Social theory

About: Social theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11421 publications have been published within this topic receiving 624898 citations.

The Role of Parents in Moral Development: A social domain analysis

Abstract: This article provides a social domain theory analysis of the role of parents in moral development. Social knowledge domains, including morality as distinct from other social concepts, are described. Then, it is proposed that, although morality is constructed from reciprocal social interactions, both affective and cognitive components of parents' interactions with their children may facilitate children's moral development. The affective context of the relationship may influence children's motivation to listen to and respond to parents; in addition, affect associated with responses to transgressions can affect children's encoding and remembering of those events. Although moral interactions occur frequently in peer contexts, parents' domain-specific feedback about the nature of children's moral interactions are proposed to provide a cognitive mechanism for facilitating moral development. Parents promote children's moral understanding by providing domain appropriate and developmentally sensitive reasoning and...

History and Social Theory.

Abstract: * Preface *1 THEORISTS AND HISTORIANS * A Dialogue of the Deaf * The Differentiation of History and Theory * The Dismissal of the Past * The Rise of Social History * The Convergence of Theory and History *2 MODELS AND METHODS * Comparisons * Models * Quantitative Methods * The Social Microscope *3 CENTRAL CONCEPTS * Roles and Performances * Sex and Gender * Family and Kinship * Communities and Identities * Class and Status * Social Mobility and Social Distinction * Consumption and Exchange * Social and Cultural Capital * Patrons and Clients * Power and the Public Sphere * Centres and Peripheries * Hegemony and Resistance * Social Protest and Social Movements * Mentalities, Ideologies, Discourses * Communication and Reception * Postcolonialism and Cultural Hybridity * Orality and Textuality * Memory and Myth *4 CENTRAL PROBLEMS * Rationality versus Relativism * Concepts of Culture * Consensus versus Conflict * Facts versus Fictions * Structures versus Agents * Functionalism * The Example of Venice * Structuralism * The Return of the Actor *5 SOCIAL THEORY AND SOCIAL CHANGE * Spencera s Model * Marxa s Model * A Third Way? * Essays in Synthesis * Patterns of Population * Patterns of Culture * Encounters * The Importance of Events * Generations *6 POSTMODERNITY AND POSTMODERNISM * Destabilization * Cultural Constructions * Decentering * Beyond Eurocentrism? * Globalization * To Conclude * Bibliography * Index

Knowledge and the Curriculum in the Sociology of Education: towards a reconceptualisation

Abstract: This paper argues that the question of knowledge needs to be reconceptualised if sociology is to make its potential contribution to current debates about the curriculum. It begins with a review of the dominant assumptions underlying contemporary curriculum policy: neo-conservative traditionalism and technical-instrumentalism. It then examines the relativist position on knowledge that follows from the postmodernist critiques that have recently come to dominate social theory, particularly in the sociology of education. The paper argues that, in different ways, each of these approaches avoids the question of knowledge and hence leaves unresolved epistemological and educational dilemmas. In the final section, the paper draws on recent research in the sociology of science to develop what is referred to as a social realist approach to knowledge and explores its implications both for the curriculum and the claims that we are entering a 'knowledge society'.