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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: In this paper, the authors use data from ethnographic fieldwork embedded within a multi-site mixed method evaluation to demonstrate how a systems approach can be applied in practice to evaluate the early stages of an area-based empowerment initiative -Big Local (funded by the Big Lottery Fund and delivered by Local Trust).
Abstract: It is now widely accepted that context matters in evaluations of the health inequalities impact of community-based social initiatives. Systems thinking offers a lens for uncovering the dynamic relationship between such initiatives and their social contexts. However, there are very few examples that show how a systems approach can be applied in practice and what kinds of evidence are produced when this happens. In this paper, we use data from ethnographic fieldwork embedded within a multi-site mixed method evaluation to demonstrate how a systems approach can be applied in practice to evaluate the early stages of an area-based empowerment initiative – Big Local (funded by the Big Lottery Fund and delivered by Local Trust). Taking place in 150 different local areas in England and underpinned by an ethos of resident-led collective action, Big Local offers an illustration of the applicability of a systems approach to better understand the change processes that emerge as social initiatives embed and co-evolve within a series of local contexts. Findings reveal which parts of the social system are likely to be changed, by what mechanisms, and with what implications. They also raise some salient considerations for knowledge generation and methods development in public health evaluation, particularly for the evaluation of social initiatives where change does not necessarily happen in linear or predictable ways. We suggest future evaluations of such initiatives require the use of more flexible designs, encompassing qualitative approaches capable of capturing the complexity of relational systems processes, alongside more traditional quantitative methods.
37 citations
TL;DR: The role of as discussed by the authors is to identify urban circumstances related to crime occurrence within the Greater Cairo Region, and to propose different ways to reduce these crimes, and the main districts were scrutinized according to social analysis, street-network pattern and land-use.
36 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that individual personalities, as measured by consistent individual differences in boldness behavior, strengthen with increasing familiarity and that these personalities can be disrupted by a change in group membership, and that social niche reestablishment carries a steep cost for both individuals and groups.
Abstract: The social niche specialization hypothesis predicts that animal personalities emerge as a result of individuals occupying different social niches within a group. Here we track individual personality and performance and collective performance among groups of social spiders where we manipulated the familiarity of the group members. We show that individual personalities, as measured by consistent individual differences in boldness behavior, strengthen with increasing familiarity and that these personalities can be disrupted by a change in group membership. Changing group membership negatively impacted both individual and group performance. Individuals in less familiar groups lost weight, and these groups were less successful at performing vital collective tasks. These results provide a mechanism for the evolution of stable social groups by demonstrating that social niche reestablishment carries a steep cost for both individuals and groups. Social niche specialization may therefore provide a potential first step on the path toward more organized social systems.
36 citations
TL;DR: The concept of functional differentiation is used to reformulate citizenship as inclusion in the political system and to describe the effects of the nation-State segmentation of political system for the evolution of citizenship as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The concept of functional differentiation is used to reformulate citizenship as inclusion in the political system and to describe the effects of the nation-State segmentation of the political system for the evolution of citizenship. In modern (functionally differentiated) society inclusion is system-specific, but not all-embracing. Inclusion in the political system is offered via two types of roles: the lay role of the voter and the professional role of the politician. Citizenship has not only a role, but also a status dimension. Citizenship is attributed to individuals by birth, either based on ius sanguinis or ius soli. In evolutionary perspective, nation-States have been particularly successful in including individuals in the political system by basing State rule on territoriality and by building up centralized State administrations. As a consequence, citizen-State relations are immediate, permanent, and exclusive. Nation-States also mediate the inclusion of individuals in social systems other than the political system. The nation-State as welfare state mediates inclusion in social systems by managing the risks of exclusion. With the emergence of large-scale cross-border migration and the advent of supranational forms of governance the risks of exclusion from nation-State based forms of inclusion increase not only for legal aliens, but for citizens as well. Thus the nation-State reflects the frictions between functional and segmentary differentiation of world society.
36 citations
01 Jan 1975
TL;DR: In this article, the authors treat the life course, age grading and age-linked demands for decisions as highly interrelated social forces operating in the development of human beings, and provide a more complex approach to the sociology of the life span than has been available to developmental researchers.
Abstract: Life-span developmental psychology intersects with sociology at the point where social systems, whether they be small groups or nations, deal with the biological and social maturation and aging of their individual members. The basic premise of this paper is that age is an important variable that cuts across all areas of social life, and that it does so primarily through three social mechanisms: the life course, the system of age grading, and age-linked demands for decision making. This paper treats the life course, age grading and age-linked demands for decisions as highly interrelated social forces operating in the development of human beings. The life course is portrayed as a crude road map with quite a few alternative routes for getting through life's various stages. The existence of the life course provides a conception of successive changes in the structure of an individual's life and an expection that these changes will occur. Age grading, is portrayed as a process that combines with sex to control the individual's access to various groups, roles, aspects of culture(including norms, attitudes, values, beliefs, and skills), social situations, and social processes. Decision demands provide the individual, and those who care about him or her, with motivation for imposing structure on what otherwise would be a chaotic system of sometimes contradictory age norms and age-linked opportunities. Decision demands are a prime normative mechanism for providing the movement that translates the static age grading system into the life course and ultimately into the biography of an individual. Finally, some social factors that shape the individual's responses to change are discussed. This paper represents a preliminary excursion into poorly charted territory. It contains many speculations intended to promote thinking and spark research in new directions. It is necessarily short on well-documented answers to the issues it raises. At the same time, it seeks to provide a more complex approach to the sociology of the life span than has been available to developmental researchers in the past.
36 citations