Tibetan Families vs Social Development

TheSocio-EconomicResearchIunstituteoftheChinaTibetologyCentercompiledandnublishedFOrtv-YearChangesinnbetanFamiliesinJuly1996onthebasisofageneralsurveyof100householdsinTibet.BETIERLIFEoldTibetfeaturedtemporalandreligiousadministrationoverafeudalserfdom.Mon…     

What is Social Economics?

During the 1950s at the latest, Max Weber became a ‘founding father’ of sociology, chiefly on the basis of a restricted set of canonical writings and without any consideration of his wider relationships to law, economics and politics. During the last ten years of his life he was responsible for a major collaborative work, the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik—Outline of Social Economics. The title was of his own choosing; and so it might well shed new light on his work if we consider how this work was organised, and how Economy and Society, written as a contribution to this handbook, was intended to form part of it.     

A Model of Social Security?

This essay provides historical perspective to Senator Bernie Sanders’ appropriation of elements of the Nordic model in the 2016 campaign by studying how Scandinavia was used as a political image in 1930s United States. Departing from previous scholarship, this essay argues that accounts of Scandinavian achievements were variable in their ideological outlook and sometimes deliberately challenged the existence and goals of New Deal policies. Moreover, this essay explores the usage of Scandinavia in New Deal social legislation by examining the policymaking rhetoric of the Social Security Act and its 1939 amendments. The surprising plasticity of the Scandinavian image amongst policymakers ultimately reveals the fluid nature of both New Deal-era politics and the Scandinavian images it appropriated.     

Quo Vadis,Social Theory?

John R. Hall, Cultures of Inquiry: From Epistemology to Discourse in Sociohistorical Research     

Losing Control? Inequality and Social Divisions in Oslo

The debate on inequality and social divisions in Western cities has been dominated by three positions - the polarization thesis, the 'skills mismatch' thesis and a specific European approach emphasizing the significance of welfare state structures. These three positions are examined with data from Oslo, Norway. It is shown that although income inequality has increased, there is no consistent pattern of social divisions. The evidence provides support both for the polarization and the mismatch thesis, dependent on the unit of analysis and the group in question. It is difficult to spot influences of the welfare state in these data, and it is argued that rising inequality, contrary to service provision, poverty and segregation, approaches a 'closed process'. Increased earnings at the very top, however, may be explained in terms of social networks.     

After Geopolitics? From the Geopolitical Social to Geoeconomics

Abstract:  This paper makes two central arguments. First, the popular language of geopolitics needs to be understood as historically emerging from and helping create a "geopolitical social", which both crosses and crafts traditional borders of internal and external to the national state. Second, we suggest that geoeconomic social forms are gradually supplanting this geopolitical social. After establishing the geopolitical social associated with traditional geopolitics, from Ratzel to Bismarck, we examine the erosion of geopolitical calculation and the rise of the geoeconomic. We trace emerging geoeconomic social forms in three domains: the reframing of territorial security to accommodate supranational flows; the recasting of social forms of security through the market; and the reframing of the state as geoeconomic agent. Neither an exercise in "critical geopolitics" nor an endorsement of Luttwakian style geoeconomics, this paper assumes no straightforward historical succession from geopolitical to geoeconomic logics, but argues that geoeconomics is nonetheless crucial to the spatial reconfiguration of contemporary political geography.     

Social decision-making driven by artistic explore–exploit tension

We studied social decision-making in the rule-based improvisational dance There Might Be Others, where dancers make in-the-moment compositional choices. Rehearsals provided a natural test-bed with communication restricted to non-verbal cues. We observed a key artistic explore–exploit tension in which the dancers switched between exploitation of existing artistic opportunities and riskier exploration of new ones. We investigated how the rules influenced the dynamics using rehearsals together with a model generalized from evolutionary dynamics. We tuned the rules to heighten the tension and modelled nonlinear fitness and feedback dynamics for mutation rate to capture the observed temporal phasing of the dancers' exploration-versus-exploitation. Using bifurcation analysis, we identified key controls of the tension and showed how they could shape the decision-making dynamics of the model much like turning a ‘dial’ in the instructions to the dancers could shape the dance. The investigation became an integral part of the development of the dance.     

Circulation of Coronavirus Images: Helping Social Distancing?

As soon as the SARS-Cov2 disease was recognized by experts to potentially cause a serious pandemic, a three dimensional diagrammatic image of the virus, colored in strong red, conquered public media globally. This study confronts this iconic virus image with a historic image analysis of 33,000 biomedical articles on coronaviruses published between 1968–2020 and interviews with some of their authors. Only a small fraction of scientific virus publications entail images of the complete virus. Red as an alarm color is not used at all by scientists who don't aim for a non-scientific public. Circulation in this case concerns the movement of iconic images from a scientific context into a general public. On the basis of hps-studies on scientific diagrams and especially on color use in scientific diagrams to convey specific messages in public, the paper discusses the role of the claim of public corona-virus diagram as “scientific.” It points at relevant differences between most frequent scientific corona-virus images and the diagrammatic image used in public. Both author- and readerships (in science and public) follow contrasting aims and values. Thus, the images meet non-expert readers for whom the images entail very different – and potentially unintended – meanings then to virus experts.     

Social Archaeologies of “Utopian” Settlements in Ireland

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century a number of “Ideal” or “Utopian” type settlements were established across Ireland. These tended to be religious groupings or “model” communities associated with industry. In the southwest a number of short-lived cooperative communities were established along Owenite principles which continue to play an integral part in the radical histories of the country. This paper examines the archaeologies of these sites and analyses the role of individual in their formation and collapse and addresses the social archaeology of their construct and layout. It is suggested that contemporary hierarchical norms were actually reproduced in these communities and this segregation is reflected in the physical morphology of the settlements.     

Colonial Research and the Social Sciences at the End of Empire: The West Indian Social Survey, 1944–57

After the ending of slavery the West Indian colonies were marginalised in British imperial consciousness but the major disturbances of the 1930s jolted the complacency of colonial administrators and aroused more widespread concern over lack of development. At the same time, there was greater official recognition of the academic social sciences in formulating policies to promote colonial development and counter mounting threats to empire. This article focuses on a major study carried out in Jamaica in the late 1940s, the West Indian Social Survey, whose main brief was to research aspects of African Caribbean culture that acted as a barrier to progress. It evaluates the context, origins and conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the project, looks at problems encountered by the researchers during the survey and in publishing the findings and, finally, considers the impact of the research on academic knowledge and policy making. A key theme is the relationship between the Colonial Office, the academics on the Colonial Social Science Research Council who sponsored and supervised the project, and the research team in the field. Problems in the inception and management of the project and publication of research findings raise questions as to who were the gatekeepers of academic knowledge and how such knowledge was constructed and disseminated.     

‘The Social’ and Beyond: Introducing Actor-Network Theory

In recent years, it has been suggested (e.g. TAG 2002, 2006; IKUWA3 2008) that it is necessary for the discipline to move beyond the study of ships and boats towards the ‘wider social contexts’ of seafaring and maritime activity. This paper investigates the contours of ‘social’ as an object of study. Two questions are asked: (1) how is this object defined within sociology, classical and contemporary social theory, and archaeology; and (2) what is the status of nonhumans, physical-material things, artefacts, plants, animals, etc.? After taking a look at several different theories, it is argued that it is not necessary for us to move beyond ships and boats. Instead, an alternative approach is offered, one that allows us to move beyond the restrictive ontology of the social.     

Private Life Dramas? Sexuality,Regulation and Social Identities

Lawrence Stone, Broken Lives: Separation and Divorce in England, 1680–1857 A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Married Life Diana Jeater, Marriage, Perversion and Power: The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894–1930 Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880–1928     

Corporate Social Responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been adopted as an approach to international development. But who does it benefit and in what ways? Most importantly, does it allow certain interest groups to redefine the meaning of international development success? This article examines the historical relationship between business and development and compares how expectations of business as exemplified through CSR practices differ from those in the past. It then looks at the role and expectations of business in developing countries and proposes two tests for assessing if CSR makes a positive contribution to development goals based on whether it redefines the meaning of good business practice in the interests of the poor and marginalized, and if it helps development practitioners to manage more effectively the possibility and consequences of global capitalism for poor countries. The article argues that the interests of business are not adequately aligned with those of the poor, and explains why CSR does little to redress this. It argues that the business case in some instances overrides the developmental case for certain actions, and that business thinking is increasingly evident in the policies and practices of international development. Although CSR may have a positive contribution to make in some circumstances, its limitations need to be understood if development's case for involving business is not to be subsumed by business reasons for engaging with (and by‐passing) developing countries.     

Entitled to Health? Social Protection in Chile's Plan AUGE

In theory everyone has the right to health. However, in reality many low income households are unable to fully access health services and therefore cannot fully claim their rights. Recently, in an attempt to overcome these limitations, health reforms in Chile under the Plan AUGE have proposed a series of legal entitlements to health care that are available to everyone regardless of income level. While this is an important starting point in ensuring more universal access to health, the process has raised a number of important issues, particularly on how these entitlements have been defined and how far they will be able to transform (gender) inequalities within the health system. Looking at this from a gender perspective enables us to see that despite the shift from a health care system based on redistributive rights towards one based on the right of recognition, certain sectors of the population remain excluded. Decision‐making processes have remained technocratic, and women's groups have been marginalized from the debate around the reform. Moreover, health policy makers continue to ignore the role of the unpaid care economy in health care provision. The current reform has served to reinforce the gender roles around health care.