Social system

About: Social system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2974 publications have been published within this topic receiving 92395 citations.

Genetic Thinking in the Study of Social Relationships Five Points of Entry

Abstract: For nearly a generation, researchers studying human behavioral development have combined genetically informed research designs with careful measures of social relationships such as parenting, sibling relationships, peer relationships, marital processes, social class stratifications, and patterns of social engagement in the elderly. In what way have these genetically informed studies altered the construction and testing of social theories of human development? We consider five points of entry where genetic thinking is taking hold. First, genetic findings suggest an alternative scenario for explaining social data. Associations between measures of the social environment and human development may be due to genes that influence both. Second, genetic studies add to other prompts to study the early developmental origins of current social phenomena in midlife and beyond. Third, genetic analyses promise to shed light on understudied social systems, such as sibling relationships, that have an impact on human develo...

The Process of Secularization: A Post-Parsonian View

Abstract: Parsons' ideal-typical model of society depicts a religiously based moral order which is characterized by congruence within and between the cultural, structural, and personality levels of the social system. In attempting to apply this model to modern societies, however, Parsons encounters certain empirical and logical difficulties which are instructive for an understanding of the process of secularization. These difficulties, like secularization itself, are due to the process of differentiation within and between the levels of the social system. The empirical and logical difficulties led Parsons either to qualify his model of society as a religiously based moral order characterized by congruence, or to conclude that in interpreting the data paradoxes are unavoidable. It is argued that, if one takes the facts of differentiation not as departures from a basic model but as normative for modern society, one can construct a rough outline of the nature of a secular society. An attempt is made to sketch such an outline by drawing on the analysis which Parsons himself provides of differentiation in modern social systems. In conclusion, certain questions are raised for the sociology of religion.

Involving society in restoration and conservation

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that ecosystems often cannot be considered as separated from social systems, but that they should rather be seen as interacting, cross?scaled, coupled systems operating on multiple temporal and spatial scales. Humans have an increasing impact on ecosystems worldwide, while at the same time ecosystems are of critical importance for the functioning of human systems through ecosystems services. Often the term ?social ecological systems? is used in approaches that consider ecological and social systems as integrated systems. This paper aims to contribute to clarification of the different relationships between social and ecological systems. The focus is on the social side of ecological restoration and conservation, in particular on participation, indigenous knowledge, governance, and ethics. It is concluded that in restoration and conservation of social ecological systems more attention should be paid to the role of social systems and conditions on which ecosystems depend. It implies awareness of the importance of engaging stakeholders and fostering public debate and deliberation.

Elementary Structures in the Nepal Himalaya: Reciprocity and the Politics of Hierarchy in Ghale-Tamang Marriage

Abstract: The relationships organized by marriage and kinship in small scale societies have long been a mainstay of anthropological approaches to society. These approaches have, however, varied in contentious ways through the years. Some have stressed adherence to positive rules of marriage and behavior embedded in kinship terminologies (Levi-Strauss 1969 [1949]); others have stressed social organization as an outcome of statistical patterns of behavior (Murdock 1949). Still others have discussed social organization in terms of decision-making models, themselves structured by an embedded hierarchy of rules available to the conscious repertoire of social actors (Keesing 1967). More recent and promising analyses have attempted to join the improvisations of human agency with accounts that recognize the role of structured historical relationships and their strategic recreation (Bourdieu 1977). These are largely subsumed under the heading of practice approaches (Ortner 1984, 1989:11-18) and themselves encompass applications to various sets of data from historical (Bourdieu 1976) and secondary ethnographic sources (Collier 1988) to actual analyses of process among contemporary groups (Bradburd 1984). Among the advantages of practice approaches is an explicit concern with individual strategic behavior conducted within particular contexts of meaning and prestige rather than in response to an integrated, highly structured set of rules (Bourdieu 1976:119-120). This stress on defining particular local contexts does not exclude economic considerations from the understanding of practice although they are not given a priori analytic prominence. Moreover, where other approaches have stressed logical coherence, either in parallels between behavior and terminology or in normative systems, the practice perspective allows for the simultaneous existence of apparently contradictory motivations. Indeed, these points of tension provide actors with the alternatives that give flexibility to social systems. Leach recognized the importance of these inconsistencies in his work on the Kachin, suggesting that the "overall process of structural change comes about through the manipulation of these alternatives as a means of social advancement" (1977:8). Recent work demonstrates the pivotal position of marriage in recreating and extending political and domestic statuses in classless societies. Much of this work, however, seems to imply that any particular society will be defined by highly integrated ideal models which define the differences along which inequalities are structured. Jane Collier's (1988) three models of social inequality defined by marriage, for example, take social inequality as a necessary condition in all societies, but appear to assume single discourses of social interaction within any particular setting. Even Leach's recognition of

Virtual history: a socially networked pedagogy of enlightenment

Abstract: Background: Twenty-first-century undergraduates often find eighteenth-century culture difficult to access and, influenced by popular assumptions about the period in current media theory, characterise the century as individualist, underestimating the cultural significance of social networking in literary and political history. Purpose: This study set out to teach the history of social networking as culturally significant in the production of literary texts during the eighteenth century as well as to demonstrate the intellectual and compositional potential of today's social networking technologies. A virtual reconstruction of eighteenth-century London in Second Life and a semester project requiring the student recreation of 3D social spaces like coffee houses and gardens tested the uses of social networking tools to teach research methods and build disciplinary knowledge. Sources of evidence: Evidence of student learning outcomes is provided by three undergraduate courses in eighteenth-century culture, with...