Search

Begin New Search Topic Sociology

81. Gramáticas de acción, retorno de experiencia y arte para resolver los problemas

Author:
Pierre Tripier
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
This article emphasizes the utility, in social sciences, of concepts like “grammar”, “grammar of action” and “grammar of interpretation of a situation” as used in Clausewitz's work and in The Art of War. Two empirical examples illustrate this subject: the first one is analyzed by the novelist Karl Weick and the second by the expert in military tactics, Lieu-tenant Colonel Michel Goya. This demonstrates the necessity to use the concept of “grammar” in sociological investigations. If Sociology would like to latter and be like other sciences, sociologist should not be satisfied to establish diagnosis, but should dare prognostics and to help decisions with the assistance of those grammars.
Topic:
Communications and Sociology

82. The Iron Cage of Democracy: Institutional Similarity and Stasis in African Political Party Systems

Author:
Rachel Beatty Riedl
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper asks (a) how to understand the development of new institutions in nascent democracies, and (b) what explains the persistence of institutional forms that do not conform to rationalist expectations of competitive efficiency. Much scholarship focuses on the power of strategic coordination under formal rules to shape democratic institutions, such as the form of the party system. This article contends that strict rationalist explanations of party systems leave unexplored the ways in which individual politician's and voter's strategic calculations are bounded by the organizational imperatives of systemic competition. Sociological theories of institutional development better explain the organizational logic driving party system origin and endurance in new democracies. The article uses original interview data from three contrasting cases of party system development in Africa to highlight the empirical puzzle that drives this conclusion: despite seemingly analogous democratic origins, largely similar conditions of low economic development, high ethnic heterogeneity, and weak state capacity, as well as comparable formal electoral rules in pairwise combinations, the party systems across Africa demonstrate incredible cross-national variation in the ways in which political parties organize and compete for power. Additionally, party systems maintain these varied forms over time rather than converging on a “most efficient” model. A focus on the particular mechanisms of reproduction through institutional isomorphism contributes to the research agenda of explaining institutional development, change, and stability.
Topic:
Democratization, Political Theory, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Africa

83. Soziologie kapitalistischer Dynamik

Author:
Christoph Deutschmann
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
I address the "growth miracle“(William Baumol) of modern capitalism. The central point is that the historically unique social dynamics of modern capitalism cannot be conceptualized satisfactorily by theories of “economic growth”; instead, the explanation requires a genuinely sociological approach. The first part of the paper gives a critical summary of the existing modernization-theoretical approaches and outlines an alternative theoretical perspective which is based largely on the interpretations of money by Simmel and Marx. The second part delivers a multi-level approach of capitalist dynamics which culminates in the construction of three growth scenarios, one positive and two negative ones. These scenarios could contribute to illuminating the background of the actual economic crisis.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Political Theory, and Sociology

84. The Culture of Fear and Control in Costa Rica (II): The Talk of Crime and Social Changes

Author:
Sebastian Huhn
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The Costa Rican talk of crime is fundamentally based on the assumption that a formerly explicitly nonviolent nation has been transformed into a battleground for social violence—that is, on the belief that an alarming “crime wave” is occurring today while there was no crime at all in the past. On the basis of this assumption, the fear of crime and the call for zero tolerance and drastic law enforcement actions have been increasing. In this paper I discuss the Costa Rican talk of crime from a historical perspective to demonstrate that crime has always been a topic that has generated pervasive feelings of insecurity and social pessimism. I argue that social changes in Costa Rican society and the paradigmatic shift in economic and social‐welfare politics since the 1980s have been essential in the transformation of the talk of crime. As part of this transformation, the politicization of crime since the 1990s has been one of the most powerful changes in the dominant discourse.
Topic:
Crime, Economics, Politics, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Latin America

85. Increasing Migration, Diverging Communities: Changing Character of Migrant Streams in Rural Thailand

Author:
Filiz Garip
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper studies how increasing migration changes the character of migrant streams in sending communities. Cumulative causation theory posits that past mi- gration patterns determine future flows, as prior migrants provide resources, influence, or normative pressures that make individuals more likely to migrate. The theory implies uniform patterns of exponentially increasing migration flows that are decreasingly selective. Recent research identifies heterogeneity in the cumulative patterns and selectivity of migration in communities. We propose that this heterogeneity may be ex- plained by the differential accessibility of previously accumulated migration experience. Multi-level, longitudinal migration data from 22 rural Thai communities allow us to measure the distribution of past experience as a proxy for its accessibility to community members. We find that migration becomes a less-selective process as migration expe- rience accumulates, and migrants become increasingly diverse in socio-demographic characteristics. Yet, selectivity within migrant streams persists if migration experience is not uniformly distributed among, and hence not equally accessible to, all community members. The results confirm that the accumulation and distribution of prior mi- grants' experiences distinctly shape future migration flows, and may lead to diverging cumulative patterns in communities over time.
Topic:
Migration, Political Economy, and Sociology
Political Geography:
Thailand and Southeast Asia

86. Who Cares?: How best to protect UK care workers employed through agencies and gangmasters from exploitation

Author:
Krisnah Poinasamy
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
There are an estimated 1.5 million workers in the adult social care workforce in the UK, working in residential care homes or providing care to people in their own homes. And with an ageing population the number of care workers is set to rise in the next two decades.
Topic:
Labor Issues and Sociology
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

87. Culture, Agency and Power: Theoretical Reflections on Informal Economic Networks and Political Process

Author:
Kate Meagher
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Do network theory really offer a suitable concept for the theorization of informal processes of economic regulation and institutional change? This working paper challenges both essentialist and skeptical attitudes to networks through an examination of the positive and negative effects of network governance in contemporary societies in a range of regional contexts. The analysis focuses on three broad principles of non-state organization – culture, agency and power – and their role in shaping processes of economic and political governance. It will be shown that the effective theorization of informal regulatory processes requires attention to the specific interaction of culture, agency and power in particular social contexts. Emphasizing a grounded theory approach, this article draws on cutting-edge network research from East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Western societies to develop theoretical tools for the comparative study of non-state governance and its impact on wider processes of institutional change.
Topic:
Political Theory, Sociology, Governance, and Culture
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and East Asia

88. From Network to Class? Towards a more complex Conception of Connection and Sociability

Author:
France Bourgouin
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The notion of networks is frequently used by social science scholars in order to explain various forms of social and economic linkages. In this Working Paper, I question why it is that we have replaced older notions of sociality such as culture, community, or group with network, and what the analytical gains are if any. Building upon recent ethnographic fieldwork conducted with foreign African businessmen and women employed in Johannesburg's tertiary sector multinational corporate, I argue that the network approach is too narrow a way for conceiving the linkages and connections between individuals; the processes and institutional channels that connect individuals may not be so apparent and “mappable” but rather much more diffuse and context-based.
Topic:
Political Theory, Sociology, and Culture
Political Geography:
Africa

89. Regulating Reciprocal Distances: House construction projects as inverse governmentality in Maputo, Mozambique

Author:
Morten Nielsen
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Although reciprocal relationships with neighbours and local-level civil servants are of paramount importance to people living on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique, they also harbour destructive potentials. In an unstable urban environment built on a presumption of malice, it is consequently important only to reveal what needs to be seen while concealing those facets which might awaken unwanted desires. This working paper examines how residents in a periurban area seek to position themselves at appropriate distances to important but potentially dangerous others. It is argued that house-building constitutes a potent medium for proportioning viable distances so that reciprocal exchanges can be realized without being harmed by presumed greedy and envious others. In particular, the paper explores how house-builders imitate urban norms which state and municipality claim to be using but which they are incapable of implementing. Through such processes of inverse governmentality, illegal occupancy acquires a form of pragmatic legitimacy when appearing to materialise state-defined urban norms.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Sociology
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

90. Flexible Employment, Flexible Families, and the Socialization of Reproduction

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The progress of markets erodes traditional relations of social solidarity that are essential for the stability and performance of societies. As markets advance, pressures build on the state to replace informal social obligations with formal ones. Regulation may fail, however, which tends to give rise to demands for public services substituting for private reciprocity and compliance with institutionalized normative expectations. As a result, demands on public finances increase. The paper demonstrates this sequence by describing how the pressures and attractions of labor markets undermined the “Fordist family” of the 1960s; how the complex interaction between increasingly more flexible employment and loosening family structures resulted in declining fertility in a variety of modern societies; and how providing for societies' physical reproduction increasingly became a matter of public policy in some countries but not in others. Parallels are drawn to active labor market policy and the recent rescue of the money-making industry by Western governments. Moreover, special attention is paid to differences between countries, especially Sweden on the one hand and the United States on the other, in particular to the conditions under which governments apparently can afford not to heed calls for ever deeper and ever more expensive intervention in social relations. Exploring the increasingly negative relationship between fertility and “familialism,” the paper also shows how advanced commodification of labor and individualization of social life has effectively made it impossible to return to traditional social arrangements, such as the postwar family.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Labor Issues, Sociology, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States