Micro-social Level Research Articles

Singiel i singielka o życiu w pojedynkę

The article presents Polish singles’ main arguments for living alone that are from micro-social level, e.g. unfortunate experiences in previous relationships, negative memory of one’s parents relationship, very strong family ties, negative impression of friends’ relationships, no experience in building lasting relationships, happy marriage of one’s parents as an unachievable ideal, living alone as a natural consequence of being an only child etc. These general arguments have been described in relation to various reasons for which the single-men and single-women have decided to live alone. The article is based on empirical surveys which were carried out at the turn of 2006/2007.

THE CASE OF TEMPORARY MIGRATION OF LABOR. BETWEEN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

Emigration, understood under its seasonal, tempora ry pattern (i.e. the migration of workforce for a certain, shorter or longer period of time abr oad) has become a more and more typical phenomenon of the Romanian transition, especially in the last period (i.e. Europeanisation), strongly associated with th e opening of the so called 'European space'. Effects of migratio n are diverse both on macro- and micro-social level . In macro- social terms, such type of migration appears as a l ogical, sine qua non condition for the creation of a modern civilization, a dynamic pattern of the so called de veloped-underdeveloped states metabolism. However, the most visibly affected level is the micro-social, where e migration generates new types of families and leads to 'temporary abandoned' children towards whom specific societal perceptions are attached. Within the pre sent paper, based on available studies and their finding s, we aim to realize the short review of the micro- social, familial consequences of this type of migration, by focusing mostly on the case of children.

A macroscopic intergroup approach to the study of ethnolinguistic development

This article analyzes the ethnolinguistic development of linguistic minority group members using two complementary models. The first is a macroscopic model of the factors that influence the ethnolinguistic development of minorities in intergroup contexts. The model comprises three levels of factors: a) the macrosocial, comprising two sublevels (ideological, legal and political framework; institutional and social context), b) the microsocial (linguistic and cultural socialization), and c) the psychological (ethnolinguistic development). The second model analyzes specific hypotheses between the microsocial and psychological levels. This model shows

Developing a mid‐range theory of patient advocacy through concept analysis

The aim of this paper is to clarify and refine the concept of patient advocacy through synthesizing the advocacy literature in nursing and to establish a theoretical basis for future studies on patient advocacy in nursing. Patient advocacy is an essential component of the Registered Nurse professional role. During the past 30 years, the patient advocacy role has become more important, but the concept of patient advocacy lacks a consistent definition and research into nurses' patient advocacy roles is limited. There have been few quantitative empirical studies on patient advocacy in nursing. Walker and Avant's method of concept analysis was used as a guideline in examining the concept of patient advocacy through synthesizing the advocacy literature in English (1974-2006). A mid-range theory of patient advocacy emerges during the process of synthesizing and analysing the advocacy literature. Three core attributes of the concept of patient advocacy are identified: (1) safeguarding patients' autonomy; (2) acting on behalf of patients; and (3) championing social justice in the provision of health care. They reflect nurses' patient advocacy roles at both macro- and micro-social levels. Antecedents of patient advocacy occur at both macro- and micro-social levels and call for nurses' advocacy roles in the healthcare system. Consequences produced by nurses' patient advocacy behaviours are contextual. Nurses' patient advocacy behaviours not only can positively influence the patients, other nurses and the nursing profession, but also can cause negative consequences for nurses who take action to advocate for patients. The proposed mid-range theory may be useful in guiding advocacy practice in nursing and in guiding research in the advocacy area. The proposed theory needs to be furthered refined and tested in the future.

Giving Social Ties, Reciprocity in Modern Society

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the meaning of giftgiving and reciprocity in modern society and thereby following the pointers left by Marcel Mauss. A critique will be made of the dichotomy of self-interest and normatively orientated action that forms the basis of sociology. For this conceptual dichotomization has caused forms of social interaction that cannot be localized either on the side of self-interest or on that of morality. It is the logic of the gift and the reciprocity thus evoked that in our view accompanies and structures all forms of interaction, from the social micro to the macrolevel. It is shown that in modern societies gifts and reciprocities form their own orders of interaction, and not only on a microsocial level. The principle of reciprocity even accompanies as a rule transfers owing to (state) compulsion as well as economic, selective exchange. As a basic principle of processes of sociation it is, fundamentally, present everywhere and in some areas it is explicitly and openly in effect (for example in welfare state transfers). Sociology has for too long overlooked the fact that this principle cannot be traced back either to normativist or to utilitarian explanations and nevertheless represents a principle of construction of modern societies.

Urban violence and public health in Latin America: a sociological explanatory framework

Interpersonal violence has become one of the main public health issues in Latin American cities. This article presents a framework for sociological interpretation that operates on three levels, expressed in the factors that originate, foment, or facilitate violence. Macro-social factors include: social inequality due to the increase in wealth versus poverty; the paradox of more schooling with fewer employment opportunities; increasing expectations and the impossibility of meeting them; changes in family structure; and loss of importance of religion in daily life. At the meso-social level the analysis highlights: increased density in poor areas and urban segregation; masculinity cult; and changes in the local drug market. The micro-social level includes: an increase in the number of firearms; alcohol consumption; and difficulties in verbal expression of feelings. The article concludes with an analysis of how violence is leading to the breakdown not only of urban life but also of citizenship as a whole in Latin America.

DISPUTES INVOLVING YOUTH STREET GANG MEMBERS: MICRO‐SOCIAL CONTEXTS*

This paper examines microsocial contexts of violent and nonviolent dispute‐related incidents involving gang members. Data consist of reports of field observations of twelve black and eight white youth street gangs in Chicago between 1959 and 1962. Dispute‐related incidents (N = 2,637) were classified according to three primary pretexts: normative or order violations, identity attacks and retaliation. Findings show that disputes associated with each of these generally unfolded consistently with expectations based on the extent to which status concerns were likely to be outweighed by such situational constraints as a close relationship between disputants and audience intervention. We suggest that understanding violence in the gang context will be enhanced greatly by further consideration of the microsocial level of explanation and linkages to its macro‐ and individual‐level counterparts.

From urban form to urban relations: in search for a new kind of reflexive and critical knowledge in urban geography and city monitoring

The paper explores what unites the social environment the material environment. both the material form, and, jointly, the sensibility that echoes it. .It argues that urban geographers need to develop a research model drawing on urban geography, on urbanism and on land management and capable of integrating the thoughts, the emotions, the affects and the valu-es of city dwellers and citizens and therefore knowledge situated at a micro-social level. However, such research still would need to lead to truly regulatory knowledge. Its translati-on into practical measures needs to be democratically approved, especially by actors who know how to think and act both locally and globally, in relation to multiple and complex territories of affiliation and intervention. This implies a huge effort of the imagination and of construction, both at the theoretical level and at the level of the operational tools needed. Indeed, the concept of “ urban project ”, which has been frequently encountered since the end of the ‘70s and which is supposed finally to supersede functionalist urbanism, cannot be conceived of without taking into consideration the population’s capability to participate and embrace projects or, on the contrary, to oppose them.

From urban form to urban relations: in search for a new kind of reflexive and critical knowledge in urban geography and city monitoring

The paper explores what unites the social environment the material environment. both the material form, and, jointly, the sensibility that echoes it. .It argues that urban geographers need to develop a research model drawing on urban geography, on urbanism and on land management and capable of integrating the thoughts, the emotions, the affects and the valu-es of city dwellers and citizens and therefore knowledge situated at a micro-social level. However, such research still would need to lead to truly regulatory knowledge. Its translati-on into practical measures needs to be democratically approved, especially by actors who know how to think and act both locally and globally, in relation to multiple and complex territories of affiliation and intervention. This implies a huge effort of the imagination and of construction, both at the theoretical level and at the level of the operational tools needed. Indeed, the concept of “ urban project ”, which has been frequently encountered since the end of the ‘70s and which is supposed finally to supersede functionalist urbanism, cannot be conceived of without taking into consideration the population’s capability to participate and embrace projects or, on the contrary, to oppose them.

Noncontemporaneity, Asynchronicity and Divided Memories

Three different paradigms of temporal inconsistency are distinguished. ‘Noncontemporaneity’ refers to the local and temporal coexistence of phenomena that are related to different historical periods or different stages of social evolution. This paradigm presupposes an encompassing unity of society and disregards the normality of hybridization and syncretism in real societies. The paradigm of ‘asynchronicity’ centres the differences of pace and rhythms between different social systems or institutional domains. Here the indispensability of temporal differences for the perception of time and change is frequently ignored. The third model is called ‘divided memories’. Divided memories are generated by different experiential backgrounds with respect to the perception of core events. Generations are presented as communities of experience that differ with respect to this experiential background. Most important in this respect are triumphant or traumatic experiences that devalue the experience of the parental generation and provide a frame for the collective identity of a generation. The authenticity of these experiences is rooted in corporal presence and bodily rituals. Recently public debates tend to construct generational differences in an inflationary manner. This public construction of generations contrasts to the blurring of generational differences on a microsocial level.

Community action and the regulation of alcohol availability: Modelling the connections

In Australia, as in other countries, recent initiatives aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm have focused on the local community as the site of interventions, and in many cases have included local controls on alcohol availability as a key component. In this process, liquor licensing authorities – as the statutory agency primarily responsible for regulating alcohol availability – have been called upon to act as instruments of public health. Historically, however, their primary function has not been to promote public health, but rather to maintain orderly markets. Moreover, their power to intervene in market processes has in many instances been curtailed under deregulatory policies accompanying globalisation. Taken together, these trends generate a need for a theoretically-informed understanding of the role of liquor licensing bodies and other regulatory agencies in a context of locally-based initiatives aimed at reducing alcohol-related problems. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for meeting this need. Liquor regulatory systems are seen as agencies of social control mandated by the state. Three key components of these systems are identified: 1) laws and regulations governing the activities of liquor licensing authorities; 2) the structure and resourcing of agencies established to uphold the laws and regulations, and 3) practices through which decisions are reached by the licensing authorities. Each of these has influence independently of, but also in interaction with, each other. The initiation of local action focusing on alcohol problems generates a complex social field within which economic and political agencies, some operating at a purely local level, others at a national or even global level, compete to promote and defend their interests, and in which culturally ascribed beliefs and practices associated with drinking alcohol at the micro-social level are endorsed, challenged and/or defended. Within this field, liquor licensing authorities become agencies upon which competing claims are made. The processes involved can be analysed in terms of four phases: 1) agenda setting and problem definition; 2) specification of alternatives; 3) decision-making; 4) implementation. The components and processes outlined in the paper are illustrated with reference to instances of local action in northern Australia. The model proposed will serve, it is argued here, as a framework for more systematic comparative analysis of such local actions.

Acculturation and Prejudice in Germany: Majority and Minority Perspectives

This article explores the connections between prejudice and specific attitudes toward acculturation in Germany. Results of surveys confirm the hypothesis that prejudice is related to ideologies of assimilation and segregation among majority‐ group members. Moreover, experimental and correlational studies indicate that these attitudes are linked to discriminatory behavior. Further analyses of studies with ethnic minorities prove that prejudice and acculturation are linked within minority groups as well. Additionally it is shown that prejudice is functional in order for minorities to acculturate. These studies confirm the impression that there is a close link between macrosocial and microsocial levels of coping with migration.

Through the meshes of patriarchy:: The Male/Female Relationship in the Saguenay Peasant Society (1860–1930)

This article offers an analysis of women's life and status within the peasant family of the Saguenay region (Quebec) prior to the completion of the settlement process. After a brief survey of the literature in the field, a variety of sources (including several bodies of oral data) is analyzed, offering the conclusions that: (1) it is useful to carefully distinguish between the macro-social or societal level (State, Church, capital …) and the micro-social sphere of the family and the conjugal couple; (2) the societal scale was made up of unambiguously patriarchal powers, norms, and institutions, whereas at the micro-social level, the reality was much more complex and offered a great deal of diversity; (3) societal constraints heavily influenced the conjugal relationship but not in a deterministic way. The latter remained a social area where the women, somehow, remained able to maneuver, to negotiate and to assert themselves; (4) the same can be said of the thesis that male ownership and control of the means of production necessarily entailed subordination and proletarianization of the married women; and (5) it would be fruitful to explore the idea that male domination was mostly rooted and secured not in the family but in the societal arena.

Problems and perspectives of inter-confessional dialogue

In Ukraine, complex, extraordinary in its content and responsible for the consequences of the period of society's reform, its development and establishment in the coordinates of new values ​​and priorities continues. Significant changes take place, in particular in the spiritual sphere of being, in the system of ideological settings, normative standards, fulfilling important functions of life orientation and legitimacy both on the macro and on the microsocial level. In general, for the Ukrainian present, a distinct tendency is evident in the ideological and, above all, religious differentiation.

Stress and Coping Approaches and Research

The stress and coping approach offers a useful heuristic for conceptualizing complex social processes at a microsocial level. Its application to the study of the impact of marital conflict on children has advanced understanding of constructive versus destructive marital conflict processes and the comorbidity of marital conflict and other family risk factors (e.g., parental depression and alcoholism, child abuse and maltreatment, divorce). An updated stress and coping model is outlined that emphasizes the role of children's feelings of emotional security, the primacy of emotionality in guiding responding, but also the importance of children's coping efficacy and appraisal. Children's distress and behavioral dysregulation increase when marital conflict is frequent and destructive, suggesting that sensitization to anger may contribute to maladaptive coping processes and the development over time of problems in adjustment.

Linking Social Structure and the Exit Process in Religious Organizations: Defectors, Whistle-Blowers, and Apostates

Among the processes most thoroughly analyzed by social scientists studying religion have been conversion/affiliation and, more recently, deconversion/disaffiliation (Snow and Machalek 1984; Bromley 1991). Recent theory and research on these processes have been stimulated by a variety of developments, such as the historic, absolute decline in mainline church membership coupled with an unanticipated surge in conservative church membership, a mass exodus from traditional religious orders, the rapid growth and subsequent decline of controversial new religious movements, and widespread experimentation with a diverse array of New Age and quasi-religious groups. The primary focus of research has been on the nature of individual transformation and the process by which it occurs, which has concentrated theory and research at a microsocial level. Indeed, in assessing recent theory and research on conversion, Machalek and Snow (1993: 69) observe that it is somewhat ironic that sociologists have shown little reluctance to subordinate social contextual variables to individual variables in their efforts to explain the causes of conversion and call for a shift in analytic focus to the role of temporal, organizational and macrosocial factors. The same observation can be made about deconversion/disaffiliation. In fairness, there is a long history in sociology of analyzing role types that emerge in specific social contexts (Klapp 1954), and there have been some attempts to create types of conversion/affiliation (Lofland and Skonovd 1981) and deconversion/disaffiliation (Richardson et al. 1986) in a manner that potentially would link role and organization structure. The exit typology developed here and applied to religious organizations constitutes an effort to connect that social process and its accompanying interpretive narrative to organizational context. I argue that the process of exit and the way that it is interpreted is significantly determined by the power and social l

The Moral Status of Fetuses in Russia

Starting bioethics in Russia we were motivated with the idea of the democratization of our society on a basic micro-social level. The country was swift enough to take several important steps in this direction on the macro-social level, i.e., to adopt a new constitution with guarantees of human rights and rights of ownership of private property, to elect the parliament and the president. But these modernizations in the Russian political facade did not sufficiently change the internal structure of the society–the net of everyday relationships in the home, at work, at school, in hospitals and other places. One of the most brilliant philosophers of the Russian “silver age,” L.S. Frank, wrote in the beginning of the century that a tyrannical state (at his time the czarist state) grows out of tyrannical interpersonal relationships. Political revolution not grounded in a social evolution on the basic level of satisfying “simple” human economic, physical, and psychological needs could reproduce only the same totalitarian pattern under a new ideological label. Events resulting from the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 proved the wisdom of his statement. Russia could suffer the same fate today.

Matthew and marginality

This article explores marginality theory as it was first proposed in the social sciences, that is related to persons caught between two competing cultures (Park; Stonequist), and, then, as it was developed in sociology as related to the poor (Germani) and in anthropology as it was related to involuntary marginality and voluntary marginality (Victor Turner). It then examines a (normative scheme' in antiquity that creates involuntary marginality at the macrosocial level, namely, Lenski's social stratification model in an agrarian society, and indicates how Matthean language might fit with a sample inventory of socioreligious roles. Next, it examines some (normative schemes' in antiquity for voluntary margi-nality at the microsocial level, namely, groups, and examines how the Matthean gospel would fit based on indications of factions and leaders. The article ,shows that the author of the Gospel of Matthew has an ideology of (voluntary marginality', but his gospel includes some hope for (involuntary marginals' in the real world, though it is somewhat tempered. It also suggests that the writer of the Gospel is a (marginal man', especially in the sense defined by the early theorists (Park; Stone-quist).

Social Ecology as Political Economy: A Case Study in the Anthropology of Complexity

A VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION of family planners serves a population of about 100,000 in the center of a web of local, regional, and national relationships with other organizations within the family planning movement and with public bureaucracies, a web that structures the association's opportunities and constraints. The dynamics of purposive action within this web are traced using a power-conscious, open-systems model that illuminates process at the microsocial level. The analysis of this political economy of voluntary group action suggests that a comprehensive understanding of macrosocial forces requires a view from the bottom, from the actual grounded realities. Examination of resource strategizing necessitates consideration of value rationality, [voluntary associations, social ecology, open-systems models, political economy, value rationality]

Later Life. The Social Psychology of AgingV.W. Marshall (ed.) Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications

SUMMARYThis study represents a significant contribution to the theoretical development of the social psychology of aging. The authors favor an interpretative approach to aging while emphasizing the features of the structural context. The theoretical challenge outlined in the book revolves around maintaining an equilibrium between the two points of view and examining the mechanisms that link the macro and the micro levels of society.The introduction provides a clear overview of the theoretical questions which reflect the essence of this book. A group of articles examines the socio-historic and theoretic roots of the interpretative approach in the general development of human sciences theories as well as in the work of G.H. Mead and the pragmatic American trend. Another series of articles concentrates on the changes which have taken place in the modern western societies; the authors examine the impact created by this revolution on the relationship between the generations, on the life span and on the relationship between the aged and death. Other contributions are made at a more micro-social level. These focus on the support systems available to the elderly as well as the networks of friends. The last article underlines the importance of adopting a comparative approach for all theoretical development.