Relational Inequalities

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey ◽  
Dustin Avent-Holt
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Social Closure ◽  
Workplace Inequality ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Class And Status ◽  
Technology Industries

Relational Inequalities focuses on the organizational production of categorical inequalities, in the context of the intersectional complexity and institutional fluidity that characterize social life. Three generic inequality-generating mechanisms—exploitation, social closure, and claims-making—distribute organizational resources, rewards, and respect. The actual levels and contours of the inequalities produced by these three mechanisms are, however, profoundly contingent on the historical moments and institutional fields in which organizations operate. Organizational inequality regimes are comprised of the resources available for distribution; the task-, class-, and status-based social relations within organizations; formal and informal practices used to accomplish goals and tasks; and internal cultural models of people, work, and inequality, often adapted from the society at large to fit local social relationships. Legal and cultural institutions as they are filtered through workplace inequality regimes steer which groups are exploited and excluded, blocking or facilitating the conditions that lead to exploitation and closure. Sometimes exploitative and closure claims-making are naked and open for all to see; more often, they are institutionalized, taken for granted, and legitimated, sometimes even by those being exploited and excluded. The implications of RIT for social science and equality agendas are discussed in the conclusion. Case studies examine historical and contemporary workplace inequality regime variation in multiple countries. The role of intersectionality in producing regime variation is explored repeatedly across the book. Many occupations and industries are examined in depth, with particular attention given to engineers, CEOs, financial service, airlines, and information technology industries.

Organizational Inequality Regimes

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-106
Author(s):  
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey ◽  
Dustin Avent-Holt
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Workplace Inequality ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Resource Levels ◽  
Class And Status ◽  
Organizational Rules

This chapter describes organizations as inequality regimes. Regimes are comprised of the resources available for distribution; the task-, class-, and status-based social relations within organizations; formal and informal practices used to accomplish goals and tasks; and internal cultural models of people, work, and inequality, often adapted from the society at large to fit local social relationships. Resource levels, national institutions, organizational rules and practices, local organizational cultures, and status intersectionality constitute the basic sources of variation in inequality regimes. Case studies examine historical and contemporary workplace inequality regime variation in Japan, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, and the United States. The role of intersectionality in producing regime variation is explored.

Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Carville
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Street Photography

Justin Carville draws on recent debates in relation to photography and the everyday in order to examine the role of street-photography in the cultural politics of religion as it was played out in the quotidian moments of social relations within Dublin’s urban and suburban spaces during the 1980s and 90s. The essay argues that photography was important in giving visual expression to the social contradictions within the relations between religion and the transformation of Irish social life, not through the dramatic and traumatic experiences that defined the nation’s increased secularism, but in the quiet, humdrum and sometimes monotonous routines of religious ceremonies and everyday social relations.

scholarly journals Stages of busi(-)ness and identity

Ethnologies ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Lightfoot ◽  
Valérie Fournier
Keyword(s):  
Family Business ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Work Space ◽  
Small Family ◽  
The Family ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Creation

Résumé This article explores how space gets mobilised in the performance of “family business”. The very concept of the “family business” collapses some deeply entrenched distinctions in Western modern societies, those between home and work, private and public, family life and business rationality, distinctions that are mapped over space through the creation of boundaries between work space and family space, home and office. The “family business”, especially when run from home, unsticks this ordered sense of space as familial images and business stages are collapsed. Our analysis of small family run boarding kennels focuses on the way space is used to frame different stages of action. In particular, we draw upon theatrical metaphors to explore the work that goes into the staging of identities and social relations. We first discuss the relationships between space, stages, performance and identity through a theatrical lens; we then draw upon material from our study of family run boarding kennels to explore how owner-managers use space as a malleable resource from which they carve out and assemble different stages to perform their business and themselves to different audiences. After going back into the theatre to discuss the role of stages in weaving together coherent stories in the family business or in drama, we close by exploring the limitations of the theatrical metaphor for the analysis of social life.

scholarly journals Dzielenie przestrzeni, praktyki graniczenia. Parkowanie, własność i przynależność na polskich osiedlach mieszkaniowych

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Karol Kurnicki
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation

Space gains significance through processes of social differentiation and bordering, and in consequence is connected with the creation and maintenance of social divisions. The author seeks confirmation of this fact at the level of everyday practices in housing settlements, tracking the mechanisms used by people in situations of contact and confrontation with others in the social space. He sets himself several aims: (1) he attempts to analyze selected spatial practices (parking within the settlement, the creation of belonging), reflecting the internal structuring strategies of housing settlements; (2) he points to the causes of that structuring, that is, the main contexts in which these practices occur and are strengthened; (3) he highlights the important role of space in processes of bordering and differentiation. Practices connected with parking and the creation of belonging, although apparently disparate and deriving from contrary spheres of social life make it possible to hypothesize that the striving for separation and the increased importance of space determine the organization of borders, divisions, and social relations in housing settlements.

scholarly journals Social Health, Social Pressure, and Social Immunity

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Alexandra Pilyushenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Social Immunity ◽  
Sociocultural Environment ◽  
Spiritual Foundations

The article addresses the problem of social health as a basic factor of positive sociocultural environment in the context of globalization. The research objective was to define the content of social health as a balance of such categories as social immunity and social pressure. The study relied on the methodology of philosophical analysis, dialectical method, and system approach. The phenomenon of social health was described as part of the system of dynamic and multidimensional social relations. The article featured the role of sociocultural environment of one's life and attitudes of spiritual and moral nature that make up one's social health formation. Social pressure is an attributive characteristic of social life, which is getting increasingly complex in all areas of human life. The article also introduces the term of social immunity as a set of spiritual foundations of one's activity that provides one with productive social relationships. Social immunity depends on one's age, lifestyle, and sociocultural environment. The author also analyzed various prosocial deviant forms of behavior. The decisive factor of social health formation is that social immunity should correspond with the current social pressure.

scholarly journals Food Studies and Communication

Communication ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Parasecoli
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Food Studies ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Textual Representations ◽  
Class And Status

Food is much more than fuel for our bodies. It is an essential part of human cultures, and as such it carries meanings that shape and reflect individual and communal identities in terms of race, ethnicity, class, age, social class, and status, among others. It is both deeply physical and highly symbolic. Challenging the fundamental opposition between inside and outside, eating requires ingestion, bringing the outside inside, which is both exciting and terrifying. For this reason, food is both a source of pleasure and comfort and a cause for anxieties and concerns ranging from purity to propriety, heath, and wellness, just to mention a few. All food communicates meaning. We are implicitly trained to get cues from the world that surrounds us, and food is not excluded from these dynamics. We can obtain information from products and ingredients; from dishes and recipes; from the material objects that surround the act of eating, from tableware to furniture, interior design, built environments such as markets, stores, and supermarkets; from urban design and landscapes; from performative acts that include selling, cooking, serving, and eating food, as well as even disposing of leftovers; from every component of food systems, from agricultural production to manufacturing, packaging, transportation, distribution, trade, retail, and consumption; invisible infrastructures such as supply chains, cold chains, and more recently electronic traceability and blockchain. This bibliographical article focuses on the study of the intentional forms of communication that revolve around material, visual, and textual representations of food, and how they reflect, shape, or at times even problematize the explicit and implicit meanings food is able to generate. Research on these matters has grown in recent years with the emergence and growth of food studies as an interdisciplinary academic field. However, scholars from other disciplines, from literary studies to art history, media studies, gender studies, and politics, have engaged with the role of food in communication, often embracing multidisciplinary approaches in dialogue with food studies. The article is divided in two parts. The first part examines publications that look at food in different means of communication, from TV to fine arts and digital media, investigating the specificities of each means in its relationship with food discourse and practices. The second part instead explores research on food representations in the communication that involves different aspects of cultural and social life, from gender to politics. Some overlapping between the two sections is inevitable, but nevertheless the organization of the bibliographical entries in these two large sections can help the reader better navigate the content of the article and the rapidly expanding literature.

scholarly journals Women in the "Kerangkeng" of Tradition: the Study on the Status of Women in Minangkabau

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-385
Author(s):  
Welhendri Azwar
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Control ◽  
Biological Differences ◽  
Status Of Women

The system of values, norms and some stereotypes attached to women are one of the factors that giving influences on the position and relationships of women with men in the existing social structure. Each person embraces the system of values or norm which is a consensus and constructed by the community itself than from generation to generation. The emergence of social construction on the status and role of women is the result of the perspective of a community towards their biological differences between men and women. The perspective which then results in oppression, exploitation, and subordination of women in social relations are contextually strongly related to socio-cultural conditions at that time. This section will discuss how women are positioned in the social life and the perspective of the culture of its subordination. Next, it is also described how the emergence of patriarchal ideology, a system that accommodates the interests of men to dominate and control women, as a consequence of the understanding of the nature of women which biologically different to men. The hegemony of patriarchal ideology brings the social awareness for women to accept the conditions of subordination as a natural thing, which is wrapped by the products of culture and tradition. It includes how patriarchal ideology is giving the effect on the system and the tradition of marriage.

Moral Principles in the Life of Society, or “Metaphysics of History”

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4-2) ◽  
pp. 311-329
Author(s):  
Vladislav Cheshev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

The article investigates the influence of moral principles on historically developing social relations. The appeal to this problem is based on a conceptual approach to the origin of human morality, which arises in the course of sociogenesis as a set of behavioral principles that provide the intraspecific cultural (non-genetic) solidarity necessary for human societies. It is noted that the moral consciousness of individuals, which regulates interpersonal relationships, is a necessary but insufficient means for transmitting moral principles. Morality is expressed in the relationship between society and an individual. Society solves the problem of reproduction of moral regulators, it brings them into the nature of social relations by necessity. In this regard, attention is drawn to the role of elite groups in solving the aforementioned problem, in particular, it points out the peculiarities of the formation of an elite layer in Russian history. The elite is the bearer of moral images of social behavior, which expresses the attitude to public goals, interests, historical meanings of social life. The task of the elite is the implementation of these principles in the nature of social relations. The egoism of individuals and social groups can impede the solution of such a problem. Overcoming difficulties of this kind can be achieved by an awareness of history, which provides the basis for public consensus. The article focuses on the ethos of the “spirit of capitalism”, which enters into the social environment through the principles of the organization of economic activity. The paper shows the relevance of the problem of interaction of economic ethics and moral foundations of society as a systemic whole.

Rethinking Corporate Social Responsibility and the Role of the Firm—On the Denial of Politics

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Hanlon
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Opening Up

This article argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) does not represent a challenge to business. On the contrary, it suggests that CSR represents a further embedding of capitalist social relations and a deeper opening up of social life to the dictates of the marketplace. Furthermore, it protests that CSR is not a driving force of change but rather an outcome of changes brought on by other forces. Most particularly, it is the result of a shift from a fordist to a post-fordist regime of accumulation at the heart of which is both an expansion and a deepening of wage relations. This article somewhat conveniently traces the (re)emergence of CSR as an issue beyond the academy from the 1990s whilst acknowledging the academic work on CSR carried out earlier (Carroll, 1979 or Owen, 2003 on the democratic push in CSR during the 1970s).

Crossing boundaries. Regimes of value in intercultural colonial contexts. Reflections on Jean and John Comaroff's ‘Beasts, banknotes and the colour of money’

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Laurier Turgeon
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Theoretical Ground ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Written Word

This thought-provoking essay strives to theorize the concept of ‘regimes of value’ and, more specifically, the role of material objects in the convertibility of different orders of value in the making of modern economies and societies. Put forth by Arjun Appadurai in his edited volume The social life of things (1986), the notion of regime of value originally referred to the use of categories of material objects in the construction of value within a specific cultural context. Appadurai was more concerned with the way value is invested in objects than in theories of exchange and currency, consequently the notion remained relatively untheorized. Jean and John Comaroff break new theoretical ground in at least two ways. First, they take into consideration and juxtapose different regimes of value – primarily cattle for the southern Tswana peoples and currency for the European colonizers – to see how they are constructed and become the focus of complex mediations between these groups in the colonial context of South Africa. Cattle, like currency (in the form of coins or paper money), come to objectify value because they have the power to make or break social relations, to build new social hierarchies or overturn old ones, to do or undo moral economies. They show that different regimes of value can coexist in the same social space and be played out against one another. Second, Jean and John Comaroff interrogate the role of conversion, or ‘commensuration’, as they say, of regimes of value, that is, their power to make objects from different cultural contexts universally objectifiable, comparable and negotiable. Instead of making difference, as is usually thought, it is the capacity to negate difference and make all things equal that expresses the effectiveness of a regime of value. It is also these processes of commensuration and conversion that give material objects their magical qualities, through which they become fetishized and ‘seem to have a power all of their own’ (p. 131). More than the written word or oral discourse, it is material objects that become the preferred tools and means of colonial domination. The authors contribute then to a better understanding of the workings of political economies as well as to the materialities of colonialism.

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