Topic
Value (ethics)
About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.
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TL;DR: The notion of institutional anomie was introduced in the context of the institutional-anomie theory as discussed by the authors, which links crime, anomies, and contemporary social change in a Durkheimian rather than Mertonian manner.
Abstract: Explicating Institutional-Anomie theory relative to the sociologies of Durkheim, Merton and Polanyi, I find that this theory goes beyond Merton by using a strain of thought that is critical of liberal society. By bringing in the notion of the disembedded market economy, a central notion in the institutionalism of Polanyi and Durkheim, this theory links crime, anomie, and contemporary social change. I also discuss some of the limitations of linking crime with societal level processes in a Durkheimian rather than Mertonian manner. The classical sociological notion of anomie has long been a conceptual tool to under stand the relationship between social structure, culture and deviant behaviour. Central to different versions of anomie theory is the premise that humans are normative beings. People act and think on the basis of commonly shared definitions and traditions. To a greater and lesser extent the common meanings that emerge in social life have senti mental value for people; they constitute morality and ethics. Shared cultural values define and sanction people's goals and the means they use in reaching the goals. Anomie results when the power of social values to regulate the ends and the means of human conduct is weakened. But anomie perspectives are not a unified body of theory. While Durkheim is usually seen as the founder of the sociological tradition of anomie theory, his notion of anomie changed fundamentally in the hands of American sociology (Orru 1987; Besnard 1990). Durkheim's (1951) understanding of anomie derives from his concern about the disruptive tendencies of fundamental features of modern, industrial society. Durkheim argues that specific features of industrial society, particularly in the sphere of economic activity, produce a chronic state of normative deregulation. As a result, valued goals become ill conceived and the society fails to provide people with normative limits on their desires. In contrast, American anomie theorists have not emphasized anomie as the widespread lack of socially valued goals. Thus Merton's (1967/1994) influential essay, Social Structure and Anomie, does not cast in doubt the fundamental cultural ends of the society, that is, the normative ends of action. In Merton's theory social values are clearly defined in the mainstream egalitarian ideology and in the universal emphasis on monetary success. On the cultural level, Merton emphasizes the lack of equilibrium between socially described means and ends of action. Anomie is caused by the imbalance
115 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors suggest the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living, such as textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition.
Abstract: This article suggests the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living. Its objects are textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition. The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.
114 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the impact of temporal distance on moral concerns in situations where selfish motives clash with altruistic considerations and found that people would feel more guilty about engaging in selfish behavior, thought acting selfishly would be more immoral, and were more likely to commit to altruistic behavior when thinking about distant versus near future events.
Abstract: he present research examines the impact of temporal distance on moral concerns in situations where selfish motives clash with altruistic considerations. Drawing upon Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) which posits that abstract, high-level features of events and social values take on more weight with greater temporal distance, we hypothesized that moral concerns should be higher for temporally distant situations. The results from five experiments supported this conjecture. People indicated they would be more likely to choose altruistic over selfish behaviors, reported they would feel more guilty about engaging in selfish behavior, thought acting selfishly would be more immoral, and were more likely to commit to altruistic behavior when thinking about distant versus near future events. Moreover, as predicted, temporal distance primarily enhanced moral concerns among individuals with high moral value strength. Support was also obtained in favor of the assumption that value salience was responsible for the temporal distance effect on moral concerns. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.
114 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on social networks and business success among a sample of small-scale entrepreneurs operating in the wood business in the coastal town of Tanga, Tanzania, and adopt a holistic approach and theoretical triangulation when trying to empirically integrate the entrepreneurial process and its context.
Abstract: I Introduction DEVELOPING ECONOMIES TODAY ARE CHARACTERIZED BY dramatic changes in the direction of liberalization and globalization, not least in Africa. Business entrepreneurs have increased opportunities to enact their business environments and develop profitable enterprises with a wide geographical range. Obviously, opportunities are not equal for all, and we see clear tendencies toward increasing social differences with recent economic growth on the African continent. Local and small-scale entrepreneurs are easily marginalized in open competition with "alien" businesspeople (Kilby 1983) or foreign investors. In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are clear indications that enterprises owned by Asians and Europeans are bigger, more innovative, and faster growing than neighboring firms owned by native Africans (Ramachandran and Shah 1999). Also, differences are seen in business performance of entrepreneurs from various domestic ethnic groups. It is a recognized fact in socioeconomic research that social networks create social capital of importance for business development. Networks represent a means for entrepreneurs to reduce risks and transaction costs and improve access to business ideas, knowledge, and capital. A social network consists of a series of formal and informal ties between the central actor and other actors in a circle of acquaintances. Social networks are channels through which entrepreneurs get access to the necessary resources for business startup, growth, and success. Social capital is defined as an attribute created in the interaction between people, which increases the strength and value of personal qualities such as intelligence and work experience, and represents a resource for collective as well as individual action (Coleman 1988). Social capital is manifested in norms and networks that enable people to act collectively (Woolcock 1998). According to Lin (1999), the value of a person's social capital is determined by qualities of her or his social network. We shall argue that social networks are also determined by an initial basis of social capital. The national cultures of the East African countries are fragmented, and ethnicity, religion, and class are only three common bases for faction. Culture, in our perspective, may be usefully defined as a collective subjectivity: a shared set of values, norms, and beliefs. Subcultures within national African contexts are probably of vital importance for the development of value systems, trust, and social networks, and thereby also for business success. In this paper, focus is set on social networks and business success among a sample of small-scale entrepreneurs operating in the wood business in the coastal town of Tanga, Tanzania. The objective of our research is to indicate any correlation between sociocultural contexts, personal relationships, and the ability to enact one's environment and make a success in business. Complementing theoretical perspectives on social embeddedness (Nobria and Gulati 1994), we argue that entrepreneurs also have an opportunity to develop social relations and to modify cultural bonds. Enacting the business environment, however, also needs resources and certain cognitive frames. We adopt a holistic approach and theoretical triangulation when trying to empirically integrate the entrepreneurial process and its context. The aim is a "combination of theoretically creative and empirically grounded" analysis (Zafirovski 1999, p. 588), closer to "story-telling" than the mathematical line of economic sociology. Few studies are made specifically of the role of social networks in African business, and we use a qualitative methodology to expand theory, rather than proving by statistics the existing theory. The paper is organized in six parts. After this introduction follows a brief presentation of findings on relations between social networks and business success, mostly from Europe and the United States. …
114 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the process by which consensus is reached and the factors determining this process are shown to be extra-textual in nature, and weigh the importance of the role any critic may be said to play in the long-term process by taking into account such as, for example, the authority he enjoys among his colleagues, the review medium in which he is publishing.
114 citations