Showing papers on "Social theory published in 2015"

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Abstract: NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation

Abstract: This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities – and thus the potential for transformational adaptation – can be supported.

Foucault and the Government of Disability

Abstract: "Foucault and the Government of Disability" is the first book-length investigation of the relevance and importance of the ideas of Michel Foucault to the field of disability studies-and vice versa. Over the last thirty years, politicized conceptions of disability have precipitated significant social change, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, the redesign of urban landscapes, the appearance of closed-captioning on televisions, and the growing recognition that disabled people constitute a marginalized and disenfranchised constituency. The provocative essays in this volume respond to Foucault's call to question what is regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical, and liberating, while they challenge established understandings of Foucault's analyses and offer fresh approaches to his work. The book's roster of distinguished international contributors represents a broad range of disciplines and perspectives, making this a timely and necessary addition to the burgeoning field of disability studies. "A serious step forward not only for disability studies but for the range of theoretical positions associated with Foucault. "Foucault and the Government of Disability" will provide for years to come a basis for rethinking Foucault's impact on social theory as well as a foundation for active political struggle against the oppression of people with disabilities."-- Tobin Siebers, University of Michigan "Testimony to the enduring power of Foucault's work to stimulate new ways of thinking about and resisting the pernicious effects of normalization within modern societies... Critically engaging Foucault as well as received interpretations of his work, this collection is intended for readers of Foucault as well as critical disability theorists. It delivers on its promise to stimulate us to think differently about both disability and Foucault." -- Jana Sawicki, Williams College Shelley Tremain teaches in the Philosophy Department of the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

Decoloniality as the Future of Africa

Abstract: Decoloniality is not only a long-standing political and epistemological movement aimed at liberation of (ex-) colonized peoples from global coloniality but also a way of thinking, knowing, and doing. It is part of marginalized but persistent movements that merged from struggles against the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, neo-colonialism, and underdevelopment as constitutive negative elements of Euro-North American-centric modernity. As an epistemological movement, it has always been overshadowed by hegemonic Euro-North American-centric intellectual thought and social theories. As a political movement, it has consistently been subjected to surveillance of global imperial designs and colonial matrices of power. But today, decoloniality is remerging at a time when the erstwhile hegemonic Euro-North American-centric modernity and its dominant epistemology are experiencing an epistemological break. This epistemic break highlights how Euro-North American-centric modernity has created modern problems of which it has no modern solutions and how theories/knowledges generated from a Euro-North American-centric context have become exhausted if not obstacles to the understanding of contemporary human issues. This essay introduces, defines, and explains the necessity for decoloniality as a liberatory language of the future for Africa.

Educating for Futures in Marginalized Regions: A sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations

Abstract: ‘Raising aspirations’ for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called ‘knowledge economies’. However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political conditions for aspiring, based in structural changes associated with globalization. Drawing conceptually on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Arjun Appadurai and authors in the Funds of Knowledge tradition, this article theorizes two logics for aspiring that are recognizable in research with young people and families: a doxic logic, grounded in populist–ideological mediations; and a habituated logic, grounded in biographic–historical legacies and embodied as habitus. A less tangible third ‘logic’ is also theorized: emergent senses of future potential, grounded in lived cultures, which hold possibility for imagining and pursuing alternative futures. The article offers a...

Conceptualizing connections Energy demand, infrastructures and social practices

Abstract: Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this paper we focus on the task of understanding and analysing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together we suggest that forms of car-dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow.

Creativity as a Sociocultural Act.

Abstract: The present article introduces, develops, and illustrates a perspectival framework for the creative process drawing on current developments within the cultural psychology of creativity and the social theory of George Herbert Mead. The creative process is conceptualized as a form of action by which actors, materially and symbolically, alone and in collaboration with others, move between different positions and, in this process, imaginatively construct new perspectives on their course of action which afford greater reflexivity and the emergence of novelty. The article begins by locating this approach within a broader conception of distributed creativity and the role of difference—social, material, and temporal—for creative expression. It then outlines four key premises of the perspectival framework before illustrating it with the help of a subjective camera study of a painter's creative activity. In the end, some important questions are raised concerning the theoretical and practical implications of this new model.

Dictionary of Critical Realism

Abstract: Preface, Contributors and Contributions, List of Figures, HOW TO USE THIS BOOK, Cross References, References and Quotations, Citation of Works by Bhaskar, Citation of Works by Other Authors, General Abbreviations, Symbols, Abbreviations Used by Critical Realist Authors, Critical realism, The causal-axiological chain (MELD[ARA] schema), Domains, The hermeneutical circles, Dialectic, Epistemological dialectic, General, DICTIONARY ENTRIES, Works by Roy Bhaskar, Other Works Referred to in the Text Contributors and Contributions: Alexander, David (University of Technology, NSW), brain Archer, Margaret S. (University of Warwick) morphogenesis/morphostasis Blom, Bjoern (Umea University), social work (with Stefan Moren) Bowring, Bill (London Metropolitan University), legal studies Brannan, Matthew (Keele University), ethnography Brereton, Derek P. (University of Michigan), anthropology evolution of society evolutionary psychology Brown, Andrew (University of Leeds) economics Byrne, David (Durham University) chaos/complexity theory (with David L. Harvey) Calder, Gideon (University of Wales, Cardiff), ethics philosophical anthropology sociology of the body Carter, Bob (University of Warwick), race, racism, ethnicity Clark, Alexander M. (University of Alberta), nursing Clarke, Graham (University of Essex), psychoanalysis Cruickshank, Justin (University of Birmingham), essentialism Dean, Kathryn (University of London), medium theory needs reason Downward, Paul (Loughborough University), method, quantitative D'Souza, Radha (University of Waikato), colonialism, neo-colonialism, post-colonialism emancipatory movements Ekstroem, Mats (OErebro University) media studies Engholm, Par (OErebro University), irrealism pragmatism TMSA totality Fairclough, Norman (University of Lancaster), discourse analysis Faulkner, Philip (University of Cambridge), closure, demi-reg, PRVS model Ferber, Michael P. (West Virginia University), geography of religion Steve Fleetwood (University of Lancaster), industrial relations labour markets Groff, Ruth (Williams College), truth Harvey, David L. (University of Illinois), chaos/complexity theory (with David Byrne) Hostettler, Nick (University of London), sociology of knowledge Hoyer, Karl Georg (Roskilde University), ecology (with Petter Naess) Jessop, Bob (University of Lancaster), political science social form space-time strategic-relational approach Jones, Peter, (Sheffield Hallam University), linguistics Joseph, Jonathan (University of Kent), hegemony political theory structuralism, post-structuralism Kowalczyk, Ruth (University of Lancaster), management science Lacey, Hugh (Swarthmore College/Universidade de Sao Paulo) explanatory critique philosophy of religion (with Douglas V. Porpora) Lawson, Clive (University of Cambridge), technology Lawson, Julie (University of Amsterdam), urban studies Maton, Karl (University of Wollongong), studies of education (with Brad Shipway) Mingers, John (University of Kent), autopoiesis system Minnerup, Gunter (University of New South Wales), historiography Moren, Stefan (Umea University) social work (with Bjoern Blom) Morgan, Jamie (University of Helsinki), analytical problematic emergence empiricism globalisation idealism identity theory materialism mind political economy (with Heikki Patomaki) power Morrow, Ross (University of Technology, NSW), social theory sociology sociology of sexuality Naess, Petter (Aalborg University) ecology (with Karl Georg Hoyer) urban and regional planning Nellhaus, Tobin (Yale University), aesthetics cognitive science culture, cultural analysis signs, semiology, semiotic New, Caroline (University of Bath Spa), feminist theory gender Nielsen, Peter (Roskilde University), capitalism critical theory fetishism Marxism rational choice theory Norrie, Alan (University of London), dialectical critical realism Norris, Christopher (University of Wales, Cardiff), ontology, transcendental realism Olsen, Wendy (University of Manchester), poverty Parker, Ian (Manchester Metropolitan University), psychology Parker, Jenneth (London South Bank University), sustainability Patomaki, Heikki (University of Helsinki), futures studies international relations neoliberalism political economy (with Jamie Morgan) Pinkstone, Brian (University of Western Sydney) economic history tendency (with Mervyn Hartwig) Porpora, Douglas V. (Drexel University), philosophy of religion (with Hugh Lacey) social structure Potter, Garry (Wilfrid Laurier University), knowledge theory of philosophy of social science Pratten, Stephen B. (University of London), contrast explanation explanation Psillos, Stathis (University of Athens), causal law inference Nicod's criterion philosophy of science realism Ratcliffe, Peter (University of Warwick) migration studies Roberts, John M. (Brunel University), postmodernism Scambler, Graham (University of London), disability sociology of health and medicine Shield, Richard (University of Leeds), management and organisation studies method, methodology Shipway, Brad (Southern Cross University), studies of education (with Karl Maton) Tew, Philip (Brunel University), literary theory Westerhuis, Diane (James Cook University), social constructionism Williams, Malcolm (University of Plymouth), probability

From Broken Windows to Busy Streets A Community Empowerment Perspective

Abstract: In the present article, we introduce a community empowerment perspective to understanding neighborhoods. A preponderance of literature exists on neighborhood risk factors for crime. Yet less is known about positive factors that make neighborhoods safe and desirable. We propose community empowerment as a conceptual foundation for understanding neighborhood factors that promote social processes, and ultimately, lead to an improvement in structural factors. We suggest that neighborhoods are empowered because they include processes and structures for positive social interactions to emerge and develop. We present busy streets as a mechanism that creates a positive social context, in which social cohesion and social capital thrive. Thus, empowered communities are characterized by climates that promote busy streets. Our article underscores the need to examine both the broader, structural context and social processes operating within this context. Such an integrative perspective is necessary to fully understand how to empower neighborhoods, particularly in the face of structural challenges.

Understanding health through social practices: performance and materiality in everyday life.

Abstract: The importance of recognising structure and agency in health research to move beyond methodological individualism is well documented. To progress incorporating social theory into health, researchers have used Giddens' and Bourdieu's conceptualisations of social practice to understand relationships between agency, structure and health. However, social practice theories have more to offer than has currently been capitalised upon. This article delves into contemporary theories of social practice as used in consumption and sustainability research to provide an alternative, and more contextualised means, of understanding and explaining human action in relation to health and wellbeing. Two key observations are made. Firstly, the latest formulations of social practice theory distinguish moments of practice performance from practices as persistent entities across time and space, allowing empirical application to explain practice histories and future trajectories. Secondly, they emphasise the materiality of everyday life, foregrounding things, technologies and other non-humans that cannot be ignored in a technologically dependent social world. In concluding, I argue the value of using contemporary social practice theories in health research is that they reframe the way in which health outcomes can be understood and could inform more effective interventions that move beyond attitudes, behaviour and choices.

What can health inequalities researchers learn from an intersectionality perspective? Understanding social dynamics with an inter-categorical approach?

Abstract: The concept of intersectionality was developed by social scientists seeking to analyse the multiple interacting influences of social location, identity and historical oppression. Despite broad take-up elsewhere, its application in public health remains underdeveloped. We consider how health inequalities research in the United Kingdom has predominantly taken class and later socioeconomic position as its key axis in a manner that tends to overlook other crucial dimensions. We especially focus on international research on ethnicity, gender and caste to argue that an intersectional perspective is relevant for health inequalities research because it compels researchers to move beyond (but not ignore) class and socioeconomic position in analysing the structural determinants of health. Drawing on these theoretical developments, we argue for an inter-categorical conceptualisation of social location that recognises differentiation without reifying social groupings – thus encouraging researchers to focus on social dynamics rather than social categories, recognising that experiences of advantage and disadvantage reflect the exercise of power across social institutions. Such an understanding may help address the historic tendency of health inequalities research to privilege methodological issues and consider different axes of inequality in isolation from one another, encouraging researchers to move beyond micro-level behaviours to consider the structural drivers of inequalities.

A model for study of teacher agency for social justice

Abstract: Internationally teachers are called upon to act as agents of change. However, there is little clarity about the kind of change teachers are expected to contribute to and even less empirical evidence about the ways teacher agency operates in schools and beyond. Empirical analyses of teacher agency require a clear articulation of the purpose and content of such agency in relation to a particular aspect of change, which could then help us specify appropriate units of analysis and generate hypotheses based on the insights provided by previous research. This paper articulates a model for study of teacher agency as a process whereby teachers act strategically to transform the risks of exclusion and underachievement into inclusion and improved outcomes for all students in contexts of cultural and social diversity. The model is guided by social theories of human agency within social structures and cultures, applied to the empirical insights into teachers’ inclusive practices. Potentially appropriate units of anal...

Interpreting "altmetrics": viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories

Abstract: More than 30 years after Cronin's seminal paper on "the need for a theory of citing" (Cronin, 1981), the metrics community is once again in need of a new theory, this time one for so-called "altmetrics". Altmetrics, short for alternative (to citation) metrics -- and as such a misnomer -- refers to a new group of metrics based (largely) on social media events relating to scholarly communication. As current definitions of altmetrics are shaped and limited by active platforms, technical possibilities, and business models of aggregators such as Altmetric.com, ImpactStory, PLOS, and Plum Analytics, and as such constantly changing, this work refrains from defining an umbrella term for these very heterogeneous new metrics. Instead a framework is presented that describes acts leading to (online) events on which the metrics are based. These activities occur in the context of social media, such as discussing on Twitter or saving to Mendeley, as well as downloading and citing. The framework groups various types of acts into three categories -- accessing, appraising, and applying -- and provides examples of actions that lead to visibility and traceability online. To improve the understanding of the acts, which result in online events from which metrics are collected, select citation and social theories are used to interpret the phenomena being measured. Citation theories are used because the new metrics based on these events are supposed to replace or complement citations as indicators of impact. Social theories, on the other hand, are discussed because there is an inherent social aspect to the measurements.

“Successful Aging,” Gerontological Theory and Neoliberalism: A Qualitative Critique

Abstract: This article is a critique of the successful aging (SA) paradigm as described in the Rowe and Kahn book, Successful Aging (1998). The major point of this article is that two key ideas in the book may be understood as consonant with neoliberalism, a social perspective that came into international prominence at the same time the SA paradigm was initially promoted. These two key ideas are (a) the emphasis on individual social action applied to the nature of the aging experience and (b) the failure to provide a detailed policy agenda for the social and cultural change being promoted and, particularly, for older adults who may be left behind by the approach to change the book suggests. The article provides no evidence for a direct connection between SA and neoliberalism, but rather shows how similarities in their approaches to social change characterize both of them. In sum, the article shows (a) how the implicit social theory developed in the book, in a manner similar to neoliberalism, elevates the individual as the main source of any changes that must accompany the SA paradigm and (b) the focus on SA as individual action does not provide for those older adults who do not or will not age “successfully.” This, we conclude, implicitly sets up a two-class system of older adults, which may not be an optimal means of addressing the needs of all older adults. The article also reviews a number of studies about SA and shows how these, too, may emphasize its similarities to neoliberalism and other issues that the SA paradigm does not adequately address.

Childhood Adversity Is Associated with Adult Theory of Mind and Social Affiliation, but Not Face Processing

Abstract: People vary substantially in their ability to acquire and maintain social ties. Here, we use a combined epidemiological and individual differences approach to understand the childhood roots of adult social cognitive functioning. We assessed exposure to 25 forms of traumatic childhood experiences in over 5000 adults, along with measures of face discrimination, face memory, theory of mind, social motivation, and social support. Retrospectively-reported experiences of parental maltreatment in childhood (particularly physical abuse) were the most broadly and robustly associated with adult variations in theory of mind, social motivation, and social support. Adult variations in face discrimination and face memory, on the other hand, were not significantly associated with exposure to childhood adversity. Our findings indicate domains of social cognition that may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of adverse childhood environments, and suggest mechanisms whereby environmental factors might influence the development of social abilities.

Academic English Socialization through Individual Networks of Practice.

Abstract: This article introduces the notion of individual network of practice (INoP) as a viable construct for analyzing academic (discourse) socialization in second language (L2) contexts. The authors provide an overview of social practice theories that have informed the development of INoP—community of practice (CoP; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and social network theory (Milroy, 1987)—and review relevant literature on academic discourse socialization and more general L2 learning studies that have used either CoP or social network as theoretical frameworks. Next, they illustrate how INoP was applied in a study that examined the academic English socialization of Mexican students at a Canadian university. Findings from the INoP analysis of three participants provide evidence of its rich potential for examining academic (discourse) socialization processes in other contexts and possibly using complementary forms of data analysis involving the analysis of interactional data. The authors suggest future applications of INoP in TESOL to help refine and validate this construct. Investigating the INoPs of other groups of English language learners in English-medium institutions will help scholars, educators, and students better understand the often unseen but vital social processes that mediate learning and consider ways of maximizing the potential of social networks and practices for their own educational purposes.

Revitalizing Criminological Theory:: Towards a new Ultra-Realism

Abstract: This book provides a short, comprehensive and accessible introduction to Ultra-Realism: a unique and radical school of criminological thought that has been developed by the authors over a number of years. After first outlining existing schools of thought, their major intellectual flaws and their underlying politics in a condensed guide that will be invaluable to all undergraduate and postgraduate students, Hall and Winlow introduce a number of important new concepts to criminology and suggest a new philosophical foundation, theoretical framework and research programme. These developments will enhance the discipline’s ability to explain human motivations, construct insightful representations of reality and answer the fundamental question of why some human beings risk inflicting harm on others to further their own interests or achieve various ends. Combining new philosophical and psychosocial approaches with a clear understanding of the shape of contemporary global crime, this book presents an intellectual alternative to the currently dominant paradigms of conservatism, neoclassicism and left-liberalism. In using an advanced conception of "harm", Hall and Winlow provide original explanations of criminal motivations and make the first steps towards a paradigm shift that will help criminology to illuminate the reality of our times. This book is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of criminology, sociology, criminological theory, social theory, the philosophy of social sciences and the history of crime.

Social Imaginaries in Debate

Abstract: Investiga tions into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries fi eld has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. Th e recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable fi eld and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the fi eld as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative (as opposed to imitative). We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a signifi cant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-(auto)instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the fi eld and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination (including deliberations on the reproductive and creative imaginations, as well as consideration of contemporary Japanese contributions), the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifi cally political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their intercivilisational encounters. Th e social imaginaries fi eld imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold signifi cant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena (including their manifest crises). Th e essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making off ers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices.

Introducing the Social Presence Model to Explore Online and Blended Learning Experiences

Abstract: This study explores the level of social presence or connectedness, in two iterations of a 13-month, graduate-level certificate program designed to help K-12 school leaders integrate technology in their districts. Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory serves as the theoretical lens for this programmatic research. The methods include a case study approach for coding discussions for 16 online courses using the pre-established Social Presence coding scheme as well as conducting instructor and student interviews and collecting observation notes on over a dozen face-to-face courses. The results of this study suggest the need for further research and development on the Social Presence coding scheme. Additionally, this study unveiled the Social Presence Model, a working model that suggests social presence consists of the following five integrated elements: Affective Association, Community Cohesion, Instructor Involvement, Interaction Intensity, and Knowledge and Experience. Finally, this study also highlighted the importance of multiple data sources for researchers, the need for researchers to request access to participant data outside the formal learning environment, and the inherently unique challenges instructors face with multimodal literacy and social presence in blended learning programs.

Identification and characterization of cyberbullying dynamics in an online social network

Abstract: Cyberbullying is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon impacting young adults. In this paper, we present a study on both detecting cyberbullies in online social networks and identifying the pairwise interactions between users through which the influence of bullies seems to spread. In particular, we investigate the role of user demographics and social network features in predicting how users will respond to a cyberbullying comment. We characterize the influencer/influenced relationship by which a user who has no history of abuse observes a peer engaging in bullying and follows suit. To our knowledge, this is the first effort modeling peer pressure and social dynamics with analytical models. We validate our models on two distinct social network datasets, totalling over 16, 000 posts. Our results offer insight into the dynamics of bullying and confirm social theories on the power of peer groups in the cyberworld. A full version of this paper is available on arXiv.org.

Not just skills: what a focus on knowledge means for vocational education

Abstract: This contribution to the symposium on Michael Young’s article ‘Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge based approach’, supports his contention that curriculum theory has lost sight of its object—‘what is taught and learned in schools’, and argues that this has particularly deleterious consequences for vocational education and training (VET). VET is unproblematically positioned as applied, experiential and work-focused learning, and it is seen as a solution for those who are alienated from or unsuccessful in more traditional forms of academic education. This article argues that rather than being a mechanism for social inclusion, VET is instead a key way in which social inequality is mediated and reproduced because it excludes students from accessing the theoretical knowledge they need to participate in debates and controversies in society and in their occupational field of practice. It presents a social realist analysis to argue why VET students need access to theoretical knowledge, how a ...

The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value

Abstract: Written over a thirty-year span, Michael Lambek's essays in this collection point with definitive force toward a single central truth: ethics is intrinsic to social life. As he shows through rich ethnographic accounts and multiple theoretical traditions, our human condition is at heart an ethical one-we may not always be good or just, but we are always subject to their criteria. Detailing Lambek's trajectory as one anthropologist thinking deeply throughout a career on the nature of ethical life, the essays accumulate into a vibrant demonstration of the relevance of ethics as a practice and its crucial importance to ethnography, social theory, and philosophy. Organized chronologically, the essays begin among Malagasy speakers on the island of Mayotte and in northwest Madagascar. Building from ethnographic accounts there, they synthesize Aristotelian notions of practical judgment and virtuous action with Wittgensteinian notions of the ordinariness of ethical life and the importance of language, everyday speech, and ritual in order to understand how ethics are lived. They illustrate the multiple ways in which ethics informs personhood, character, and practice; explore the centrality of judgment, action, and irony to ethical life; and consider the relation of virtue to value. The result is a fully fleshed-out picture of ethics as a deeply rooted aspect of the human experience.

Two decades of Neo-Marxist class analysis and health inequalities: A critical reconstruction

Abstract: Most population health researchers conceptualize social class as a set of attributes and material conditions of life of individuals. The empiricist tradition of 'class as an individual attribute' equates class to an 'observation', precluding the investigation of unobservable social mechanisms. Another consequence of this view of social class is that it cannot be conceptualized, measured, or intervened upon at the meso- or macro levels, being reduced to a personal attribute. Thus, population health disciplines marginalize rich traditions in Marxist theory whereby 'class' is understood as a 'hidden' social mechanism such as exploitation. Yet Neo-Marxist social class has been used over the last two decades in population health research as a way of understanding how health inequalities are produced. The Neo-Marxist approach views social class in terms of class relations that give persons control over productive assets and the labour power of others (property and managerial relations). We critically appraise the contribution of the Neo-Marxist approach during the last two decades and suggest realist amendments to understand class effects on the social determinants of health and health outcomes. We argue that when social class is viewed as a social causal mechanism it can inform social change to reduce health inequalities.

Dilemmas of Difference: Indigenous Women and the Limits of Postcolonial Development Policy

Abstract: In Dilemmas of Difference Sarah A. Radcliffe explores the relationship of rural indigenous women in Ecuador to the development policies and actors that are ostensibly there to help ameliorate social and economic inequality. Radcliffe finds that development policies’s inability to recognize and reckon with the legacies of colonialism reinforces long-standing social hierarchies, thereby reproducing the very poverty and disempowerment they are there to solve. This ineffectiveness results from failures to acknowledge the local population's diversity and a lack of accounting for the complex intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and geography. As a result, projects often fail to match beneficiaries' needs, certain groups are made invisible, and indigenous women become excluded from positions of authority. Drawing from a mix of ethnographic fieldwork and postcolonial and social theory, Radcliffe centers the perspectives of indigenous women to show how they craft practices and epistemologies that critique ineffective development methods, inform their political agendas, and shape their strategic interventions in public policy debates.

The Robot Journalist in the Age of Social Physics: The End of Human Journalism?

Abstract: In the age of Big Data, extracting knowledge from unlimited data silos employing Artificial Intelligence algorithms is becoming fundamental for the survival of society. We are living in an age of exponential growth in the complexity of social systems. We are at the dawn of an emergence of a new science some term as “social physics” that will allow to automatically analyse the billions of micro social engagements done continuously through our mobile devices in all fields of human activity (similar to the study of atoms in physics). This analysis of the social dynamics will allow to identify new social trends, social theories, at the “budding” stage.

Emotion, rationality, and decision-making: how to link affective and social neuroscience with social theory

Abstract: In this paper, we argue for a stronger engagement between concepts in affective and social neuroscience on the one hand, and theories from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology on the other. Affective and social neuroscience could provide an additional assessment of social theories. We argue that some of the most influential social theories of the last four decades—rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and post-structuralism—contain assumptions that are inconsistent with key findings in affective and social neuroscience. We also show that another approach from the social sciences—plural rationality theory—shows greater compatibility with these findings. We further claim that, in their turn, social theories can strengthen affective and social neuroscience. The former can provide more precise formulations of the social phenomena that neuroscientific models have targeted, can help neuroscientists who build these models become more aware of their social and cultural biases, and can even improve the models themselves. To illustrate, we show how plural rationality theory can be used to further specify and test the somatic marker hypothesis. Thus, we aim to accelerate the much-needed merger of social theories with affective and social neuroscience.

Thermodynamics, matter, politics

Abstract: While there is a burgeoning literature on matter in social theory, there has been a surprising lack of interest amongst social theorists in the importance of the concept of energy in natural scientific accounts of matter. In this context, I examine how the work of Isabelle Stengers challenges social theorists to take thermodynamic accounts of energy, in particular, seriously. The paper develops three arguments: firstly, while social theorists have often wanted to add social relations to matter, in doing so they have ignored physical scientists’ own analyses of relations, including thermodynamics; secondly, that thermodynamics offers a different way of theorizing matter-energy than that suggested by vitalist approaches to political ecology; thirdly, that the thermodynamic concept of energy is necessarily linked to the practice and politics of measurement. At the same time, I argue that Stengers's account of thermodynamics both illuminates her understanding of politics, and points to its limitations.

Relational sociology: a well-defined sociological paradigm or a challenging ‘relational turn’ in sociology?

Abstract: In this paper I present and summarize the theoretical proposals of four leading scholars of the so-called ‘relational sociology’. First of all I try to contextualize its emergence and developments ...

Melding Sociology and Economics: James Coleman's Foundations of Social Theory*

Abstract: JHEN PUBLISHERS receive copies of reviews of their books, they quickly scan them for possible quotes for use in promotional materials. They are often frustrated to discover that a reviewer really liked the book, yet never managed to say so in a clear, unequivocal way. The people at Harvard University Press will experience no such frustration with this essay on James Coleman's application of rational choice theory to the classical issues of sociology. Professor Coleman's Foundations of Social Theory is a masterwork. Epic in scope, it is clear, engaging, and forcefully argued. Traditional sociologists will be unable to ignore its bold new agenda for their discipline. And the book will have a lasting impact on economics, political science, psychology, and other disciplines concerned with human behavior. Having issued this ringing endorsement of the work as a whole, I hasten to add that there are many points on which I find myself in substantial disagreement with Coleman. On some occasions, he pushes the rational choice theory too far; on others, not nearly far enough. But one of his great virtues is his remarkable willingness to articulate clear theories and commit himself to their predictions. In the process, he leaves himself open to being proved wrong, and indeed he sometimes is wrong. Yet how much more satisfying is his approach than the familiar alternative of constructing vague ad hoc explanations to fit known fact patterns. Foundations of Social Theory is organized into five parts. Part I, Elementary Actions and Relations, introduces the basic building blocks of the theory-actors, resources, interests, individual rights, and relatonships involving authority and trust. Part II's focus is the "micro-tomacro transition"; it applies the theory of rational individual behavior to the units developed in Part I to deduce how systems of actors will behave. Here, Coleman is concerned with social exchange, crowd behavior, and the emergence of social norms. In Part III, Coleman constructs a theory in which the principal actor is not the individual but the corporation. His aim is to explain how and why individuals empower formal organizations to act on their behalf, and the means whereby such authority can be revoked. Part IV, entitled Modern Society, employs the theories developed earlier to shed light on developments in contemporary social and economic life. Coleman devotes Part * James S. Coleman. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1990. Pp. xvi, 993. ISBN 0-674-312250-2.