scholarly journals From Ex-Combatants to Citizens: Connecting Everyday Citizenship and Social Reintegration in Colombia

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maivel Rodríguez López ◽  
Eleni Andreouli ◽  
Caroline Howarth
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
National Programme ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The City

Citizenship can be understood as a form of civic participation and a means of developing social relations with members of the broader community and, therefore, can act as an important means to help reintegrate ex-combatants back into mainstream society. This paper discusses an exploratory research project conducted with a sample of 23 Colombian ex-combatants from non-state armed groups who are current participants of the national programme of reintegration in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. By collecting their views and opinions about what it is like to become reintegrated, we explored the range of social factors that facilitate as well as obstruct practices of citizenship in everyday life and, subsequently, the ways in which this affects their overall experience of reintegration into Colombian society. Drawing on social psychological literature on citizenship and on the theory of social representations, we explored how citizenship is understood and enacted by this group as part of their reintegration process. A thematic analysis of three focus groups highlights an enabling as well as a limiting social context that affects former combatants’ ability to participate as citizens. This paper also contributes to the social psychology of citizenship by studying the experience of reintegration in conflict-affected societies.

How to Reveal the Constructed Worlds: the Budapest Riots 2006

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Mihály Fogarasi ◽  
István Kovács
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Hungarian Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hungarian State

This empirical study is aimed at exploring one important social psychological aspect of two significant, politically motivated clashes that happened in Budapest in 2006. The multiple effects of these mass demonstrations can be detected even today. Both the 18 September 2006 event at the HQ of Hungarian State Television and the 23 October 2006 event in the inner part of Budapest gave rise to considerable and immediate interest across the whole of Hungarian society. The study represents the so called social representations both of the policemen and civilians who participated in the clashes. Through the results of this research the reader may understand the common interpretations – that have been created through social construction – of those who were involved in the events. Method: Some 42 interviewees were involved in the study. We used semi-structured interview-techniques. The texts were analysed according to the sequential-transformative-model, which combines both the qualitative and the quantitative techniques of content (text) analysis. Results: The groups have constructed some different representations constituting their interpretations relating to what happened there in Budapest, as well as how and why. Finally, the shared constructs constitute the partly differing realities of the members of those groups. Conclusion: The existence of those realities outlines the definitive aspect of the process of social construction, namely, it depends fundamentally on the nature of the social relations in which the actors are positioned, which in turn, through the perspectives taken, influences the process of applying different meanings and explanations to events that appear to be the same.

scholarly journals Living in a Digital Society: from the Point of View of One Social Psychological Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
I.B. Bovina ◽  
N.V. Dvoryanchikov
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Digital Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Modern Era

Technology has become ubiquitous, and without it it is hardly possible to imagine everyday human life. As a result of their active use, the individual feels as if he is an important participant in various processes taking place in a globalized world. The purpose of this theoretical and analytical study is to analyze the potential of the social representations theory to study the transformations that occur to a person in a digital society. Theory makes it possible to answer the question of how a person builds an explanation for a new phenomenon and builds his behavior in accordance with it. The modern era is an era of visual culture, where the power of texts (which corresponded to the generation of parents) was replaced by the power of pictures (at the level of the adolescents and young people). This feature can be viewed through the prism of the ideas of this theory, speaking of figurative and linguistic rhetorics. Finally, the theory of social representations allows us to articulate the processes of communication, social representations, and explain how the latter regulate social behavior and social relations in the digital society.

Rural migrants in villages-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China: Multi-positionality and negotiated living strategies

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 2245-2260 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Chung
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper investigates rural Chinese migrants’ agency through their multi-positionality and negotiated living strategies. The idea of ‘multi-positionality’ conceptualises a migrant’s mobility between physical locations and shifting social positions. Through individual migrants’ multi-positionality, this study discusses their place-specific social relations and thereby the diverse way to negotiate a living in villages-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. These strategies include simple approaches such as facilitating physical movements between different locations and more sophisticated ones which develop multiple roles with outsiders and native villagers in different localities. While the former allows individual migrants to use their local knowledge to make a living in the context of institutional exclusion and discrimination, the latter further cultivates changes and an upgrade in social relations. Rural migrants' everyday stories are used to unfold an individual’s particular people–place relationship and how he/she has tapped into a place-specific resource to make a living. It does not aim to generalise rural migrants’ experience; rather it seeks to show diversity and complexity. Migrants’ stories are collected through extensive research in a village-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. Through these stories, not only does this paper articulate the social relations which underlie individual migrants’ shifting positions, but also extends translocal studies on migrants beyond the narrative of physical locations.

scholarly journals Neighbourhood open spaces for social cohesion

2020 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 06019
Author(s):  
Rukhsana Badar ◽  
Sarika Bahadure
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Unitary Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neighbourhood Level ◽  
The City

The global cities of the world are witnessing a visible disconnection of everyday life. In India the Smart City guidelines acknowledge the need to counter the growing social detachment and intolerance by encouraging interactions. They go further in identifying that preserving and creating of open spaces must be a key feature of comprehensive urban development. Most social relations are cemented within open spaces at the neighbourhood level. Previous studies examine the association between the attributes of neighbourhood open spaces and social activity but neglect to view the issue comprehensively. The present study turns to Lefebvre’s Unitary Theory which states that open space is a result of three forces; 1) perceived space which is the physical dimension and material quality identifiable by the senses; 2) conceived space created by planners and other agents as plans and documents; and 3) lived space which is shaped by the values attached and images generated through user experience. For open space conducive to social interactions these three aspects must work in tandem. With this consideration a framework of criteria and indicators is developed and used to measure and compare the open spaces in select neighbourhoods in Europe and India. The investigation thus reveals differences in all three aspects of neighbourhood spaces. It also reveals a discrepancy between the planning standards formulated and employed by the city authorities in providing the spaces and the actual needs of the community. The research aims to address this gap. The study of the Indian cases lays foundation for the use of the framework to measure open spaces in association with social cohesion and thereby contribute to the enhancement of the social infrastructure of the City.

scholarly journals Social representations and ideology: Theories of common sense about COVID-19 among middle-class Brazilians and their ideological implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Luiz Gustavo Silva Souza ◽  
Emma O’Dwyer ◽  
Sabrine Mantuan dos Santos Coutinho ◽  
Sharmistha Chaudhuri ◽  
Laila Lilargem Rocha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Psychological Analysis ◽  
Related Risk ◽  
The Social

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of billions of people worldwide. Individuals and groups were compelled to construct theories of common sense about the disease to communicate and guide practices. The theory of social representations provides powerful concepts to analyse the psychosocial construction of COVID-19. This study aimed to understand the social representations of COVID-19 constructed by middle-class Brazilian adults and their ideological implications, providing a social-psychological analysis of these phenomena while the pandemic is still ongoing. We adopted a qualitative approach based on semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted online in April-May 2020. Participants were 13 middle-class Brazilians living in urban areas. We analysed the interviews with thematic analysis and a phenomenological approach. The social representations were organised around three themes: 1) a virus originated in human actions and with anthropocentric meanings (e.g., a punishment for the human-led destruction of the environment); 2) a dramatic disease that attacks the lungs and kills people perceived to have “low immunity”; and 3) a disturbing pandemic that was also conceived as a correction event with positive consequences. The social representations included beliefs about the individualistic determination of immunity, the attribution of divine causes to the pandemic, and the need for the moral reformation of humankind. The discussion highlights the ideological implications of these theories of common sense. Socially underprivileged groups are at greater COVID-19-related risk, which the investigated social representations may contribute to conceal and naturalise.

scholarly journals Representações sociais da enfermagem elaboradas por profissionais de saúde não enfermeiros

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Érick Igor dos Santos ◽  
Yasmin Rayanne Alves ◽  
Antonio Marcos Tosoli Gomes ◽  
Aline Cerqueira Santos Santana da Silva ◽  
Diego Bonfante Mota ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Professionals ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Representation Theory ◽  
Nursing Health ◽  
Nursing Professional

Aims:  To  analyze  the  social  representations  of  nursing  by  non-nursing health professionals. Method: This is a descriptive, exploratory research, with a qualitative  approach,  using    Social  Representation  Theory  as  a  structural  approach.  A total of 53 non-nursing health professionals participated in this research. The technique used to collect the data was based on free and hierarchical opinions, using the inductor terminology “nursing”. D ata analysis was treated through the software E VOC  2005. Results:  The  following  are  among  the  core  terms  used  to  socially  represent  nursing: care,  team,  responsibility  and  work.  Discussion:  It  was to  form  a  balance  between the functional,  normative,  and  perceived  image  of  the  representation,  which  includes cognitive  and  evaluative  elements.  There  is  a  positive  view  towards  the  study  object. Conclusion:  This  representation has  been  carefully  presented  as  professionals  relate to concrete  and  tangible  formats  to  express  the  nursing  professional,  and  then  they  are able to reconstruct the object nursing.

Hanseníase: formas sociais da doença no Brasil e na Índia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Parente Costa
Keyword(s):  
Social Representations ◽  
Field Work ◽  
World Health ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Leprosy Patients ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The City

The research proposes a study of the social representations of leprosy, we seek three times to understand the sense of every society and their dynamics in relation to disease. The first in the city of Sobral/CE, where we carry out research in the years 2008 and 2009; the second moment in the city of Mogi das Cruzes/SP, with a man who has gone through several periods of hospitalization and overcame the stigma through work aimed at manufacture of prosthetic patients amputees; and the third time in New Delhi in India, where we find the largest number of leprosy patients. The places chosen for the field work were selected after repeated bibliographical research, readings of scholarly articles, medical texts and physicians about the disease and mainly with the data of the World Health Organization (WHO) and of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). We investigate the sociocultural reality of people afflicted by illness and how these could be with the disease.

Ato Quayson's Oxford Street, Accra: Tracing Autobiographical Narrative in Analytical Method

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 496-504
Author(s):  
Anjali Prabhu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
African City ◽  
Creative City ◽  
The Social ◽  
Implicit Argument ◽  
Oxford Street ◽  
The City ◽  
Autobiographical Narrative

In his fascinating study of accra, ato quays0n quickly alerts his reader to the idea that one must not separate ways of knowing shakespeare from ways of knowing Accra. “Reading” the city as a literary critic, but much more, Quayson gives a discursive framework to his historical account of the material, social, and esoteric life of the city. Underlying the text is an implicit argument with other prominent accounts of African cities, which take a more utopian view and present these cities as mapping the innovative, exciting, and creative possibilities of urban space for the rest of the world. Quayson's mode of history is explicitly linked to storytelling in a number of ways beyond his disclosure that “[t]he retelling of Accra's story from a more expansive urban historical perspective is the object of Oxford Street” (4). From the start, it is also clear that his approach will utilize a broadly Marxian framework, which is to see (city) space in terms of the built environment as well as the social relations in and beyond it: “space becomes both symptom and producer of social relations” (5). But ultimately Quayson's apprehension of his city is Marxian because it recuperates ideas, desires, and creativity from the realm of the unique or inexplicable, of “genius,” to effectively insert them into various systems of production or into spaces that lack them. In so doing Quayson enhances, not hinders, our appreciation of those forms of innovation. Also Marxian is his employment of the “negative,” which refers to the way he splits apart many of the accepted relations between things in the scholarship on the development of the city, the postcolonial African city in particular, and pushes beyond the evidence of the “booming” or “creative” city. Quayson thus binds a more philosophical method of reasoning to his analysis of urban social relations while he straddles different disciplines. His work is illuminated when we locate a personal impulse, which we will track through the autobiographical narrative, to intervene not just in the ways the city is understood but also in the ways it is actually developing.

Social and Economic Factors of Development

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Bogdan Ershov ◽  
Natalia Muhina ◽  
Igor Asmarov
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Quantitative Composition ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
The People ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material State

Russian statehood has more than a thousand-year history and traditions. It is obvious that the social, economic, and political development of the country had its direct or indirect influence on the Russian state and statehood itself. Therefore, in this chapter we separately single out the social factors of the development of Russian statehood and the economic factors of the development of Russian statehood, which stand apart from each other. Social factors in the development of Russian statehood are factors in the development of society as a single and complex organism and its social institutions. Social factors are, in essence, domestic political, because they represent the political and spiritual state of the elite and the people, the established system of social relations, internal social contradictions, and social conflicts. The economic factors of the development of Russian statehood are divided into external and internal ones. External economic factors are the proximity or remoteness from the trade routes, and the qualitative and quantitative composition of the country's exports and imports. Internal economic factors are the achieved material state of society, the availability of natural resources and their involvement in the economy, the availability of transport and production infrastructure and its development, and economic crises.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document