACY: ADDICTION IN A SOCIAL WORLDADDICTION, Issue 4 2009TOM WALKER No abstract is available for this article. [source] Naive Decision Making: Mathematics Applied to the Social World by T. W. KörnerINTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Susan Starkings No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Analysis of the Borders of the Social World: A Challenge for Sociological TheoryJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2005GESA LINDEMANN ABSTRACT:In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The methodological consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann. [source] Self-Monitoring: Individual Differences in Orientations to the Social WorldJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 3 2006Christopher Leone ABSTRACT In their articles in this special section of the Journal of Personality, the authors have focused their attention on the role of individual differences in self-monitoring for a variety of interpersonal phenomena. In so doing, the authors have provided an overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions of the psychology of self-monitoring to the domains of interest: close relationships, consumer behavior, behavior in the workplace, and social interaction. As each of the contributing authors to this special section suggests, much more theoretical and empirical work is in order if the impact of individual differences in self-monitoring for the phenomena reviewed here is to be fully appreciated. Moreover, the four domains of interest represented in this special section by no means exhaust the areas to which theorists and researchers have applied or can apply the psychology of individual differences in self-monitoring. Given the large nomological network that currently exists involving the self-monitoring construct, it is anticipated that the breadth and depth of applications of the psychology of self-monitoring will only continue to expand as it has in the last 30 years since the appearance of the construct in the literature. [source] The temptations of cult: Roman martyr piety in the age of Gregory the GreatEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 3 2000Conrad Leyser Pope Gregory the Great (590,604) was arguably the most important Roman writer and civic leader of the early middle ages; the Roman martyrs were certainly the most important cult figures of the city. However modern scholarship on the relationship between Gregory and the Roman martyrs remains curiously underdeveloped, and has been principally devoted to comparison of the gesta martyrum with the stories of Italian holy men and women (in particular St Benedict) told by Gregory in his Dialogues; in the past generation the Dialogues have come to be understood as a polemic against the model of sanctity proposed by the Roman martyr narratives. This paper explores Gregory's role in the development of Roman martyr cult in the context of the immediate social world of Roman clerical politics of the sixth and seventh centuries. Gregory's authority as bishop of Rome was extremely precarious: the Roman clerical hierarchy with its well-developed protocols did not take kindly to the appearance of Gregory and his ascetic companions. In the conflict between Gregory and his followers, and their opponents, both sides used patronage of martyr cult to advance their cause. In spite of the political necessity of engaging in such ,competitive generosity', Gregory was also concerned to channel martyr devotion, urging contemplation on the moral achievements of the martyrs , which could be imitated in the present , as opposed to an aggressive and unrestrained piety focused on their death. Gregory's complex attitude to martyr cult needs to be differentiated from that which was developed over a century later, north of the Alps, by Carolingian readers and copyists of gesta martyrum and pilgrim guides, whose approach to the Roman martyrs was informed by Gregory's own posthumous reputation. [source] Commentary: Autism and Anthropology?ETHOS, Issue 1 2010Mary C. Lawlor Comments explore the ways in which authors attend to demarcation of the social world, establishment and negotiation of expertise, juxtaposition of autism as a phenomenon of interest and as an exemplar of sociality, and management of structured and improvisational approaches to the study of engagements in real life. The dilemmas and tensions that are briefly described here are only a partial list of still uncultivated spaces where autism and anthropology can,should,do meet. [sociality, autism, engagement, expertise, ethnography] [source] Workers in the New Economy: Transformation as Border CrossingETHOS, Issue 1 2006Valerie Walkerdine In this article, I seek to make an intervention in debates between psycho-logical and postmodern anthropology by engaging with the theme of border crossing. I argue that the theme of the border is one that fundamentally instantiates a separation between interior and exterior with respect to subjectivity, itself a funda-mental transformation and a painful and difficult border. This is related to a Cartesian distinction critiqued in this article. How the distinction between interior and exterior may be transcended is discussed in relation to examples of transformation from the crossing of class borders to the production and regulation of workers in a globalized and neoliberal economy. I begin with reference to postwar transformations of class with its anxious borders and go on to think about changes in the labor market and how these demand huge transformations that tear apart communities, destroy work-places, and sunder the sense of safety and stability that those gave. Advanced liberalism or neoliberalism brings with it a speeding up of the transformations of liberalism in which subjects are constantly invoked as self-contained, with a trans-portable self that must be produced through the developmental processes of personality and rationality. This self must be carried like a snail carries a shell. It must be coherent yet mutable, fixed yet multiple and flexible. But this view of the subject covers over the many connections that make subjectivity possible. I conclude by ask-ing what it would mean to rethink this issue of the production of safe spaces beyond an essentialist psychological conception of only one mother child space, separated from the social world, as having the power to produce feelings of safety? I end the article with an argument for a relational approach to subjectivity and sociality. [subjectivity, relationality, neoliberalism, workers, class] [source] "They Took Out the Wrong Context": Uses of Time-Space in the Practice of PositioningETHOS, Issue 2 2004Kevin M. Leander Time-space is not merely a backdrop to social interaction; rather, individuals use particular forms of time-space to discursively position themselves and others. This article analyzes how several adolescents interpreted a previous classroom interaction, which was rife with social positioning. Responding to a videotape of this interaction, the adolescents were in general agreement that one of them ("Latayna") acted "ghetto." An analysis of the interview data reveals how participants use typified forms of time-space, or particular chronotopes, in the practice of positioning. These chronotopes index the relative changeability of the social world, the possibilities of individual agency, and the relations of social and individual development. The analysis also makes visible how individual actors, including Latanya, creatively and strategically shape subjectivities by transforming and laminating diverse chronotopes. [source] The creation and consequences of the social world: an interactional analysis of extraversionEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 5 2003Leslie G. Eaton Seventy-six previously unacquainted, opposite-sex pairs of undergraduate participants engaged in a 5,min videotaped interaction, then provided their mutual impressions. Research assistants coded 64 behaviours from the videotapes; these ratings were combined into behavioural factors. Participants provided self-descriptions of personality and were described by two acquaintances. Path analyses indicated that targets extraversion was associated with their behavioural involvement, which in turn was associated with partners subsequent ratings of their personality. Targets interpersonal positive affectivity was associated with their partners extraversion. Similar patterns of behavioural associations were found in relation to self-reported, partner-reported, and acquaintance-reported extraversion. These results demonstrate how extraverts may create a positive social environment through their own positivity and by creating a social press for positivity in return. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Priorities in social categoriesEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2010Katherine D. Kinzler In this paper we review evidence from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to raise a common question: Are there priorities in how humans categorize their social world? Are some social groupings more prominent in childhood, and more resilient in adulthood than others? We review and compare evidence from each field, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relative robustness of gender, race, age, and language as social categories. We highlight the value of developmental approaches for characterizing the origins and nature of social categories in adults, and provide suggestions for how collaborative research from social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology could inform our understanding of potential priorities in social categorization. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A guide to practical babooning: Historical, social, and cognitive contingencyEVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009Louise Barrett Professor of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge Abstract As ecologically adaptable animals, baboons are distributed widely across Africa, and display a variety of morphological and behavioral differences that reflect both local ecology and a complex evolutionary history. As long-lived, slowly reproducing animals, baboons face numerous ecological challenges to survival and successful reproduction. As group-living animals, the social world presents an equally diverse array of challenges that require the negotiation of individual needs within the constraints imposed by others. Understanding how all these facets of baboon evolutionary history, life history, ecology, sociality, and cognition fit together is an enormous but engaging challenge, and despite one hundred years of study, it is clear there is a still much to learn about the various natural histories of baboons. What also is clear, however, is that an appreciation of contingency holds the key to understanding all these facets of baboon evolution and behavior. In what follows, I hope to illustrate exactly what I mean by this, highlighting along the way that history is not to be ignored, variability is information and not merely "noise", and that behavioral and cognitive complexity can be two very different things. [source] The social world of Australian practice nurses and the influence of medical dominance: An analysis of the literatureINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 6 2009FRCNA, Grad Cert Ed (Tert Teach), Jane Mills RN In Australia, the number of practice nurses is growing at a rapid rate. On the nursing landscape, this group of nurses stand out because of their relationship with the Australian Government who both fund them, and concern themselves with their continuing professional development. This paper provides a construction of the social world of Australian practice nurses, identifying stakeholders in the business of practice nursing. Literature produced by the various social world segments is analysed for the influence of medical dominance on the role, image, power and politics of practice nurses. [source] Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2004February 2, Portland, Presidential Address to the International Studies Association This paper focuses on the relationship between International Relations theory and ethics. It poses the question of the complicity of the discipline in the events of September 11, 2001. The paper begins with a discussion of Weber's notion of science as a vocation, and links this to the commitment in the discipline to a value-free conception of social science, one that sharply separates facts from values. The paper then examines the role of ten core assumptions in International Relations theory in helping to construct a discipline that has a culturally and historically very specific notion of violence, one resting on distinctions between economics and politics, between the outside and the inside of states, and between the public and the private realms. Using the United Nations Human Development report, the paper summarizes a number of forms of violence in world politics, and questions why the discipline of International Relations only focuses on a small subset of these. The paper then refers to the art of Magritte, and specifically Velazquez's painting Las Meninas, to argue for a notion of representation relevant to the social world that stresses negotiation, perspective, and understanding rather than notions of an underlying Archimedean foundation to truth claims. In concluding, the paper asserts that the discipline helped to sing into existence the world of September 11 by reflecting the interests of the dominant in what were presented as being neutral, and universal theories. [source] Convention and Intersubjectivity: New Developments in French EconomicsJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 3 2006JOHN LATSIS The recently formed French School of the "économie des conventions" have claimed that they are developing a revolutionary new approach to the social sciences. This group of researchers in economics, philosophy, sociology, law and history attempt to transcend the inherited analytical frameworks of structural-functionalist sociology and neoclassical economics and provide an alternative picture of the social world. This article will investigate some of these claims in detail. First, I trace the cohesion of the Convention School's ideas around the key concept of convention. Conventionalist theory reflects an ontological shift towards the recognition of intersubjectivity. This shift leads to tension between the advocacy of methodological individualism on the one hand and the use of convention as a central analytical category on the other. [source] The Analysis of the Borders of the Social World: A Challenge for Sociological TheoryJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2005GESA LINDEMANN ABSTRACT:In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The methodological consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann. [source] Living with stroke: a phenomenological studyJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 2 2000Christopher R. Burton PGCertHE BN RGN Living with stroke: a phenomenological study Understanding how stroke sufferers experience their stroke and recovery is essential if the development of rehabilitation services is to be effective and appropriate. Previous research in this area has tended to be either cross-sectional or with a limited amount of informant follow-up, and consequently has limited utility. This paper describes a study underpinned by a phenomenological approach, which tracked the experiences of six patients admitted to a rehabilitation unit in the north-west of England. Informants were followed for at least 12 months after stroke, and a total of 73 interviews were undertaken during the study. The data demonstrate that recovery from stroke involved restructuring and adaptation in physical, social and emotional aspects of an individual's life. Two important features of recovery were highlighted. First, whilst aspects of pre-stroke life may be used to describe individual progress, no end-point to recovery was identified as informants described and anticipated life with stroke. Second, informants focused on the social context of recovery where engagement in the social world was emphasized over discrete physical function. Although no common path of recovery was found, it is recommended that stroke services are structured to take account of the long-term needs of stroke patients and their families in their home environment. [source] Social goals and conflict strategies of individuals with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities who present problems of aggressionJOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 5 2008C. Pert Abstract Background A few recent studies have adopted a social cognitive perspective to explore how individuals with intellectual disabilities (IDs), who present problems of aggression, view their social world. The focus has mainly been on participants' perceptions of others' behaviour within conflict situations. The present exploratory study aims to compliment existing research by exploring social cognitive factors that may influence how individuals respond to conflict. Methods Study was carried out with 20 aggressive and 20 non-aggressive men and women who have a mild to moderate ID. The ,Social Goals and Strategies for Conflict' (SGASC) assessment was devised to explore whether group or gender differences could be found in participants' expected outcomes of aggressive strategies, their expected outcomes of submissive strategies and their emotional reaction to these outcomes. Participants' social goals within hypothetical situations of conflict were also explored. Results It was found that aggressive and non-aggressive participants have different social goals. There were no significant differences for expected outcomes of aggression or submissiveness. Nevertheless, a number of trends suggest that more aggressive participants expect negative outcomes for submissiveness compared with their non-aggressive peers. Conclusions While the findings of this study are tentative, investigating the social outcomes that are valued by individuals with ID who present problems of aggression appears to be a promising area for further research, with possible implications for clinical assessment and treatment. [source] Personality Reflected in a Coherent Idiosyncratic Interplay of Intra- and Interpersonal Self-Regulatory ProcessesJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 6 2006Carolyn C. Morf ABSTRACT This article discusses a framework that conceptualizes personality in terms of a unique pattern of interacting intra- and interpersonal self-regulatory mechanisms employed in the service of constructing and maintaining a desired self. These personal goals motivate the individuals' self-construction efforts and give direction, organization, and coherence to the self-regulatory dynamics,both within the person and in the social world in which they play out. The framework is illustrated through research on construct validation of the narcissistic personality type and extended by brief applications to dependency and rejection sensitivity to show how it may help us understand the complex signatures that are the expressions of a personality type. It offers a guide for where to look for and how to organize the unique features and idiosyncratic dynamics of different self-construction types and to make sense of their otherwise often seemingly paradoxical expressions. In so doing, the framework speaks to basic goals of personality psychology by providing an approach for capturing trait-like individual differences while simultaneously shedding light on the psychological mechanism that underlies them. [source] Caring for people in the ,virtual ward': the practical ramifications for acute nursing workJOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 4 2003M. DEACON, ba (hons) m.phil rmn srn enb(810) This paper discusses an aspect of data analysis arising from an ethnographic study of acute mental health nursing conducted in an inner city psychiatric unit. The data were collected in the form of field notes. These were made during and following episodes of participant observation on one acute ward and on a psychiatric intensive care unit over a period of 20 months. Acute wards have been subject to continuing criticism as both sites of care and treatment for mentally ill people and of nursing work. However, the practical operations of this social world remain largely unexamined. It is argued that without this understanding, mundane work methods will always be regarded as an impediment to work that is regarded as ,therapeutic' and therefore, of importance. The focus will be on phenomena named the ,virtual ward'. The research has demonstrated that the boundaries of nurses' responsibility reach far beyond the ward's spatial environment, both physically and communicatively. The complexity of the work that takes place within the virtual ward and the skills required for its successful completion are taken for granted, but are also a practical source of frustration. Anonymized examples from the practice site studied are used to illuminate the discussion. Working within the virtual ward is part of the messy reality of nurses' work. It is argued that understanding and respecting this reality is necessary if we are to be seriously and consistently ambitious about practice development. [source] Posttraumatic stress disorder and community violence: An update for nurse practitionersJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF NURSE PRACTITIONERS, Issue 10 2009MSN Staff Nurse, Sarah J. Blizzard RN Abstract Purpose: An update on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and community violence for nurse practitioners (NPs) and other healthcare providers is required. Data Sources: A review of current literature on PTSD related to community violence is presented as well as an overview of PTSD disorders. Conclusions: Violence takes place in our communities and in our larger social world every day. In the face of increasing disasters and violent events, there is growing concern over the overall impact of violence on mental health. PTSD, a type of anxiety disorder, may develop as a result of exposure to these events. Implications for Practice: NPs have an important role to play in recognizing and treating PTSD symptoms in persons following exposure to a severe psychological trauma. [source] "A Disease of Frozen Feelings":MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2010Ethically Working on Emotional Worlds in a Russian Orthodox Church Drug Rehabilitation Program In a Russian Orthodox Church drug rehabilitation program in St. Petersburg, drug addiction was often described as a disease of frozen feelings. This image suggests that rehabilitation is a process of thawing emotional worlds and, thus, allows the emotions to flow once again. In this article I argue that "frozen feelings" is better understood as the unsocial emotional worlds many drug users experience, and that rehabilitation in this church-run program particularly focuses on the cultivation of an emotional world that supports sociality. This is done, I argue, by means of ethically training rehabilitants to learn how to control and manage their emotional worlds, and in so doing, rehabilitants become new moral persons better able to live in the social world. [source] Giving Voice to Children's Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and PotentialsAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2007ALLISON JAMES In this article, I explore the lessons that the anthropological debates of the 1980s about writing culture might have for contemporary childhood research within anthropology and the social sciences more generally. I argue that the current rhetoric about "giving voice to children," commonplace both inside and outside the academy, poses a threat to the future of childhood research because it masks a number of important conceptual and epistemological problems. In particular, these relate to questions of representation, issues of authenticity, the diversity of children's experiences, and children's participation in research, all of which need to be addressed by anthropologists in their own research practices with children. Unless anthropologists do so, childhood research risks becoming marginalized once more and will fail to provide an arena within which children are seen as social actors who can provide a unique perspective on the social world about matters that concern them as children. [source] Pre-ICD Illness Beliefs Affect Postimplant Perceptions of Control and Patient Quality of LifePACING AND CLINICAL ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 3 2010CLAIRE N. HALLAS Ph.D. Background: The implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is a device used in the treatment of ventricular arrhythmias and the prevention of sudden cardiac death. However, the ICD has been associated with negative psychological outcomes such as anxiety, depression, panic, and poor quality of life (QoL). Recent studies suggest that the preimplantation psychology of patients, combined with their postimplantation perceptions about their cardiac condition, are greater contributory factors than their medical status to a poor outcome. Method: Our study employed an interview-based qualitative grounded theory methodology to explore whether medical history hetereogeneity and illness beliefs impact on the QoL of 13 ICD patients. Results: Perceived control emerged as the core category related to QoL with three subsystem themes related to control: (1) illness beliefs, attributions, and appraisals; (2) coping resources and strategies; and (3) the social world. Patients at risk for the poorest adaptation were younger (<45), unemployed, and with an acute onset cardiac history. These patients interpreted their illness as severe, utilized emotion-focused coping (e.g., avoidance of situations), and believed themselves to be socially excluded. Adjusted patients used proactive problem-focused coping (e.g., normalizing) and minimized consequences of the device. Conclusions: The data developed a theoretical model of QoL, which identified perceived control, illness beliefs, and coping impacting on adjustment. From our study, we have a wider understanding of the combination psychological issues relevant to ICD patients and are able to treat those at risk with interventions to promote adjustment in the context of a society that values health and well-being. (PACE 2010; 33:256,265) [source] My father's flags: psychoanalytic perspectives on being an American from the streets and the consulting room,PSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2004Rachael Peltz Abstract In this paper the author explores the generational object of the American flag in three periods of American history: the post World War Two era, the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the period immediately following 9/11. In each of these periods the flag holds a difference resonance. In the first it symbolized the assurance of a measure of freedom and social security; in the second it represented the imposition of American dominance abroad; and in the third the flag was used to justify a new and unnecessary war. The author argues that a new flag is needed, one that signifies a revitalized ,progressive patriotism' dedicated to reclaiming and rebuilding the institutions that have been eroded in this period of American history. The paper then shifts from the symbol of the flag to the psychoanalytic consulting room. The author maintains that psychoanalytic development and clinical theories now stop short of the examining the psychic relationship to the social world outside of the family and that in order to truly help people live fully in the ,place that they live', psychoanalysis must extend its theories and clinical interventions beyond the Oedipal triad to communal groupings the larger society. Copyright © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd [source] The cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theoryTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2006Gerard Delanty Abstract Critical cosmopolitanism is an emerging direction in social theory and reflects both an object of study and a distinctive methodological approach to the social world. It differs from normative political and moral accounts of cosmopolitanism as world polity or universalistic culture in its conception of cosmopolitanism as socially situated and as part of the self-constituting nature of the social world itself. It is an approach that shifts the emphasis to internal developmental processes within the social world rather than seeing globalization as the primary mechanism. This signals a post-universalistic kind of cosmopolitanism, which is not merely a condition of diversity but is articulated in cultural models of world openness through which societies undergo transformation. The cosmopolitan imagination is articulated in framing processes and cultural models by which the social world is constituted; it is therefore not reducible to concrete identities, but should be understood as a form of cultural contestation in which the logic of translation plays a central role. The cosmopolitan imagination can arise in any kind of society and at any time but it is integral to modernity, in so far as this is a condition of self-problematization, incompleteness and the awareness that certainty can never be established once and for all. As a methodologically grounded approach, critical cosmopolitan sociology has a very specific task: to discern or make sense of social transformation by identifying new or emergent social realities. [source] At the birth of second century sociology: times of reflexivity, spaces of identity, and nodes of knowledgeTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2000Göran Therborn ABSTRACT The sociology of the next century is likely to differ from that of the twentieth century. The current situation and the future prospects of sociology are assessed by spelling out the trajectory over the past century of sociology's predominant assumptions about the character and direction of the social world and of its own task of cognition. Sociology is located in three spaces of identity: a space of disciplines, a stage of everyday practice, and a space of imagination and investigation. From the cosmological, epistemological, and spatial trajectories some indications of a new, very different future of sociology are given. Finally, a way of preserving and developing the legacy of first century sociology is presented, in the form of nodes of knowledge, central to a ,typical' sociological approach to the social. [source] Are We all Natural Dualists?THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2001A Cognitive Developmental Approach The article takes to task the well-established anthropological claim that non-Western peoples are free from the traps of dualistic thinking. Although Vezo informants in Madagascar produce statements that could be used to support such a claim, experimental procedures that target their inferential reasoning reveal that they systematically differentiate between mind and body, between the biological processes that determine the organism and the social processes that shape personhood. This suggests that there is a significant discrepancy between people's explicit linguistic statements and their implicit theoretical knowledge. Moreover, developmental data show that such implicit theoretical presuppositions are essential to the production and transmission of cultural knowledge. Thus, Vezo children, who do not as yet differentiate between the biological mechanism of birth and the social mechanism of nurture, are still unable to grasp a salient aspect of Vezo culture, namely the causally integrated set of ideas that guide the way adults classify the social world. These findings have significant theoretical and methodological implications for the constitution of anthropological knowledge. [source] A Picture of the Floating World: Grounding the Secessionary Affluence of the Residential Cruise LinerANTIPODE, Issue 1 2009Rowland Atkinson Abstract:, A quarter century of financial deregulation, robber-baron corporatism and growing income polarisation has enabled the spatial partitioning of urban space into new and complex arrangements of micro-neighbourhood governance and privatism. These archipelagos of fortress homes and neighbourhoods increasingly lie outside the spaces of conventional state and city government. Yet while residential spaces of urban affluence have been unable to fully remove contact with the social diversity of the public realm, nomadic forms of super-affluence, flowing around a global,national urban system, have generated a form of networked extra-territoriality,a social space decoupled from the perceived risks and general dowdiness of the social world beneath it. This paper examines this space via the curious case of The World, a large residential cruise ship which, as its name suggests, roams the oceans and ports of the globe. Our title is taken from the name given to Japanese paintings of the new affluence and fantasy of life lived by the affluent and artists in late nineteenth century Japanese cities (O Ukiyo E, or pictures of the floating world). We suggest that The World forms a similarly disconnected realm, not only literally afloat, also detached from the reality of a world that has been strategically left behind. [source] Understanding ,resource' conflicts in Papua New GuineaASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 1 2008Glenn Banks Abstract: Papua New Guinea, with its heavy dependence on natural resources, limited economic development in the past two decades, poor record of governance and high-profile separatist conflicts such as the Bougainville civil war, appears to be an exemplar of the ,Resource Curse' theory , the notion that natural resources actively undermine economic development. Using a number of examples from a range of scales, this paper argues that what appear to be ,resource' conflicts in Papua New Guinea are actually better conceived as conflicts around identity and social relationships. The very different conceptualisation of natural resources in most Melanesian societies , as elements of the social world as much as any external environmental sphere , means that resources become a conduit for local social and political agendas and tensions to be expressed. The nature of traditional conflict in Melanesian societies is discussed as a guide to the better management and resolution of what appear to be ,resource' conflicts in Papua New Guinea. [source] Perceiving communion in the dyadic relationship of othersASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2006Sylvia Xiaohua Chen The present research took an ecological approach to explore a relational issue in social perception , are the perceived personality characteristics of dyad members and their perceived behavioural exchanges related to perceptions of that dyad's perceived level of friendship? To this end, observers reported on a dyad they knew well using an indigenous measure of personality perception and the Dyadic Behavioural Exchange Scale, combined with an adapted version of Hays' Friendship Observation Checklist. Perceived similarity of personality on the dimensions of application, emotional stability (negative) and helpfulness (negative) along with the perceived level of dyadic behaviour exchange were found to be additive predictors of perceived communion or friendship strength. This interplay of personal and interpersonal processes has demonstrated the application of methodological relationalism in the social domain, and broadened the ambit of social cognition to include knowledge of relationship units of which the observer is not a member, but which plays a part in his or her social world. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||