Components Of Social Systems Research Articles

Resilience and social change: Findings from research trends using association rule mining

This study analyzed the historical development of resilience with respect to multidisciplinary aspects using association rule mining (ARM). ARM is a rule-based machine-learning approach tailored to identify validated relations among multiple variables in a large dataset. This study collected author keywords from all resilience-related literature in the Web of Science database and examined the changes in validated resilience-related topics using ARM. We found that resilience-related research tends to diversify and expand over time. Although topics and their academic fields related to engineering and complex adaptive systems were prominent in the early 2000s, psychosocial resilience and social-ecological resilience have received significant attention in recent years. The increasing interest in resilience-related topics linked to psychological and ecological factors, as well as social system components, can be attributed to the impact of a series of complex and global events that occurred in the late 2000s. Recently, resilience has been conceived as a way of thinking, perspective, or paradigm to address emergent complexity and uncertainty with vague concepts. Resilience is increasingly being regarded as a boundary spanner that promotes communication and collaboration among stakeholders who share different interests and scientific knowledge.

Optimization of Social Systems in the Diffusion of Innovations in Traditional Islamic Society

The diffusion of innovation in the context of developing traditional societies has its challenges with the many obstacles in the social system. Previous studies have proven that each social component has a significant role in facilitating the process of innovation diffusion to underprivileged societies. However, they need to discuss how to optimize these components to overcome the barriers of social systems in traditional societies. Meanwhile, M. Yunus created an innovation in the form of microcredit and successfully diffused it to Muslim women who live in poverty in Bangladesh. This study investigates how Yunus optimizes the social system's components to successfully diffuse the program's innovation in the high traditional challenges. The method used in this study is a qualitative approach with a type of case study and analysis based on Rogers' theory of social system components. This study finds that social system barriers can be overcome by 1) optimizing the role of reforming agents in optional decisions through interpersonal relationships; 2) optimizing local communication channels that are homophilous with friendship networks among lower-class Muslim women.

Emergency or emerging financing strategies of art museums in the context of a pandemic?

ABSTRACT Even if crises have the capacity to reveal the structural problems that underlie the various components of social systems, little systematic knowledge exists on how museums respond to these situations. Combining what is known about how museums reacted to previous crisis and empirical evidence of how museums recently adjusted their activities and strategies, the article highlights how art museums in Western Europe started to tackle the ambivalent challenge to pursue social purposes while being urged to monetize possible assets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, art museums have adopted ‘emergency’ and ‘emerging’ strategies associated with the modification of the funding mix, new partnerships and collaborations, and sustainable financing. The offer of digital services, a moderate reliance on crowdfunding, blockchain technologies, and an increased sensitivity of community needs, are among the novelties that art museums engaged with. Forerunners that had started with such practices before the pandemic, had the opportunity to take these to the next level.

Variation in communicative complexity in relation to social structure and organization in non-human primates.

Communicative complexity relates to social complexity, as individuals in more complex social systems either use more signals or more complex signals than individuals living in less complex ones. Taking the individual group member's perspective, here we examine communicative complexity in relation to social complexity, which arises from two components of social systems: social structure and social organization. We review the concepts of social relationships and social complexity and evaluate their implications for communicative and cognitive complexity using examples from primate species. We focus on spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), as their social organization is characterized by flexibility in grouping dynamics and they use a variety of communicative signals. We conclude that no simple relationship exists among social complexity, communicative complexity and cognitive complexity, with social complexity not necessarily implying cognitive complexity, and communicative and cognitive complexity being independently linked to social complexity. To better understand the commonly implied link between social complexity and cognitive complexity it is crucial to recognize the complementary role of communicative complexity. A more elaborated communicative toolkit provides the needed flexibility to deal with dynamic and multifaceted social relationships and high variation in fission-fusion dynamics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.

Revisiting the components of Macroscelidea social systems: Evidence for variable social organization, including pair‐living, but not for a monogamous mating system

AbstractElephant‐shrews (Macroscelidea) have long been considered the only mammalian order to be completely monogamous, based on observations of their pair‐living social organization. We reviewed primary studies on the four components of social systems (social organization, mating system, social structure, and care system) in elephant‐shrews to evaluate whether they truly are monogamous. To identify gaps in our knowledge of their social system, we reviewed evidence for a pair‐living social organization, mate fidelity (mating system), pair bonds (social structure), and biparental care (care system). Field data were available for eight species and seven were often pair‐living. However, these seven species exhibited intra‐specific variation in social organization; two of these species were also solitary living, two species were also group‐living, and the remaining three species were both solitary and group‐living. The eighth species was exclusively solitary. We reconstructed the ancestral social organization of Macroscelidea using Bayesian phylogenetic mixed‐effects models and found that variable social organization, rather than exclusive pair‐living, was the most likely ancestral state, though there was high uncertainty. No socio‐ecological factors (body size, population density, and habitat) predicted a specific social organization. Observations of mating have been rare, such that no firm statements can be made. However, one unpublished study indicated high levels of extra‐pair paternity. Regarding social structure, there was no evidence of pair‐bonding, but there was evidence of mate guarding. Only maternal care has been observed, with females having very short nursing bouts. Evidence suggests that despite having often a pair‐living form of social organization, Macroscelidea should not be described as a monogamous order, as little or no evidence supports that designation, nor are they exclusively pair‐living (social organization) and we urge further field studies on Macroscelidea social systems.

Impact of Social and Institutional Factors on the Uptake of Conservation Agriculture: A Case of Zambia and Zimbabwe

Conservation agriculture (CA) involves the practice of three interlinked principles of minimum soil disturbance, a permanent soil cover and crop rotation. Despite the many stated benefits of the technology, its uptake in Africa has been slow. This study applies the theory of planned behaviour to investigate the attitudes, the role of the social system (social influence, by-laws and customs) and the institutional environment in the decision to practice CA principles and on the area under CA in Choma, Zambia and Nkayi, Zimbabwe. The study finds differing attitudes between districts towards CA outcomes. Local by-laws have a positive correlation with the practice of minimum soil disturbance but negative correlations with the practice of soil cover and crop rotation. Social influence and customs have significant relationships with the area under CA. Institutional support is perceived to be necessary for the practice of minimum soil disturbance but not so for the practice of crop rotation or on the area under CA. We conclude that the attitudes towards CA depend on the performance of the CA options promoted to farmers while the effects of the social system components and institutional factors on the uptake of CA depends on how the particular CA principle fits into the social and institutional environment in which it is promoted. We recommend agriculture extension services and policymakers to pay more attention to these issues in the promotion of CA.

La función de la evaluación docente dentro del sistema complejo de la educación en México

En este artículo se retoman aspectos que contextualizan la evaluación docente hacia la segunda década del siglo XX en México (en particular en el Estado de México) y se analiza este proceso como parte del sistema complejo de la educación. Se realizó un estudio documental de diferentes fuentes enfocadas a la teoría de sistemas de Niklas Luhman para entender al sistema de la educación como parte de los sistemas sociales; así como el proceso que ha tenido la evaluación de la educación, la postura del snte en la reconstrucción de este proceso y estadísticas de participación de los profesores en la evaluación docente. El análisis de la información recabada revela, por un lado, que la intención primordial de la evaluación docente es elevar la calidad de la educación en México; por otro lado, que tiene un alto impacto en los profesores con respecto a la certeza laboral; también se identificó que el SNTE participa activamente para informar y acompañar a sus agremiados en el complejo camino de la evaluación. En este estudio se plasma la necesidad de mejora en aspectos claves de la evaluación docente y se vislumbran otros que no se contemplaron en un inicio como medios de oportunidad para lograrlo; entonces se puede mencionar que la evaluación docente es un proceso necesario, sin embargo, falta puntualizar criterios de evaluación para cumplir con su intención. Este proceso a la fecha se encuentra inconcluso.

Инвариантные компоненты социальных систем как естественное ограничение институционального творчества

Инвариантные компоненты социальных систем как естественное ограничение институционального творчества

Shifting relationships to place: a relational place-based perspective on SES resilience

ABSTRACTDisasters literally and figuratively shake the foundations of place in a community. If place is seen as both a construction of and contributor to identity, then the impact of disasters can result in not only physical displacement but can also fundamentally displace community and individual identity. Despite this, resilience theory, a widely used approach for dealing with disaster, provides little empirical or theoretical background on the role of place in shaping response and recovery from disruption. On 22 February 2011, the ground beneath the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, shook, destabilizing the physical and psychological landscape and displacing the foundations of place identity for many communities. Through the case study of Project Lyttelton, a grassroots community organization close to the epicenter of the 22 February earthquake, this paper seeks to understand and explore the nuances of place and identity, and its role in shaping resilience to such displacing events. We argue that place is an integral component of social systems that requires consideration within resilience frameworks in order for social factors to be properly integrated. From this, we make the case for increased awareness of the connections between these processes and the related consequences for post-disaster realities at both the community and policy level.

Participatory education and challenges in a fragmented world a holistic approach to urban planning for a sustainable future

Accepted: 23.06.2015 In our ‘complex, fragmented urban world’ (Stoker,2000 ) ‘global problems are generated at the local scale and should be solved there too’ (Condon,2008). Yet, neither governments nor citizens take responsibility for the collective problems, while political systems focus on short-term rather than long term benefits. McIntyre-Mills argues, ‘policy and practice needs to consider social, economic and environmental implications for all life’. The field of urban planning exemplifies this. Key issues of democracy and participation in public policy making at local and regional level; the role of the private sector and the balance of markets, government and civil society; and a containerized approach by government results in much urban planning failing to recognize future consequences of current choices. Democracy needs to change to meet the convergent social, economic and environmental challenges. McIntyre-Mills recommends ‘both centralized controls to protect the global commons and decentralized engagement to test out our ideas’. Urban planning also will only succeed if it recognizes that ‘we need to be the subjects not the objects of other people’s designs’ (McIntyre-Mills). However, participatory design is complex and difficult and, while digital communication can potentially include more voices, like any engagement it works best when complementing other processes and ‘built around the needs, goals, and concerns of the potentially engaged,’ (Leinghninger). Sarkissian therefore argues that urban planning needs to take a holistic approach, ‘taking into account multiple layers and components of social systems’ and to be long term focused. This paper explores the means to do that.

Insights from socio-hydrology modelling on dealing with flood risk – Roles of collective memory, risk-taking attitude and trust

The risk coping culture of a community plays a major role in the development of urban floodplains. In this paper we analyse, in a conceptual way, the interplay of community risk coping culture, flooding damage and economic growth. We particularly focus on three aspects: (i) collective memory, i.e., the capacity of the community to keep risk awareness high; (ii) risk-taking attitude, i.e., the amount of risk the community is collectively willing to be exposed to; and (iii) trust of the community in risk reduction measures. To this end, we use a dynamic model that represents the feedback between the hydrological and social system components. Model results indicate that, on the one hand, by under perceiving the risk of flooding (because of short collective memory and too much trust in flood protection structures) in combination with a high risk-taking attitude, community development is severely limited because of high damages caused by flooding. On the other hand, overestimation of risk (long memory and lack of trust in flood protection structures) leads to lost economic opportunities and recession. There are many scenarios of favourable development resulting from a trade-off between collective memory and trust in risk reduction measures combined with a low to moderate risk-taking attitude. Interestingly, the model gives rise to situations in which the development of the community in the floodplain is path dependent, i.e., the history of flooding may lead to community growth or recession.

Falsifying Merton's Macro-Level Anomie Theory of Profit-Motivated Crime: A Research Note

The objective of our article is straightforward. We seek to derive, and to confront with data, an empirical model of Robert K. Merton's macro-level, anomie theory of profit-motivated crime. We use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression equations to estimate the joint effects of measures of the acceptance of material success goals and absolute and relative deprivation, respectively, on cross-national rates of drug trafficking. Consistent with the predictions derived from Mertonian anomie theory, the coefficients for the product terms (the acceptance of success goals × absolute deprivation and the acceptance of success goals × relative deprivation) are significant and positive. This investigation provides what we believe is the first evaluation of the Mertonian proposition that the cultural (goals) and structural (means) components of social systems operate together to increase the level of profit-motivated crime. What is missing, of course, is a measure of anomie. We are forced to infer that anomie is the causal mechanism that links the joint influence of culture and social structure on pecuniary crime. Admittedly, this is an unavoidable limitation of the current investigation.

Adaptive Ecosocial System Sustainability Enhancement in Sub-Saharan Africa

A conceptual framework is developed and used for improving the livelihood of Sub-Saharan communities faced with multiple stresses resulting from adverse environments, vector-transmitted diseases, and limited food. Ecosocial systems are the units for management. The accumulation of ecological, economic, and social capital is the objective of management, the reduction of maintenance costs is the key strategy, and technologies must satisfy ecological, economic, and social criteria. Interacting social system components are communities, facilitators, scientists, and political as well as administrative organizations. An adaptive approach to management allows flexibility in human and financial resource allocation and results in changes in knowledge and efficacy of management operations. The implementation strategy at two sites in Ethiopia relies on a two-stage procedure. In Stage 1, human and cattle health management set the conditions for development. In Stage 2, the ecosocial system is kept on a trajectory to enhanced ecological, economic, and social capital. In each stage, the assignment of responsibilities leads to four implementation phases. In Stage 1, successful precision targeting of tsetse and drug-based Trypanosoma spp. control increased the economic and social capital at the Luke site in southwestern Ethiopia but threatened the ecological capital because of overstocking and land degradation. In Stage 2, a women’s group living in the outskirts of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) transformed barren land into a horticultural enterprise to enhance ecosystem service provision, including production of horticultural goods, and increase soil fertility expressed by nutrients and water availability. This article reviews concepts on human livelihood improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa and identifies principles that became important during project execution.

The role of body size in competition and mate choice in an agamid with female-biased size dimorphism

Competition and mate choice are fundamentally important components of social systems. We investigated intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual competition (mate choice) in Rankinia diemensis, an agamid lizard with female-biased size dimorphism. We examined intra-sexual interactions during contests and mate choice in relation to body size for both males and females. In male-male competition trials, proportions of two display types differed depending on body size, with more tail flicks produced by bigger males, and more hand-waves displayed by smaller males. These behaviours hold particular biological significance for agamid lizards; tail-flicks convey aggressiveness and, therefore, dominance, while hand-waves often denote submissiveness. In female-female competition trials, a greater difference in body size between the two conspecifics resulted in the larger female directing more pushes towards the smaller female. This female competition may be important in the social system and could be involved in resource defence. We found no indication of size-based mate choice for males or females. This suggests mate preferences may not be based on body size in this species. This may be linked to female-biased size dimorphism in this species, but it also supports previous studies that have failed to demonstrate female choice in reptiles.

The Underside of Conflict Management - in Africa and Elsewhere

Summaries This article traces the evolution of thought on dispute resolution in recent decades and takes a critical look at its latest incarnation, the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) revolution. It argues that ADR is premised on the harmony model of law that denies the unequal power of disputing parties and ignores issues of social justice. It calls for a real dialogue by serious scholars willing to examine the now plentiful evidence of the performance of ADR devices. The article also shows that dispute resolution is not autonomous from other social and economic components of social systems, and that as a consequence it is not possible to divorce law and power. Any ADR scheme, therefore, needs careful study of the social conditions in which it may operate.

社会システムの二重の閉鎖性

Niklas Luhmann applied autopoietic systems theory to social systems theory by laying stress on ‘communication’ or ‘communicative events’ as a component of social systems. It is frequently said that such social systems are ‘operationally closed’ and ‘cognitively open’ at the same time. To explain why social systems should be defined ‘operationally closed’, I will ‘refer’ to Parsons' version of social systems theory that has been criticized as ‘oversocialized’. Then, I will use two keys to understand the operational closure of social systems and psychic systems. One is the distinction between ‘input type description’ and ‘closure type description’, the other is the ‘double closure of systems’ concept proposed by Heinz von Foerster.

Autopoiesis: The organizational closure of social systems

AbstractThe attempt to define living systems in terms of goal, purpose, function, etc. runs into serious conceptual difficulties. The theoretical biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela realized that any such attempt cannot capture what is distinctive about them: Their autonomy and unity. Goal, purpose, etc. always define the system in terms of something extrinsic, whereas living systems are unique because they maintain their unitary continuity of pattern despite the ceaseless turnover of their components. So, system‐closure is a prerequisite of their adequate conceptual comprehension. Maturana and Varela themselves found that system‐closure pertains exclusively to their organization, i.e. the set of relations among system‐components which unify them. For living systems this comprises the relation between the system‐components and the processes which they undergo. This relation is self‐referential because it is closed, i.e. it essentially (re)produces itself.While this model worked very well in the biological domain, attempts to extend it to the social domain met with serious conceptual obstacles. The reason for this is that Maturana did not make a consistent enough application of it. He understood the components of social systems biologically (individuals, persons, etc.) and the relations between them socially (language). This inconsistency ruptured the system's organizational closure. Consequently organizational closure (autopoiesis) can be maintained only when both the components of social systems and their processes are of the same type: Social. This interpretation can be found in the work of Niklas Luhmann who recognizes that the components of social systems are not persons, individuals, actors or subjects but communicative actions themselves. This preserves the organizational closure of the system and permits the concept of autopoiesis to be used as a powerful instrument of social analysis.

Merton's “social structure and anomie”: The road not taken

The thesis of this paper is that Robert Merton's essay “Social Structure and Anomie” contains two analytically distinct theoretical arguments, a theory of social organization and a theory of deviant motivation. The theory of social organization discusses the articulation of components of social systems, whereas the theory of deviant motivation addresses the sources of pressures on individuals to violate social norms. These two theories employ similar terms and are joined to deal with a principal substantive concern for Merton, namely, the distribution of deviant behavior within a social structure. I argue, however, that the two theories are not logically interdependent. Evidence inconsistent with one is thus not necessarily inconsistent with the other. Moreover, I suggest that the theory of social organization warrants greater attention than it has received to date because it is the more original and lucid of the two theoretical arguments, and because it has the potential for generating a promising resear...

Social Theory and Talcott Parsons in the 1980

In recent years a revival has occurred in analytical and empirical studies related to the social theory of Talcott Parsons. The newer analytical work addresses the whole of Parsons' effort in the context of questions that bear on all social theory. Especially important works by Bershady, Habermas, Munch, and Alexander establish a new baseline for future analytical assessments of the theory. Much of the empirical work focuses on specification and assessment of theoretical propositions, particularly concerning the more normative components of social systems, and on general action complexes that synthesize social, cultural, personality, and behavioral aspects of major phenomena in modern societies.