Patterns Of Social Life Research Articles

RESTRUCTURING LABOUR TIME: IMPLEMENTING ALTERNATIVE WORKING-TIME ARRANGEMENTS ON SOUTH AFRICAN MINES, 1991–2004

Two case studies suggest the restructuring of labour time in South African mining is indissolubly linked with work reorganisation. This results in organisational complexity by virtue of a plethora of production and social issues requiring attention, and alluded to in this article. Two primary forms of temporal restructuring are identified: the first option, continuous operations, is preferred by the industry and marks the lengthening and absolute extension of aggregate social labour time. It extends labour time to its maximum temporal limit, disrupting established patterns of social life. This option represents a retrogressive social development and is resisted by organised labour. The second option, a five-day working week, is preferred by labour organisations and marks the shortening and relative intensification of labour time expenditure. It results in the rhythms of working-time remaining more regular, maintaining established patterns of social life. This option represents a progressive social development, yet is resisted by mining capital. When changing working-time arrangements, the adoption of mining capital's preference results in the social impact of continuous working-time schedules coming to the fore. The adoption of organised labour's preference results in issues of control over the labour process coming to the fore when reducing working hours.

Traditional Micronesian societies: adaptation, integration, and political organization

Traditional Micronesian Societies explores the extraordinary successes of the ancient voyaging peoples who first settled the Central Pacific islands some two thousand years ago. They and their descendants devised social and cultural adaptations that have enabled them to survive-and thrive-under the most demanding environmental conditions. The dispersed matrilineal clans so typical of Micronesian societies ensure that every individual, every local family and lineage, and every community maintain close relations with the peoples of many other islands. When hurricanes and droughts or political struggles force a group to move, they are sure of being taken in by kin residing elsewhere. Out of this common theme, shared patterns of land tenure, political rule, philosophy, and even personal character have flowed. To describe and explain Micronesian societies, the author begins with an overview of the region, including a brief consideration of the scholarly debate about whether Micronesia actually exists as a genuine and meaningful region. This is followed by an account of how Micronesia was originally settled, how its peoples adapted to conditions there, and how several basic adaptations diffused throughout the islands. He then considers the fundamental matters of descent (ideas about how individuals and groups are bound together through ties of kinship) and descent groups and the closely interlinked subjects of households, families, land, and labor. Because women form the core of the clans, their roles are particularly respected and their contributions to social life honored. Socio-political life, art, religion, and values are discussed in detail. Finally, the author examines a number of exceptions to these common Micronesian patterns of social life.

Reframing Black Perspectives in Social Work: New Directions?

This paper aims to focus on the politics of exclusion by opening up a debate about black perspectives in social work and articulates a comparative assessment between the UK and USA which includes contributions from social and political theory, particularly the ‘politics of recognition’. The paper begins by mapping the territory denoted in the growth of ‘studies’ in sociology and academia. Following these discussions, I review criticisms and possibilities of anti‐racist social work and black perspectives to argue that in the British context, the dilution of anti‐racist social work into a discriminatory practice framework undermined the place of black perspectives in social work education. In the next section, a reframing of black perspectives is envisaged with implications for social work learning and practice. By attending to these issues, social work learning and practice can support a more inclusive approach to professional knowledge which recognizes changing patterns of social life, complexity and multiple perspectives.

A (computational) social science perspective on societal transitions

This paper aims to illustrate how social sciences, sociology in particular, have theorized on societal transitions. The first section introduces some preliminary definitions. The assumption is that a societal transition is more than a social, economic or technological change. It is a large-scale and long-term macro process through which a given social system radically changes its structural basis, in terms of new socio-technical practices, governance rules, social and economic institutions, cultural frames, and patterns of social life. The second section provides an excursus on social science accounts on transitions. In particular, the attention has been given to Norbert Elias’ famous study on the rise and fall of the court society in France, between 17th and 18th century and to Manuel Castells’ recent analysis of the emergence of the network society. The third section discusses problems and challenges of standard approaches and suggests some building blocks of societal transition models, taken from complexity and social simulation literature. The concluding section suggests some way-forward measures towards a computational social science approach to societal transitions.

Are medical students socially exclusive? A comparison with economics students

Medical students have long been perceived as socially segregated from other students. However, the evidence for this is mainly anecdotal. This study investigates this issue by comparing medical students with economics students. Questionnaires measuring objective and subjective social life patterns were completed by 149 medical and 149 economics students at a campus-based university in the UK. Medical students drew significantly more of their close friends and housemates from among students on the same course than economics students. Significantly more medical than economics students had a partner on the same course, participated in departmental sports clubs and societies, and felt separated from the rest of university life. Commonly reported reasons for this separation among medical students were high workloads, that the medical school was located outside the main campus, and high numbers of contact hours, some of which took place at sites outside the university. Medical students are more socially exclusive than economics students, which may lead to 'in-group' attitudes and behaviours. This is educationally important and may affect their future professionalism. Universities should be aware of the issues involved when planning curricula, timetables, welfare initiatives and campus design. Prospective medical students should be informed of the social consequences of studying medicine.

The Tyranny of Authenticity: Rebellion and the Question of “Right Life”

The Tyranny of Authenticity: Rebellion and the Question of “Right Life” Adam Arola When confronted with subcultures that understand themselves to be rebellious and define themselves around a particular aesthetic movement, anyone who has spent time reading Adorno cannot but find him- or herself confronted with a particular array of questions and concerns: Can any kind of potent, critical labor be actualized by an aesthetic movement that does not attend to the material conditions of its emergence? Furthermore, do all attempts at rebellion necessarily fall into the trap of replicating the patterns of social life against which they are reacting? Finally, do all “failed” attempts at rebellion necessarily amount to precisely that, exhaustive failures? Are we in fact, as Ian MacKaye put it in 1982, just screaming at a wall—but a wall that will never fall? Or might there be a certain kind of rebellion through art—in this case, certain varieties of punk rock—that, as Adorno says, “is true insofar as what is speaking out of it and it itself is conflicting and unreconciled” (1997, 168)? In other words, is there a kind of failed attempt at rebellion that, in recognizing the necessity of its failure, simultaneously serves as an exposé of certain ideological overdetermination and frees us up for thinking anew? And what might this thinking otherwise look like? In light of these concerns, the objective of this essay is to investigate the relationship between a model autonomous subjectivity, the certain trope of authenticity, and social movements—particularly the culture that surrounds punk rock—that posit and understand themselves as rebellious. To that end, this article will take place in four sections. First, I discuss the connection between authenticity and punk rock, that is, punk rock’s critique of the “mainstream.” Second, I turn to investigate the model of individuality that lies as the subject of predication for the adjectives authentic or inauthentic—in doing so I hope to connect this model of the individual to a certain understanding of political sovereignty, the very model punk rock generally wants to reject. Third, I will show that this model of the individual is not only problematic but also untenable via a discussion of the problem with reactionary rebellion. Finally, through Adorno’s famous quote from Minima Moralia, “Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen,” that is, “There is no right life in a false life” (1980, 43), we will attempt to see what the limits of any critical [End Page 291] activity based in a reductive concept of authenticity might be. My claim is that insofar as punk rock reinstantiates the same pattern of life—that is, the falsehood or false life that Adorno points to in this aphorism—in its model of authenticity, its alleged subversions do nothing but reinforce what it is attempting to escape. That is to say, that insofar as subversive subcultures do nothing but replicate that which they are attempting to critique, they lack the possibility of authenticity thought robustly, because all possibility of propriety is lost. The generation of a nontyrannical model of authenticity requires a transformation of the structure, what Adorno calls the constellation or force field, itself—not swapping which position one fills within it. This whole may be false, but we must wonder if all forms of life lead to such tyranny. My conclusion, tentatively stated, is no. I. “I’m More Punk than You” Let me begin the article with a quotation from Milan Kundera’s Immortality, which is to serve as our entryway into a discussion of the individual and authenticity. He writes: “In our world, where there are more and more faces, more and more alike, it is difficult for an individual to reinforce the originality of the self and to become convinced of its inimitable uniqueness. There are two methods for cultivating the uniqueness of the self: the method of addition and the method of subtraction. Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura’s method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more...

Where's the Sex in Fiscal Sociology? Taxation and Gender in Comparative Perspective

INTRODUCTION: BEYOND WAR In a book on a subject as daunting as fiscal sociology, getting the word sex into the title of a chapter makes obvious marketing sense. Yet, in fact, something important is missing from the other chapters, each valuable and interesting in its own right. The field of fiscal sociology, born in Schumpeter's stirring invocation of the “thunder of history” (Schumpeter [1918] 1991), has dwelt, as many of the other chapters show, mainly with how government tax (or “extraction,” in Charles Tilly's preferred word choice in Chapter 10) schemes interact with large-scale issues of war, crisis, state construction and destruction, and the like. These are important subjects, situated at the macro level of society. A closer and more detailed look at tax systems show that they have deep, persistent consequences on the micro level as well. Fiscal policies affect patterns of marriage, childbearing, work, savings, education, charity, home ownership, and more. Fiscal sociology is thus an essential element of cultural sociology. Social norms and biases are reflected in fiscal – tax and transfer – systems, and such systems, in turn, exercise coercive force, tending to entrench patterns of social life in an endless feedback loop, a point also emphasized in Beverly Moran's chapter. This is rich and important subject matter for multidisciplinary scholars to explore. The taxation of households illustrates the point. Tax codes and other aspects of fiscal systems have often been explicitly sexist (Stotsky 1996; Teck 2004).

Why the Estates? Hans Ulrich's Recovery of an Unpopular Notion

This paper outlines Hans Ulrich's reworking of the Lutheran doctrine of the estates. He conceives the estates as descriptions of the new patterns of social life that God has promised to found and secure. This emphasis on the divine activity of generating social order is an expression of Ulrich's agreement with common and familiar criticisms of the doctrine, and why he nevertheless believes it indispensable for an evangelical ethic. A construal of the traditional doctrine of the estates that is unique even in his native Lutheran context, it aims not at conservatism, but at a more thoroughly theological and therefore critical relationship to social order than rival theories much more inclined to revisionist rhetorical stances. In a contemporary context in which moral certainties and categories can be disputed at the most fundamental levels, Ulrich's theology seeks a form of theological reasoning that genuinely seeks the illumination of Christian beliefs about reality by taking other moral languages seriously.

Strategic Formalism: Toward a New Method in Cultural Studies

Strategic Formalism:Toward a New Method in Cultural Studies Caroline Levine (bio) Since the demise of the New Criticism, literary critics have struggled to articulate links between literary forms and social formations. From Georg Lukács to Pierre Macherey and Fredric Jameson, Marxists have been inclined to understand literary forms as expressions of social and economic realities. To be sure, literary forms do not reflect economic arrangements in any simple way in this critical tradition. In The Political Unconscious (1981)—perhaps the most sustained articulation of a Marxist incorporation of formalist concerns—Jameson defines an attention to the ideology of form as an effort to grasp the "symbolic messages transmitted to us by the coexistence of various sign systems which are themselves traces or anticipations of modes of production" (76). Traces or anticipations: for Jameson, the form of the literary artifact is by no means simply an aftereffect of the "real"; it may itself promise or predict a new reality. Urging us to move beyond political readings that focus on a text's content—its representation of class relations, for example—Jameson argues that the "historical or ideological subtext . . . is not immediately present as such, not some common-sense external reality," but "rather must itself always be (re)constructed after the fact" (81). Thus it is literary forms, read in their rich complexity as struggles among conflicting sign systems, that bear witness to a dialectical social agon, offering us our best access to both existent and emergent systems of social relations. Foucauldian and New Historicist critics, too, have argued that literary forms do not merely reflect social relationships but may help bring them into being. Powerfully influential accounts of the [End Page 625] nineteenth-century novel as different as Nancy Armstrong's and D. A. Miller's share the notion that the specificities of the genre shape new models of subjectivity, paving the way for the increasingly disciplinary power formations of bourgeois society. As Armstrong writes, "the domestic novel antedated—was necessarily antecedent to—the way of life it represented" (9). And Miller suggests that the novel undertook the "successful" task of forming "a subject habituated to psychic displacements, evacuations, reinvestments, in a social order whose totalizing power circulates all the more easily for being pulverized" (xiii). In both cases, the novel itself is capable of ushering in new power relations. Despite crucial political and methodological differences, then, Marxist and Foucauldian critics have tended to share a conviction about the power of literary forms in the social sphere. Literary forms matter politically because they are indexes of social forms, expressing or fostering dominant social and economic relationships. This essay draws on these models to arrive at a new hypothesis. It develops the idea that literary forms are socially and politically forceful but concludes that they do not derive their power from their fit with existing or emerging patterns of social life. Instead, literary forms participate in a destabilizing relation to social formations, often colliding with social hierarchies rather than reflecting or foreshadowing them. Literary forms, that is, trouble and remake political relationships in surprising, aleatory, and often confusingly disorderly ways. A range of critics in recent years—including Heather Dubrow, Dorothy Hale, Ellen Rooney, Herbert Tucker, and Susan Wolfson—have urged a new attention to form as part of a politically aware historicism. This article takes up their call. On the one hand, it relies on historicist work in the field to understand the ways that literary forms have force in the social world and are capable of shaping political arrangements. On the other hand, it extends formalist insights to make the case that social hierarchies and institutions can themselves be understood as forms. What emerges is a cultural-political field in which literary forms and social formations can be grasped as comparable and overlapping patternings operating on a common plane. Neither precedes or dominates the other, and they are less likely to reinforce each other than to clash, interrupt, or derail one another. This new formalism claims two benefits: it suggests a reevaluation of the force of the major cultural-political categories we have long recognized, such as gender, race, and [End Page 626] class; and it reveals cultural...

Cultural Scenes

This article draws on the experience of a five-year interdisciplinary research project concerned with urban culture in four cities. It develops the notion of scene to account for the loose boundaries which surround urban cultural activity and the complex relationships of this activity to broader patterns of social life within cities. The textures of urban life are produced in the ongoing investment and change which characterize the history of scenes. Using examples from Manchester, England and Montreal, Quebec, this article shows how cultural activities such as music do not simply inhabit scenes, but work upon the social and institutional foundations of cities so as to produce distinctive complexes of knowledge and behaviour.

Social networks, travel and talk.

This paper considers the role that physical, corporeal travel plays in social life. There is a large and increasing scale of such travel. This increase has occurred simultaneously with the proliferation of communication devices that in some ways substitute for physical travel. I hypothesize that the bases of such travel are new ways in which social life is 'networked'. Such increasingly extensive networks, hugely extended through the informational revolution, depend for their functioning upon intermittent occasioned meetings. These moments of physical co-presence and face-to-face conversation, are crucial to patterns of social life that occur 'at-a-distance', whether for business, leisure, family life, politics, pleasure or friendship. So life is networked but it also involves specific co-present encounters within specific times and places. 'Meetingness', and thus different forms and modes of travel, are central to much social life, a life involving strange combinations of increasing distance and intermittent co-presence. The paper seeks to examine the place of travel within the emergent pattern of a 'networked sociality'. It seeks to contribute to the emerging 'mobility turn' within the social sciences.

Friedrich Hegel and the structure of consumer response

Friedrich Hegel, building upon the foundation of Immanuel Kant, focused upon the “cultural tradition” as a structured entity that operates according to its own rules and priorities. In doing so he crafted the concept that has come down to us as “national character”, an idea that has immense value to much marketing research, especially in the international realm. Beyond this circumscribed accomplishment, Hegel’s view of society was ultimately transformed into the social structural model that has long been a dominant paradigm of social thought. Whenever marketing researchers seek to discover the recurring patterns of social life, they work in Hegel’s shadow. By being more aware of Hegel’s accomplishments and how they intersect with the priorities of marketing, we can more effectively conduct research in ways that are relevant and appropriate.

The French 35-hour workweek: a wide-ranging social change.

The reduction of the legal working week to 35 hours in France has generated wide-ranging social change. We examine the resulting changes in working-time patterns as well as their repercussions on the use of the time gained and on the quality of life and health. To compensate the reduction in the length of the working week, companies have modified the working-time patterns, by extending operation time (shiftwork, atypical schedules) and by matching the on-site workforce to production requirements (flexible working hours). They have sought to make more efficient use of working time: job intensification or job compression. The effects on the off-the-job life and health are linked to the shiftwork and atypical schedules designed to increase the company's operating time, and adjustments to the company's need for flexibilization impose working time/free time patterns that are at odds with biological rhythms and social life patterns. Changes to working-time patterns have unexpected consequences for work organization: heightened difficulties for the individual and the crew. These changes may generate a range of health problems related to overwork and stress. The way some companies have adapted may call into question the usefulness of work done by employees, thus damaging their social identity and mental well-being.

Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation

One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning‐formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined.

GLOBALIZATION AS CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY IN URBAN MISSION

International Review of MissionVolume 88, Issue 351 p. 381-389 GLOBALIZATION AS CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY IN URBAN MISSION AN OUTLOOK FROM LONDON ANDREW P. DAVEY, ANDREW P. DAVEY Andrew P. Davey is Assistant Secretary (Community and Urban Affairs) in the Board for Social Responsibility of the Archbishops' Council, Church of England.Search for more papers by this author ANDREW P. DAVEY, ANDREW P. DAVEY Andrew P. Davey is Assistant Secretary (Community and Urban Affairs) in the Board for Social Responsibility of the Archbishops' Council, Church of England.Search for more papers by this author First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1999.tb00166.xCitations: 2 Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume88, Issue351October 1999Pages 381-389 RelatedInformation

AT THE BORDER OF NARRATIVE AND ETHNOGRAPHY

RECENT PROJECTS HAVE DRAWN US into analytic terrain that defies the emerging border between narrative and ethnography.This journal’s celebration of the turn of the century affords us the opportunity to reflect on the border as we consider ethnography’s past in relation to its future. We believe that the most promising challenge awaits qualitative researchers who are willing to work in relation to the representational tension of the border, not reinforce its separation. Narrative analysis refers loosely to the examination of the diverse stories, commentaries, and the conversations engaged in everyday life. Ethnography points broadly to the careful and usually long-term observation of a group of people to reveal the patterns of social life that are locally experienced. Ethnography presents details of living not always evident in stories and other accounts, which are notable from the “disinterested” perusal of interactional and narrative occasions. If narratives are best conveyed by those whose experiences they reflect, storytellers do not always recognize or know that what they describe is patterned and might be articulated differently at other times and places. Distinctive social patterning is highlighted by the comparative inclinations of ethnographers. In the practice of fieldwork, there is considerable overlap between narrative and ethnography. Fieldworkers traditionally have observed and recorded informants’ accounts as they have also documented indigenous social worlds. William Foote Whyte’s classic urban ethnography, Street Corner Society (1943), not only reports patterns of social interaction composed of leadership, followership, and their associated activities and sentiments in the street life of an American city, but simultaneously treats us to the narrative renditions of habitues. Recently,

Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune

By focusing on the less turbulent years in between the social upheavals of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1848 Revolution, Gould reveals that while class played a pivotal role in 1848, it was neighbourhood solidarity that was a decisive organizing force in 1871. Baron Haussmann's massive urban renovation projects between 1852 and 1868 dispersed workers from Paris' centre to newly annexed districts on the outskirts of the city. Residence rather than occupation quickly became the new basis of social solidarity. Drawing on evidence derived from trial documents, marriage certificates, reports of police spies and the popular press, Gould demonstrates that this fundamental rearrangement in the patterns of social life made possible a neighbourhood insurgent movement; whereas the insurgents of 1848 fought and died in defence of their status as workers, those of 1871 did so as members of a besieged urban community.

Seikatsu Rinsho: Psychosocial Rehabilitation in Japan

Abstract Seikatsu Rinsho is a Japanese theory about the aberrant patterns of social life exhibited by persons with severe mental illness. This theory serves as the foundation of psychosocial rehabilitation in Japan. The manner in which two rehabilitation programs implement Seikatsu Rinsho is reviewed in this paper. Japanese paradigms of rehabilitation are compared to models of intervention popular in the West. Strategies for measuring its effects are also discussed.

Ethnocentric Trends in Sociology

Sociology was developed in the western intellectual ethos within adistinct sociopolitical milieu rooted in a postrevolutionary Europecharacterized by new tmds of thought that represented serious and sharpteLtctions to the prevailing social situation. Social thinkem of the periodexpressed an intense desire to develop a new science of Society that, onceequipped with adequate methods and theoretical constmcts, could be usedto study and better understand society and social phenomena. This newtool would then be used to analyze how the construction and teconstructionof society could be carried out to ameliorate the lot of people.During the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, European society passedthrough a tumultuous state and witnessed drastic changes in its Social andintellectual fabrics. The expansion of trade in the sevenknth century ledto the crumbling of the economic order and the emergence of its newmastem: guilds and charted corporations. The eighteenth century replacedthis system with that of free labor and competitive production. Theemergence of large-scale industries structured the economic organizationanew and accelerated both pduction and profit. Competition fotcedindustries to develop new technology in order to increase production andproduce better quality goods. Markets were explod and expanded, andtrade was encouraged. This economic mrganization affected the patternof social life, as the ensuing population shift from the rural to urban areasaltered the extant family structure. In addition, the rule of law began tobe considered necessary for the smooth functioning of the new economicorder. These developments gradually transformed the feudal order and thetransitory mercantile order into a capitalist economic system that created ...

Arabian Oasis City: The Transformation of 'Unayzah.

* Preface * Acknowledgments * Introduction: The Study and Its Setting * Part One: Political Autonomy, Domestically Organized Production, and Mercantile Trade *1. The Autonomous Amirate *2. The Old Agriculture *3. Craft Production and the Old Market *4. Caravans and Long-Distance Trade * Part Two: Provincial City within a New State and the Development of Capitalist Social Formations *5. Development of the New State and Education *6. Occupational Change and New Institutions * Part Three: Economic Boom and Transformation *7. The Economic Boom, Expatriates, and Local Development *8. The Market Today *9. The New Agriculture *10. Salaried Employment and Its Social Impact *11. Changing Patterns of Social Life *12. Analysis and Conclusion * Glossary of Arabic Terms * Bibliography * Index