Local Social Order Research Articles

The Geopolitics of Climate Knowledge Mobilization

Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists and societal actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface(s), each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance.

Resident-defined measurement scale for a city’s products

The concept of a city’s products has been proposed and discussed in several studies. However, customers’ quality perception is not addressed in the existing research. This study takes the perspective of city residents, follows a procedure to develop a scale, selects a few representative cities in China as study sites, and develops and tests a scale to measure the quality perceptions of a city’s products. The scale is composed of 15 dimensions: the macro environment, urban design and architectural characteristics, community infrastructure, community management and services, transportation system, leisure and recreation, shopping and dining, public events, personal career development, municipal administration and services, air quality, diligence of local government officials, social order and security, personal quality of neighborhood residents, and local corporate social responsibility. This study then examines the nomological validity by testing the relationships between the city products’ quality perception (CPQP) and citizen satisfaction, place attachment, citizen subjective well-being, and city image.

An Archaeology of Death Notices: Unearthing the Culture Shaping Death Notices in Aotearoa New Zealand

Researchers have established that the local social or moral order impacts on aspects of death announcements in various societies, though few have consequently sought to problematise that order. Those studies appear to presume the homogeneity of the studied society although modern societies typically include diverse peoples. This article assesses whether death notices in Aotearoa New Zealand are circumscribed by the dominant social/cultural order or reflect its multicultural character. Examining a large number of notices from the New Zealand Herald, we found most incorporated the same structural elements and employed a common vocabulary, evidence that the writers were guided by a single social order. Utilising published research and death notices deviating from the standard we were able to identify cultural characteristics of that local social order that were being rendered ordinary in the sample of death notices. Identified features of that dominant order are: it fixes a gulf between past and present; it limits relationships of the deceased to their immediate family; it expects positive portrayals of the deceased; and overtly religious language is largely absent. Underpinning these notices were two cultural characteristics: an understanding of time as a unidirectional flow of empty instants and a taken-for-granted a-social individuality.

Effective pedagogy as a local experience

There is always a lot of discussion about effective pedagogical practices in mathematics. While we might vary in our views about the detail, those of us based in western countries are generally agreed on approaches that emphasize student centeredness and inclusiveness. For example, we understand that effective teachers work hard at developing trusting classroom communities. We believe that, in turn, the relationships developed within that community become a resource for developing students’ mathematical competencies and identities. Effective teachers have high yet realistic expectations about what their students can achieve. They ensure that the lesson content has a strong mathematical focus and contains opportunities for students to think, reason, communicate, reflect upon and critique mathematics. However, how relevant for other settings are our western understandings of effective mathematics pedagogy? We sometimes assume that pedagogical practices that have shown to be effective in one setting will be effective for every school system, every community and every student cohort. That assumption appears to underwrite the exportation of tests and textbooks that find their way into developing countries. In essence, the practice represents a one-way transfer of expertise and materials through which the game of western ‘catch-up’ is played. Some researchers have been drawing attention to this point. They argue that pedagogical decisions in non-western settings should be grounded in local knowledge, language, culture, family systems and values and beliefs. Engagement with all these realities would unravel modes of thinking and acting within the local social order that have important implications for teaching practices. The three papers in this issue each report on research undertaken within different international settings. They explore prospective teacher learning and self-perceptions from locations based in Ethiopia, Samoa and South Africa. The researchers do not dismiss the developments on pedagogy identified in the literature, but they filter those developments

How a travelling society totalizes itself: Hybrid polities and values in Maluku, Eastern Indonesia

This article applies Dumont’s view of ideology to an Eastern Indonesian society with intense trade connections to other ethnic groups and the larger political economy. In spite of their commercial importance, these connections are framed as long-distance kinship. My question is whether this encompassment of economic by social values is part of a totalizing ideological order. I discuss the values of personhood and exchange to show that long-distance commerce is the source of social differentiation expressed in them. Ultimately, however, the test of Dumont’s methodology is not whether it helps explain the resilience of local social orders, but whether it can deal with historical complexity and change. I argue that Dumont’s answer – hybrid ideology – is a good description for the encompassment of both kin-based totalities and political-economic stratification by universalizing, Islamic values in my ethnographic context.

The Frenzy of Fields: An Interview with Neil Fligstein on Field-Theory and Social Skill

In their ongoing attempts to define the basic architecture of the social world, sociologists have repeatedly turned to the idea of an ‘intermediate’ concept of social structure. Led by the intuition that something is needed to bridge the gap between the ‘macro-level’ of society as a whole and the ‘micro-level’ of individual practice, several authors have attempted to formulate the notion of a ‘meso-level’ social order. While embedded in the general fabric of social space and hence exposed to the structural forces it exerts, these local social orders are nevertheless thought of as having their own internal dynamics and relatively autonomous principles of organisation. Classical examples of this idea can already be found in Max Weber’s (1946 [1915]) notion of ‘spheres of value’ (Wertsphare) or Karl Mannheim’s idea of ‘sector fields’ (1940) . More recently, a similar intuition has informed such seemingly disparate intellectual projects as Luhmann’s theory of ‘self-referential social systems’ (1995), DiMaggio’s and Powell’s conception of ‘organisational fields’ (1983), Abbott’s (1988, 2005) work on ‘ecologies’ and, perhaps most famously of all, Pierre Bourdieu’s (1993, 1996, 1998) work on ‘fields’. The latter has been particularly instrumental in developing what has come to be known as a ‘field-theoretical’ perspective within sociology (for a highly insightful overview of the origins and developments of this perspective within sociology, see Martin 2003). One of the latest additions in this line of field-theoretical inquiry is A Theory of Fields (2012), the most recent book by Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam. The central aim of A Theory of Fields is highly ambitious: to present the outline

Benevolence, Charity, and Duty: Urban Relief and Domain Society during the Tenmei Famine

Benevolence, Charity, and DutyUrban Relief and Domain Society during the Tenmei Famine Maren Ehlers (bio) In the fifth lunar month of 1783, the people of Ōno 大野 were startled by a roll of thunder that returned over several weeks and reminded them of giant drums or cannon shots.1 The source of this menacing noise was Mt. Asama 浅間, a large volcano in neighboring Shinano 信濃 province, which subsequently erupted later in the summer. A small domain set within the mountainous hinterland of Echizen 越前 province, Ōno was too far away to be directly affected by the eruption, but the noise proved an unlucky omen nonetheless. In 1783, after a cold and rainy summer, the peasants of the Ōno plain suffered what they called a “crop failure” (fusaku 不作). This came in the wake of a meager harvest the previous year and was followed by two more years of dearth in 1784/85 and 1786/87.2 Ōno, together with many other parts of eastern and central Japan, had entered one of the worst and longest food crises of the Tokugawa period: the Tenmei 天明 Famine.3 [End Page 55] This article discusses how Ōno’s domain authorities and the people of the castle town (also known as Ōno) organized hunger relief for the town’s commoner population during the Tenmei Famine. Relief institutions for townspeople in Tokugawa Japan differed from those for villagers because governments were particularly eager to prevent unrest around their seats of power, and because towns were centers of commerce and home to a very diverse mix of nonagricultural livelihoods. Most previous research on urban famine relief has focused on the “three capitals,” Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto.4 Consideration of the situation in Ōno adds a new dimension to such studies by exploring how different schemes of hunger aid were managed, funded, and modified in a much smaller setting. The article argues that famine relief in Ōno was structured by the local social order, especially the roles assumed by urban status groups, which served as a coordinating framework for charitable interactions. As such it also addresses the question of what relief activities reveal about society and domain rule in a small castle town in the late Tokugawa period. The shogunate and domain lords administered their territories by relying on the self-governing capacities of groups such as peasant villages, neighborhoods (which were largely occupation based), guilds, and fraternities of various kinds. Although the warrior authorities expected these groups to submit to their control and could impose their will by force if necessary, they also allowed such entities autonomy in many situations and secured their allegiance by granting them privileges and protection. In return, status groups provided the rulers with duties in the form of goods and services that reflected their particular expertise. Famine relief was shaped by this style of governance, which relied on powerful bonds of mutual obligation and group cohesion. Much of what may at first appear like individual acts of charity actually hinged on the givers’ status ties with the authorities, while the government exercised “benevolent rule” by relying on the contributions of commoners. Commoner and seigneurial interventions in hunger relief were closely intertwined and cannot be understood in isolation from one another. [End Page 56] Two types of status entities stand out as particularly relevant for urban famine relief in Ōno and elsewhere: neighborhoods (chō 町) and various forms of guilds (nakama 仲間). Chō were small, self-governing units of house-owning townspeople through which warrior governments exercised their rule over the town population. They typically comprised the two rows of houses on either side of a block-long street section. Mutual help, including assistance to needy neighbors or tenants, is often identified as one of two major responsibilities of the chō, and especially the five-household groups within them—the second being mutual supervision and control.5 By comparison, the involvement in famine relief of other officially recognized groups in Tokugawa society, such as guilds, has not received much scholarly attention. In Ōno, the sake brewer guild, the purveyor guild, and the beggar guild (a group of mendicant outcastes) all played important roles in the organization and funding of town-wide systems of relief. Their participation in these...

Объединяй, направляй и властвуй: о роли социальных навыков в конструировании локальных социальных порядков Рецензия на книгу: Fligstein N., McAdam D. 2012. A Theory of Fields. New York: Oxford University Press

The review considers a new theory of strategic action fields provided in the book “ATheory of Fields”. The author analyzes its basic elements- new as well as borrowed from other theories, and its significance for the development of organizational theory, the theory of social movements, institutional theory and economic sociology. The last part of the text criticizes some debatable theses of this theory. Theory of strategic action fields discusses the issue of the local social orders formation. The authors represent all social orders as fields, which consist of the following actors: incumbents; challengers and internal governance units. All fields are embedded in a broader field environment. It gives the most significant incentives to changes of the organizational models dominant in the fields in question. Incentives to changes are converted into changes in the case of mobilization for the collective action. It is crucial to have special social skill for the start of mobilization process. Authors define social skill as an ability to understand other actors and manage them by creating shared meanings and identities for themselves and others. Thus the authors shift their attention from the control based on the resources or power to the ability to voluntary cooperation. Social skill and the ability to voluntary cooperation are the consequence of “existential functions of the social”, the important innovation of this theory.

Embodying the institution—Object manipulation in developing interaction in study counselling meetings

This paper discusses the emergent progression of courses of action proposed and negotiated between co-participants in interaction. Each of these actions makes a subsequent range of next actions relevant, but which of these is produced by the co-participant is not pre-determined. The trajectory of an activity is not scripted, but is contingent on the choices made at each step by the participants involved, and the understanding displayed by them of the prior action(s). Body visual displays such as gaze, gesture and postural orientation, as well as vocal, material and linguistic resources, together afford participants a rich reserve of raw materials from which to fashion public displays of understanding regarding the particular juncture in the interaction.Participants in interaction are faced with the practical issues of delineating one situated practice from another, transitioning into and out of bounded activities and across successive juncture points within an activity. These may need to be furnished with some form of individual demarcation in order to avoid disorientation between co-interactants with regard to the particular frame in which they are currently engaged. We explore here how co-participants utilize aggregates of interactional components to construct such sequentially relevant action. Particularly, we focus here on how objects in the material surround are used in conjunction with talk, gaze and postural orientation to construct local social order in study guidance counselling meetings at a university.The analysis demonstrates how physical objects and bodily conduct are drawn on to project social actions that are used “symbolically” (cf. Streeck, 1996) to institutionalize interaction. Following Streeck (1996), it is the arranging of the body and objects into recognizable configurations for undertaking particular types of task that is utilized as a gestural displays of institutional orientation.

Communicating security? Policing urban spaces and control signals

The rise of reassurance policing in the UK, informed by ideas drawn from a Signal Crimes Perspective, replaced a narrow focus on controlling crime with a broader emphasis on communicating security. This paper provides a sympathetic critique of dominant assumptions implied in this policy shift concerning the reassurance function of policing. Important in these theoretically informed policy debates is the idea that the police and their partners, through symbolic communications, can influence the extent to which individuals perceive that order and security exist within urban spaces. The paper draws on research findings to illustrate the contrasting ways visible signifiers of crime and formal controls are received and interpreted by diverse audiences. It challenges assumptions about the impact of criminal activities upon perceptions of safety and contributes insights into the unintended effects of formal controls that have implications for our understanding of local social order.

Practical-Moral Knowledge: The Social Organization of Regulatory Processes in Academic Contexts

In this article, we developed a theoretical frame to analyze how practical-moral knowledge structures the regulatory processes of learning to control and direct behavior during literacy lessons in two elementary classrooms. We describe how regulatory behaviors were congruent with the local social and moral order, constituents of practical-moral knowledge. Variance in the practical-moral knowledge of each classroom revealed two different patterns of regulation: (a) a toggle or shift from other-regulation to self-regulation, with an emphasis on other-regulation and (b) a dynamic pattern of fluid shifts between other-regulation, coregulation, and self-regulation, with an emphasis on coregulation. We argue that regulatory processes do not originate within the individual but rather in and through learning practices.

Order, stability, and change in Afghanistan: from top-down to bottom-up state-making

This article presents findings from long-term empirical fieldwork and archival research into current and historical patterns of governance in north-eastern Afghanistan, conducted between 2006 and 2009. Despite the long civil war, striking continuities have been found in the make-up and functioning of the local social order. Patron–client relations, eldership, and related practices of mediation are crucial structuring principles of rural society. They have dominated Afghan politics over centuries and still do today. Viewed from a long-term perspective, this continuity, related patterns of representation, and the role of middlemen and brokers suggest a certain degree of stability, in contrast to the popular perception of instability and disorder in this country. Whilst in the past the expansion of the state relied on tacit agreement between government administrators and local elites, resulting in state-making from above, the war broadly changed actors, regimes, and coalitions, but not the underlying mechanisms of the social order. Hence, today, the failure of the current state-building project can be attributed to the fact that the effects of these mechanisms are insufficiently recognized and grasped by Western actors and state-builders. We argue that local Afghan actors have captured the intervention from below. Instead of state-building, we are dealing here with state-making dominated by patronage networks.

Anchoring of Firms in the Neighbourhood: Does Local Social and Physical Order Affect Local Firms' Investment Strategies?

An increasing number of small- and medium-sized firms, whose low relocation propensity seems to point to strong local anchors, have moved to residential neighbourhoods. On the one hand, the neighbourhood context, an attractive production milieu with rich social network potential, may enable entrepreneurs to increase investments in either human capital (personnel) or physical capital (premises, production goods). These investments further anchor firms in a neighbourhood, where they contribute to a thriving local economy. On the other hand, high crime rates, a deteriorated physical environment and a lack of social capital can discourage entrepreneurs from investing locally. In this study, we conducted a multilevel analysis on the relative contribution of neighbourhood characteristics to entrepreneurial investment strategies and controlled for firm and entrepreneur characteristics. We found that neighbourhood cohesiveness and liveability—but not local market characteristics—make a small but significant contribution to explaining local entrepreneurs' investments. This contribution is even stronger for the smallest firms. Therefore, a spatially targeted policy aimed at improving social cohesion and safety is likely to benefit both residents and small local firms.

The Memory Keeper

The public visibility and political activity of women remain contentious social issues in the Middle East. Where women are encouraged by the state to be politically active, their ensuing visibility is perceived as threatening to the local male-dominated social order, which in turn hampers their efficacy as political agents. In this article I explore political commemoration in Syria as a socially sanctioned venue for apolitical political activity that allows women nonthreatening public visibility. I focus on the work of Dr. Nadia Khost in commemorative practices in Damascus to illustrate how gender can be utilized effectively to negotiate local power hierarchies and social norms. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which the public visibility and political activity of women are sanctioned when perceived as reinforcing rather than challenging the local sociopolitical order.

Correlates of walking and cycling for transport and recreation: factor structure, reliability and behavioural associations of the perceptions of the environment in the neighbourhood scale (PENS)

BackgroundEmerging evidence suggests that walking and cycling for different purposes such as transport or recreation may be associated with different attributes of the physical environment. Few studies to date have examined these behaviour-specific associations, particularly in the UK. This paper reports on the development, factor structure and test-retest reliability of a new scale assessing perceptions of the environment in the neighbourhood (PENS) and the associations between perceptions of the environment and walking and cycling for transport and recreation.MethodsA new 13-item scale was developed for assessing adults’ perceptions of the environment in the neighbourhood (PENS). Three sets of analyses were conducted using data from two sources. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to identify a set of summary environmental variables using data from the iConnect baseline survey (n = 3494); test-retest reliability of the individual and summary environmental items was established using data collected in a separate reliability study (n = 166); and multivariable logistic regression was used to determine the associations of the environmental variables with walking for transport, walking for recreation, cycling for transport and cycling for recreation, using iConnect baseline survey data (n = 2937).ResultsFour summary environmental variables (traffic safety, supportive infrastructure, availability of local amenities and social order), one individual environmental item (street connectivity) and a variable encapsulating general environment quality were identified for use in further analyses. Intraclass correlations of these environmental variables ranged from 0.44 to 0.77 and were comparable to those seen in other similar scales. After adjustment for demographic and other environmental factors, walking for transport was associated with supportive infrastructure, availability of local amenities and general environment quality; walking for recreation was associated with supportive infrastructure; and cycling for transport was associated only with street connectivity. There was limited evidence of any associations between environmental attributes and cycling for recreation.ConclusionPENS is acceptable as a short instrument for assessing perceptions of the urban environment. Previous findings that different attributes of the environment may be associated with different behaviours are confirmed. Policy action to create supportive environments may require a combination of environmental improvements to promote walking and cycling for different purposes.

Peer group interactions in multilingual educational settings: Co-constructing social order and norms for language use

The present study explores peer group interactions in early multilingual educational settings, specifically focusing on children’s language-related episodes. Highlighting the multifaceted work of these interactional practices, it demonstrates in detail how children’s corrective actions, targeting, assessing and criticizing of the other’s language use were utilized in building the peer group identities and relations, while simultaneously indexing local norms for conduct and language use. Designed as outright disagreements with the prior speaker, corrections highlighted the contrast between the recipient’s error and the speaker’s remedy and entailed (a) the disagreement with the prior speaker (e.g. linguistic polarity marker ‘no’), (b) the explicit identification of the trouble source (‘this is not x’) and (c) the instruction as to the correct replacement (‘this is x’). Similarly, word searches in the peer group were resolved so as to index the asymmetry in knowledge between the peers. In the production of corrections, the children displayed and recognized the relevance of appropriate use of the lingua franca (e.g. Swedish) as part of their situated production of local social order. Language expertise was an issue for negotiations and redefinitions in multilingual peer group’s interactions and was one of the factors organizing social relations in multilingual educational settings.

Participation through imitative repetitions

This article provides an analysis of participation within the framework of language socialization with a focus on the child’s position as overhearer. The study suggests that a particular position as creative imitator is to be included within models of participation in order to account for the particular transition position in which the child transforms his position from overhearer to speaker. Through an empirical study it is demonstrated how an overhearing child (aged 2.2—2.4 years) embeds his contributions within the local social and interactional order through repetitions of other participants’ contributions. It is argued that these repetitions are social acts by which the child displays involvement in family conversations by orienting to their perspectives. The child can be seen to learn through others and not only from others.

The Color of Intimacy: Local Social Orders and National Equilibria in American Race Politics

Recently, political scientists have formulated a structural approach to race relations and politics that has added analytic coherence to the field and provided a workable framework to assess the systematic effects of race on broader political and social transformations. These approaches, however, conceptualize “racial orders” in ways that either explicitly treat local racial politics as epiphenomenonal or implicitly denies the analytic independence of local race relations. This article contributes to recent theorizing around racial orders by granting local racial orders analytic autonomy. By tracing the evolution of anti-miscegenation laws across time and regions, this paper demonstrates the explanatory virtues of observing the interaction between local social orders and federal policies when attempting to isolate patterns of race relations and politics in the United States. Thus, while scholars, particularly sociologists, have for decades debated whether structure or culture is responsible for persisting racial inequality, they have missed an equally culpable factor: the polity. This paper finds that racial inequality persists in the post-Civil Rights era because of the declining significance of the state in the local circumstances of racial minorities.

The ins and outs of home networking

Householders are increasingly adopting home networking as a solution to the demands created by the presence of multiple computers, devices, and the desire to access the Internet. However, current network solutions are derived from the world of work (and initially the military) and provide poor support for the needs of the home. We present the key findings to emerge from empirical studies of home networks in the UK and US. The studies reveal two key kinds of work that effective home networking relies upon: one, the technical work of setting up and maintaining the home network, and the other, the collaborative and socially organized work of the home which the network is embedded in and supports. The two are thoroughly intertwined and rely upon one another for their realization, yet neither is adequately supported by current networking technologies and applications. Explication of the “work to make the home network work” opens up the design space for the continued integration of the home network in domestic life and elaboration of future support. Key issues for development include the development of networking facilities that do not require advanced networking knowledge, that are flexible and support the local social order of the home and the evolution of its routines, and which ultimately make the home network visible and accountable to household members.

Community Policing and Disputed Norms for Local Social Control in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg

Ryan Carrier (1999), reflecting on policing in South Africa, has pointed out that there may be different types of order that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: he argues that the type of order that the state seeks to guarantee may be different from the type of order that businesses, affluent suburbs, townships and corporations wish to establish or preserve. He concludes by saying that different types of order may call for different types of policing. Whilst this idea seems interesting regarding the way communities can gain control over their direct environment, it is also quite challenging when thinking of equality in the access to security – especially in South Africa, where the idea of ‘separate but equal’ development has sinister overtones. In the current worldwide context of security governance and of development of community policing principles, the line between what communities are entitled to do and what they should leave to the police is very blurred, particularly so when norms regarding social order vary in space and time. Security norms to be implemented at the neighbourhood level have to be negotiated between communities and public authorities, and within communities themselves. This article, based on field study in suburbs and townships in post-apartheid Johannesburg, argues that there are different ‘cultures’ of policing and different conceptions of local social order embedded in different local histories and contrasting socio-economic settings. The South African state is currently attempting to homogenise security practices and to ‘educate’ people in a democratic policing culture. At the same time it is also firmly setting some limits (for instance by rejecting road closures and vigilantism) to the local security experiments developed in the period following the demise of apartheid. However, its current policy, supposedly designed to ‘unify’ the policing systems under common principles, is based on the broad encouragement of community participation in the production of security, as well as on the promotion of zero-tolerance principles. These policies actually serve to exacerbate local differentiation regarding the content and practice of policing as well as the undemocratic principles rhetorically resisted by the state.