Social Arrangements Research Articles

Corporate Social Responsibility 2.0 Towards a socio-transformative paradigm for business

The South African business fraternity is expected to contribute to and foster the government’s social transformation agenda. This contribution should be directed by businesses’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) intentions and organizational arrangements. However, companies’ efforts in this regard are being increasingly criticized due to the absence of a socio-transformative agenda. In other words, CSR praxis is perceived to be inadequately positioned in businesses to act as a core strategic function aimed at benefiting society. The purpose of this article is to outline the perceived failures of conventional CSR praxis and to propose a framework for businesses to adopt a socio-transformative CSR paradigm. A generic qualitative research design, utilizing document analysis and a literature survey, was followed in this study. The findings indicate that businesses do indeed need to adopt a socio-transformative business model to comply with national and international driving forces for change. Recommendations are proposed to guide businesses towards such a transformative management approach utilizing the principles of McKinsey 7-S model for business readiness and Kotter’s 8-step change management model. The study encourages corporations and firms to adopt a socio-transformative paradigm by utilizing established business readiness and change management models.

Technological Developments as a New Challenge for Modern Legislation

Aim: The aim of the article is to present the legal aspects of the use of new technologies. Accelerating the progress of civilization through the rapid development of technology is a challenge for both the legislator and entities who, when applying the law, interpret imperfect regulations or have to deal with the lack of regulations on a daily basis. In this publication, the author discusses legal aspects related to the development and implementation of new technologies and answers the question whether the applicable regulations combine the intentions of the creators of the regulations with social and economic needs. Introduction: The essence of all development is the improvement and expansion of human and technological capabilities and potential. Civilizational development is a system of interconnected vessels based on mutual social, cultural and technological interdependencies, and all these spheres of public life are inextricably linked with legal regulations. Without elementary knowledge of regulations, it would be difficult to make rational decisions regarding everyday life, therefore legal standards should include solutions adequate to the needs of citizens and the economy. In case of new technologies, which are subject to continuous and dynamic changes, the traditional norm-setting model known as hard law does not fully achieve its goals, and what is more, the applicable law does not keep up with the development of new technologies. Methodology: he article describes the current state of knowledge in the field of selected aspects of new technology law. The work uses theoretical research methods, including the analysis of applicable regulations and the literature and views of the doctrine, as well as the results of the research work of the author of the publication. Conclusions: Current legal regulations do not keep up with new technologies. The legislative process itself is complicated and very long. The introduction of new regulations and legislative changes requires, among others, inter-ministerial and social arrangements, work in Sejm and Senate committees, voting in Parliament, and finally the signature of the President of the Republic of Poland. The above-mentioned legal activities take time, and new technologies mean variability and dynamism – a constant fight against time. The development of technology is certainly a new challenge for legislators, for whom cooperation with the scientific community and representatives of various technological industries is an opportunity to create regulations that support rather than limit the development of 21st century technologies. Keywords: law of new technologies, technological revolution, security, implementation of innovations

Engineers, figuring it out: Collaborative learning in cultural worlds

AbstractBackgroundAlthough open‐ended projects are common in the first and final years of US engineering programs, middle‐year courses tend to utilize simpler highly constrained problems. Such problems can elicit knowledge and social practices typical of school activity (“School World”), with limited applicability in real engineering work (“Engineering World”). They can also result in inequitable participation in groups.PurposeWe investigate whether a single‐session, complex studio task can promote equitable disciplinary engagement in the middle years, where time is limited and students' engineering knowledge needs to be developed. We ask whether and how the task is taken up by teams “thinking and acting like students” versus “thinking and acting like engineers.”Design/MethodThis microgenetic laboratory study analyzes video data of three student teams completing a realistic complex task.ResultsTeams initially used “School World” strategies and social arrangements, but eventually the task demands and facilitator framing shifted activity to “Engineering World.” We found within‐team, between‐world differences in reasoning, tool use, and social practices. Examination of shifts from School World to Engineering World pointed to the importance of task framing, material tools, peer interaction, and facilitator support.ConclusionsActivity can shift to the disciplinary social and knowledge practices of engineering in a single task, expanding opportunities to learn those practices and promoting more equitable interactions. Instructors should seek to support disciplinary practices while preserving students' authority to make decisions. Future research should explore the impact of a steady diet of these kinds of studios in the middle years.

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT AFTER RETIREMENT

Abstract Retirement has been shown to accelerate the declines in physical and mental health (Dave et al., 2008) and cognitive functioning (Celidoni et al., 2017; Xue et al., 2018) due to the identity disruption and removal of a cognitively simulating environment after leaving the workforce. This necessitates a need to systematically uncover factors that could potentially buffer the negative impacts brought by retirement. This symposium aims to identify the types of self-initiated activities that can maintain post-retirement well-being through research conducted in Hong Kong and Japan. Specifically, the first paper from Chung reveals that retirees engaging in postretirement work exhibit lower life satisfaction but higher cognitive functioning than those without work. Similarly, the second paper from Katagiri also shows that work has negative impacts on life satisfaction, but such effect is buffered by civic participation. The third paper from Ho suggests that the beneficial effects of ICT use on personal mastery is more prevalent in retirees than in non-retirees. The fourth paper from Lin discloses that participation in cognitively demanding volunteering activities is associated with better cognitive and psychological functioning. These four presentations unveil various types of post-retirement activities that are beneficial to retirees, including re-engagement in the workforce, the use of technology for leisure and financial purposes, and participation in cognitively stimulating volunteering. Given that most of the pre-retirees do not have much planning on social life arrangement, findings of this symposium provide practical implications to improve psychological adjustment to this critical life event.

The Fear of Inspirational Books

Banning books from public and school libraries has sharply increased in the USA in recent years. I analyze the phenomenon of book banning from the theoretical perspective of how books get ritualized in different textual dimensions. Book bans have a long cultural history in shaping literary and religious canons. Comparison with book burning shows some similar and some distinctive strategies behind book banning. Like book burning, book banning aims to draw public attention and to offend political opponents. In contrast to ritualized destruction of iconic books, however, book banning attacks the expressive dimension of reading texts by trying to prevent access to them. Whereas book burnings aim to offend opponents’ sensibilities, book bans aim to prevent inspiration to imagine different social arrangements and personal identities. That goal is apparent from the disproportionate focus on banning books with multi-cultural and LGBTQIA+ themes. The ban acts as a warning against embracing certain opinions and identities. However, analyzing book banning as ritual also draws attention to well-developed, ongoing traditions of counter-ritualizing by many libraries. They publicize banned book lists and encourage reading them during “Banned Books Week” and similar events. Through this ritual analysis of iconic and expressive texts, book banning emerges as a traditional site of cultural conflict over the means and goals of textual inspiration.

In Search of Harmony: The Idea of Social Harmony in the Writings of Early Socialists

The problems of the history of socialist ideas, their origin and possible role in nowadays became the subject of scholar interest again. The problem of the social arrangement becomes more acute today than ever. Descriptions and even attempts to construct a harmonious society appeared many centuries ago. Two revolutions The Great French Revolution and the industrial revolution annihilated the ideological basis of previous times pushing forward the class structure instead of medieval system of estates. The first ones who found out the signs of order, not complete chaos, were early socialists A. Saint-Simon, S. Fourier, and R. Owen. This research is devoted to the comparison of approaches to the idea of social harmony of Saint-Simonists and Owenists. The main research method used is political-textual analysis. The conclusion of present study confirms that Saint-Simon and Owen being on the same side, followed different ways leading to harmonious state. However, their projects were united by a common radical idea - the complete reorganization of society, first - the system of classes and estates.

The quarantine hotel experience: travel diaries of compulsory confinement

During the summer of 2021, 14 days of quarantine at designated hotels was a mandatory Covid-19 restriction for all travellers entering Taiwan. This study employs the duo-ethnographic method to investigate the implications of quarantine hotel confinement on the emotional, physiological and psychological state of individuals. The emic approach of autoethnography provides a reflexive and evocative source for describing the feelings, emotions, perceptions and challenges during compulsory isolation in designated lodgings. Goffman’s (1961) typology for total institutions served as the conceptual tool to examine the characteristics of the social arrangement in quarantine hotels. The empirical data revealed the profound consequences of isolation. This paper outlines the detrimental implications of role dispossession, deprivation of personal freedom, programming and controlling, and disruption of key spheres of life, along with the imposition of acceptable behaviours regarding the mental health and emotional state of guests during confinement.

Clustered networks as informal elements of access and power: a study in a honey producers association

Networks observed from the perspective of the structural dimension present their complexity at the level of positions existing in a social arrangement. These positions have the power to define roles among the actors immersed in social relationships, providing advantages and differentiated access to the network actors. In this context, the present study aims to understand how the relational structure among the producers linked with an association of honey producers in the interior of Paraná state influences the social dynamics. The methodology used is quantitative and qualitative of exploratory nature and conducted as a case study. The data were collected through the sociometric evaluation questionnaire and interviews with actors selected from their position in the network enabled the understanding of the influence of social structures on network governance, establishing powers parallel to formal powers and building clustered structures that allow access and power different from those formally constituted. It evidenced that access to knowledge and resources are results of the social structures composed by the arrangement of relationships established within the producers' association, creating conditions of advantages and disadvantages for the actors immersed in the network. It was also possible to note that the routines established by governance have an influence on the formation of the network structure.

Everyday domestic water and energy consumption in Shanghai homes: The resurgence and persistence of gendered practices in China

China's ecological civilization centralises households as a unit of intervention for environmental policy. The household constructed within such policy reduces complex social arrangements and processes and results in efficiency and behaviour change interventions. Such interventions have had limited success and contribute to reproducing inequality. This paper uses ethnographic methods to develop insights into everyday practices that consume energy and water within homes in urban China. In doing so, understandings of both the responsibilities and temporalities of labour for these practices are developed, and the entanglement of these practices across diverse policy arenas is explored. Focusing upon water treatment, cooking, dishwashing, and laundering - this paper demonstrates not only how women have a much greater responsibility for such practices, but that the importance of women's labour is considered greater for practices in which hygiene is considered critical and contributing to health protection. Gendered labour is connected to the resurgence of Confucian gender ideologies within CCP policy and discourse post-1968. The exacerbation of anxieties around the health of children is further connected with parents experiencing pressure in raising their children as ‘high-quality citizens’.

Pascal without Apology

Abstract We’ve always had two Pascals, one apologetic, the other startlingly unapologetic. The unapologetic Pascal is the merciless, proto-ethnographic observer of human psychology and human social arrangements whose sardonic picture of what he calls the wretchedness of life without God is summed up in the strikingly Hobbesian chiasmus “Lacking the might to compel obedience to right, we’ve made it right to compel obedience to might.” However, Pascal turns demoralizing insights like this to apologetic purposes by showing how they’re the natural effect of a lack of specifically Christian belief. The question this essay poses against the background of the conflicted history of Pascalian exegesis is, how should we read the Pensées? The answer proposed is that we should do so in the dialectical terms that Pascal’s characteristic resort to chiasmoi like this one suggest. The result takes the form of a three-cornered conversation that links Pascalian thinking not only to the Hobbes of Leviathan but to the Hegel of the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Elements of Right and to the Wittgenstein of the late, sadly fruitless notebook On Certainty.

Communism: Doctrine, Evolution, Political Practices

"The interwar period produced a new form of social-political organization that was called totalitarianism. The communist ideal has always been proclaimed as the antidote to selfishness, especially selfishness materialized in property. Ideal communism in action appears very rarely in the historical evolution of mankind. In conclusion, the social and economic arrangement, which bears the name of communism, is defined by the fact that no member of it possesses more than any other, either because all property is held in common, or because the institution of property does not exist, either because ownership is limited to the means of consumption and is excluded as regards the means of production and exchange. "

Towards Deciphering Shared Spaces Among Religious Groups in Contemporary Indian Society: Some Illustrations and Challenges

This article presents the concept of shared spaces among religious groups in the contemporary Indian context. In the land of unity in diversity which India is known to be, this article showcases some illustrations of attempts to build shared spaces historically through religion, social arrangements, and interfaith communications and discusses the challenges in this journey. It is argued that through shared spaces, people come together, feel closeness and engage in acts of reciprocity, cooperation, and mutual celebration. Such shared spaces have permeable boundaries. The boundaries can be either barriers or bridges. Attempts to create bridges will foster peace and harmony.

‘It is a university where I felt welcome’: poems of asylum-seeking students’ sense of coherence in Australian higher education

ABSTRACT Current social and political arrangements of higher education are inequitable for students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. In many countries, their access to university is limited and if they are accepted, their status as forced migrants puts them at multiple disadvantages. This inequity is in contrast with the universal aim of higher education institutions to serve all people and their societies. Utilising a voice centred relational method (VCRM) and the theoretical lens of Aaron Antonovsky’s salutogenesis, this article is a poetic presentation of the experiences of asylum-seeking students in Australian universities. We show that higher education can provide asylum-seeking students with the means for safety (making life manageable), belonging (making life comprehensible), and success (making life meaningful). Thus, we argue that higher education institutions have the potential to help facilitate students’ sense of coherence, which in salutogenetic terms refers to their ability to comprehend their own situation, and the capacity to use the resources available. However, asylum-seeking status poses barriers in achieving this, and this inequity should be addressed.

Understanding the origins of social policy in colonial contexts: An actor-centric approach

AbstractSocial policy scholars seeking to understand the dynamics of social protection arrangements have advocated for an actor-centric approach. However, when seeking to understand the impact of colonialism on social policymaking, most scholars have focused not on actors but on ideas and institutions. To address this gap, this paper develops an actor-centric framework for understanding the introduction of social policies in colonial contexts. We identify and compare actor constellations of relevance to the introduction of social policies in two colonies of French West Africa that differ with respect to precolonial population density: Dahomey (present-day Benin), with a relatively high precolonial population density, and Côte d’Ivoire, with a relatively low precolonial population density. Despite evidence that precolonial population density can shape colonial strategies and policies, the results provide no supporting evidence that precolonial population density is a driver of meaningful variation in the introduction of social policies or in the composition of the actor constellations from which they originate. Instead, the results point to the key role of transnational and regional actors in the introduction of social policies in colonial contexts. They also highlight the domestic economic and societal arenas as sites where: i) heterogeneity emerges in the social policy actor constellations; and ii) local actors mediate tensions arising from imperially driven social transformations.

Merdeka Belajar Innovation Through Strengthening Competition Of Islamic Higher Education In Society Era 5.0

The disruption era creates a social arrangement of life that adapts to the conditions and goals set. Indonesia, a Muslim majority, must be adjusted by educational innovations, namely independent learning. Adaptation and adoption are a necessity. Islamic higher education must be reformulated, characterised by a balance of human behaviour and the role of technology in education. The study explores how Islamic higher education can compete in society era 5.0. The results show that Merdeka Belajar innovation is carried out by developing in harmony with Merdeka Belajar curricula and multilevel learning innovations. While strengthening Islamic higher education is based on aqidah sohihah, philosophy, five senses, intuition, character, rationality, and authority as a source of knowledge, all of which must be used as an inspirational approach. The competitive advantage of Islamic higher education needs leadership skills and human resources, teamwork differentiation, cooperation network, service quality differentiation, financial innovation, religious culture, and quality culture. The research implies that the better the independent learning innovation, the more vital Islamic higher education through multifunctional, adaptive, and flexible learning with the highest level of competitive quality creates Islamic education that can be applied in society era 5.0

To Each According to Their Space-Need: Communes in Outer Space

Space settlement advocates frequently argue that we will soon be able to settle humans in space. Surviving on Mars is clearly a pre-requisite to settlement, and much work has been done examining the engineering aspects of this endeavor. Much less work has been done, however, on questions related to how to arrange a society in space. Early settlements will be dangerous, isolated, and cramped, and picking a social arrangement that is likely to result in a vibrant and productive society will be critical. Moreover, given the high stakes of this endeavor, being able to anticipate and ameliorate likely social problems ahead of time would be beneficial. Some important questions to consider include: How can settlements pick members who are likely to contribute as much as or more than they take from the society? How will they make sure everyone continues to contribute? How will they retain their most talented members? The literature on space settlements frequently posits that early settlements are particularly likely to be communal, though settlement scholars rarely consult the social sciences literature to explore whether or not communes would be a good social model for space. This article explores lessons from three major communal movements—the Hutterites, kibbutzim, and 60s-era communes. Similar social problems (such as adverse selection, free riding, and brain drain) are frequently encountered in these communes, and communards employ similar solutions to ameliorate these problems. This article also discusses how the nature of these social constraints may differ in the space environment, and the potential implications of the observation that religious communes seem to be more likely to persist than purely socialist ones.

Critical Social Inclusion of Adult Migrant Language Learners in Working Life: Experiences From SFI and LINC Programs

How can integration education programs facilitate the more seamless inclusion of migrant newcomers into working life and civil society? Traditionally, integration policy and practice have been framed within a nation‐state discourse in which views of migrant incorporation are grounded within a bordered nationalism embodying a native–migrant dichotomy that reifies the view of the “migrant other” as a subject defined by its “lack” in competence and agency. In our qualitative multiple case study, we explored the bridging potential of integration programs in facilitating the inclusion of migrant students within working life in Helsinki and Edmonton. We examined the “inclusectionalities,” referring to the intersections of inclusion and exclusion that position adults enrolled in SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) language integration programs in the liminal spaces between belonging and othering. Guided by an understanding of critical social inclusion where migrants set the boundaries for interactions with authorities based upon their own needs and interests, we propose a transformational approach. Here migrant learners participate in a structural process where the fluid nature of social, political, and economic arrangements is consistently renegotiated on principles of egalitarianism and the full exercise of critical agency, herein envisioned as deliberate action resisting the social domination of racialized minorities by challenging and redefining institutional structures.

Fragile Trust, Stable Mistrust: A Theory of the Formation and Sustainability of Social Trust

The roots of social trust have long been a scholarly concern. Some argue that it is a disposition gained in early socialization that is stable despite social experiences. Others argue that social arrangements that structure prosocial interactions can cultivate it. Analyzing in-depth interview data, I contribute to this literature by developing a theory of fragile trust, stable mistrust. The results suggest interviewees understand early socialization as an important factor in the development of their own social trust. They also suggest these early experiences are structured by important socioeconomic factors. In addition, many interviewees recount a loss of social trust because of significant negative experiences, whereas none relate an experience building trust. I argue that these dynamics are driven by trustors being more interested in the kinds of activities theorized to enhance social trust than mistrusting individuals and by the cognitive mechanisms of the negativity and confirmation biases.

Can Humans Cooperate to Create a Sustainable Future?

Abstract: In response to calls for a “cultural transformation” that aims to bring about a sustainable relationship with nature, this review considers the evolution of human cooperation and its implications for cultural change. The link between cooperation and culture has varied throughout human evolution. The hierarchical ranking of a primate ancestor changed in species of Homo when they adopted egalitarian social arrangements, a stage that persisted for hundreds of thousands of years before returning once more to hierarchy. With the maintenance of social status in contemporary societies seeming to depend heavily on patterns of consumption, it is argued that the ultimate success of a change toward sustainability will depend on new systems of economic management and social incentivization.

Determinants of Rural Families Benefiting from Social Protection Arrangements under the “Decent Life” Initiative in ELKom ElAhmar Village, Shebin Elkanater District, Qaliobia Governorate, Egypt

Determinants of Rural Families Benefiting from Social Protection Arrangements under the “Decent Life” Initiative in ELKom ElAhmar Village, Shebin Elkanater District, Qaliobia Governorate, Egypt