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Social system
About: Social system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2974 publications have been published within this topic receiving 92395 citations.
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TL;DR: This paper found no statistically conclusive evidence that Democratic control of the federal government results in higher levels of total social spending and also showed that Republican control in the legislature results in a higher ratio of indirect to direct social spending.
Abstract: The United States has a divided social system in that both the public and private sectors provide citizens with benefits and services. The effects of political party control on public social policy are widely known. An area of study less understood is how partisanship influences private social benefits. I develop and test a theory that political parties’ choice between indirect and direct social expenditures is primarily motivated by a desire to alter the balance between public and private power in society. First, I find no statistically conclusive evidence that Democratic control of the federal government results in higher levels of total social spending. Additionally, my results show that Republican control of the legislature results in a higher ratio of indirect to direct social spending. These results have implications for determining the beneficiaries of social benefits and economic inequality.
41 citations
Book Chapter•
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this paper, Durkheim provided the first systematic theorisation of the historical role and social function of mass education in terms of social integration, and pointed out that society can only exist if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity.
Abstract: [Extract] Every contemporary society has ways of imparting knowledge, wisdom and values through organised systems, most often through public education systems. UNESCO's vision for education is stated as follows:
Education is at the heart of personal and community development, its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop all talents to the full and realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and the achievement of personal aims. (Delors 1996: 1)
The purpose of public education, which has undergone significant transformation over time, has its roots in the development of 'public morality' instituted through religious organisations (Glen 1988). With the separation of the state from religion, the state has increasingly begun to take on responsibility for the delivery of education. Durkheim provided the first systematic theorisation of the historical role and social function of mass education in terms of social integration. He wrote: 'Society can only exist if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity. Education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child, from the beginning, the essential similarities that collective life demands' (1956: 70). Durkheim left a legacy of linking education with social cohesion. Social cohesion was seen as the glue that keeps the members of a social system together. As industrialisation has become more advanced, contemporary education has moved away from strict notions of public morality to focus not only on the skills and knowledge base driven by the needs of a rapidly changing economy, but on the creation of national identity and citizenship within the nation-state.
41 citations
TL;DR: Luhmann, Niklas, and Suhrkamp as discussed by the authors described the society of society as a "society of society" which can be described using the same conceptual instrumentarium.
Abstract: Luhmann, Niklas. Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997. 2 vols. 1164 pp. DM 58.00. According to Niklas Luhmann, who died last November at the age of seventy, older societies had a leg up on modern ones. They had a place for an infallible outside observer-Godthough they conceded that theologians might be fallible in their interpretations of God's infallibility. Sociology, on the other hand, can't observe society from the outside and must formulate its statements about society from within society. Yet it tends to obscure this paradox behind theoretical controversies like structural/procedural, dominance/conflict, affirmative/critical. Systems theory, for its part, unfolds the paradox with the notion that the observer observes society from within a subsystem (in this case: sociology) of a subsystem (science) of the social system. Its descriptions are thus the "society of society." The first of Gesellschaft's five book-length chapters lays out its conceptual apparatus (system and environment, autopoiesis, first and second-order observations, and so forth). Most interesting here is the programmatic methodologische Vorbemerkung (36-43). Unlike an empirical methodology's attempt to establish a continuum between knowledge and reality, for Luhmann, a methodology ought to enable research to "surprise itself" (37). It can do this by stressing comparability. Though there are undeniable differences among, say, the economy, the family, and the education system, can it be mere coincidence that such heterogeneous societal subsystems display homogeneous structures, structures that can be described using the same conceptual instrumentarium? The remaining four chapters are on communication, evolution, differentiation, and self-description. Communication is the operation by which society produces and reproduces itself. Evolution is a process of variation, selection, and restabilization. Society's primary form of differentiation has shifted from segmentary to stratified to functional. These are all corridors that have echoed with Luhmann's footsteps. The virtue of Gesellschaft, in which the system reference is the entire society instead of a single societal subsystem, is that the corridors are all in the same building. Instead of treating in passing, as he does in most of his publications, the evolutionary significance of writing, the printing press, or electronic media, here Luhmann devotes a detailed, apercu-filled section to each. …
41 citations
TL;DR: A great deal of attention has been paid by social scientists and others to the problem of the theory of decisions as mentioned in this paper, which represents perhaps the most important single class of events, an event being defined as a kind of step function which separates one position of a social system from the next in point of time.
Abstract: In recent years a great deal of attention has been paid by social scientists and others to the problem of the theory of decisions. The decision is a basic concept of social systems, especially in social dynamics. It represents perhaps the most important single class of events, an event being defined as a kind of step-function which separates one position of a social system from the next in point of time. Some events are not the result of human decision at all, such as aging or accidents; some are the results of previous decisions, such as depreciation of a previously created capital structure; but when all these are removed, there remains an important category of events which constitute a deliberate change in state of a social system as a result of human action.
Address presented at the 27th National Meeting of the Operations Research Society of America, Boston, Massachusetts, May 7, 1965.
41 citations
TL;DR: The authors identify concepts of relationship, interaction, and network as useful in marketing, and see interaction as essential to buyer-seller decision-making, and identify relationships as useful for marketing.
Abstract: Marketing thinkers identify concepts of relationship, interaction, and network as useful. Edgar Crane (1972) saw interaction as essential to buyer-seller decision-making. David Ford, Kristian Molle...
41 citations