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Showing papers on "Social system published in 2003"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The central hypothesis proposes the existence of risk perception networks--relational groupings of individuals who share, and perhaps create, similar risk perceptions and confirmed the hypothesis suggesting that social linkages in communities may play an important role in focusing risk perceptions.
Abstract: Risk perceptions have, to a great extent, been studied exclusively as individual cognitive mechanisms in which individuals collect, process, and form perceptions as atomized units unconnected to a social system. These individual-level theories do not, however, help explain how perception of risk may vary between communities or within a single community. One alternative approach is based on a network theory of contagion. This approach, emerging largely from organizational and community social network studies, suggests that it is the relational aspects of individuals and the resulting networks and self-organizing systems that influence individual perceptions and build "groups or communities of like-minded" individuals. These social units, it is argued, behave as attitude, knowledge, or behavioral structures. The study reported in this article tests one aspect of this theoretical perspective. The central hypothesis proposes the existence of risk perception networks--relational groupings of individuals who share, and perhaps create, similar risk perceptions. To test this idea, data were collected from individuals involved in a community environmental conflict over a hazardous waste site cleanup. The statistical analysis used a matrix of relational social linkages to compare with a matrix of individual risk perceptions The analysis confirmed the hypothesis suggesting that social linkages in communities may play an important role in focusing risk perceptions.

304 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Examining a unique and underexplored stage in the life cycle of a community networking project, the end of a networking trial, this article demonstrates how ICTs facilitate community participation and collective action by creating large, dense networks of relatively weak social ties and through the use of I CTs as an organizing tool.
Abstract: Critics have argued that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic observations from Netville, a 2-year community networking experiment, suggest that weak, not strong ties experience growth as a result of ICTs. By examining a unique and underexplored stage in the life cycle of a community networking project, the end of a networking trial, this article demonstrates how ICTs facilitate community participation and collective action (a) by creating large, dense networks of relatively weak social ties and (b) through the use of ICTs as an organizing tool.

198 citations


Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: This paper explored the changing ecology, political significance and cultural meaning of water in south India, focusing on the ancient and complex 'tank' irrigation systems of a coastal plains region, and developed an account of the interplay between social and political organization and the ecology of water flows.
Abstract: This volume uses long-term anthropological fieldwork, oral histories and detailed archival work to explore the changing ecology, political significance and cultural meaning of water in south India. Focusing on the ancient and complex 'tank' irrigation systems of a coastal plains region, the book develops an account of the interplay between social and political organization and the ecology of water flows. This begins with an account of the centrality of water resources to the organization of a pre-colonial warrior state in which power and the control of resources were decentralized, and goes on to explore the conflicts and contradictions that emerged within this social system of water use under colonial rule. In its ethnographic chapters, the book describes cultural practices and ritual systems that connect hydrology and power within and between inter-linked villages, and then examines contrasting levels of collective action in common property water use across a catchment, and underlying 'cultural ecologies'. The book's historical and social analysis of water as a medium of political and social relations challenges narrow economistic interpretations of common property resources. It argues for a more historically grounded understanding of landscapes, rights and rules or resource use. At the same time the book indicates the importance of water in the idioms and organizations of power, whether of kings, colonial bureaucrats or development institutions. Through this work the reader not only encounters the intricate technology, ecology and politics of water in south India, but also the colonial, ecological and development visions that have and continue to be the centre of important policy debates on the relationship between state and society.

195 citations


Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: The authors discusses aspects that are of particular interest to both theoretical and empirical organisation theory, and in doing so it enables students of organisations to acquire better appreciation of Luhmann's thinking.
Abstract: The anthology discusses aspects that are of particular interest to both theoretical and empirical organisation theory, and in doing so it enables students of organisations to acquire better appreciation of Luhmann's thinking.

142 citations


Book
01 Mar 2003
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the debate surrounding the construction of regions and presented eight case studies to illustrate how they are shaped and reshaped in a variety of different ways, finding that while some regions exhibit common patterns, there are significant variations indicating that there is no definitive model of regional development.
Abstract: Regions are increasingly recognised as a key aspect of economic change in Europe, not merely as geographic spaces but also as social systems. Their history, culture, institutions and patterns of leadership mould the way in which they adapt to European and global competitive challenges. This book reviews the debate surrounding the construction of regions and presents eight case studies to illustrate how they are shaped and reshaped in a variety of different ways. The authors find that while some regions exhibit common patterns, there are significant variations, indicating that there is no definitive model of regional development. This book offers a systematic comparison of eight distinct regions and stateless nations, each with its own historical identity, but which is constantly being rebuilt in changing economic and political conditions. Avoiding economic or cultural determinism, the authors show how region-builders can shape their own responses to global challenges to produce models of development reflecting differing understandings and social compromises. Culture, Institutions and Economic Development will be warmly welcomed by academics within the fields of regional studies, European studies and political science.

137 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Bathelt, H. as mentioned in this paper, Geographies of production: growth regimes in spatial perspective 1 - Innovation, institutions and social systems. Progress in Human Geography, 27(6), 763-778.
Abstract: The version of record [Bathelt, H. (2003). Geographies of production: Growth regimes in spatial perspective 1 – Innovation, institutions and social systems. Progress in Human Geography, 27(6), 763-778.] is available online at:http://phg.sagepub.com/content/27/6/763 [doi: 10.1191/0309132503ph462pr]

122 citations


Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Stryker as mentioned in this paper made the connection between social structure, meaning and action that drives structural symbolic interaction today, and he reasserted the ability of the basic symbolic interactionist principle to inform a powerful theoretical view of how social structure and individuals that exist within it effect and constitute one another.
Abstract: Arguably, one of the most significant theoretical accomplishments of the 1960’s was Sheldon Stryker’s (1968, 1980) linking of symbolic interactionist ideas with mainstream sociological concerns about social structure. In a sense, Stryker rescued the study of symbolic interaction from a somewhat counterproductive fascination with idiosyncratic, creative, atypical behavioral productions in ill-defined, unconstraining behavioral settings. He reasserted the ability of the basic symbolic interactionist principle—that society shapes self which then shapes social behavior—to inform a powerful theoretical view of how social structure and the individuals that exist within it effect and constitute one another. Following role theory in concentrating on the stable, reoccurring interactions in our social system, Stryker once again made social psychology relevant to the mainstream concerns of our discipline. By linking the role patterns with the internalized meanings that roles had for individuals, he provided the connection between social structure, meaning and action that drives structural symbolic interaction today.

85 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown, with examples ranging from pedestrian dynamics to social choice theory, economics, demography, and the formation of businesses and alliances, that modelling the behaviour of individuals and social and political institutions according to the viewpoint of statistical physics does seem capable of capturing some of the important features of social systems.
Abstract: One of the core assumptions in the study of complex systems is that there exist ‘universal’ features analogous to those that characterize the notion of universality in statistical physics. That is to say, sometimes the details do not matter: certain aspects of complex behaviour transcend the particularities of a given system, and are to be anticipated in any system of a multitude of simultaneously interacting components. There can be no tougher test of this idea than that posed by the nature of human social systems. Can there really be any similarities between, say, a collection of inanimate particles in a fluid interacting via simple, mathematically defined forces of attraction and repulsion, and communities of people each of whom is governed by an unfathomable wealth of psychological complexity? The traditional approach to the social sciences has tended to view these psychological factors as irreducible components of human social interactions. But attempts to model society using the methods and tools of statistical physics have now provided ample reason to suppose that, in many situations, the behaviour of large groups of people can be understood on the basis of very simple interaction rules, so that individuals act essentially as automata responding to a few key stimuli in their environment. This is clearly a challenging, perhaps even disturbing, idea. I will review some of the evidence in its favour. I will show, with examples ranging from pedestrian dynamics to social choice theory, economics, demography, and the formation of businesses and alliances, that modelling the behaviour of individuals and social and political institutions according to the viewpoint of statistical physics does seem capable of capturing some of the important features of social systems. These models reveal many of the characteristic elements displayed by other complex systems: collective dynamics that changes via abrupt shifts (phase transitions), metastability, critical phenomena and scale-free statistical variations. I will discuss what this implies for the notions of human free will and determinism.

82 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Abstract: Sustainability is generally associated with a definition by the World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: "... development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs ..." However, there is no mathematical theory embodying these concepts, although one would be immensely valuable in humanity's efforts to manage the environment. The concept of sustainability applies to integrated systems comprising humans and the rest of nature; the structures and operation of the human component (society, economy, law, etc.) must be such that they reinforce the persistence of the structures and operation of the natural component (ecosystem trophic linkages, biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, etc.). One of the challenges of sustainability research lies in linking measures of ecosystem functioning to the structure and operation of the associated social system. We review the nature of this complex system including its ecological, social, economic, and technological aspects, and propose an approach to assessing sustainability based on Information Theory that bridges the natural and human systems. These principles are then illustrated using a model system with an ecological food web linked to a rudimentary social system. This work is part of the efforts of a larger multidisciplinary group at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Risk Management Research Laboratory.

74 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the impact of boundaryless career patterns on organizational decision-making and show that observing an employee's life in terms of career generally facilitates organizational decision making by what they call the evaluative capacity of career.
Abstract: Research on careers has recently discovered the growing relevance of inter-organizational, boundaryless careers. The new paradigm of career studies that goes hand in hand with the concept of boundaryless careers, though, has not yet paid very much attention to the impact of new career patterns on how organizations function. To fill this gap, the paper analyses the effects of boundaryless careers on organizational decision making. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems, we elaborate how observing a (potential) employee's life in terms of career generally facilitates organizational decision making by what we call the evaluative capacity of career. Further, the paper shows in what respect employing this mode of observation is rendered more difficult by the emergence of boundaryless careers. Based on the theoretical framework developed, we finally deduce and apply a scheme of classification of possible reactions to the organizational problems caused by boundaryless careers. In sum, the paper pro...

72 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze 80 cyber-interviews, 52 emails, 70 homepages and 80 entries on message boards to map micro-emancipatory consumption discourse and practices and build an understanding of the moderato social processes that construct Napster as an emancipative consumption community.
Abstract: Aggregating more than 10 million users in the first six month period and attaining a growth rate of 200,000 new subscribers in a single day, the online music file sharing service Napster.com became the noisy center of a new social reality that struck terror into even the most sturdy of music entertainment executives. In this exploratory netnographic analysis of Napster consumption meanings, we analyze 80 cyber-interviews, 52 emails, 70 homepages and 80 entries on message boards to map micro-emancipatory consumption discourse and practices and build an understanding of the moderato social processes that construct Napster as an emancipative consumption community. We introduce the idea of the social form of emancipation. A social form of emancipation is theorized as an operationally closed, self-referential and consumption-related social system, which, by social communication, is engaged in a permanent process of ensuring a social distinction between itself and its environment (which is the only device to be used to reproduce itself in the course of time). Consumer emancipation of consumption-related yet market-distanced social entities is developed and explored as a process conditioning communication about ideologies, meanings, norms, and values in the social form of emancipation. Our findings reveal that consumer emancipation is the reassurance of social difference through communication, and the implicit self-paradoxification of centering into the cultural crosshairs of the social form of emancipation those entities it wishes to distance from. By exploring and problematizing the distinctions between one particular social form of emancipation “Napster” and its environment, the present work helps consumer researchers better understand consumer emancipation as a conviction to difference, a difference which is being cultivated through social communication (autopoiesis). The specific autopoietical processes at Napster create the social form of emancipation as a space of choice against modern society’s conviction to inclusion with respect to music corporations, commodification and copyright. The work concludes that social communication, understood as the concatenation of operations of drawing distinctions and observations of these operations performed by drawing other distinctions, is an important yet equally under-researched dimension of consumer emancipation. “What record companies don’t really understand is that Napster is just one illustration of the growing frustration over how much the record companies control what music people get to hear, over how the air waves, record labels and record stores, which are now all part of this ‘system’ that recording companies have pretty much succeeded in establishing, are becoming increasingly dominated by musical “products” to the detriment of real music. Why should the record company have such control over how he, the music lover, wants to experience the music? From the point of view of the real music lover, what’s currently going on can only be viewed as an exciting new development in the history of music. And, fortunately for him, there does not seem to be anything the old record companies can do about preventing this evolution from happening”

Book
01 Jul 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight specific social and cultural conditions that can enhance the communication, use and creation of knowledge in a society and propose new conceptual frameworks for knowledge-based economies.
Abstract: Knowledge is a product of human social systems and, therefore, the foundations of the knowledge-based economy are social and cultural Communication is central to knowledge creation and diffusion, and Public Policy in Knowledge-Based Economies highlights specific social and cultural conditions that can enhance the communication, use and creation of knowledge in a societyThe purpose of this book is to illustrate how these social and cultural conditions are identified and analysed through new conceptual frameworks Such frameworks are necessary to penetrate the surface features of knowledge-based economies - science and technology - and disclose what drives such economiesThis book will provide policymakers, analysts and academics with the fundamental tools needed for the development of policy in this little understood and emerging area

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the concept of trust put forth by Niklas Luhmann and Talcott Parsons and show the outline of trust and its connections to autopoietic systems theory.
Abstract: This article explores the concept of trust put forth by Niklas Luhmann and Talcott Parsons. It shows the outline of Luhmann's theory of trust and its connections to his autopoietic systems theory. It also deliberates upon the role of trust in the Luhmannian research of future society as well as examines the role of trust in risk society and shows why norms, values and familiarity play only a peripheral role in today's society. Trust is a way to control everyday interaction of the future. But what are the challenges and limits of Luhmann's concept of trust?

Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a concise overview of Germany's public social system, and discuss federal relations inasmuch they have a bearing on the delivery of public assistance benefits.
Abstract: This paper follows the framework developed in past OECD studies for analysis of social assistance programmes that aim to provide low-income clients with adequate financial support while simultaneously promoting their reintegration into labour market and, where necessary, mainstream society. Increasingly, jobless citizens in Germany rely on social assistance: a role for which the programme was never intended. Indeed, there are two other programmes that serve the unemployed in Germany, and this paper discusses social assistance in the context of its relationship to Unemployment Insurance and Assistance benefits.First, this study provides a concise overview of Germany’s public social system, and discusses federal relations inasmuch they have a bearing on the delivery of public assistance benefits. The study discusses the nature of benefits available to social assistance clients in general, and related support measures for particular client-groups, for example, lone parent families ...

Book ChapterDOI
02 Sep 2003
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the micropolitics of therapy management and are organized around two case histories that lead us to consider the social relations of sickness in the context of poverty and social transformation.
Abstract: Charles Leslie was the founding editor of the University of California book series entitled “Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care”. The first book in that series was John Janzen’s (1978) ethnography The Quest for Therapy: Medical Pluralism in Lower Zaire, in which he introduced the concept of the therapy management group. In the foreword to this book, Leslie (1978) encouraged anthropologists to study medical systems as social systems, not just systems of knowledge and treatment practices.1 The study of medical systems demanded ethnographic inquiry into how meaning was negotiated among the afflicted, concerned others, and practitioners as an illness progressed through time. It also required careful consideration of the broader social and political context in which medicine was practiced and illness experienced. It is in the spirit of such an inquiry that I return to an examination of the social relations of therapy management, a concept in need of refinement. While other essays in this volume attend to the relationship between state politics and therapeutic practice (e.g., Adams and Ferzacca) , This essay focuses on the micropolitics of therapy management and is organized around two case histories that lead us to consider the social relations of sickness in the context of poverty and social transformation.2

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a new concept of a farm enterprise as a self-organizing social system, which combines ideas from Actor-Network theory (ANT) and Luhmann's theory of social systems, can serve as a useful ontological platform for understanding a farm-enterprise as an entity independent of a scientific observer.
Abstract: The growing attention to sustainable food production and multifunctional agriculture calls for a multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary research and development perspective on farming, which is able to grasp the environmental, social, technical, and financial aspects of a farm and the dynamic relationship between the farm enterprises and the surrounding world. Our thesis is that a transdisciplinary approach needs to build on a working ontology that goes beyond the epistemology of each discipline and that is not just pieced together of the ontologies connected to these different epistemologies. Based on a review of three prevailing theoretical frameworks within the field of agro-sociology: The farming styles approach, the Bawden approach, and Conway’s agroecosystem approach, we argue that these existing theories do not offer such a theoretical framework. The claim of this paper is that a new concept of a farm enterprise as a self-organizing social system, which combines ideas from Actor-Network theory (ANT) and Luhmann’s theory of social systems, can serve as a useful ontological platform for understanding a farm-enterprise as an entity independent of a scientific observer. In this framework, each farm is understood as a self-organizing node in a complex of heterogeneous socio-technical networks of food, supply, knowledge, technology, etc. This implies that a farm has to be understood as the way in which these network relationships are organised by the farm as a self-organizing social system. Among all the different possible ways in which to interact with the surrounding world, the system has to select a coherent strategy in order to make the farming processes possible at all. It will be discussed how this framework may add to the understanding of the continuous development of a heterogeneity of farm strategies and contribute to a more comprehensive view of the fields of regulation and extension.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that interaction networks are far superior to cultural area and regional approaches for bounding human social systems, and they discuss methodological and conceptual issues in bounding humans social systems and their interactions with the natural environment.
Abstract: We contend that interaction networks are far superior to cultural area and regional approaches for bounding human social systems. This article discusses methodological and conceptual issues in bounding human social systems and their interactions with the natural environment and examines several recent innovations in information technology that facilitate the study of interaction networks.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that text plays a key role in the organization of social systems across timescales and in the widest extension of social networks, and they identify emerging forms of social control in the era of globalization.
Abstract: One of the fundamental claims of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is that texts play a constitutive role in social structuration. In this chapter I will develop a theoretical perspective that tries to understand this claim in both a material and a semiotic sense. Recent research on complex systems shows that typically they are organized on and across multiple timescales. In the particular case of social-ecological systems, technologies of social organization are mediated by semiotically significant material artifacts, which persist or are functionally reproduced in long-timescale processes but are created and used on the much shorter timescales of human semiotic activity. Texts, as instances of such material-semiotic artifacts, play a key role in the organization of social systems across timescales and in the widest extension of social networks. I will argue here that this role for texts of all kinds (including those written in the grammars of architecture and bodily habitus) makes them uniquely valuable as indices of historically changing modes of social control. Extrapolating from contemporary developments in textuality (for example, hypertexts and web-surfing), I try to identify emerging forms of social control in the era of globalization. Postmodern texts and social practices already exist; they mediate new forms of social control in new ways.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical response to John Minger's recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’ is presented. But it draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhm...
Abstract: This article is a critical response to John Minger's recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhm...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Niklas Luhmann was one of the most innovative and productive social theorists of the 20th century as mentioned in this paper, who developed a comprehensive and distinctive social theory and his ideas have enrichedmany discipli...
Abstract: Niklas Luhmann was one of the most innovative and productive social theorists of the 20thcentury. He developed a comprehensive and distinctive social theory and his ideas have enrichedmany discipli ...

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the issue of training and development in Spain and provide an outline of relevant institutions, networks and sources with regard to the issue, showing how a new constituency of interests have emerged and coalesced.
Abstract: The article will address the issue of training and development in Spain. First, the general economic and labour market context will be outlined. Second, the public policy context of training and development and the institutions of regulation will be considered in terms of the way challenges have been responded to by the state and social actors, with an emphasis on developments in lifelong learning and the reality of corporate strategy and practice. Finally, the article will provide an outline of the relevant institutions, networks and sources with regard to the issue of training and development, showing how a new constituency of interests have emerged and coalesced. There is a tendency in the literature and debates related to training and development to speak in terms of binarisms. On the one hand, there are social systems that are deemed to exalt the virtues of training and create high levels of economic investment and political involvement in this area, whilst there are others who fail both to prioritise it and develop extensive systems of social engagement. These types of approaches tend to have difficulty dealing with some of the more complex realities of training, and the myriad of typologies and hybrids, that constitute national training systems such as Spain's.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the issue of training and development in Spain and provide an outline of relevant institutions, networks and sources with regard to the issue, showing how a new constituency of interests have emerged and coalesced.
Abstract: The article will address the issue of training and development in Spain. First, the general economic and labour market context will be outlined. Second, the public policy context of training and development and the institutions of regulation will be considered in terms of the way challenges have been responded to by the state and social actors, with an emphasis on developments in lifelong learning and the reality of corporate strategy and practice. Finally, the article will provide an outline of the relevant institutions, networks and sources with regard to the issue of training and development, showing how a new constituency of interests have emerged and coalesced. There is a tendency in the literature and debates related to training and development to speak in terms of binarisms. On the one hand, there are social systems that are deemed to exalt the virtues of training and create high levels of economic investment and political involvement in this area, whilst there are others who fail both to prioritise it and develop extensive systems of social engagement. These types of approaches tend to have difficulty dealing with some of the more complex realities of training, and the myriad of typologies and hybrids, that constitute national training systems such as Spain's.

Journal ArticleDOI
Jin Nam Choi1
TL;DR: Choi et al. as discussed by the authors conceptualized the roles of context in the process of achieving the goal of the innovation, and offered dimensions to be considered in the investigation of differentiated routes linking context to targeted behavioral outcomes.
Abstract: Jin Nam Choi McGill UniversityABSTRACT Social innovations are designed and implemented to make positive changes in social systems and individual and collective behavior. The implementation of this type of innovation inevitably involves interactive dynamics among variables residing at different levels of analysis, such as individuals, groups, and organizations. Framing the implementation of social innovation as a multilevel phenomenon, this article focuses on top-down influence processes (e.g., group to individual, teacher to students) that have often been presumed to operate in various social innovations and that were tested in J. H. Kallestad and D. Olweus’s (2003) study. Specifically, this article proposes a way to conceptualize the roles of context in the process of achieving the goal of the innovation, and offers dimensions to be considered in the investigation of differentiated routes linking context to targeted behavioral outcomes. Through a more systematic incorporation and examination of the multilevel dynamics of social innovations, theory and practice as related to their implementation may benefit substantially.

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, a sustainable development generally means mot not only the relations between the natural environments and social development but also the equality and efficiency of social activities, the coordination among different social systems and the changes in ways of human life.
Abstract: We must work creatively in order to carry out sustainable development and promote all around social Development, in all its aspects. Sustainable development generally means mot only the relations between the natural environments and social development but also the equality and efficiency of social activities, the coordination among different social systems and the changes in ways of human life. Sustainable development needs innovation in knowledge .technology and management .which implement each other. Innovation plays an important part in social development .It can change people's ways of thinking and behaving, arouse people's creative fervor. As the determining factor for science and technology advance, it directly push forward social reform and promote sustainable development in social economy.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an innovation is formed in the social system through the diffusion process, and artifacts that embody the innovation alter their aspects considerably, such as the internal and external influence factors and the population of potential adopters.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that various types or displays of social inequality may have been shaped by quite different phenomena Different mechanisms of structuring or institutionalization of hierarchical systems could act in parallel in the same culture (or society) or could be specific to particular cultures in particular periods and circumstances.
Abstract: The author argues that various types or displays of social inequality may have been shaped by quite different phenomena Different mechanisms of structuring or institutionalization of hierarchical systems could act in parallel in the same culture (or society) or could be specific to particular cultures in particular periods and circumstances These mechanisms could have their foundations in the sphere of material production and property relations as well as outside this sphere In the last case, monopolization of special knowledge and occupations (often closely connected with ideology) by certain social groups is a powerful force that often shaped and still shapes social inequality To illustrate the idea, data on some hunter-gatherer societies where such mechanisms of social differentiation existed in the most pure and uncomplicated forms are used

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors define structural globalization as the increasing spatial scale and intensity of interaction networks and argue that interaction networks are far superior to cultural area and regional approaches for bounding human social systems and examine several recent innovations in information technology that facilitate the study of inter-action networks.
Abstract: The historical trajectory of structural globalization is an attribute of the mad­ ern interstate system and earlier systems of societies. We define structural globalization as the increasing spatial scale and intensity of interaction net­ works. We contend that interaction networks are far superior to cultural area and regional approaches for bounding human social systems. This article dis­ cusses methodological and conceptual issues in bounding human social sys­ tems and their interactions with the natural environment and examines several recent innovations in information technology that facilitate the study of inter­ action networks. A debate has waxed and waned over how to bound social systems in time and space for purposes of telling human histories and explaining social change (Chase-Dunn & Hall, 1997; Mann, 1986; Parsons, 1966; Tilly, 1984; Wallerstein, 1974). Sociospheres have long interacted with biospheres and the geosphere, and humans have long painted their stories with attention to the significance of place and the natural world. Theorists of the emer­ gence of complex and hierarchical social systems have treated or ignored geographical and biological context depending on their mix of material determinism on the one hand and social and cultural constructionism on the other: Our theoretical approach can be characterized as institutional materialism: a combina­ tion of focusing on the historical evolution of humanly constructed institutions (e.g. lan­ guage, kinship, production technology, states, money, markets) and the changing ways that humans interact with their biological and physical environment. This theoretical frame­ work deploys what has been called the comparative world-systems approach to bounding social systems. Rather than comparing societies with one another we compare systems of human societies (or intersocietal systems) and these are empirically bounded in space as interaction networks - bilateral or multilateral regularized exchanges of materials, obliga­ tions, threats, and information. World-systems are human interaction networks that display oscillations of expansion and contraction (i.e. pulsation), with occasional large expansions that bring formerly sepa­ rate regional systems into systemic intercourse with one another. These waves of expan

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the most recent figures relating to actual and future social protection expenditure in the EU, disaggregated according to function and showing significant differences between gross and net figures.
Abstract: Governments and social partners in the European Union (EU) look for ways and means to adapt welfare systems to new needs, to keep expenditure under control, and to find alternative and supplementary financial resources in order to cope with future financial commitments. The EU is actively involved in the search for solutions to these common problems. It becomes more and more evident that only an active economic, budgetary, taxation and social policy mix can provide a solid base for safeguarding social systems. The author presents the most recent figures relating to actual and future social protection expenditure in the EU, disaggregated according to function and showing significant differences between gross and net figures. Attention is also paid to coverage and replacement rates of social benefits and to the availability of social infrastructures. The article then shows the shifts in implicit tax rates on labour in comparison with the rate on other factors. The conclusion outlines a European trade union view on the future of social protection in Europe and suggests possible issues for social benchmarking.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: A comparative social research by social anthropologists and ethnologists is uniting behind the latter standpoint as mentioned in this paper, which investigates specific forms of the embedding of violence and institutions that regulate conflicts.
Abstract: Research on violence is dominated by two major options: the etiological approach, or search for causes, which attributes violence to particular (overt or latent) individual failings and conflicts; and the analysis of the system of violence as a part of the social system. This latter approach investigates specific forms of the embedding of violence and institutions that regulate conflicts. Increasingly, comparative social research by social anthropologists and ethnologists is uniting behind the latter standpoint (cf. Abbink, 1994a, 1994b; Bollig, 1991; Elwert, Feuchtwang, & Neubert, 1999; Halbmayer, 2000; Orywal, 1996; Schlee, 2000; Schmidt & Schroeder, 2001).