Showing papers on "Social system published in 1992"

Social Stress: Theory and Research

Abstract: This chapter differentiates the stressful consequences of social organization from the stressful antecedents of psychological disorder. The pivotal distinction concerns whether the occurrence of stressors is viewed as socially determined, or as independent of social placement. Recent research is evaluated concerning both the social distribution of stress and social variation in response to stress. Two particularly productive areas of inquiry are also reviewed: self-efficacy as a mediator between social position and stress; and the intersection of macro- and micro-stress processes in economic and occupational spheres, with emphasis upon gender stratification. This review concludes that the occurrence of systemic stressors is not necessarily an indication of a social system run amok but may reflect instead the system functioning precisely as it is supposed to function.

Major Social Theories of Aging and their Implications for Counseling Concepts and Practice A Critical Review

Abstract: The article discusses the counseling implications and applications of a number of social theories of aging. It explores the effects of some of the rather distinct perspectives on aging that have emerged, beginning with the conceptualizations, research studies, and criticisms of disengagement theory, activity theory, and role theory, leading up to continuity theory and the liberation perspective. The social theory approaches to aging and the resulting empirical studies examined here have affinities with some of the existing perspectives of counseling concepts and counseling practice. The focus is on counseling perspectives aimed at helping elderly individuals maintain a satisfactory state of psychological well-being. Particular attention is given to the reciprocal influences among social systems, individual resources, and counselor effects in helping elderly clients cope with differential demands, internal pressures, and external constraints of the social environment. An integrative framework proposing con...

Central Life Interests: Creative Individualism in a Complex World

Abstract: Individuals in modern societies move among a variety of social encounters each day. Often contradictory behaviors are required to carry out these interactions. If behaviors and values are inconsistent from one setting to another, is a single self capable of adjusting adequately to such inconsistencies? Or is the total self made up of several selves, capable of effective performance in a complex and contradictory society? This volume addresses these fundamental concerns of social psychology and social organization. Dubin concludes that human beings have evolved socially so that there is an effective match between personality structures of modern persons and the advanced social systems in which they live. Dubin finds that people function competently in most institutions while investing little positive motivation in their performance. They reserve strong motivations for limited, self-chosen central life interests that define their core self. This results in a two-tier structure of living. The first level consists of self-chosen actions and values constituting a central life interest, geared toward self-realization. The second tier encompasses the bulk of social action as required behavior, facilitating institutional functioning, and maintaining social order. In today's modern world the individual occupies a more central position than ever. Modern citizens are freer than in the past to expand their ideas about themselves, encouraged by industrial and commercial institutions, while seeking, in their central life interests, the realization of their creative individualism. For the future, Dubin envisions a social system expanding opportunities for a broader range of central life interests. At the same time, required behaviors will have a more limited range, but will be enforced more rationally and imperatively in the interests of social order. "Central Life Interests "is an original and perceptive exploration of the linkages between persons and society. It will be of interest to sociologists, psychologists, economists, and administrative scientists.

Management of Technology and Moose on Tables

Abstract: Management of Technology, like Strategy and Marketing, is not a discipline, although studies in it may inform the underlying disciplines. MOT is an issue-driven field, focused on the process of knowledge generation and transformation within a social system. That social system can range from a product development team to a corporate function, a firm, an industry, a network of organizations and individuals, to even society at large. Several implications follow from this definition of management of technology.

A Structural Analysis of the Formation of a Network Organization

Abstract: The development of network organizations is increasingly necessary in a global information-oriented economy. The network organization is a highly decentralized and densely integrated social system ...

Social action and power

Abstract: Introduction Part I: In Search of Action 1. Action and Behaviour 2. Action and Social System 3. Rationality and the Theory of Action 4. Action and Labour 5. Action and the Subject-Structure Relation 6. Action and Communication 7. Where to find Action Part II: Action as A Borderline Concept 1. The Reduction of Action to Meaning 2. Observance of Rules and Relation to Rules 3. The Revival of the Philosophy of Praxis 4. Life-World and Anonimous Intentionality 5. The Ontology of Understanding and the Hermeneutical Circle 6. Existential Phenomenology and Hermeneutic 7. Hermeneutic and Pragmatism Part III: General Categories of Action 1. Action and Desire 2. Insecurity and Identity 3. Action as Involvement: Care and Responsibility 4. Action and Transcendence Part IV: Power 1. Sociality and Normative Order 2. Inner Power 3. Outer Power 4. Structural Power and the Production of Inequality 5. Structural Power and Social System: the Crises of Power 6. Theories of Power and Theory of Action Part V: Problems of Method 1. Hermeneutic and Scientific Discourse 2. The Phenomenological Analysis of Action 3. Social Research in a Hermeneutical Perspective Part VI: Some Conclusions.

Social work practice : a systems approach

Abstract: Social Systems and Their Environments Some Characteristics of open Systems Additional Characteristics of Open Systems System Change Systems Analysis of Some Social Work Practices A Systems Model of Conflict Resolution Implications and Conclusions. Appendices: The Systems Approach as a Model Outline of a Suggested One-Semester MA.

Counterpoints in the sociology of leisure

Abstract: In this article I develop three themes in the contemporary sociological study of leisure: (1) Leisure is complex, despite the deceptive appeal of simplification. (2) Leisure is social, embedded in the roles and conflicts of a divided social system. (3) Leisure is contextual without being determined. Leisure should not be trivialized; it is important just because it is complex, social and contextual.

Autopoiesis and social systems

Abstract: In this rejoinder to Zelený and Hufford's paper, “The application of autopoiesis in systems analysis: Are autopoietic systems also social systems?”,1 it is argued that applying autopoiesis, a biological concept, directly and literally to social systems in general, and to the family in particular, encounters practical difficulties of interpretation and adds no conceptual clarification or explanatory value to research in those fields. Additionally, and contrary to what Zelený and Hufford imply, social systems are not limited to cooperative units but include hierarchical command Systems as well. Discussion follows Luhmann's efforts to widen the concept of autopoiesis beyond its original biological connotations, thus making it applicable to the social sciences: social and psychic systems are not living systems, but meaning-using systems, based respectively on communication and consciousness as modes of meaning-based production rather than on individuals or even actions. Two concepts (self-observation and self...

The Fragility of Progress: An Interpretation of the Turn Toward Meaning in Eisenstadt's Later Work

Abstract: In its earlier phases, S. N. Eisenstadt's work revised functionalist theory by focusing on institutions and group interests and on the contingent nature of historical change. In the last decade, as his work has moved from social system to civilizational analysis, Eisenstadt has focused increasingly on the independent role of cultural codes and intellectual carrier groups as instigators of broad social change. In place of institutional strains it is now tensions internal to the cultural maps of diverse civilizations that initially instigate resistance and social movements. There has been a corresponding shift in Eisenstadt's view of modernity, which he now describes as an inherently fragile social order whose very premises stipulate explosive and endemic efforts to supersede the institutional and cultural frameworks of contemporary social life.

Concretizing the concept of social stress

Abstract: The concept of social stress, as adapted from Selye's work on biology, is insufficient to explain psychological functioning. To be useful, social stress must include enduring social practices characteristic of particular social systems that violate socially generated as well as biological needs. Some of these stressful events are gender role, poverty, and societal practices such as extreme competition, individualism, and materialism.

Social control in alternative religions: a familial perspective

Abstract: This article highlights the pervasiveness of family models in both the theological self-conceptions of alternative religious organizations and the sociological scholarship on them. We argue that these models provide useful directions for studying alternative religions, since both institutions frequently enmesh their members in constraining social environments that facilitate the occurrence of sustained and systematic abuse. Noteworthy, therefore, is the failure of alternative religion scholars to incorporate insights from standard family violence literature in their analyses of various religious groups. We outline three approaches to family violence literature -- social structural, social systems, and feminist -- that provide explanations about why members remain in abusive social relationships. These explanations shed light on the reasons why members remain in abusive alternative religions, and they establish clear conceptual links between the sociology of religion and the sociology of the family.

Understanding contemporary social movements

Abstract: Until recently, theories in the social sciences have paid little attention to grass-roots movements, especially those of a transnational character. Whether it is the Durkheimian and Parsonian sociological theory of "the social system" or the Boasian concept of culture, theorists have tended to focus instead on the nation-state or its various microcosms: formal organizations, rational bureaucracies, political parties and cultural systems. Thus little attention has been given to the social movement as part of the Weltanschauung of the social scientists.1 Since the 1960s, however, following the postwar boom, there have been several crises in socialist and capitalists nation-states, as well as a "crisis of representation" in the social sciences.2 As a result of these changes, the last two decades witnessed the emergence of new movements in the realms of social organization, and in various domains of social scientific inquiry. The growth of grass-roots "critical social movements" in "world regional locales as diverse as North America, Japan, Europe, China & Mexico"3 have paralleled the growth of new frames of reference in the social sciences, including postmodernism, "practice," "body," "language game, fstructuration," and tne renewed significance of "everyday life."4 To make sense of the contemporary human condition, it is useful to note these parallel crises in the "nation state" and in social science "representation," and the critical responses of various emerging social and theoretical movements to these crises.

Policy analysis and problem-solving for social systems: Toward understanding, monitoring, and managing complex real world problems

Abstract: Objectives and Overview Understanding the Complexity and Dynamic Nature of Real World Social Problems I Methodology Understanding the Complexity and Dynamic Nature of Real World Social Problems II Examples Monitoring and Evaluating a Problem's State and Course What is a Problem-Solution? Identifying Policies and their Relative Importance Limits to Problem-Solving Can More Specific and Detailed Policies be Identified? Obtaining Verifiable Predictive Inferences and Prognoses Brief Examples of Dynamic Structures of Complex Problems The Long-Term Solution of Complex Social Problems Themes of Policy Analysis and Problem-Solving - A Summary

Towards an integrated and synergized social policy: Concepts and strategies

Abstract: In first reviewing the most recent trends of social policy in Western Europe, the present article argues that social policy is best conceived of as a plural action system that enhances the interactions between community care and intermediary welfare organizations and does this within the framework of a welfare state working as an Observation‐Diagnosis‐Guidance system. Social policies for the 1990s can be better understood, planned, and implemented if seen as a new way for steering social systems.

Participation of the social partners in education policy: decision-making relating to training colleges in Portugal

Abstract: The problem of the role of agents defining education and training policies in Portugal lies in establishing policies for both education project organisation and management. It involves developing the education model of training colleges which are seen as a special area for developing relationships between the education system and the economic and social system. Training colleges involve agents not traditionally involved in the education system.

The Relation Between Mental and Social Systems

Abstract: In the following essay I shall try to elucidate the relation between mental and social systems. In my opinion this is one of the most interesting aspects of psycho-social work, because the interactional intersection is important for the understanding of dyadic relationships, for example in therapist-patient relationships, and also in institutional contexts (e.g. social-psychiatric networks (see Nissen, 1991)). I have focussed the following study on the mental system within the interpenetration of mental and social systems and show the necessity of psychodynamic processes for a complete understanding of the interpenetration; i.e. the reduction of the mental system to a cognitive or conscious system is not possible.

The Structure of Neofunctionalist Sociology

Abstract: This paper interprets the basic structure of “Neofunctionalist Sociology”.First, neofunctionalists have addressed the presuppositional problems (the action-order problems) of social systems specifying Talcott Parsons' presuppositional arguments of action systems. And they have analyzed the theoretical presuppositions of the sociological theorizings which appeared in the second phase of postwar sociodogy. Consequently, they point out that their theorizings “one-dimensionalized” by reductions and conflations. Therefore, neofunctionalists advocate the “multi-dimensional” sociological theory which can link micro and macro theorizings.Second, neofunctionalists have organized “research programs” specifying their presuppositional argument (the generalized discourse) and have been oriented to the empirical and concrete analyses of social orders. They are developing the multi-dimensional analyses of normative order, normative macro-sociology incorporating micro elements (action/agency) and conditional materialistic ones. In the 1990 s, neofunctionalism must be 'institutionalized' and 'internalized'.