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Social

Social

Latin root meaning

The term social is derived from the Latin word socius, which as a noun means "an associate, ally, companion, business partner or comrade" and in the adjectival form socialis refers to "a bond between people" (such as marriage) or to their collective or connected existence.

The Unobservable

Although the term "social" is a crucial category in social science and often used in public discourse, its meaning is often vague, suggesting that it is a fuzzy concept. An added difficulty is that social attributes or relationships may not be directly observable and visible, and must be inferred by abstract thought. Thus the sociologist C. Wright Mills invented the expression "the sociological imagination", which referred to the need to think imaginatively beyond what an individual can empirically observe in order to grasp the social domain in all its dimensions - connecting, for example, "private troubles" and "public issues". A similar point is made in the context of architecture by Ole Bouman and Roemer van Toorn in their groundbreaking work The Invisible in Architecture. General problems concerning the nature of social reality and what (or how) we can know about it are the object of social theory.

Some different definitions

In the absence of agreement about its meaning, the term "social" is used in many different senses, referring among other things to:
- attitudes, orientations or behaviours which take the interests, intentions or needs of other people into account (in contrast to anti-social behaviour);
- common characteristics of people or descriptions of collectivities (social facts);
- relations between people (social relations) generally, or particular associations among people;
- interactions between people (social action);
- membership of a group of people or inclusion or belonging to a community of people;
- co-operation or co-operative characteristics between people;
- relations of (mutual) dependence;
- the public sector ("social sector") or the need for governance for the good of all, contrasted with the private sector;
- in existentialist and postmodernist thought, relationships between the Self and the Other;
- interactive systems in communities of animal or insect populations, or any living organisms. In one broad meaning, "social" refers only to society as "a system of common life", but in another sense it contrasts specifically with "individual" and individualist theories of society. This is reflected for instance in the different perspectives of liberalism and socialism on society and public affairs. The adjective "social" implies that the verb or noun to which it is applied is somehow more communicative, cooperative, and moderated by contact with human beings, than if it were omitted. That is, it implies that larger society has played some role in defining the idea or the principle. For instance terms like social realism, social justice, social constructivism, social psychology and social capital imply that there is some social process involved or considered, a process that is not there in regular, "non-social", realism, justice, constructivism, psychology, or capital. The adjective "social" is also used often in political discourse, although its meaning in such a context depends heavily on who is using it. In left-wing circles it is often used to imply a positive characteristic, while in right-wing circles it is generally used to imply a negative characteristic. It should also be noted that, overall, this adjective is used much more often by those on the political left than by those on the political right. For these reasons, those seeking to avoid association with the left-right political debates often seek to label their work with phrases that do not include the word "social". An example is quasi-empiricism in mathematics which is sometimes labelled social constructivism by those who see it as an unwarranted intrusion of social considerations in mathematical practice, which is supposed to be "objective" and "above" social concerns.

Social theorists

In the view of Karl Marx, human beings are intrinsically, necessarily and by definition social beings who - beyond being "gregarious creatures" -cannot survive and meet their needs other than through social co-operation and association. Their social characteristics are therefore to a large extent an objectively given fact, stamped on them from birth and affirmed by socialization processes; and, according to Marx, in producing and reproducing their material life, people must necessarily enter into relations of production which are "independent of their will". By contrast, the sociologist Max Weber for example defines human action as "social" if, by virtue of the subjective meanings attached to the action by individuals, it "takes account of the behaviour of others, and is thereby oriented in its course". In this case, the "social" domain really exists only in the intersubjective relations between individuals, but by implication the life of these individuals also exists in part outside the social domain. "Social" is thus implicitly also contrasted with "private". In the positivist sociology of Emile Durkheim, a social fact is an abstraction external to the individual which constrains that individual's actions. In his 1895 work Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim writes: "A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an influence, or an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations." In Durkheim's view, sociology is 'the science of social facts'.

Socialism and social democracy

The term "socialism", used from the 1830s onwards in France and England, was directly related to what was called the social question, in essence the problem that the emergence of competitive market societies did not create "liberty, equality and fraternity" for all citizens, requiring the intervention of politics and social reform to tackle social problems, injustices and grievances (a topic on which Jean-Jacques Rousseau discourses at length in his classic work The Social Contract). Originally the term "socialist" was often used interchangeably with "co-operative", "mutualist", "associationist" and "collectivist". The term social democracy originally referred to the political project of extending democratic forms of association to the whole of society, substituting popular sovereignty, the universal franchise and social ownership for the rule of a propertied class which had exclusive voting rights.

Modern uses

In contemporary society, "social" often refers to the redistributive policies of the government which aim to apply resources in the public interest, for example, social security. Policy concerns then include the problems of social exclusion and social cohesion. Here, "social" contrasts with "private" and to the distinction between the public and the private (or privatised) spheres, where ownership relations define access to resources and attention. The social domain is often also contrasted with that of physical nature, but in sociobiology analogies are drawn between humans and other living species in order to explain social behavior in terms of biological factors. The term "social" is also added in various other academic sub-disciplines such as social geography, social psychology, social anthropology, social philosophy, social ontology, social statistics and social choice theory in mathematics. Some references:
- Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd, and Ernst Fehr (eds.), Moral Sentiments and Material Interests, Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life.
- Max Weber, Economy and Society.
- Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action.
- Goran Therborn, Science, Class and Society.
- Russell Keat and John Urry, Social Theory As Science.
- Alex Callinicos, Social Theory: an Historical Introduction.
- C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination.
- Ole Bouman and Roemer van Toorn (eds.), The Invisible in Architecture.
- Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
- Charles Derber, The Pursuit of Attention; Power and Ego in Everyday Life.
- Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist.

Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages, those being most notably Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics.

Main features

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. There are six noun cases: #nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative), #genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun), #dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), #accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases), #ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), #vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express location (otherwise expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, small islands, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. There are six general tenses in Latin (technically they are tense/aspect/mood complexes). The indicative mood can be used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative. The following examples are of the first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") in the indicative mood and the active voice:
Primary sequence tenses
# present (laudo, "I praise") # imperfect (laudabam, "I was praising") # future (laudabo, "I shall praise," "I will praise")
Secondary sequence tenses
# perfect (laudavi, "I praised", "I have praised") # pluperfect (laudaveram, "I had praised") # future perfect (laudavero, "I shall have praised," "I will have praised") The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the primary sequence.
Latin and Romance
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative. In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico Ancient Greek is a compulsory subject.
Latin and English
See Latin influence in English for a more complete exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, hundreds of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink). Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/teachem2/thennow/]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages.
Latin education
The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts), backed up by the Senior Classical League for college students. Many would-be international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua considers itself to be the modernized and simplified version of the language (le latino moderne international e simplificate). Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat have also helped boost interest in the language.
See also

About the Latin language

- Latin grammar
- Latin spelling and pronunciation
- Latin declension
- Latin conjugation
- Latin alphabet
- List of Latin words with English derivatives
- Latin verbs with English derivatives
- Latin nouns with English derivatives
- ablative absolute
- Word order in Latin
About the Latin literary heritage

- Latin literature
- Romance languages
- Loeb Classical Library
- List of Latin phrases
- List of Latin proverbs
- Brocard
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- Carmen Possum
Other related topics

- Roman Empire
- Internationalism
References

- Bennett, Charles E. Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0195208293
- Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1859844022; translated from the French by John Howe.
- Wheelock, Frederic. Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0060784237
External links

- [http://www.jambell.com/latin.html Latin Phrases for after dinner conversation (Thanks to Elaine Poole)]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lat Ethnologue report for Latin]
- [http://forumromanum.org/literature/index.html Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum] is a comprehensive webography of Latin texts and their translations.
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ The Perseus Project] has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin an interactive Latin dictionary].
- [http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe words by William whitaker] is a dictionary program online capable of looking up various word forms.
- [http://retiarius.org/ Retiarius.Org] includes a Latin text search engine.
- [http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar from U of Notre Dame]
- [http://latin-language.co.uk/ Latin language] History of Latin language, Latin texts with English translation and a collection of dictionaries.
- [http://augustinus.eresmas.net/scl/ Societas Circulorum Latinorum] gathers together Latin Circles all over the world.
- [http://www.learnlatin.tk LearnLatin.tk] - Free online course in Latin
- [http://www.latintests.net/ LatinTests.net] - Lets Latin learners test their grammar and vocabulary with self-checking quizzes.
- [http://thelatinlibrary.com/ The Latin Library] contains many Latin etexts
- [http://www.textkit.com/ Textkit] has Latin textbooks and etexts.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Latin-english/ Latin–English Dictionary]: from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.language-reference.com/ Language reference] Cross-foreign-language lexicon powered by its own search engine. All cross combinations between Latin and French, German, Italian, Spanish.
- [http://comp.uark.edu/~mreynold/rhetor.html Rhetor by Gabriel Harvey] was originally published in 1577 and never again reprinted.
- [http://freewebs.com/omniamundamundis omniamundamundis] Latin hypertexts from fourteen ancient Roman authors.
- [http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pron.htm Pronunciation of Biological Latin, Including Taxonomic Names of Plants and Animals]
- [http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii Nuntii Latini (News in Latin)], written and spoken (RealAudio) news in latin. Weekly review of world news in Classical Latin, the only international broadcast of its kind in the world, produced by YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
- [http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=Replace%20Me&from=eng&to=ltt InterTran Latin], Translate from Latin to ENGLISH or vice versa.
- [http://www.latinvulgate.com Latin Vulgate] The Latin and English of the Old & New Testaments in parallel, along with the Complete Sayings of Jesus in parallel Latin and English. Category:Classical languages Category:Ancient languages Category:Fusional languages Category:Languages of Italy Category:Languages of Vatican City als:Latein zh-min-nan:Latin-gí ko:라틴어 ja:ラテン語 simple:Latin language th:ภาษาละติน

Social science

The social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. They diverge from the arts and humanities in that the social sciences emphasize the use of the scientific method and rigorous standards of evidence in the study of humanity, including quantitative and qualitative methods. The social sciences are also known pejoratively as the soft sciences in contrast to the hard sciences. Social science theories typically deal with aggregated, not individual, behavior.

Major fields

The main social sciences include:
- Anthropology
- Communication
- Economics
- Education
- History
- Geography
- Linguistics
- Law
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Cultural Studies
- Social Policy Not all institutions recognize these fields as social sciences. For example, communication, cultural studies and history may be classified as humanities depending on how they are taught, and in which country they are taught. Some disciplines have characteristics of both the humanities, social and natural sciences: for example some subfields of anthropology, such as biological anthropology, are closely related to the natural sciences whereas archaeology and linguistics are social sciences. Similarly diverse subjects like geography also traverse the natural and social sciences (e.g., geomorphology and historical geography are often taught in single departments of geography). Some social sciences may converge with certain fields from the natural sciences, and become interdisciplinary. Examples of such fields include sociobiology -- an interdisciplinary field drawing on sociology and biology.

History

In ancient philosophy, there was no difference between the liberal arts of mathematics and the study of history, poetry or politics—only with the development of mathematical proof did there gradually arise a perceived difference between "scientific" disciplines and others, the "humanities" or "liberal arts". Thus, Aristotle studies planetary motion and poetry with the same methods, and Plato mixes geometrical proofs with his demonstration on the state of intrinsic knowledge. This unity of science as descriptive remains, for example, in the time of Thomas Hobbes who argued that deductive reasoning from axioms created a scientific framework, and hence his Leviathan was a scientific description of a political commonwealth. What would happen within decades of his work was a revolution in what constituted "science", particularly the work of Isaac Newton in physics. Newton, by revolutionizing what was then called "natural philosophy", changed the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific". While he was merely the archetype of an accelerating trend, the important distinction is that for Newton, the mathematical flowed from a presumed reality independent of the observer, and working by its own rules. For philosophers of the same period, mathematical expression of philosophical ideals was taken to be symbolic of natural human relationships as well: the same laws moved physical and spiritual reality. For examples see Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz and Johannes Kepler, each of whom took mathematical examples as models for human behavior directly. In Pascal's case the famous wager, for Leibniz, the invention of binary computation and for Kepler the intervention of angels to guide the planets. In the realm of other disciplines, this created a pressure to express ideas in the form of mathematical relationships. Such relationships, called "Laws" after the usage of the time (see philosophy of science) became the model which other disciplines would emulate. August Comte (1797-1857) argued that ideas pass through three rising stages, Theological, Philosophical and Scientific. He defined the difference as the first being rooted in assumption, the second in critical thinking, and the third in positive observation. This framework, still rejected by many, encapsulates the thinking which was to push economic study from being a descriptive to a mathematically based discipline. Karl Marx was one of the first writers to claim that his methods of research represented a scientific view of history in this model. With the late 19th century, attempts to apply equations to statements about human behavior became increasingly common. Among the first were the "Laws" of philology, which attempted to map the change overtime of sounds in a language. It was with the work of Darwin that the descriptive version of social theory received another shock. Biology had, seemingly, resisted a basis as a mathematical study, and yet the Theory of Natural Selection and the implied idea of Genetic inheritance - later found to have been enunciated by Gregor Mendel, seemed to point in the direction of a scientific biology based, like physics and chemistry, on mathematical relationships. With the early 20th century, a wave of change came to science that saw "statistical" study sufficiently mathematical to be "science". This application of statistics to physics would yield Quantum Dynamics and an increasingly statistical view of biology. The first thinkers to attempt to combine inquiry of the type they saw in Darwin with exploration of human relationships, which, evolutionary theory implied would be based on selective forces, were Freud in Austria and William James in the United States. Freud's theory of the functioning of the mind, and James' work on experimental psychology would have enormous impact on those that followed. Freud, in particular, created a framework which would appeal not only to those studying psychology, but artists and writers as well. One of the most persuasive advocates for the view of scientific treatment of philosophy would be John Dewey (1859-1952). He began, as Marx did, in an attempt to weld Hegelian idealism and logic to experimental science, for example in his "Psychology" of 1887. However, it is when he abandoned Hegelian constructs, and joined the movement in America called Pragmatism, possibly under the influence of William James' "Principles of Psychology" that he began to formulate his basic doctrine, enunciated in essays such as "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy" (1910). This idea, base on his theory of how organisms respond, states that there are three phases to the process of inquiry: #Problematic Situation, where the typical response is inadequate. #Isolation of Data or subject matter. #Reflective, which is tested empirically. With the rise of the idea of quantitative measurement in the physical sciences, for example Lord Rutherford's famous maxim that any knowledge that one cannot measure numerically "is a poor sort of knowledge", the stage was set for the conception of the humanities as being precursors to "social science" was set. This change was not, and is not, without its detractors, both inside of academia and outside. The range of critiques begin from those who believe that the physical sciences are qualitatively different from social sciences, through those who do not believe in statistical science of any kind, through those who disagree with the methodology and kinds of conclusion of social science, to those who believe the entire framework of scientificizing these disciplines is solely, or mostly, from a desire for prestige and to alienate the public.

Rise

Theodore Porter argued in "The Rise of Statistical Thinking" that the effort to provide a synthetic social science is a matter of both administration and discovery combined, and that the rise of social science was, therefore, marked by both pragmatic needs as much as by theoretical purity. An example of this is the rise of the concept of Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, a test which produces a number which it is not clear what, precisely, is being measured, except that it has pragmatic utility in predicting success in certain tasks. The rise of industrialism had created a series of social, economic, and political problems, particularly in managing supply and demand in their political economy, the management of resources for military and developmental use, the creation of mass education systems to train individuals in symbolic reasoning and problems in managing the effects of industrialization itself. The perceived senselessness of the "Great War" as it was then called, of 1914-1918, now called World War I, based in what were perceived to be "emotional" and "irrational" decisions, provided an immediate impetus for a more "scientific" and easier to manage form of decision making. Simply put, to manage the new multi-national enterprises, private and governmental, required more data. More data required a means of reducing it to information upon which to make decisions. Numbers and charts could be interpreted more quickly and moved more efficiently than long texts. In the 1930s this new model of managing decision making became cemented with the New Deal in the US, and in Europe with the increasing need to manage industrial production and governmental affairs. Institutions such as The New School for Social Research, International Institute of Social History, and departments of "social research" at prestigious universities were meant to fill the growing demand for individuals who could quantify human interactions and produce models for decision making on this basis. Coupled with this pragmatic need was the belief that the clarity and simplicity of mathematical expression avoided systematic errors of holistic thinking and logic rooted in traditional argument. This trend, part of the larger movement known as Modernism provided the rhetorical edge for the expansion of social sciences.

Present state

There continues to be little movement toward consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories which, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks. See consilience.

Criticism

The social sciences are sometimes criticized as being “less scientific” than the natural sciences, in that they are seen as being less rigorous or empirical in their methods. This claim is most commonly made when comparing social sciences to fields such as physics, chemistry or biology in which direct experimentation and falsification of results is generally carried out in a more direct fashion. Social scientists refute such claims by pointing to the use of a rich variety of scientific processes, mathematical proofs, and other methods in their professional literature. Others, however argue that the social world is much too complex to be studied as one would study static molecules. The actions or reactions of a molecule or chemical substance are always the same when placed in certain situations. Humans, on the other hand, are much too complex for these traditional scientific methodologies. Humans and society do not have certain rules that always have the same outcome and they cannot guarantee to react the same way to certain situations. Another criticism is that social sciences tend to be compromised more frequently by politics, since results from social science may threaten certain centers of power in a society, particularly ones which fund the research institutions. (For example, in the US, corporations and the state are frequently cited as these centers of power.) Further, complexity exacerbates the problems, since observed social data may be the result of factors which are hard to evaluate in isolation.

Reference

The beginnings of the social sciences in the eighteenth century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the social sciences is also reflected in its specialised encyclopedias. The older editions are therefore of strong historical interest while the newest reflects current discussions, methodologies and ideologies.
- 1934, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
- 1968, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
- 2001, International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences / ed.-in-chief Neil J. Smelser; Paul B. Baltes, Amsterdam [etc.] : Elsevier, 2001-

External links

- [http://www.dialogical.net/socialsciences/index.html Social Science Virtual Library]
- [http://xlab.berkeley.edu UC Berkeley Experimental Social Science Laboratory]
- [http://www.sosig.ac.uk Social Science Information Gateway] (UK) Category:Humanities occupations ko:사회 과학 ja:社会科学 th:สังคมศาสตร์

Fuzzy concept

A fuzzy concept is a concept of which the content or boundaries of application vary according to context or conditions. Usually this means the concept is vague, lacking a fixed, precise meaning, without being meaningless altogether. It does have a meaning, or multiple meanings, which however can become clearer only through further elaboration and specification. Fuzzy concepts play a role in the creative process of forming new concepts to understand something. In the most primitive sense, this can be observed in infants who, through practical experience, learn to identify, discriminate and generalise the correct application of a concept. However, fuzzy concepts may also occur in scientific, journalistic and scholarly activity, when a thinker is in the process of clarifying and defining a newly emerging concept which is based on distinctions which, for one reason or another, cannot (yet) be more exactly specified. It could be argued that some concepts (e.g. "love" or "God") are inherently or intrinsically fuzzy concepts, to the extent that their meaning cannot be completely and exactly specified with logical operators or objective terms, and can have multiple interpretations, which may be partly subjective only. It may also be possible to specify one personal meaning for the concept, without however placing restrictions on a different use of the concept in other contexts (as when, for example, one says "this is what I mean by X" in contrast to other possible meanings). Fuzzy concepts can be used deliberately to create ambiguity and vagueness, as an evasive tactic, or to mediate what is otherwise a contradiction of terms. This could be a failure or refusal to be more precise, but also could be a prologue to a more exact formulation of a concept.

C. Wright Mills

Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916, Waco, Texas – March 20, 1962, Nyack, New York) was an American sociologist. Among other topics he was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post-World War II society, and advocated relevance and engagement over disinterested academic observation.

Life and work

Mills graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1941. In 1946 he took a faculty position at Columbia University, which he kept, despite controversy, until his untimely death. White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) contends that the titular workforce is politically conservative because members tend to identify with the companies they work for. The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationship between political, military, and economic elite (people at the pinnacles of these three institutions), noting that these people share a common world view, 1) the "military metaphysic"- a military definition of reality, possess 2)"class identity"- recognizing themselves separate and superior to the rest of society, have 3) interchangibility: i.e. the move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking directorates 4)coptation/socialization: of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after such elite. Further these elite in the "big three" institutional orders have an "uneasy" alliance based upon their "community of interests" driven by the military metaphysic. For a summary video of the power elite model see http://elite.asadi.org The Sociological Imagination (1959) describes a mindset—the sociological imagination—for doing sociology that stresses being able to connect individual experiences and societal relationships. Other important works include The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948), The Causes of World War Three (1958), Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960), and The Marxists (1962).

Outlook

According to the basic shape of any "intellectual portrait" of Charles Mills, his essays - as published in his anthology "The Sociological Imagination" (Oxford University Press, 1961) - are of particular interest. The appendix "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" gives an impressive insight into what a sociologist as a social scientist whenever working creatively (like an artist) is able to work out. Thus far, C. Wright Mills reminds us of the very beginning of modern scholarly thinking: substance and appearance are by no means identical; moreover, whenever substance and appearance are looked upon as identical there is no need for science, scientists, or scholars at all. Given this setting, Charles Mills was indeed, as Irving L. Horowitz told us, a social scientist sharply contradicting the bulk of mainstream (sometimes called "bullshit") sociology. When G.F.W. Hegel once stated: "The most reasonable thing children can do with their toy is to break it to pieces" (Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, part III) this might express the attitude of C. Wright Mills whenever looking at the mainstream concepts of the sociology of his time. In a specific double-sense Charles Mills was quite a traditional Marxist: i) he knew what Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels stressed: "It is not the consciousness determinating the every-day-life but it is the very life [pre] determinating the consciousness" (The German Ideology, 1st part, on Ludwig Feuerbach); ii) against any individualistic, reductionist, and obscure images of what "society" constitutes C. Wright Mills knew for sure what Marx fundamentally detected and clearly expressed: "Any society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of relationships [and] conditions that the individual actor is forming" (Karl Marx: Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie/Rohentwurf, 1857/58: "Gesellschaft besteht nicht aus Individuen, sondern drückt die Summe der Beziehungen, Verhältnisse aus, worin diese Individuen zueinander stehn") Looking on what, within the 1980´s, became prominent as British "Thacherism" and its/her basic phrase: "There is no such thing as society, only men and women and their families" - Charles Wright Mills - that brilliant sociological egghead from Texas who died, with bis boots on, within his cultural exile in New York in 1962, just 45 years old- was indeed an individual sociologist analysing "such thing as society" trying to detect the very roots of society. And that is, strictu sensu, the way of scholarly thinking of any marginal man (Robert Ezra Park) an old radical like Karl Marx taught us.

Critical conflict theory

Mills thought it was possible to create a good society on the basis of knowledge and that people of knowledge must take responsibility for its absence. Mills argues that micro and macro levels of analysis can be linked together by the sociological imagination, which enables its possessor to understand the large historical sense in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. Individuals can only understand their own experiences fully if they locate themselves within their period of history. The key factor is the combination of private problems with public issues: the combination of troubles that occur within the individual’s immediate milieu and relations with other people with matters that have to do with institutions of an historical society as a whole. In modern society those centralization of power and that the men who head government, corporations, the armed forces and the unions are closely linked. The means of power at the disposal of centralized decision makers have greatly increased. The Power Elite is made up of political, economic and military leaders. Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” gives a clear image of the entwinement of these bases of power. Mills shares with Marxist sociology and elite theorists the view that society is divided rather sharply and horizontally between the powerful and powerless. He also shares their concerns for alienation, the effects of social structure on the personality and the manipulation of people by the mass media. At the same time however Mills does not regard property (economic power) as the main source of conflict in society.

Quotations

External links

- [http://www.cwrightmills.org/ Official website]
- [http://www.asadi.org/ Contemporary Analysis of his work]
- [http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Mills/ Frank Elwell's page at Rogers State] Mills, C. Wright Mills, C. Wright Mills, C. Wright Mills, C. Wright Mills, C. Wright ja:チャールズ・ライト・ミルズ

Sociological imagination

Sociological imagination is a sociological term coined by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959. It suggests that people look at their own personal problems as social issues and, in general, try to connect their own individual experiences with the workings of society. For example, people in poverty by this perspective might stop to consider that they are not alone, and rather than blaming themselves should criticize the social forces that directed them into their present condition. There are three key questions that constitute the core of Mills' sociological imagination: # What is the structure of a particular society and how does it differ from other varieties of social order? # Where does this society stand in human history and what are its essential features? # What varieties of women and men live in this society and in this period, and what is happening to them? Mills¹ argued that ‘nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps’. Mills maintained that people are trapped because ‘their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family [and] neighbourhood’¹, and are not able to fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles. Underlying this feeling of being trapped are the seemingly uncontrollable and continuous changes to society. Mills⁴ mentions unemployment, war, marriage and life in the city as examples where tension between private trouble and public issues becomes apparent. The feeling that Mills identified in 1959 is still present today and many examples can be found in popular media. One example is the tension that present-day women experience regarding their perceived housekeeping responsibilities, as discussed in a 2004 broadcast of Life Matters (Radio National 2004). The discussion focused on the rising popularity of domestic advice and support services, in particular the immensely popular American website FlyLady.net (Cilley 2004), which provides advice to people (mainly women) who are not able to deal with their perceived roles as home maker. Sociologist Susan Maushart argues that feminism has ‘thrown out the baby with the bathwater’ (Radio National 2004) because, although the victories of feminism have ensured that women are not restricted to being homemakers, they have devalued the home in their wake. Many women thus feel trapped between the social change achieved by feminism and the cultural expectations of being home makers. Mills offers a solution to this feeling of being trapped. He argues that because: "neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both"¹, we need to develop a way of understanding the interaction between individual lives and society. This understanding is what Mills calls Sociological Imagination: the 'quality of mind' which allows one to grasp "history and biography and the relations between the two within society"³. Mills believed, however, that "ordinary people do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world"². Sociological Imagination is much more part of contemporary society than in the days when Mills wrote his book. Programs like Life Matters mainly deal with issues located on the crossroads between private trouble and the public sphere. Many people do, however, not seem to be interested in developing the ‘quality of mind’ that Mills envisaged. Most remain focused on private issues, without realising the social reality in which the issues are embedded.

External links

- [http://www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/010/decision.html Sociological Imagination in life events]

References

- A Current Affair: 2001, Drugs: the schoolyard trade, Channel Nine. http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/stories/743.asp Visited 10 June 2004.
- Cilley, M.: 2004, FlyLady.net. http://www.flylady.net/ (FlyLady)
- Mills, C. W.: 1959, The sociological imagination, Oxford University Press, London. :#(Mills 1959: 3) :#(Mills 1959: 4) :#(Mills 1959: 6) :#(Mills 1959: 9–10)
- Radio National: 4 June 2004, Life Matters: The lost art of housework, Australian Broadcasting Company. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s1120513.htm. Category:Sociology

Social theory

Social theory refers to the use of abstract and often complex theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze social patterns and large-scale social structures. Though many commentators consider social theory a branch of sociology, it functions inherently in an interdisciplinary manner, as it uses ideas from and contributes to a plethora of disciplines such as anthropology, economics, theology, history, and many others. Social theory attempts to answer the question 'what is?', not 'what should be?'. One should therefore not confuse it with philosophy or with belief.

Social theory in relation to hard science

Main article: sociology versus social theory Social theory always had an uneasy relationship with the more traditional academic disciplines; many of its key thinkers never held a university position. Compared to workers in disciplines within the “objective“ natural sciences -- such as physics or chemistry -- social theorists may make less use of the scientific method and of other fact-based methods to prove a point. Instead, they tackle very large-scale social trends and structures using hypotheses that they cannot easily prove, except over the course of time. Criticism from opponents of social theories often objects to this. Extremely critical theorists, such as deconstructionists or postmodernists, may argue that any type of research or method has inherent flaws. Often, however, thinkers may present their ideas as social theory because the social reality that those ideas describe appears so overarching as to remain unprovable. The social theories of modernity or anarchy can exemplify this. However, social theories still play a major part in the sciences of sociology, anthropology, economics, and others. Objective science-based research often begins with a hypothesis formed from a social theory. Likewise, science-based research can often provide support for social theories or can spawn new ones. For instance, statistical research grounded in the scientific method that finds a severe income disparity between women and men performing the same occupation can complement the underlying premises of the complex social theories of feminism or of patriarchy. In general, and in particular among adherents of pure sociology, social theory has appeal because it takes the focus away from the individual (the way in which most humans look at the world) and focuses it on the society itself and the social forces which control individuals' lives. This sociological insight (often termed the sociological imagination) has appealed to students and others dissatisfied with the status quo because it looks beyond the assumption of societal structures and patterns as purely random.

History

Pre-classical social theorists

Prior to 19th century, social theory took largely narrative and normative traits. Expressed in story form, it both assumed ethical principles and recommended moral acts. Thus one can regard religious figures as the earliest social theorists. Saint Augustine (354 - 430) and St. Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225 - 1274) concerned themselves exclusively with a just society. St. Augustine describes late Ancient Roman society but through a lens of hatred and contempt for what he saw as false Gods, and in reaction theorized The City of God. Similarly, in China, Master Kong (otherwise known as Confucius) (551 - 479 BCE) envisaged a just society that went beyond his contemporary society of the Warring States. Later on, also in China, Mozi (circa 470 - circa 390 BCE) recommended a more pragmatic sociology, but ethical at base.

Classical social theory

The first “modern” social theories (known as classical theories) that begin to resemble the analytic social theory of today developed almost simultaneously with the birth of the science of sociology. Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857), known as the 'father of sociology', laid the groundwork for one of the first social theories - social evolutionism. In the 19th century three great classical theories of social and historical change emerged: the social evolutionism theory (of which Social Darwinism forms a part), the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory. Another early modern theorist, Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903), coined the term "survival of the fittest" (and incidentally recommended avoidance of governmental action on behalf of the poor (socialism) as a positive act). Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923) and Pitirim A. Sorokin argued that 'history goes in cycles', and presented the social cycle theory to illustrate their point. Emile Durkheim postulated a number of major theories regarding anomie and functionalism. Max Weber theorized on bureaucracy, religion, and authority. Karl Marx theorized on the class struggle and social progress towards communism and laid the groundwork for the theory that became known as Marxism. Marxism became more than a theory, of course, carrying deep implications over the course of 20th century history (including the Russian Revolution of 1917). Most of the 19th century pioneers of social theory and sociology, like Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx, John Stuart Mill or Spencer, never held university posts. Most people regarded them as philosophers, because much of the their thinking was interdisciplinary and "outside the box" of the existing disciplines of their time (eg:, philology, law, and history). Many of the classical theories had one common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path. They differed on where that path would lead: social progress, technological progress, etc. Social cycle theorists were much more skeptical of the Western achievements and technological progress, however, arguing that progress is but an illusion in of the ups and downs of the historical cycles. The classical approach, close to historicism, has been criticized by many modern sociologists and theorists, among them Karl Popper, Robert Nisber, Charles Tilly and Immanuel Wallerstein.

Modern social theory

Although the majority of 19th-century social theories now class as obsolete, they have spawned new, modern social theories. Some modern social theories represent some advanced version of the classical theories, like Multilineal theories of evolution (neoevolutionism, sociobiology, theory of modernization, theory of post-industrial society) and various strains of Neo-Marxism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by a more or less arbitrary division of topics, the social theory became most closely related to academic sociology while other subjects such as anthropology, philosophy, and social work branched out into their own disciplines. Such subjects as "philosophy of history" withered, and their subject matter became part of social theory as taught in sociology. Attempts to recapture a space for discussion free of disciplines began in earnest in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research provides the most successful example. The Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago followed in the 1940s. In the 1970s, programs in Social and Political Thought were established at Sussex and York. Others followed, with various different emphases and structures, such as Social Theory and History (University of California, Davis). Cultural Studies programs, notably that of Birmingham University, extended the concerns of social theory into the domain of culture and thus anthropology. A chair and undergraduate program in social theory was established at the University of Melbourne and a number of universities now specialize in social theory (UC-Santa Cruz is one example). Finally social theory seems to be gaining more acceptance as a classical academic discipline. In modern times, generally speaking, social theory began to stress free will, individual choice, subjective reasoning, and the importance of unpredictable events in place of the classic determinism – thus social theory become much more complex. Rational Choice Theory and Symbolic Interaction Theory furnish two examples. Most modern sociologists deem there are no great unifying 'laws of history', but rather smaller, more specific, and more complex laws that govern society.

Post-modern social theory

See also post-modern feminism and postmodernism.

External links

- [http://www.cas.usf.edu/socialtheory/ The International Social Theory Consotrium]
- [http://www.bolender.com/Sociological%20Theory/Sociological%20Theorists.htm Sociological Theorists]
- [http://www.theory.org.uk/ Social theory and popular culture] Category:Sociology

Attitude (psychology)

:This article is about the psychological term attitude. For other meanings, see attitude Attitude is a key concept in social psychology. In academic psychology parlance, attitudes are positive or negative views of an "attitude object": a person, behaviour, or event. Research has shown that people can also be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative attitude towards it. There is also a great deal of new research emerging on "implicit" attitudes, which are essentially attitudes that people are not consciously aware of, but that can be revealed through sophisticated experiments using people's response times to stimuli (how quickly they can make judgements about them). Implicit and "explicit" attitudes (i.e. the ones people report when they consciously ask themselves how much they like a thing) both seem to affect people's behaviour, although in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The exact relationship between them is not currently well understood. Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience, and there are numerous theories of attitude formation and attitude change, including:
- Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger
- Self-perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem
- Meta programs, associated with NLP
- Persuasion
- Social judgment theory
- Balance theory When it comes to Human Resource Management and recruiting, in recent years [http://www.jobeq.com/articles/why_jobEQ.htm hire for attitude] became a well known mantra. Several commercial tests such as the [http://www.labprofile.net LAB Profile], [http://www.jobEq.com/iwam.php iWAM] and PAPI were developed to measure work Attitude and motivation, e.g. for [http://www.jobeq.com/articles/pre-employment_testing.htm pre-employment testing].

Anti-social

Anti-social behaviour is that lacking in judgement and consideration for others, ranging from careless negligence to deliberately damaging activity (e.g. vandalism and graffiti). Someone behaving in an anti-social manner may be a manifestation of an antisocial personality disorder. The term "anti-social" is often mistakenly used to describe someone who is introverted. People who are anti-social can also be introverted, however.

Anti-social behaviour in the UK

In 2003, the British government proposed legislation to counter anti-social behaviour - the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003. This introduced Anti-social behaviour orders which are civil orders which if broken can result in imprisonment of up to five years. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 defines anti-social behaviour as behaviour "caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household." The counter part of Anti-Social Behaviour is Pro-Social Behaviour. Pro-Social Behaviour is any behaviour intended to help or benefit another person, group or society. To determine what is Pro-Social Behaviour, we observe the underlying goal (motive) that initiates and drives the behaviour rather than the actual outcome of the behaviour. True Pro-Social behaviour is intentional.

Social fact

In positivist sociology, a social fact is an abstraction external to the individual which constrains that individual's actions. Law is an example, the suicide rate in a given community another. Thus a social fact is an external constraint, such as a norm or institution, within the collective conscience or collective representations, which is internalized by individuals as morals which inevitably constrain their behaviour (Marshall 1994: 486). The term was coined by 19th century French sociologist Émile Durkheim and was crucial to Durkheim's analysis of society (and to that of his followers) but is little used today. Where Auguste Comte dreamed of making sociology an all-encompassing discipline that contained all others—'the queen of sciences', in his terms— Durkheim was less ambitious. Durkheim aimed to set sociology on a firm, positivist footing, as a science among other sciences. He reasoned that any particular science must have unique subject matter which is not shared with any other science, but which must be susceptible to investigation by empirical means. Variations within the phenomena under investigation, according to Durkheim, must be explained by causes which also lie within the realm of that particular science. In consequence, Durkheim asserted that sociology must become the 'science of social facts'. "Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual.... ...if no reality exists outside of the individual consciousness, it [sociology] wholly lacks any material of its own." (Suicide, p. 37-8, quoted in Hoult, p. 298) In his 1895 manifesto Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim wrote: "A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an influence, or an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations." In Durkheim's view, sociology was simply 'the science of social facts'. The task of the sociologist, then, was to search for correlations between social facts and thus reveal laws. Having discovered the laws of social structure, the sociologist is then able to determine if any given society is 'healthy' or 'pathological' and prescribe appropriate remedies. Durkheim's work on the 'social fact' of suicide rates is famous. By carefully examining police suicide statistics in different districts, Durkheim was able to 'demonstrate' that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than Protestants, and ascribe this to a social (as opposed to individual) cause. This was groundbreaking work and remains much-cited even today. Initially, Durkheim's 'discovery of social facts' was seen as significant because it promised to make it possible to study the behaviour of entire societies, rather than just of particular individuals. Modern sociologists refer to Durkheim's studies for two quite different purposes, however:
- As graphic demonstrations of how careful the social researcher must be to ensure that data gathered for analysis is accurate, (Durkheim's reported suicide rates were, it is now clear, largely an artifact of the way in which particular deaths were classified as 'suicide' or 'non-suicide' by different communities. What he had actually discovered was not different suicide rates at all—it was different ways of thinking about suicide.)
- As an entry point into the study of social meaning, and the way in which apparently identical individual acts often cannot be classified empirically. Social acts (even such an apparently private and individual act as suicide), in this modern view, are always seen (and classified) by social actors. Discovering the 'social facts', it follows, is generally neither possible nor desirable, but discovering the way in which individuals perceive and classify particular acts offers a great deal of insight. A total social fact [fait social total] is "an activity that has implications throughout society, in the economic, legal, political, and religious spheres." (Sedgewick 2002: 95) "Diverse strands of social and psychological life are woven together through what he [Mauss] comes to call 'total social facts'. A total social fact is such that it informs and organises seemingly quite distinct practices and institutions." (Edgar 2002:157) The term was popularized by Marcel Mauss in his The Gift and coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim.

Sources

- Marshall, Gordon, ed. (1994). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019285237X.
- Hoult, Thomas Ford, ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
- Sedgewick, Peter (2002). Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts, Routledge Key Guides Series. Routledge. ISBN 0415284260.
- Edgar, Andrew (2002). Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers, Routledge Key Guides Series. Routledge. ISBN 0415232813 .

External link

- [http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/TheoryWeb/readings/DurkheimFactForm.html What is a Social Fact?] From Émile Durkheim, The Rules of the Sociological Method, (Ed. by Steven Lukes; trans. by W.D. Halls). New York: Free Press, 1982, pp. 50-59. Category:Sociology

Social relations

Social relation can refer to a multitude of social interactions, regulated by social norms, between two or more people, with each having a social position and performing a social role. In sociological hierarchy, social relation is more advanced then behavior, action, social behavior, social action, social contact and social interaction. Social relations form the basis of concepts such as social organisation, social structure, social movement and social system.

Specific meaning

Although Harvard University has featured a "Department of Social Relations" (in which Talcott Parsons played a prominent role), and although the term "social relations" is frequently used in social sciences, there is in fact no commonly agreed meaning for this concept (see also the entry social). "Social" connotes association, co-operation, mutual dependence and belonging. It could be argued that a social relation is, in the first instance, simply a relation between people, but more specifically
- a relation between individuals insofar as they belong to a group,
- a relation between groups of people, or
- a relation between an individual and a group of people. The group could be an ethnic or kinship group, a social institution or organisation, a social class or social stratum, a nation, a population, or a gender etc. This definition contrasts with the relationship between people and inanimate objects.

Examples

In this sense, a social relation is therefore not necessarily identical with a unique interpersonal relation or a unique individual relation of some type, although all these kinds of relations presuppose each other; a social relation refers precisely to a condition which groups of people have in common or share. For example, the simple statement "Jack and Jill love each other" might refer to a unique interaction between two people, the meaning of which might be difficult to define for an outsider. Yet, Jack and Jill may also be socially related in many different ways, insofar as they both are, as a matter of fact, members of the same or different social groups, and thus their identity is shaped in good part by the fact that they belong to those groups. If we wanted to understand and explain their behaviour, we would need to refer to those social relations. We might establish the milieu they grew up in, their ancestors, the jobs they do, where they lived, who their friends are, and so on, all of which helps explain why they necessarily interact in the way that they do, and not in some other way. At a higher level of abstraction, we might consider two groups which are socially related, for example, although they live in different places, they depend on each other in trading goods and services. At an even higher level of abstraction, we might consider the relationship between an individual and the whole of the world population, or the relationship of the world population to itself. Some might indeed argue that a social relation exists between mortals and God (or the Gods), though others would regard this more as an imaginary relation. In flights of fancy, we could extend the analysis to the relation of all sentient organisms in the universe.

Theorists

However, the difficulties only start here, because now it needs to be established how these social relations exist, how we know they exist, what kinds of social relations there are, and how we can find out about them, verify them or identify them. About these questions researchers often disagree and debate, proposing different kinds of methodology to obtain knowledge of social relations. At one end of the spectrum, Karl Marx approvingly quotes Giambattista Vico's argument that humans can understand their society in its totality because "they made it themselves"; the limits to what humans can know are mainly practical in nature. At the other end of the spectrum, Karl Popper rejects the possibility of objective knowledge about society as a whole, suggesting that methodological holism must lead to totalitarianism; progressive social change can only be achieved through the small steps of piecemeal social engineering.

Understanding social relations

There are at least three problems in understanding social relations.
- many social relations are not directly observable by an individual, and can only be inferred with the aid of abstractions. This raises the question of how we know they exist, and how they exist.
- reflexivity: in the case of social science, the scientist is in a very obvious way himself or herself part of the social world being studied (this occurs also in natural sciences; not just in the sense that a biologist is also a biological being, but also even in theoretical physics - cf. the reflections of David Bohm).
- animal and insect populations for example also display a kind of "social" behaviour, so that social relations are not necessarily uniquely human relations (cf. the insights of sociobiology), and social relations might exist between humans and animals (though some dispute this; they argue that associative relations are confused here with true social relations; a human being could associate with all sorts of things or organisms, without a social relation being involved).

Types of social relations

In broad terms, we can distinguish six basic levels of human awareness:
- sub-conscious awareness (studied by e.g. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Milton Erickson).
- conscious subjective awareness (dissociated, focusing inward on the inner world, or expressing an inner state outwards) (studied e.g. in phenomenology and general psychology).
- intersubjective awareness (an awareness which occurs in association with other people and is internal to that association) (studied e.g. in social psychology and sociology).
- objective awareness (dissociated, focusing outward to a world that exists mind-independently, as is developed e.g. in science to a high level).
- reality-transforming awareness (transitions in practical action reframing the boundaries of different forms of awareness and changing consciousness, or connecting different forms of awareness - occurring in work, play, love, activism, politics etc.
- transcendent awareness (going beyond personal knowledge or experience - some would include intuition and spirituality under this heading; it is the subject of much writing in religion and New Age thought). Corresponding to these levels of human awareness, we could also define different kinds of social relations, i.e. the different ways in which humans might experience the connections among their own kind:
- subconscious social relations (for example at the level of the collective unconscious or between parents and children,
- social relations which exist only in subjective awareness or subjective perceptions (a person might act as though a social relation exists),
- intersubjective social relations involving shared meanings conveyed through communication,
- objective social relations which exist whether someone is aware of them or not (they might nevertheless be communicated insofar as we communicate with everything we are and do);
- social relations in the process of being transformed from one kind into another, or being interrelated with each other;
- spiritual or intuitive social relations of some kind. As illustration, we can apply the foregoing to the notion of a group.
- A person might almost out of instinct identify with a group or relate to it;
- s/he might imagine being a member of a group, regardless of whether this is really the case;
- a group might exist only in the form of intersubjective relations among its members;
- a group might exist as an objective description, or as an objective reality, even regardless of whether one was aware of belonging to it;
- a group might be forming or dissolving, or both at once, and it might be changing its boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, perhaps overlapping with other groups;
- a group might also exist at the level of a common spiritual affinity or identification (Cf. the notion of a noosphere). However the group may exist, or be perceived to exist at some level - with the obvious consequences that has for the kinds of social relations involved - it is clear that understanding different kinds of group relations require different methods of inquiry and verification. Precisely because social relations may be experienced at different levels of awareness, they are not necessarily transparent at all. Indeed, Karl Marx wrote ironically in this respect that "science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided".

References

- Dick Houtman, Class and Politics in Contemporary Social Science: Marxism Lite and Its Blind Spot for Culture
- Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
- Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies
- Frank Furedi, Where have all the intellectuals gone?
- Piotr Sztompka, Socjologia Category:Sociology

Community

A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. The individual living beings can be plant or animal; any species; any size. What characterizes a community is sharing interaction in many ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion within the mixture, but the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common. This is even true in biological communities.

The nature of community

In biological terms, natural communities are formed based upon relationships. Whether surviving in salt water, fresh water or atop a geological substrate, living things of common species are attracted to each other, at least long enough to procreate, or the species would be no more. More often than not, communities of animal species obey a built-in mandate to gather together. The rules of community that are found in nature have preserved life on this planet to this day and will most likely stay in place for some time to come.

The context of community

From the days of the hunter-gatherer culture, individual humans have learned that there is strength in numbers and that sharing work and resources can be a good thing. The Latin root munus or gift, brings into the meaning of community the aspect of giving of one's self to others. Related etymology for munere expands the meaning to included something prized, precious and worth defending. It is the same root as used for the word munitions (defences). Sharing in this "common defence" incorporates a balance between self-interest and shared-interests within and among members of a group and is a crucial factor in community formation. When enough participants in a group develop an attitude of caring for the well-being of the whole, or the common good, the prospect of community is present. Whatever drives people to cooperate and collaborate in the first place, is not quite as important in the context of community as what makes them continue to associate. Resilient connections between and among people are what is important in the formation of viable communities. Successful efforts by a mix of participants tend to attract the attention of other less connected individuals who may seek to join the group that is succeeding. This tendency, akin to herd behavior in animals, is called Self-organization. Over time, some parts of humanity have progressed steadily toward more complex forms of organization and control. Hunter/gatherer tribes settled around seasonal foodstocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states. The fact that commerce, industry, government and human institutions become ever larger and more complex suggests that humans, particularly those who are conversant with the rules that drive these complexes are themselves driven toward aggregation, amalgamation, and consolidation. When this increase in social capital reaches critical mass, innovations in social networks can begin to work toward a higher context through an inescapable cultural awareness of others. This phenomenon is generally called the emergence of collective consciousness.

The processes of community

It can be intuitively reasoned through subjective experience that we've all shared, regardless of culture, class, religion or any other determinant, that we grow to learn who we are chiefly through contact with others. This is a progressive development which is as universal in Human experience as any single sociological component can be - the process of identification. A human being is born with a mind and a set of inherited traits. Without going into the argument of heredity with environment, it is reasonable to accept that the habits and behaviors that a person grows into are largely a function of the community group behaviors that prevailed through that process. That is the first process of community. As an individual grows into an adult another process occurs. That being a progressive accumulation of facts, truths, and hopefully insights which all move together through the process of realization. It is during plateaus reached along this progression that cognitive structures are formed, attitudes toward the local world, the society viewable from within personal scope, and an understanding of how people relate one to the other and within the context of community. This process is called socialization. So, identification, realization and socialization brings an individual into a position of making choices about who he or she will socialize with and under what conditions and circumstances. From the perspective of the individual, selecting or deselecting groups to join is yet another process - the process of association. When associated individuals develop the intent to give of themselves to the group and maintain all of the processes from identification to association they begin to bring into practice the first process of true community - the process of communication.

Problems of community

As communities form, so usually develops a collective consciousness and a set of mores. These serve to add cohesion, harmony and continuity to a group, allowing it to grow, sometimes to a gargantuan size. Once a critical mass of people adopts a set of mores and develops a collective consciousness it becomes a society. Participation is no longer optional for the individual. Behavior is now a function of being required or compelled to conform to the norm rather than choosing to give of one's self. This condition is sometimes thought of as the status quo. A natural outgrowth of stagnant societies and large organizations is an increased propensity in individuals and factions to deviate from the norm. When enough individuals and factions decide that deviation can be a good thing, a new community can form as a subculture within the society. This can be good for the society by creating dynamics that enhance the social experiences and improve the well-being of the whole. A moderate form of this occurrence is called a social movement, while a radical form is called a revolution. Individuals and factions can decide to form alliances intent on repressing deviation, eliminating or containing subcultures, enforcing the status quo or even oppressing or destroying the parts of the society that do not suit them or fit into their idea of what the society as a whole is to represent. In both tiny communities and massive societies, problematic conditions arise involving the emergence of leaders. Leadership is a civic phenomenon that may introduce a high level of hierarchy. The structure of this hierarchy plays a key role in determining the characteristics of the whole. The community will effectively present to the larger world this collective personality.

The sense of community

Continuity of the connections between leaders and leaders, leaders and followers, followers and followers is vital to the strength of a community. Members, both leaders and followers, individually hold the collective personality of the whole. With sustained connections and continued conversations, participants in communities, regardless of degrees of inclusion, develop emotional bonds, intellectual pathways, enhanced linguistic abilities, and even a higher capacity for critical thinking and problem-solving. It could be argued that successive and sustained contact with other humans might help to remove some of the tensions of isolation, due to disenfranchisement, thus opening creative avenues that would have otherwise remained impassable. Conversely, sustained involvement in tight communities might tend to aggravate tensions in some individuals. But, in many cases, it is easy enough to distance one's self from the "hive" temporarily to ease this stress. In fact, psychological maturity and effective communication skills may well be a function of this ability. In nearly every context, individual and collective behaviours are required to find a balance between inclusion and exclusion; for the individual - a matter of choice; for the group - a matter of charter. The sum of the creative energy and the strength of the mechanisms that maintain this balance is manifest as an observable and resilient sense of community.

The spirit of community

If the sense of community exists, both freedom and security exist as well. The Community then takes on a life of its own, as people become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. This is the spirit of community.

External Links

- [http://www.edgelife.net/glossary/community.htm Nurture a multifaceted community]
- [http://www.bcen.net Birmingham Community Empowerment Network]

Public sector

The public sector is that part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government, whether national, regional or local/municipal. Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security, administering urban planning and organising national defences. The organisation of the public sector (public ownership) can take several forms, including:
- Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organisation generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government.
- Publicly-owned corporations (in some contexts, especially manufacturing, "State-owned enterprises"); which differ from direct administration in that they have greater commercial freedoms and are expected to operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by government (although goals may be set for them by government).
- Partial outsourcing (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services), is considered a public sector model. A borderline form is
- Complete outsourcing or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector. (See Britain's Private Finance Initiative.) The decision about what are proper matters for the public sector as opposed to the private sector is probably the single most important dividing line among socialist, liberal, conservative, and libertarian political philosophy, with (broadly) socialists preferring greater state involvement, libertarians favoring minimal state involvement, and conservatives and liberals favoring state state involvement in some aspects of the society but not others.

Governance

Governance comprises the processes and systems by which an organization or a society operates. Frequently, people establish a government to administer these processes and systems. English-speakers sometimes erroneously confuse the term governance with the term government. One should distinguish the concept of governance from its associated concept, politics. Politics involves processes by which a group of people with initially divergent opinions or interests reach collective decision

Social

Latin root meaning

The Unobservable

Some different definitions

Social theorists

Socialism and social democracy

Modern uses

Latin

Main features

Primary sequence tenses

Secondary sequence tenses

Latin and Romance

Latin and English

Latin education

See also

About the Latin language

About the Latin literary heritage

Other related topics

References

External links

Social science

Major fields

History

Rise

Present state

Criticism

Reference

See also

External links

Fuzzy concept

See also

C. Wright Mills

Life and work

Outlook

Critical conflict theory

Quotations

Further reading

External links

Sociological imagination

External links

References

Social theory

Social theory in relation to hard science

History

Pre-classical social theorists

Classical social theory

Modern social theory

Post-modern social theory

See also

External links

Attitude (psychology)

See also

Anti-social

Anti-social behaviour in the UK

See also

Social fact

Sources

See also

External link

Social relations

Specific meaning

Examples

Theorists

Understanding social relations

Types of social relations

See also

References

Community

The nature of community

The context of community

The processes of community

Problems of community

The sense of community

The spirit of community

See also

External Links

Public sector

See also

Governance