scholarly journals Moral Money? LETS and the Social Construction of Local Economic Geographies in Southeast England

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 1377-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Exchange ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Moral Economic

Local exchange employment and trading systems (LETS) have spread rapidly throughout the United Kingdom during the 1990s. Like all economic geographies, they are socially constructed and are more than a simple response to social exclusion. The economic activity generated by and conducted through LETS is based upon direct forms of social relations and a local currency which facilitate locally defined systems of value formation and distinctive moral economic geographies. Nevertheless, LETS take on some of the class and gender characteristics of the wider economy. Furthermore, the ways in which LETS are represented—not least in the media—may serve to stereotype them as exclusionary and marginal to the needs of those most in need and so to distance them from those excluded from the formal economy.

Local Exchange Trading Systems in the United Kingdom: A Case of Re-Embedding?

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 1361-1376 ◽  
Author(s):  
L Thorne
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Local Exchange ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper a recent type of social and economic organization to appear in the United Kingdom—the local exchange trading system—is examined. From comparative research based on interviews with coordinators of six systems the motivation for involvement, the nature of the local money, and the relationship to business and state regulation are explored. The internal coherence of the systems and the relevance of the ‘local’ is assessed. Contextualized by debates on the nature of economics, where the notion of embeddedness of economic life in social relations is gaining ground, the concept of an active ‘re-embedding’ is introduced in order to explore the significance of local exchange trading systems.

The Social Relations of Business Representation and Devolved Governance in the United Kingdom

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (10) ◽  
pp. 1853-1876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Raco
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cooperative Networks ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policymaking And Implementation ◽  
And Performance

The reform of regional governance in the United Kingdom has been, in part, premised on the notion that regions provide new territories of action in which cooperative networks between business communities and state agencies can be established. Promoting business interests is seen as one mechanism for enhancing the economic competitiveness and performance of ‘laggard’ regions. Yet, within this context of change, business agendas and capacities are often assumed to exist ‘out there’, as a resource waiting to be tapped by state institutions. There is little recognition that business organisations' involvement in networks of governance owes much to historical patterns and practices of business representation, to the types of activities that exist within the business sector, and to interpretations of their own role and position within wider policymaking and implementation networks. This paper, drawing on a study of business agendas in post-devolution Scotland, demonstrates that in practice business agendas are highly complex. Their formation in any particular place depends on the actions of reflexive agents, whose perspectives and capacities are shaped by the social, economic, and political contexts within which they are operating. As such, any understanding of business agendas needs to identify the social relations of business as a whole, rather than assuming away such complexities.

Diversity and Relationships

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-150
Author(s):  
Mona Sue Weissmark
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Clinical Consequences ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
And Gender

This chapter outlines key issues in scientific literature concerning how evolutionary processes have shaped the human mind. To that end, psychologists have drawn on Charles Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis, or how males compete for reproduction and the role of female choice in the process. Darwin argued that evolution hinged on the diversity resulting from sexual reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists posit that heterosexual men and women evolved powerful, highly patterned, and universal desires for particular characteristics in a mate. Critics, however, contend that Darwin’s theory of sexual selection was erroneous, in part because his ideas about sexual identity and gender were influenced by the social mores of his elite Victorian upper class. Despite this critique, some researchers argue similarly to Darwin that love is part of human biological makeup. According to their hypotheses, cooperation is the centerpiece of human daily life and social relations. This makes the emotion of love, both romantic and maternal love, a requirement not just for cooperation, but also for the preservation and perpetuation of the species. That said, researchers speculate that encounters with unfamiliar people, coincident with activated neural mechanisms associated with negative judgments, likely inspire avoidance behavior and contribute to emotional barriers. This suggests the need to further study the social, psychological, and clinical consequences of the link between positive and negative emotions.

Framing Nature: First Steps into the Wilderness for a Sociology of the Landscape

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Bell
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
The Media

We give a sociological reading of the landscape as a formation not primarily of the natural world but of the social. Landscape is best seen as a terrain on which socially constructed and historically determined significatory practices are at work shaping our perception of nature. Accordingly we must attend to the media forms and practices through which landscape has been represented if we are to understand the inter-textual nature of our experience of nature. We explore in particular sociological attempts to understand tourist representations of the landscape. We engage with Urry's postmodern analysis of picturesque tourism and argue that a more historically informed analysis is needed that links representations of landscape to power relations in colonised societies.

Sachs, Chavafambira, Maggie: Prurience or the Pathology of Social Relations?

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grahame Hayes
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Traditional Healer ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
The South ◽  
The Social ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Mind

Black Hamlet (1937; reprinted 1996) tells the story of Sachs's association with John Chavafambira, a Manyika nganga (traditional healer and diviner), who had come to Johannesburg from his home in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Sachs's fascination with Chavafambira was initially as a “research subject” of a psychoanalytic investigation into the mind of a sane “native”. Over a period of years Sachs became inextricably drawn into the suffering and de-humanization experienced by Chavafambira as a poor, black man in the urban ghettoes that were the South Africa of the 1930s and 1940s. It is easy these days to want to dismiss Sachs's “project” as the prurient gaze of a white, liberal psychiatrist. This would not only be an ahistorical reading of Black Hamlet, but it would also diminish the possibilities offered by what Said (1994) calls, a contrapuntal reading. I shall present a reading of Black Hamlet, focusing on the three main characters - Sachs, Chavafambira, and Maggie (Chavafambira's wife) - as emblematic of the social relations of the other, racial(ised) bodies, and gender.

scholarly journals Salisbury tragedy: the news of the week’s narrative of Skripal case

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 00130
Author(s):  
Irina Volkova ◽  
Leila Algavi ◽  
Shuanat Kadyrova ◽  
Natalya Rastorgueva
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Research Group ◽  
International Research ◽  
Television Program ◽  
Media Impact ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
International Research Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

This paper is the second part in the series of studies into the media impact on the transformation of the social and cultural structures in which societies operate. The authors (International Research Group KVAR) describe the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of transcripts of twenty-seven episodes of the “Vesti Nedeli” television program (Rossiya 1, 2018) depicting the mysterious poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The aim of this study is to find out in what way the journalists of “Vesti Nedeli” narrate and interpret the events in Salisbury. Based on C. Booker‘ classification, the authors explore the specific traits of the story plot about the Skripals case. The analysis leads to the conclusion that it is not the Skripals who are at the center of the narration but the United Kingdom and its attitude to Russia. The study identifies the narrative force drivers and the main actors and their subject-object roles: this is one of seven basic plots.

Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Living Animal ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Nature

Abstract This study centers on equestrian show culture in Ontario, Canada, and examines how horses are entangled symbolically and materially in socially constructed hierarchies of value. After examining horse-show social relations and practices, the paper traces the connections among equestrian culture, class, and the social constructions of horses. Equestrian relations expose multiple hierarchical intersections of nature and culture within which both human-horse relations and horses are affected by class structures and identities. In equestrian culture, class affects relations within and across species, and how horses are conceptualized and used, as symbols and as living animal bodies.

The hearthhold in pastoral Fulbe society, central Mali: social relations, milk and drought

Africa ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam de Bruijn
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Economic Viability ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralists ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Social Units

AbstractIn pastoral Fulbe society in central Mali women had and in some degree still have an important social and economic role, concentrated on a milk economy organised through a special female-headed, women-centred unit called by the Fulbe fayannde, or ‘hearthhold’. In a society of semi-nomadic pastoralists who live most of the year in small social units, social relations and networks are very important, perhaps even crucial to the success of their main survival strategy, which is transhumant cattle-keeping. In the literature on the Fulbe this social unit has received relatively little attention. An analysis from the perspective of the ‘hearthhold’ sheds new light on property and gender relations in Fulbe society in general.Drought has had an enormous impact on the situation of the Jallube studied in this article. Economic change—a switch to agriculture and production for the market—has brought about a shift of focus for the men. Economically, milk is no longer essential for them, and hence the fayannde loses its importance; socially, too, the role of the fayannde, as symbolised by milk, is changing. For women the erosion of the fayannde is serious: an analysis of marriage gifts shows how important the fayannde is not only to the social organisation of the Jallube but also to their economic viability. In times of stress this importance may be greater for women than for men. The decline of the fayannde may lead to a transformation of gender relations, the marriage ceremony and women's social security—changes that the return of the rains or the re-establishment of herds may not reverse.

The Sprewell/Carlesimo Episode: Unacceptable Violence or Unacceptable Victim?

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Walton
Keyword(s):  
Media Representations ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Social Responses ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Hierarchies ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Normalization Of Violence

NBA player Latrell Sprewell’s attack on his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, in 1997, received extraordinary attention in the media. The coverage of the incident and subsequent trial revealed the media’s attitude toward violence within cultural representations of sport. This paper focuses on the way that violence associated with sport can be understood in relationship to the normalization of violence against women in American culture. Specifically, I focus on how the violent acts of athletes and coaches elicit different social responses depending on the social status of the victim. I argue that media representations, framed within narratives that construct their importance around gendered ideas of private and public spheres, work to support current race, class, and gender hierarchies. I also offer alternative ways of understanding the incident given the peculiar work setting of professional sport.

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