Outline of a Theory of Practice.
About: This article is published in Contemporary Sociology.The article was published on 1980-03-01. It has received 14683 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Practice theory.
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TL;DR: It is argued that norms of shame and blame and the labelling process with which they are bound up always arise within a structure nexus, and the salience of this attribution for health interventions in HIV/AIDS is addressed.
220Â citations
TL;DR: The authors found that trust, communication, and employee focus have significant direct and moderate indirect affects on organizational commitment, while Social Capital plays a central part in the reduction of organizational transaction costs.
Abstract: Organizational scientists have been investigating the role of human relationships vis-a-vis firm productivity for some years. Recently, Social Capital has been theorized to play a central part in the reduction of organizational transaction costs. We briefly position Social Capital among several theories claiming a role for interpersonal capital, review its theoretical nuances, and test this theoretical structure using a sample of 469 sales professionals from a leading medical services firm. Our findings indicate that trust, communication, and employee focus have significant direct and moderate indirect affects on organizational commitment.
220Â citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that implicit theories of agency acquired from cultural traditions can be integrated in social perceivers' judgments about individuals and groups, and that the more prominent the public representations of a specific conception in a society, the more chronically accessible it will be in perceivers" minds.
Abstract: Many tendencies in social perceivers' judgments about individuals and groups can be integrated in terms of the premise that perceivers rely on implicit theories of agency acquired from cultural traditions. Whereas American culture primarily conceptualizes agency as a property of individual persons, other cultures conceptualize agency primarily in terms of collectives such as groups or nonhuman actors such as deities or fate. Cultural conceptions of agency exist in public forms (discourses, texts, and institutions) and private forms (perceivers' knowledge structures), and the more prominent the public representations of a specific conception in a society, the more chronically accessible it will be in perceivers' minds. We review evidence for these claims by contrasting North American and Chinese cultures. From this integrative model of social perception as mediated by agency conceptions, we draw insights for research on implicit theories and research on culture. What implicit theory research gains is a bet...
219Â citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a re-examination of the concept of stigma as applied to health and illness is presented, where the author's hidden distress model of epilepsy is outlined and subject to critique under the headings of conceptual decisions, theoretical context, and biographical impact.
Abstract: This paper comprises a re-examination of the concept of stigma as applied to health and illness. It takes as its point of departure the author's hidden distress model of epilepsy posited in the 1980s. This model is outlined and subject to critique under the headings of conceptual decisions, theoretical context, and biographical impact. It is argued that although the model retains partial validity, its principal weaknesses are its neglect of important sociological questions more commonly posed since its formulation. An examination of these questions is followed by a consideration of stigma relations oriented towards a re-framing of stigma more appropriate for a changed, and changing, social world. A core contention is that interactionist theories of deviance and stigma alike focused almost exclusively on institutional and symbolic orders and paid scant attention to social structures and axes of power. The paper concludes with a provisional re-working of the hidden distress model of epilepsy that takes account of this contention.
219Â citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors synthesize the social science research on racially correlated disparities in education and propose a reformulation of the original question: "When are racial disparities in Education not due to discrimination?" They argue that the reformulated question is more likely to bring solutions to the race gap than the original one.
Abstract: In this article I seek to answer the question, "When are racial disparities in education the result of racial discrimination?" To answer it I synthesize the social science research on racially correlated disparities in education. My review draws from thte sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, and education literatures. I organize explanations into six categories: biological determinism, social structure, school organization and opportunities to learn, family background, culture, and the state. I arrive at three answers. The first is a definition: Racial discrimination in education arises from actions of institutions or individual state actors, their attitudes and ideologies, or processes that systematically treat students from different racial/ethnic groups disparately or inequitably. The second answer is that while distinguishing racial discrimination from disparities may be an interesting intellectual, legal, and statistical challenge, the conclusion probably is less meaningful than social scientists and policy makers might hope. The third answer follows from the first two. I propose the following reformulation of the original question: "When are racial disparities in education not due to discrimination?" I argue that the reformulated question is more likely to bring solutions to the race gap than the original one. Even if we conclude that discrimination does not cause racial disparities in education, we should not conclude that schools have no role in addressing them. If public schools do not address educational disparities, then who or what institution will?
219Â citations