The Usefulness of Indepth Life History Interviews for Exploring the Role of Social Structure and Human Agency in Youth Transitions

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Hubbard
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Youth Transitions

This paper discusses the usefulness of indepth life history interviews in illustrating the role of social structure and human agency in youth transitions. Drawing on sociological theory and youth transition research, the paper highlights how the role of structure and agency has been perceived by youth researchers. Whilst this literature acknowledges the interplay between structure and agency in transitional processes, the appropriateness of particular research methods for explicating structure and agency needs to be further elucidated. Using data from a study of youth transitions in rural areas of Scotland, a range of transitional experiences from two indepth life history interviews is presented here. This exploratory exercise suggests that life history interviews enable researchers to explore how far social structures provide opportunities and constraints for human agents at the same time as showing how individuals, with their own beliefs and desires, take actions despite the social structures that underlie the immediacy of their experiences.

Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha Muennich
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Rent Extraction ◽  
Free Competition ◽  
The Social

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely.

scholarly journals Measuring the contribution of mobility to malaria persistence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Ferreira da Costa Gomes ◽  
Cláudia Torres Codeço ◽  
Leonardo Soares Bastos ◽  
Raquel Martins Lana
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Logistic Model ◽  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Perspective Change ◽  
Using Data

Abstract Background: To achieve the goal of malaria elimination, it is important to determine the role of human mobility of maintain parasite transmission. The Alto Jurua basin (Brazil) has one of the largest prevalence of malaria vivax and malaria falciparum in the Amazon. The goal of this work was to estimate the contribution of human commutation on the persistence of malaria in this region using data from a origin-destination survey.Methods: Data from the origin-destination survey was used to describe the intensity and motivation for commutation between rural settlements and urban areas in two municipalities, Mancio Lima and Rodrigues Alves. The relativetime-person spent in each locality per household was estimated. A logistic model was fitted to estimate the effect of commuting on the probability of getting malaria for a householder from a zone of residence commuting to another zone.Results: Our main results suggest that this population is not very mobile. 96% of household reported spending more than 90% of the annual person-hour at localities within the same zone of residence. Study and work are the most prevalent motivations for commuting, 40.5% and 29.5% respectively. Spending person-hours in urban Rodrigues Alves conferred relative protection to the residents of urban Mancio Lima. On the other hand, spending time in urban Rodrigues Alves conferred protection against malaria for those living in urban Mancio Lima. The opposite effect occurs for those spending time in the rural areas of both municipalities.Conclusion: In the alto Jurua region, the place one lives is a stronger determinant of malaria risk than the place ones commute. These municipalities of a hotspot of Plasmodium transmission, thus understanding the main fluxes is essential to planning control strategies because the probability of getting malaria is dependent on the intensity of transmission of both, the area of origin and the area to which the displacement take place. The natural conditions for the circulation of pathogens such as the Plasmodium spp, combined with the pattern of mobility of humans in the Amazon, make clear the need of disease control perspective change. It is essential that intersectoral public policies be the basis for health mitigation actions.

Landlords and Lords of the Land: estate management and social control in Uttar Pradesh 1860–1920

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Musgrave
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
And Control ◽  
Great Mass

The problem of controlling and taxing the countryside is one which has remained with all governments in Asia, or indeed in the whole developing world, up to 1972. Government has inevitably tended to be essentially urban-based, centred on military power-bases, whether they be ‘Pacified Areas’, towns or mud forts, backed by military power normally concentrated in these centres. Outside the towns, however, lived the great mass of the population, and the great mass of the potentially taxable wealth, and it is upon its ability to control the rural areas that the credibility and survival of any régime must ultimately depend. It is perhaps an indication of our preoccupations with the problems of pacification and control in Asian societies that increasing interest is being shown in the patterns of rural control, in systems of traditional deference, which are usually seen as surviving much longer and much more strongly in the countryside than in the towns, and in problems of income distribution through social structures based on land. In such a situation, then, the role of the ‘estates’—of traditional and institutionalized systems of dependence and of control, of systems which were commonly used and hence studied by governments—is one which demands to be considered.

Role of Microfinance Institutions in Development of India

2018 ◽  
pp. 138-155
Author(s):  
Amir Manzoor
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Microfinance Institutions ◽  
Related Services ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

The role and contribution of microfinance institutions (MFIs) is very important in development. Microfinance is a very important source of financial services for people and microenterprises that do not have easy access to banking and related services. The objective of this chapter is to assess empirically the impact of MFIs on development of India. This study aims to fill a gap in econometric assessments of microfinance institutions. Using data of MFIs operating in India and using savings of client as proxy for development, this chapter found empirical evidence for significant positive impact of microfinance institutions on development. While development in rural regions generally lags behind urban areas, this chapter found no statistical evidence for differences in the marginal impact of microfinance institutions subject to geographical positions. It can therefore be concluded that impact of MFIs on development in rural areas is positive and independent of environment.

scholarly journals Bicycle cinema

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Kristensen
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Technical Development ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Interpretative Flexibility

This paper examines the relationship between identities and the bicycle as portrayed in films. The analysis finds that taking the viewpoint of the bicycle emancipates the bicycle from being subjected to closure, as the constructionists would have it, and thus articulates the differences with which the bicycle can communicate to its rider. The paper examines the bicycle as depicted in three films: Premium Rush (Davis Koepp, 2012), A Sunday in Hell (Jørgen Leth, 1977) and Life on Earth (Abderrahmane Sissako, 1998). It engages with the concept of ‘interpretative flexibility’ and the development of the bicycle, as examined by Wiebe Bijker and others, and argues that the interpretative flexibility of bicycles does not cease just because the high-wheeler was abandoned and the ‘safety’ bicycle was universally accepted. The fight for the role of the bicycle continues and the bicycle is subject to constant transformations in order to reconstruct it according to human needs. Andrew Feenberg’s modified constructivism is applied to re-examine the technical development of the bicycle, claiming that technology is dependent on specific social structures as well as human agency. The paper argues that just as social structures are negotiable and unfixed at any point in time, the bicycle too is never neutral but remains negotiable and unfixed. Consequently, since the bicycle constantly ‘speaks’ back to the user, there is never closure in the technical development of the bicycle. Drawing on the writings of Bruno Latour and the Deleuzian idea of assemblages, the bicycle and its rider are considered as an organic entity that is constantly forged and un-forged. Understanding the rhetoric of the bicycle machine helps the convergence of a bicycle becoming with becoming a rider, marking the bicycle as equal to its rider. Viewed in this way, the hierarchy of agency collapses and a crystallization emerges out of the rider and bicycle entwinement.

Urban and rural voting patterns in Senegal: the spatial aspects of incumbency, c. 1978–2012

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominika Koter
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Party Identity

ABSTRACTOne of the most striking voting patterns in many African elections is the marked difference between urban and rural voters in their willingness to support the incumbent. In many countries, incumbents receive their worst electoral scores in the cities, whereas the countryside votes overwhelmingly for them. This pattern is puzzling because there is no evidence that rural areas benefit more from government policies. On the contrary, most governments in Africa exhibit a pro-urban policy bias. Why then do rural voters support incumbents at higher rates? Using evidence from original interviews with politicians in Senegal, coupled with media coverage from several elections, I contend that incumbents enjoy higher success in rural vis-à-vis urban areas because rural voters are more susceptible to clientelism. Tight social structure, cohesion and the prominent role of local patrons facilitate the acquisition of entire blocs of rural voters for the incumbent. These findings are independent of ethnic, religious or party identity.

scholarly journals Changes in social structure and the role of the peasantry

2014 ◽  
pp. 71-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srdjan Sljukic
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Rural Sociology ◽  
Social Division ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociology Of Agriculture

Modernization processes in rural areas not only lead to the separation of peasant (traditional) and rural, due to the deagrarization and changes of cultural and political patterns, but also to full integration of agriculture into the social division of labor. As a part of economy, agriculture, in a social sense, ceased to be linked exclusively to rural areas, which enables the distinction between sociology of agriculture and rural sociology. In this paper, the changes in class/strata structure of agriculture that took place during the last two decades in the Serbian society are described and explained. After that, an attempt was made to explain this new structure in the context of a broader structure of Serbian society and its reproduction, taking into the consideration the existing views (Lazic/Cvejic). The author especially emphasises his critical views on some disputable issues.

Predators with Pouches

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menna Jones ◽  
Chris Dickman ◽  
Mike Archer
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
North America ◽  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Physiological Basis ◽  
Juvenile Dispersal ◽  
Book Covers

Predators with Pouches provides a unique synthesis of current knowledge of the world’s carnivorous marsupials—from Patagonia to New Guinea and North America to Tasmania. Written by 63 experts in each field, the book covers a comprehensive range of disciplines including evolution and systematics, reproductive biology, physiology, ecology, behaviour and conservation. Predators with Pouches reveals the relationships between the American didelphids and the Australian dasyurids, and explores the role of the marsupial fauna in the mammal community. It introduces the geologically oldest marsupials, from the Americas, and examines the fall from former diversity of the larger marsupial carnivores and their convergent evolution with placental forms. The book covers all aspects of carnivorous marsupials, including interesting features of life history, their unique reproduction, the physiological basis for early senescence in semelparous dasyurids, sex ratio variation and juvenile dispersal. It looks at gradients in nutrition—from omnivory to insectivory to carnivory—as well as distributional ecology, social structure and conservation dilemmas.

scholarly journals Measuring the contribution of human mobility to malaria persistence

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo F. C. Gomes ◽  
Cláudia T Codeço ◽  
Leonardo S. Bastos ◽  
Raquel M. Lana
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Malaria Prevalence ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Human Mobility Pattern

Abstract Background To achieve malaria elimination, it is important to determine the role of human mobility in parasite transmission maintenance. The Alto Juruá basin (Brazil) exhibits one of the largest vivax and falciparum malaria prevalence in the Amazon. The goal of this study was to estimate the contribution of human commutes to malaria persistence in this region, using data from an origin-destination survey. Methods Data from an origin-destination survey were used to describe the intensity and motivation for commutations between rural and urban areas in two Alto Juruá basin (Brazil) municipalities, Mâncio Lima and Rodrigues Alves. The relative time-person spent in each locality per household was estimated. A logistic model was developed to estimate the effect of commuting on the probability of contracting malaria for a certain residence zone inhabitant commuting to another zone. Results The main results suggest that the assessed population is not very mobile. A total of $$96\%$$ 96 % households reported spending over $$90\%$$ 90 % of their annual person-hour in areas within the same residence zone. Study and work were the most prevalent commuting motivations, calculated at $$40.5\%$$ 40.5 % and $$29.5\%$$ 29.5 % respectively. Spending person-hours in urban Rodrigues Alves conferred relative protection to urban Mâncio Lima residents. The opposite effect was observed for those spending time in rural areas of both municipalities. Conclusion Residence area is a stronger determinant for contracting malaria than commuting zones in the Alto Juruá region. As these municipalities are a hotspot for Plasmodium transmission, understanding the main local human fluxes is essential for planning control strategies, since the probability of contracting malaria is dependent on the transmission intensity of both the origin and the displacement area. The natural conditions for the circulation of certain pathogens, such as Plasmodium spp., combined with the Amazon human mobility pattern indicate the need for disease control perspective changes. Therefore, intersectoral public policies should become the basis for health mitigation actions.

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