Social system

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

Age Grouping and Social Complexity

Abstract: In order to be sustainable, larger-scale social systems require containing nepotistic tendencies, which are potentially disruptive in multiple domains of social activities. Many formal institutions of our modern democratic states seem to facilitate such offsetting. The ethnographic records provide many examples of large tribes not relying on either formal institutional frameworks or strict hierarchies to articulate the diverging requirements of kin-group allegiance and broader social affiliations. How does greater social complexity emerge in such decentralized societies? Among the different informal solutions presented in the literature, we find an interesting one: age-set systems, which involve the grouping of coevals in cross-kin associations. An essential aspect of such systems is their ability to enable the swift neutralizing of the basic pull of nepotism without intensive investments in a formal institutional apparatus, as is observed in more complex and modern social systems. When great benefits can be obtained through social exchange in large cooperative networks, an age-based organization helps counter familistic preferences by creating new incentive structures.

An Empirical Illustration of Social Legitimation through Hegemony: Narratives of Students from a Community College on Seeking a Transferal in Hong Kong

Abstract: It is argued that social legitimation is possible through hegemony whereby people of a given social system see the system as legitimate through the naturalness of a way of thinking about issues of ...

Intelligent Technologies for Large-Scale Social System Sustainable Development

Abstract: Intelligent technologies based on concepts of self-organization, adaptation, and learning are proposed for control and sustainable development of the social system. Model of self-organizing evolve social system consists of several groups located in different regions is derived. Sufficient conditions about the definite direction of human capital migration between these social groups are obtained. That provides the possibility of formal definitions of concepts of human capital regional attractor and migration attractiveness, sectoral and general migration climate. A vector indicator of the attractiveness of a social group for human capital, as well as a matrix characterizing the migration climate for the entire community, is obtained. Also, adaptive technologies for straight control of the social system sustainable development are described. To avoid undesirable distortion of information it is proposed to use progressive adaptive mechanisms. Learning, self-organizing and expert control mechanisms for the sustainable development of the social system are characterized.

An Ecological Approach to Reducing the Social Isolation of People With an Intellectual Disability

Abstract: An ecological approach to understanding insecure attachments and social isolation among people with an intellectual disability is constructed using Gibson's (1979/1986) affordance-based theory. Although environmental affordances and individual limitations interact to limit the development of social competence, we believe that by focusing on the immediate environment, community-based approaches to helping people with an intellectual disability are often ignored, which increases the burden on individual caregivers. A more comprehensive strategy, which extends Gibson's theory of affordances, allows us to consider how higher level social systems influence the immediate environment and provides the context for understanding why successful change occurs when a multifaceted, holistic approach that works on several levels is adopted. Examining these systems within an ecological framework fundamentally redefines our thinking by shifting the focus from a person's disability to a more nuanced understanding of a pers...

The Emergence of Consensus

Abstract: The origin of population-scale coordination has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. Recently, game theory, evolutionary approaches and complex systems science have provided quantitative insights on the mechanisms of social consensus. However, the literature is vast and widely scattered across fields, making it hard for the single researcher to navigate it. This short review aims to provide a compact overview of the main dimensions over which the debate has unfolded and to discuss some representative examples. It focuses on those situations in which consensus emerges 'spontaneously' in absence of centralised institutions and covers topic that include the macroscopic consequences of the different microscopic rules of behavioural contagion, the role of social networks, and the mechanisms that prevent the formation of a consensus or alter it after it has emerged. Special attention is devoted to the recent wave of experiments on the emergence of consensus in social systems.