Showing papers on "Embeddedness published in 1989"

Divided over Democracy: The Embeddedness of State and Class Conflicts in Contemporary Mexico

Abstract: WHAT explains state actors’ support for democratic political reforms, and how does this shape democratization? These questions have remained relatively unexamined in recent scholarship on democratization because most scholars assume that state actors are unwilling to relinquish political power through the introduction of democratic structures and practices. Yet this assumption is now being called into question. Several recent studies of Brazil and Argentina suggest that state actors do sometimes support democratic openings, and that their actions with respect to democratic reform can at times change the terms and nature of societal debate and struggle over democratization. 2 However, these recent studies also show that

Power, Intercorporate Networks, and "Strategic Bankruptcy"

Abstract: Strands of scholarly writing on corporate bankruptcy are scattered across the fields of economics, jurisprudence, political science, and policy analysis. These varied perspectives tend to share common weaknesses that point directly to adding a sociological voice to the debate. An analytic framework that emphasizes power, interorganizational ties, and the embeddedness of organizational action in a larger social structure yields new insights into "strategic bankruptcies," such as the Chapter 11 filing of the Manville Corporation. In turn, this perspective leads to a questioning of some of the basic assumptions concerning the role and operation of bankruptcy law.

Social psychology, contexts of aging, and a contextual world view.

Abstract: Two world views-mechanism and organicism-have dominated the youthful history of social psychological study of adult development and aging. Despite differences, both assume a stable, universal, transhistorical structure underlying social psychology; the goal of research is to discover and delineate such universals. A third world view, contextualism, begins with an assumption that action and thought are developed within relationships, which form the contexts for particular actions. It stresses the negotiated, constructed nature of "reality,"the historical embeddedness and unique quality of action as it unfolds, and the importance of negotiation making use of multiple perspectives. The approach and contextualist goals are significantly different from more typical approaches. Three areas of research in social gerontology and social psychology-environmental relations, attribution, and social relations in a social reconstruction/social breakdown model-illustrate a contextualist approach. Control and a "voice" in a negotiation of relationships and the characteristics of one's contexts are central to a contextual approach to all three.