Social Science Concepts Research Articles

On Public Forms of Competition

Competition is among the few social-scientific concepts clearly associated with the transparency discourse—obvious today when a myriad of public “ratings” and “rankings” evaluate states, universities, and other actors while often claiming to advance the transparency of those actors and their performances. This article deals with this association from a historical-sociological perspective. It argues that public rankings and similar discursive devices not only symbolize competition but also create and reproduce it, creating what is called here, “artificial zero-sum games.” On this basis, it also makes the case that a more sophisticated conceptualization of public forms of competition draws attention to a long-term historical trend, the beginnings of which can be traced to the 19th century. The argument is presented in two steps: In the first part, a sociological model of public forms of competition is proposed that combines classical sociologist Georg Simmel’s concept of “indirect” and “pure” competition (= competition as a struggle for the favor of a third party) with insights from communication theory, market sociology, media, and globalization research. This model implies that public communication processes create competition by imagining an anonymous audience that enables this kind of competition through its very indefiniteness and anonymity. Thus “publicity” or “publicness,” rather than “transparency,” seem to be the more adequate terms to conceptualize these forms of competition. The second part discusses historical-sociological implications of this model, analyzing competition between nation-states (and national collective identities) in the light of recent globalization research, claiming and describing three trends—toward competition for modernity prestige, specific cultural achievement prestige, and attention/legitimacy —since the late-19th century.

Social layers of customer-to-customer value co-creation

Purpose– Approached from the customer-dominant (C-D) logic perspective, this paper aims to extend current value co-creation discussions by providing conceptual insights into co-creation within customers' social sphere. Focusing on socially dense contexts in which customers consume together in dyads or collectives, the paper seeks to provide recommendations of how service managers can facilitate customer-to-customer (C2C) co-creation.Design/methodology/approach– The paper bridges current thinking on value within the C-D logic with service management perspectives on C2C interactions and social science concepts on consumer communities. Examples from literature and practice are drawn on in the discussion.Findings– The proposed framework reveals C2C co-creation as a dynamic, multi-layered process that is embedded in customers' social contexts. Value emerges in four distinctive social layers: “detached customers”, “social bubble”, “temporary communitas” and “ongoing neo-tribes”.Research limitations/implications– This paper is conceptual. Further validation of the framework in a variety of socially dense consumption settings is needed, using field-based qualitative methods such as participant observation and interviews.Practical implications– Awareness of the multi-layered nature of C2C co-creation and specific practices in which value is formed provides service managers with opportunities to create value propositions that help facilitate such co-creation. Service managers across various sectors benefit from understanding how customers can be “nudged” into more socially immersive co-creation layers.Originality/value– The paper contributes by introducing a C2C co-creation perspective, conceptualizing the social layers within which value is formed, and providing specific propositions to service managers with regard to servicescape structuring and other strategies that facilitate C2C co-creation.

Reconsidering Real-Actual-Empirical Stratification

In the last couple of years there have been some attempts to introduce Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts (especially habitus) into the critical realist conception of social science. But these attempts either limit themselves to the constitution of a philosophical connection between Bourdieu and critical realism or confine Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions to analyses of human agency, whereas Bourdieu’s habitus can provide a deepening of the critical realist conception of what the ‘social’ is. We can establish a socio-ontological connection between the concept of habitus (within its indispensable relation to the ‘field’) and the idea of the social as a stratified reality. In this way, it may be possible to employ real-actual-empirical stratification for the purpose of defining the domain-specific ontology of social science, and to comprehend the habitus-field relation as a component of the stratification in question. To this end, the paper suggests that habitus (together with social institutions) is ‘the missing link between structure and agency’.

A Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience: Divergence, Convergence and Interactions in Kindred Community Concepts

Resilience and empowerment are widely employed concepts in community psychology and other social sciences. Although empowerment is more closely associated with community psychology, both concepts hone to community psychology's strengths-based values, recognizing, respecting, and promoting local capacity and positive outcomes. Both concepts also have been critiqued for lacking clear consensus regarding definition, operationalization, and measurement (Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Luthar et al. in Child Dev 71(3):543-562, 2000). This deficiency is reflected in the wide ranging applications of each term independently, and is particularly concerning when the terms are used together or interchangeably. Theoretical work on these concepts' boundaries and interaction is lacking. This paper builds on the authors' prior work operationalizing the processes and outcomes of each concept (Brodsky et al. in Am J Community Psychol 47(3-4):217-235, 2011; Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Cattaneo and Goodman in Psychol Violence, in press) to present a combined transconceptual model illuminating the divergence, convergence, and interactions between the two. Both resilience and empowerment are fueled by unsatisfying states, but are differentiated by, among other things, internally (resilience) versus externally (empowerment) focused change goals. Goal determinants include context, power differentials, and other risks and resources. These concepts have the potential to facilitate each other, and understanding their interaction can better inform community psychologists' work with marginalized populations.

Praxis und Form

It makes sense to combine Marx and Bourdieu in order to analyze capitalism and criticize economics. Whereas Marx reveals the crucial importance of social forms and capital fetishism, Bourdieu’s theory of practice serves as theoretical antidote to rational choice theory in economics and other social sciences. Furthermore Bourdieu convincingly criticizes Marxism for its inability to overcome theoretical oppositions like idealism vs. materialism. On the other hand Bourdieu’s theory of capital contributes to the proliferation of capital concepts in social science and contains some degree of complicity with economic imperialism that can be questioned by Marxian theory.

Alterity and History: The Cross-Current Contributions of the Work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Alterity and History: The Cross-Current Contributions of the Work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot Ethel Hazard This essay explores and celebrates Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s intellectual vision and analytical insights. Few cultural anthropologists, historians, or political theorists have produced a compendium of work that holds such pertinence for policymakers, scholars, and advanced students in the social sciences and humanities. His work provides knowledge about modern political and economic relations that never romanticizes Haitian alterity but instead, produces ethnographic and historically grounded evidence about the human realities of modern capital and oppressive political systems. Haitian alterity was not perceived as a given by Trouillot, but was rather the subject of many interlocking historical questions. Trouillot’s publications investigate European-derived political traditions in order to provide a broader, evidence-based understanding of the historical emergence of patterns of economic development, issues of governance within the Haitian nation-state and internationally, and state practices that advocated increased citizen political participation. These topics are found throughout Trouillot’s academic scholarship and were present in his public engagement and service. By placing such value on these issues, his work provides a theoretical and analytical lens through which to understand Haitian alterity not as deficit or deficient, but as unknown yet knowable. It is in this way that Trouillot’s work provides a crosscurrent of knowledge regarding the historical and contemporary realities in Haiti and the Caribbean. However, the back-and-forth relationship between European and American politics, and the regionally specific historical relationships that he advanced, also address issues pertinent to the political traditions of people of African descent throughout the Americas. Alterity includes processes involved in the making and forging of historical distinctiveness. In Trouillot’s written and public works, Haiti’s distinctiveness requires an understanding of the intersections of modern historical transformations and a substantive examination of human agency. Moreover, it was his own crosscurrent of academic and personal knowledge, as well as his [End Page 33] analytical vision and critical insights, that engaged scholarship about the construction and historical emergence of Western European politics. This scholarship neither silenced nor ignored the contributions made by people of African descent, or the political leadership within the Republic of Haiti and throughout the Americas. If the “New World” was an alternative to Europe, the Republic of Haiti, according to the scholarship of Trouillot, was an alternative to the historical transformations underway in the Americas. Most importantly, the content of Haitian history provided a necessary critique of the foundational premises held in political and economic theory that impacted a fuller ethnographic understanding of human history. In this essay, I offer specific insights regarding Trouillot’s ethnohistorical scholarship and his contributions as an engaged public intellectual. I had the benefit of having him as a professor when I first began graduate study at Johns Hopkins University. I applied to the Hopkins anthropology program because in the 1993 American Association of Anthropology Guide to Anthropology Programs, Dr. Trouillot listed the “Afro-Americas” as his area of cultural expertise. I wanted to learn what he meant by the “Afro-Americas.” During the period I attended the university as a graduate student, I began to recognize that his historical research and his public comments and writings interlocked. The “Afro-Americas” were not a static, singular object but were created by human-driven processes with important contextual locations, fraught by historical invisibility in the scholarship. Trouillot’s academic instruction included coursework that specifically trained students to understand the creation of social scientific concepts and categories. His critical intervention as a professor provided me with my own intellectual tools. It is clear after an examination of both his academic and public engagement that for Trouillot, contemporary foreign relations and politics were interrelated with historical population transformations. Historical transformations are not linked in directly causal relationships with issues of state formation and governance, but are shifts that need to be critically examined. Culture, history, and power provide the basis for important analytical discussions regarding political processes. As the Krieger Endowed Chair at Johns Hopkins, Trouillot openly discussed the tenuousness of his place and power at the table of tenured knowledge creators in US academic institutions. For more than ten years, Trouillot was...

What can we say about the future of social science?

Social science has for the most part lost its ambition to be ‘science’, as shown in the recent change in the American Anthropological Association statement of purpose. The new term is expertise. The change points to something fundamental: social science methods are now largely stable; they have well-developed uses for public and policy audiences; because they are user-friendly they are unlikely to radically change, and new problems arise for them to be applied to. New concepts are developed, but they do not develop into ‘theories’ in a scientific sense. So what is expertise? It is something other than fact generation: it is the result of aggregating and assessing research in an area. Experts engage with one another, so there is a community of expertise. Yet there is also another sense of ‘scientific’: using the tools of natural science and extending them to the social. The current means of doing this for social science is through neuroscience. These methods could serve to filter and validate social science concepts.

Education and social change: contours in the history of American schooling

In this brief, interpretive history of American schooling, John Rury focuses on the evolving relationship between education and social change. The book considers the impact of social forces, such as industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and cultural conflict on the development of schools and other educational institutions. It also examines the various ways that schools have contributed to social change, particularly in providing avenues of social mobility and success for certain social groups and not for others. Detailed accounts of the experiences of women and minority groups in American history explain how their lives have been affected by education. Key features include: *Content Coverage--Provides a concise, comprehensive, and interpretive coverage of American educational history that ranges from colonial beginnings to the present. Key social science concepts, such as social and cultural capital are used throughout to explain historical developments related to social change and education. *Engaging Storyline--Provides a clear, interpretive storyline in which descriptive text is repeatedly punctuated by in-depth explorations of specific historical issues or events that increase the level of student engagement and response. *Teaching Flexibility--Its content, modest length, and price make it appropriate for students in any of the following courses: Social and Historical Foundations of Education, Introduction to Education, History of Education, or Educational Policy Studies.

The Forgotten Alasdair MacIntyre: Beyond Value Neutrality in the Social Sciences

Alasdair MacIntyre is often recognized for his contributions to moral philosophy. In this article, I argue that his reputation should be rehabilitated as a theorist who has realized an essentially critical conception of social science that moves beyond the old dogma of value neutrality. The article’s first section narrates how MacIntyre’s unique conception of a critical social science arose out of debates with Peter Winch, whose defense of value neutrality MacIntyre found untenable. He responded by developing a social science every bit as interpretive as Winch’s, but also inherently critical and normative. The second section explores how MacIntyre’s vision of social science can generate criticism of major approaches to political inquiry today, including mainstream political science, Quentin Skinner’s Cambridge School, and Michel Foucault’s post-structuralism.

Ethics in health technology assessment: Understanding health technologies as policies

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) agencies strive to broaden their analyses to address more policy-relevant dimensions, including ethics. This trend has been described as transforming HTA to health technology policy analysis. A related social science concept, technology-as-policy, suggests useful directions for integrating ethics analysis into technology assessments. It challenges the HTA field to shift its focus from ethics to values and from evidence to intelligence. We describe these key concepts using recent Canadian and international innovations in HTA to illustrate promising trends.

Entrepreneurship in action: bringing together the individual, organizational and institutional dimensions of entrepreneurial action

There is increasing recognition that entrepreneurship research needs to achieve a better balance between studying to entrepreneurial activities and setting these activities in their wider context. It is important that these good intentions are realized and one way of doing this is to bring together ethnographic research with concepts from sociology and from pragmatist thinking. In this study, field research material is interwoven with a set of key concepts to ensure that balanced attention is paid to issues at the levels of the enterprising individual, the organization and societal institutions. The field research is innovative in combining depth study of several enterprises and their founders with the analysis of broader aspects of ‘entrepreneurship in society’. It achieves this through a process of ‘everyday ethnographic’ observation, reading, conversation and ongoing analysis. In the spirit of a pragmatist conception of social science, the underlying logic of entrepreneurial action is identified. This is a logic which needs to be appreciated by all of those who wish to understand and/or engage with the entrepreneurial dimension of contemporary social and economic life.

Spatial Polygamy and Contextual Exposures (SPACEs)

Exposure science has developed rapidly and there is an increasing call for greater precision in the measurement of individual exposures across space and time. Social science interest in an individual's environmental exposure, broadly conceived, has arguably been quite limited conceptually and methodologically. Indeed, we appear to lag behind our exposure science colleagues in our theories, data, and methods. In this paper we discuss a framework based on the concept of spatial polygamy to demonstrate the need to collect new forms of data on human spatial behavior and contextual exposures across time and space. Adopting new data and methods will be essential if we want to better understand social inequality in terms of exposure to health risks and access to health resources. We discuss the opportunities and challenges focusing on the potential seemingly offered by focusing on human mobility, and specifically the utilization of activity space concepts and data. A goal of the paper is to spatialize social and health science concepts and research practice vis-a-vis the complexity of exposure. The paper concludes with some recommendations for future research focusing on theoretical and conceptual development, promoting research on new types of places and human movement, the dynamic nature of contexts, and on training. "When we elect wittingly or unwittingly, to work within a level … we tend to discern or construct - whichever emphasis you prefer - only those kinds of systems whose elements are confined to that level."Otis Dudley Duncan (1961, p. 141)."…despite the new ranges created by improved transportation, local government units have tended to remain medieval in size."Torsten Hägerstrand (1970, p.18)"A detective investigating a crime needs both tools and understanding. If he has no fingerprint powder, he will fail to find fingerprints on most surfaces. If he does not understand where the criminal is likely to have put his fingers, he will not look in the right places. Equally, the analyst of data needs both tools and understanding."John Tukey (1977, p.1)"When we observe the environment, we necessarily do so on only a limited number of scales."Simon Levin (1992, p. 1945)There is a desperate need to develop methods with the same precision for an individual's environmental exposure as we have for an individual's genome … even a partial, targeted understanding of exposure can provide substantial advantages."Christopher Wild (2005, p.1848).

Inventing the axial age: the origins and uses of a historical concept

The concept of the axial age, initially proposed by the philosopher Karl Jaspers to refer to a period in the first millennium BCE that saw the rise of major religious and philosophical figures and ideas throughout Eurasia, has gained an established position in a number of fields, including historical sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of religion. We explore whether the notion of an “axial age” has historical and intellectual cogency, or whether the authors who use the label of a more free-floating “axiality” to connote varied “breakthroughs” in human experience may have a more compelling case. Throughout, we draw attention to ways in which uses of the axial age concept in contemporary social science vary in these and other respects. In the conclusion, we reflect on the value of the concept and its current uses and their utility in making sense of human experience.

Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Perspectives

Recently, interest in the archaeology of ethnogenesis has surged. This renewed interest stems from innovations in the historical study of ethnogenesis, theoretical shifts favoring multidirectional agency, and relevant contemporary sociopolitical debates. Theoretical problems surrounding the appropriateness of the social science concept of “ethnicity,” however, have made the comparative study of ethnogenesis difficult. Drawing from past and emergent perspectives adds renewed vigor to comparative studies of ethnogenesis. A methodology that integrates the different types of theory can resolve the theoretical tensions in the archaeological study of ethnogenesis.

Organizations and Social Worker Well-Being: The Intra-Organizational Context of Practice and Its Impact on a Practitioner's Subjective Well-Being

This study aimed to better understand the varied factors that contribute to social worker subjective well-being (SWB) (the social science concept for happiness). Using qualitative methods of inquiry 19 social workers who reported having low to medium levels of workplace and profession satisfaction were interviewed to assess those factors within their lives that they perceived as impacting their well-being. One thematic category from the analysis was aspects of the intra-organizational context of workplaces that can impact social worker SWB. Respondents identified interpersonal workplace relationships, decision-making processes, management/supervisory dynamics, workload and workplace expectations, access to resources and infrastructure support, and inter-organizational relationships as key intra-organizational factors contributing to their overall wellbeing. in conclusion, these findings have practical application within organizations for structured policies and unstructured practices to improve social worker subjective well-being.

Pierre Bourdieu a Kabylové: Idealizace, identifikace, instrumentalizace?

Pierre Bourdieu's social scientific concepts and theories are very popular among social scientists today. However, his early writings based on fieldwork in Algeria are far less well known, despite the fact that in was in these texts that his famous concepts and theories originated. This article sets out to examine the mutual relationship between Bourdieu and the Kabyle people from several perspectives. The author focuses on Bourdieu's relationship to the fieldwork, his relations with Kabyle intellectuals, and at the role they played as his key informants and 'experts' on Kabyle culture. The article investigates to what extent and how in France Bourdieu defended the academic activities of the Kabyle people relating to their own culture. It also studies Bourdieu's opinion on the Kabyle people's emancipation efforts within independent Algeria. Finally, it looks at how familiar the Kabyle people are today with Bourdieu's work on their society and culture and how his body of work is interpreted, taught at universities and used as a tool in the formation process of Kabyle collective identity. The article is based on a study of primary and secondary sources: Bourdieu's scholarly writings, media interviews, his speeches at ceremonies, and his correspondence, and it draws on published interviews with Bourdieu's friends and colleagues. The author also used her own fieldwork in Algeria as an auxiliary source of data.

James D. Mooney and General Motors' Multinational Operations, 1922–1940

This article traces the emergence of the General Motors Corporation as a multinational enterprise under the leadership of James D. Mooney from 1922 to the outbreak of World War II. Mooney's unpublished paper “The Science of Industrial Organization” (1929) portrays GM's multidivisional organization's use of the line-staff concept in organizing overseas assembly plants. Here I compare General Motors with Ford Motor Company, which had first-mover advantages overseas, and examine how each company organized and managed their international operations. “Linking pins,” a social-science concept, illustrates how GM's organizational hierarchy achieved vertical coordination of effort. Economic depression and the prelude to World War II followed the expansionary 1920s, requiring GM and Ford to adjust to a changing environment. The article also covers Mooney's naïve attempts to use business for diplomacy in the years leading up to the war.

Lukács on Science: A New Act in the Tragedy

Abstract The rejection of the ‘dialectics of nature’ has long been thought of as the most fundamental factor distinguishing Western Marxism from official Soviet-style Marxism. Yet, in Tailism and the Dialectic, Georg Lukács – perhaps the most influential figure in Western Marxism – strongly endorses the existence of an objective dialectic in nature. A close examination of Lukács’s main writings on science shows, however, that he still in effect denied the possibility of applying dialectical method to nature. This paradox is bound up with a dualistic conception of natural and social science with distinctly adverse implications for the development of an ecological Marxism.

Social sciences, scientific research, higher education and social developments - An Albanian inside of dialectics and structured scientific research, in social sciences

The social sciences have inherited a not so clear relationship with the social politics throughout the history. At the first moment the concept of social sciences came into use in the 19th century the first organizations that were promoting them were not located in the universities. They were located in the Public Sector. They brought into the scenery not only professional of the area, but also politicians, clerics and businessmen. The main objective was the promoting of the reforms that consider the social politics able to improve the so defined social problems. These associations thought that by collecting different kind of data regarding these problems they would reach a clear insight on the directions the state should follow in the framework of different politics and reforms. As a result, the national research capacity is of the highest importance to the ability of a state to invent and implement successfully its politics based on evidences that concern and come as a reaction to the concerns and issues of the social problems as a whole. In this article I will be presenting first of all an overview of the scientific research in Albania in the area of the social sciences by pointing out the main areas that deserve to be the prior ones in the contest of developing activities that aim the implementation of the research in Social Sciences. Also, a great number of Institutions has been contacted with the aim of receiving official information and data on the functioning and on the potential problems that can be faced during the research processes. These institutions have been selected based on their involvement at the area of the scientific research of the social sciences. At first this will involve the policy makers at the central level, like the Ministry of Education and Sciences and the main research actors in the public and in the private sector. The criteria of the geographical and the subjects coverage has been also used in order to be able to present a public institutions of the higher education and research but even the enterprises that act in the research area are mainly focusing to the integration of these two systems which have been working separately for a long period of time and that must become efficient in order to adapt to the conditions of a country that has limited financial resources. This article is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific research in Albania, focusing in defining the priority areas for the research in social sciences. The information about the higher education and the potential problems that it faces, is based on a big number of research institutions, selected based on their involvement in scientific research in social sciences. This article brings into evidence the fact that in order to establish a stable and effective infrastructure in scientific research in Albania, is important to work in different directions. A successful way to increase the efficasity through the elements of the “innovative system” is by working with organizations that work in specific sectors of the economy, aiming for a possible cooperation in scientific search, for an important social contribution.

Preaching Messages We Never Intended

Churches and denominations are increasingly practicing welcome and affirmation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people and many seminaries and divinity schools now incorporate training on LGBTIQ competency into the curriculum. Yet, amid increasingly overt affirmation, there are subtler ways of bringing to expression the long history of Christian LGBTIQ negativity that are unintentional and often go unnoticed and unchallenged in institutional contexts. This article introduces the social scientific concept of “microaggressions” as a necessary component of training for religious professionals intending to work with and alongside LGBTIQ persons. The article will suggest that in the context of preaching, microaggressions—brief, unintended, and often-unconscious expressions of LGBTIQ denigration — should be examined as a part of the curriculum in homiletics classrooms. What can be learned about microaggressions in the classrooms can serve as a parallel for continued examination of the subtly aggressive speech acts that are perpetrated against LGBTIQ people as “unofficial” messages of denigration, often in self-identified “welcoming” schools and congregations.