Famiglia, lavoro e capitale sociale: morfogenesi e nuovi paradigmi

Author(s):  
Cristina Mariti

- In Western societies family and work, the two focal subsystems governing individual and social groups' daily life, are undergoing substantial and may be final adjustments. Family dimension is changing in its hierarchical structure, in kinship and ties, in emotional, reproductive and economic organisation and setting up new styles coexisting with traditional standard and gradually corroding its role and constitution. Work, on the other hand, is increasingly connoted by flexibility, mobility and precariousness and it appears as a strongly (may be irreversible) changing element of the social system; several are the social "aggregates" on which these adjustments are active: (self)confidence, planning skills, individual time allocation, emotional and familiar life organisation. The theory of social capital, considered as the knowledge in reciprocity held by an individual and used, together with intellectual and cultural heritage, in social mutual relations, is recently raising in social sciences. The purpose of the survey is to analyse the reciprocal interconnections and the refractive upshots of the process involving these three elements and the set up network.

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


Author(s):  
Konstantin S. Sharov

The paper is concerned with a study of the changing content and style of non-canonical Christian religious preaching in the digital age. Special attention is paid to the analysis of modern rhetoric Christian preachers practice in their Internet channels, forums and blogs. It is shown that the content of the Internet sermon is largely determined by the Internet users themselves and the topics of their appeals. The fundamental characteristics of the content of the Internet sermon are: 1) focus on the individual, their private goals and objectives, not just on theological problems; 2) rethinking the phenomenon of the neighbour; 3) a shift from the Hesychast tradition of preaching the importance of inner spiritual concentration to the preaching of religious interactivity. The observed stylistic features of the digital preaching can be summarised as follows: 1) moving away from simple answers to the rhetoric of new questions addressed to the audience; 2) empathy, co-participation with a person in his/her life conflicts and experiences; 3) desire to share religious information, not to impose it; 4) resorting to various rhetorical techniques to reach different audiences; 5) a tendency to use slang, sometimes even irrespective of the audience’s language preferences and expectations. It should be pointed out that the Orthodox Internet sermon in the Russian Internet space has a dual and contradictory nature. On the one hand, this phenomenon can be regarded as positive for the Orthodox preaching in general, since it is a means of spreading Christian ideas in the social groups that do not constitute a core of parishioners of Orthodox churches, for example, schoolchildren, students, representatives of technical professions, etc. On the other hand, the effectiveness of such preaching is still unclear. Lack of reliable statistics as well as the results of the survey related to the Orthodox Internet preaching gives us no opportunity to judge about effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the phenomenon at this stage of its development.


Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.


Author(s):  
Ladislav Stejskal ◽  
Jana Pustinová ◽  
Jana Stávková

Article is devoted to evaluation of the Czech population’s income situation according to the inquiry realized within the frame of the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) project. This was carried out by the Czech Statistical Office in the year 2005. Selected introductive analyses are presented with the view of pointing at the primary data usage possibilities. Main aim of the paper is to explicate basic quantitative indicators of Czech households’ income situation in general, then in division according to social groups and regional belonging. Consequent aim encompasses the identification and analysis of the income unevenness measure by the help of alternative methodological approach. The essential findings and income characteristics are introduced, including recomputation to the physical and so-called standardized member. In compliance with the predefined threshold the households endangered with the insufficient income level are identified. Insufficient income level means that household earnings cannot cover standard living costs. This part is followed by the brief statistical analysis of the data set of this group of households and the reference to other studies which are currently being pursued. Conclusion comprehends the spectrum of processes and analyses that could follow, or are already worked out, in concurrence with the existing findings. First of these, for example, is the income situation evaluation of seniors involved in the enquiry. Reason is that this segment is traditionally perceived as economically weak and more or less dependent on the social system settings.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Flynn ◽  
James M. Hay

Using complexity science, we develop a theory to explain why some social movements develop through stages of increasing intensity which we define as an increase in  social focusing. We name six such stages of focusing: disintegration, revitalization, religious, organisation, militaristic, and self-immolation. Our theory uses two variables from the social sciences: differentiation and centrality, where differentiation refers to the internal structure of a social system and centrality measures the variety of incoming information. The ratio of the two, differentiation/centrality (the d/c ratio) is a shorthand way of saying that centrality must be matched by a corresponding level of differentiation to maintain basic focusing. If centrality exceeds differentiation, then the result is a lack of focusing—disintegration. On the other hand, the more differentiation exceeds centrality, the more the system moves into the higher stages of social focusing, from revitalization to the final stage of self-immolation.   To test the theory we examine historically indigenous social movements, in particular, the Grassy Narrows movement in northern Ontario Canada. We also suggest how the theory might be applied to explain other examples of social movement, especially millenarian movements at the end of the 20th century. We also suggest sociocybernetic ways the rest of society and the social movement itself can change its own social focusing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khairul Firdhaus Abdullah ◽  
Mohamad Marzuqi Abdul Rahim ◽  
Wahyu Hidayat Abdullah

This study aims to evaluate the role of Maahad Tahfiz ADDIN to produce huffaz in the State of Perak Darul Ridzuan based on the implementation of the Tahfiz Al-Quran curriculum with important instruments of collecting quantitative data (questionnaires). A survey method which was used involved 366 students from the Maahad Tahfiz Al-Quran ADDIN in the state of Perak who are randomly selected. The subjects of the study were students aged 13 years to 17 years old. A questionnaire was developed to collect the required data. The findings were analyzed descriptively by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 22.0. The results show that the implementation of the goals and objectives of the Quranic Tahfiz curriculum at Maahad Tahfiz ADDIN was the highest mean of 3.60. The conclusions from this study show that the goal and objectives of tahfiz are at a good level and can be further enhanced. On the other hand, the content of the curriculum and time allocation for the Quranic memorization should be given due attention and improvements so that Maahad Tahfiz ADDIN can actually filling the gap in producing more quality huffaz in the state of Perak Darul Ridzuan.


Author(s):  
Sophie Noyé ◽  
Gianfranco Rebucini

Since the 2000s, forms of articulation between materialist and Marxist theory and queer theory have been emerging and have thus created a “queer materialism.” After a predominance of poststructuralist analyses in the social sciences in the1980s and 1990s, since the late 1990s, and even more so after the economic crisis of 2008, a materialist shift seems to be taking place. These recompositions of the Marxist, queer, and feminist, which took place in activist and academic arenas, are decisive in understanding how the new approaches are developing in their own fields. The growing legitimacy of feminist and queer perspectives within the Marxist left is part of an evolution of Marxism on these issues. On the other side, queer activists and academics have highlighted the economic and social inequalities that the policies of austerity and capitalism in general induce among LGBTQI people and have turned to more materialist references, especially Marxist ones, to deploy an anticapitalist and antiracist argument. Even if nowadays one cannot speak of a “queer materialist” current as such, because the approaches grouped under this term are very different, it seems appropriate to look for a “family resemblance” and to group them together. Two specific kinds of “queer materialisms” can thus be identified. The first, queer Marxism, seeks to theorize together Marxist and queer theories, particularly in normalization and capitalist accumulation regimes. The second, materialist queer feminism, confronts materialist/Marxist feminist thought with queer approaches and thus works in particular on the question of heteropatriarchy based on this double tradition.


Author(s):  
Lucy Nicholas

The contact hypothesis has been the go-to social psychology concept for promoting better relations between unequal social groups since its inception in the context of ‘racial’ de-segregation in the USA. The idea that contact between groups reduces prejudice has been applied to a range of dominant / subordinate social groups such as ethnic groups, homo/heterosexuals, cis and trans people. This chapter will question whether the aims and premises of contact theory are still useful in the context of increasingly subtle and systemic biases and inequalities, and whether and how it might be usefully extended to relations between more complex identities than simple pre-defined oppositional ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups.  To do so, it considers some examples of intergroup othering using case studies pertaining to backlashes against gender, sexual and ethnic diversity in the contemporary Australian context. This chapter proposes the fruitful combination of queer ethics, post-tolerance political theory and the social psychology concept of ‘allophilia’ (love for the other) to move towards fostering ‘positive regard’ as an alternative way to tackle prejudice. It suggests that queer ethics can lend a convincing strategy here, which I call ‘reading queerly’, that is, being able to approach an other with an openness that neither homogenises nor subordinates difference.


Author(s):  
Eric Fabri

This chapter addresses ontology, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being. As a branch of metaphysics, ontology is mainly concerned with the modes of existence of different entities (tangible and intangible). Every subdiscipline in the social sciences relies on an ontology that defines which elements really matter when it comes to explaining the phenomenon they set out to elucidate. A specific branch of ontology is devoted to the modes of existence of social phenomena: social ontology. Two main positions emerge: realism and constructivism. Scientific realism assumes that social phenomena have an objective existence, independent of the subject. By contrast, constructivism claims that social phenomena have no objective existence and are a construction of the human mind. Its fundamental axiom is that, even if reality exists outside the subject’s perception, the subject cannot reach it without perceiving it. This implies the mediation of imaginary structures, which are provided by social groups. It is important to note, however, that many other positions exist apart from realism and constructivism.


Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss

This chapter explores the social and economic aspects of gift-exchange as a universal phenomenon. Examples drawn from both complex and traditional societies indicate that the personal gift and counter-gift, in which givers and receivers are known to each other and personally communicate with each other, is characterised by a great variety of sentiments and purposes. At one end of the spectrum, economic purposes may be dominant as in some forms of first-gifts which aim to achieve a material gain or to enhance prestige or to bring about material gain in the future. At the other end are those gifts whose purposes are predominantly social and moral in that as ‘total social facts’ they aim to serve friendly relationships, affection, and harmony between known individuals and social groups. Meanwhile, social gifts and actions carrying no explicit or implicit individual right to a return gift or action are forms of ‘creative altruism’.


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