Social change

About: Social change is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 61197 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1797013 citations.

Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation

Abstract: This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities – and thus the potential for transformational adaptation – can be supported.

New social movement theories

Abstract: This article offers an overview and assessment of the utility of new social movement theories for analyzing contemporary forms of collective action. The article beings with a brief overview of the ...

Social Capital and Community Effects on Population and Individual Health

Abstract: Social capital refers to those features of social relationships--such as levels of interpersonal trust and norms of reciprocity and mutual aid--that facilitate collective action for mutual benefit. Social capital is believed to play an important role in the functioning of community life across a variety of domains, ranging from the prevention of juvenile delinquency and crime, the promotion of successful youth development, and the enhancement of schooling and education to the encouragement of political participation. More recently, researchers have begun to apply the concept to explain variations in health status across geographic localities. In preliminary analyses, the higher the stocks of social capital (as indicated by measures of trust and reciprocity in social surveys), the higher appear to be the health achievement of a given area. Strengthening the social capital within communities may provide an important avenue for reducing socioeconomic disparities in health.

Parents and Peers in Social Development: A Sullivan-Piaget Perspective

Abstract: Most studies of social development in children have relied on the assumption that adults' instructions to children pass on knowledge of the rules of behavior which govern and preserve society. In this volume, James Youniss argues that the child's relations with his or her friends and peers make a distinctive and critically important contribution to social development. While the child's relations with parents and other adults provide a sense of order and authority, peer relations are a source of sensitivity, self-understanding, and interpersonal cooperation. Following a discussion of the views of Harry Stack Sullivan and Jean Piaget, whose theories are synthesized in Youniss's perspective, Youniss presents a wealth of empirical data from studies in which children describe their own views of their two social worlds.