Generating Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey ◽  
Dustin Avent-Holt

This book introduces relational inequality theory (RIT). RIT builds on a foundation of social relationships, organizations, and the intersectional complexity and fluidity that characterize social life. The argument is organized around three generic inequality-generating mechanisms—exploitation, social closure, and claims-making. The actual levels and contours of the inequalities produced by these three mechanisms are, however, profoundly contingent on the institutional fields in which organizations operate and their internal intersectional dynamics. RIT is contrasted to status attainment theory in sociology, human capital and neoclassical models in economics, as well as heterodox economics and more institutional political economy approaches to inequality. The chapter concludes with an outline of the scientific advantages of relational models of action.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Claudio Bolzman ◽  
Tineke Fokkema ◽  
Ibrahima Guissé ◽  
Danique van Dalen

Abstract This article focuses on European migrants living in Morocco and now near retirement or retired. Using a lifecourse approach we are interested in whether their timing of migration to Morocco made a difference in terms of their motivations to settle there and subsequently with the social relationships at the destination. To this end, we conducted 36 biographical interviews with Swiss, Dutch and Belgian Flemish migrants aged 50 and older. Findings show the relevance of a lifecourse perspective for international migration studies. Early adulthood migrants to Morocco had no strong obligations in their home country and were ready to explore new affective or professional experiences in a new country. They had the time to discover and find a place in Moroccan society and to develop long-lasting social relationships with kin and non-kin. Middle-adulthood migrants moved with the intention of rapidly accessing a higher standard of living thanks to the tourism economy, with hedonistic perspectives in a setting with a better climate. Their social life is limited to interaction with business clients and a few like-minded migrants from Europe, and their communication with personnel is a daily challenge. Most late-in-life migrants experienced disruptive life events before migrating, and expected to find in Morocco a second chance to build a better life. They generally move in select circles of European expatriates.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jostein Holmgren

Thesis type: Bachelor of Arts, PsychologyAuthor: Jostein HolmgrenSupervisor: Thomas Wolfgang SchubertGrade: A (Highest obtainable)Institution: Department of Psychology, University of OsloSocial status is a core feature of human social life. Recently, researchers have begun exploring a possible link between the processing of social status and physical dimensions. Drawing on several theoretical frameworks, including Relational Models Theory, embodied cognition, and the Analog Magnitude System (AMS), the author argues for social status being a dimension processed similarly to physical magnitudes. The present study replicates previous findings of a distance effect typical of magnitudes in the domain of social status, and offers novel evidence for a size effect. Although with limitations, the evidence suggests that social status is processed as any other dimension in the AMS.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Ardhian Indra Darmawan ◽  
Shanti Wardhaningsih

Setiap manusia yang ada di dunia memiliki keyakinan yang dianut. Spiritual  adalah dasar dari kehidupan manusia dalam aktivitas kehidupan di dunia. Salah satu peristiwa yang terjadi dalam kehidupan adalah hubungan sosial antar manusia.  Perkembangan manusia dimulai dari bayi, balita, anak-anak, remaja, dewasa sampai lanjut usia. Masa remaja adalah fase transisi yang berada diantara fase anak - anakmenuju fase dewasa. Setiap fase perkembangan manusia dipengaruhi oleh beberapa faktor, salah satunya adalah faktor lingkungankeluarga dan spiritual. Abad 21 memberikan potensi adanya pergeseran nilai emosional dan sosial remaja ke arah negatif, seperti pergaulan bebas yang dilakukan oleh remaja. Data diambil  melalui PubMed, ProQuest, dan Google Cendekia menggunakan kata kunci: spiritual, sikap spiritual orang tua, perilaku sosial dan seksual remaja. Hasil dari delapan artikel yang diperoleh, diidentifikasi sebanyak empat tema, yaitu Spiritual dalam hubungan sosial, spiritual dalam perilaku dan kesehatan mental remaja, perilaku seksual berdasarkan budaya dan yang terkahir yaitu kontrol spiritual dalam perilaku dan pendidikan seksual. Hakekat dari nilai yang sosial yang terkandung dalam spiritual mampu memberikan dampak bagi kehidupan sosial remaja. Peran tingkat pengetahuan dan aplikasi nilai spiritual oleh orang tua dan lingkungan remaja tinggal mampu memberikan dampak bagi perilaku sosial remaja.  Perilaku sosial remaja yang didalamnya terdapat perilaku untuk memenuhi kebutuhan biologisnya yaitu perilaku seksual.  Remaja yang pengalaman hidupnya belum banyak, maka berisiko salah dalam mengambil keputusan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan dalam kehidupannya termasuk hubungan sosialnya. Meningkatnya pemahaman nilai spiritual akan mampu mengontrol perilaku yang dilakukan oleh remaja untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sosialnya. Kata kunci: peran spiritual, perilaku sosial dan seksual, remaja SPIRITUAL ROLE DEALING WITH SOCIAL AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF YOUTH ABSTRACTEvery human being in the world have adopted beliefs. Spirituality is the foundation of human life in the world's life activity. One of the events that happen in life is the social relationships between people. Human development begins from infants, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults to elderly. Adolescence is a transitional phase that is between phases of a child - the child towards the adult phase. Each phase of human development is influenced by several factors, one of which is a spiritual family and environmental factors. The 21st century provides the potential for a shift in adolescent emotional and social values in the negative direction, such as promiscuity conducted by adolescents. Data retrieved via PubMed, ProQuest, and Google Scholar using keywords: spiritual, spiritual attitudes of parents, social behavior and sexual. Results from the eight articles obtained, four themes were identified, namely spiritual in social relationships, spiritual behavior and mental health of adolescents, sexual behavior based on culture and finally spiritual control in sexual behavior and education. The nature of the social values contained in the spiritual can provide an impact on the social life of adolescents. The role of the level of knowledge and application of spiritual values by parents and the environment of adolescents living is able to have an impact on adolescent social behavior. Adolescent social behavior in which there is behavior to meet biological needs, namely sexual behavior. Teenagers, whose life experiences are not many, then risk making the wrong decision to meet the needs in their lives, including social relationships. Increased understanding of spiritual values will be able to control the behavior carried out by adolescents to meet their social needs. Keywords: spiritual behavior, adolescents, adolescent sexual behavior 


Author(s):  
Ulrich Lehmann

This chapter discusses luxury as both a quantitative measure of capital (economic) and as a qualitative measure of labour (social). Thus, it argues that luxury has to be regarded simultaneously as an economic fact and as a medium to communicate social relationships. The method of political economy contextualises these relationships into a particular power structure where stratification is expressed in commodity forms, in the concept of the luxury-as-dominance. Furthermore, the duality of capital and labour shows how much forms of production are integral to understanding luxury. Such processes, whatever the ultimate aspiration of the owners of the means of production (and capital), reinstate the makers at the centre of production and advance once more their cultural significance.


Author(s):  
María del Rocío Soto Flores ◽  
Ingrid Yadibel Cuevas Zuñiga ◽  
Susana Asela Garduño Román

The processes of economic globalization and accelerating technological change have led to changes in economic and social life at a global level. New technologies, such as the TICs, systems of artificial intelligence, scanning, connectivity, nanotechnology, and biotechnology, among others, have transformed the national productive structures and human capital that require technologies disruptive today. In this context, education has become the main element of the knowledge society and training of human capital that demands a knowledge-based economy. The objective of the chapter is to analyze the relationship between human capital formations in the construction of a society of knowledge in Mexico. The structure is organized in three sections: 1) an analysis of the knowledge society, 2) the formation of human capital and the institutions of higher education in the knowledge society, and 3) human capital formation and its relationship in the construction of a society of knowledge in Mexico.


2020 ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Zane Goebel

This chapter develops the concepts of believability and scalar reflexivity through an engagement with anthropological and sociolinguistic concerns about interviewing, rapport, reflexivity, and representing social life. These concerns intersect when considered as issues of denotation versus connotation. The author demonstrates these intersections through a focus on how researcher and consultant engage in role alignment and acts of belonging during the interviews discussed in previous chapters. It is argued that by taking a discursive view of how role alignment and acts of belonging figure in the construction of social relationships in the field, one can provide more nuanced accounts of the scaled and reflexive interpretative processes that scholars engage in as they produce their ethnographic accounts.


2019 ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey ◽  
Dustin Avent-Holt

This chapter is an introduction to relational inequality theory (RIT). In RIT resources are generated and pool in organizations. Actors with legitimated claims gain access to those resources. Some people and potential trading partners are denied access to organizational resources through processes of social closure. Others appropriate organizational resources based on their ability to exploit weaker actors in production and exchange relationships. Actors are more or less powerful in these claims-making processes to the extent that they have cultural, status, and material advantages in resource-distributing relationships. These power-generating resources tend to be associated with categorical distinctions such as ownership, occupation, gender, education, citizenship, and race. Which categorical distinctions are the basis for claims-making are institutionally and organizationally variable. Markets as well as institutional fields influence, but do not determine, action and opportunities. Rather, actors use cultural and other tools to invent local strategies of action.


2020 ◽  
pp. 212-224
Author(s):  
Phillip Brown

This concluding chapter provides arguments based on mounting research evidence showing that, for many, learning is not earning. It also rests on the contention that historical possibilities exist to improve the quality of individual and social life through the transformation of economic means—in other words, by developing a new way of thinking about human capital. The chapter goes on to confront future prospects for the new human capital, even as these prospects depend on rebalancing the power relations between capital and labor. To conclude, the chapter calls for a different narrative that connects with the disconnections in people’s lives—their sense of disappointment, alienation, and unfairness. However, the distributional conflict revealed at the very heart of capitalism, which is central to the crisis of human capital, remains to be resolved.


Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1438-1448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine J Crompton ◽  
Sonny Hallett ◽  
Danielle Ropar ◽  
Emma Flynn ◽  
Sue Fletcher-Watson

Many autistic people are motivated to have friends, relationships and close family bonds, despite the clinical characterisation of autism as a condition negatively affecting social interaction. Many first-hand accounts of autistic people describe feelings of comfort and ease specifically with other autistic people. This qualitative research explored and contrasted autistic experiences of spending social time with neurotypical and autistic friends and family. In total, 12 autistic adults (10 females, aged 21–51) completed semi-structured interviews focused on time spent with friends and family; positive and negative aspects of time spent with neurotypical and autistic friends and family; and feelings during and after spending time together. Three themes were identified: cross-neurotype understanding, minority status and belonging. Investigation of these themes reveals the benefits of autistic people creating and maintaining social relationships with other autistic people, in a more systematic way than previous individual reports. They highlight the need for autistic-led social opportunities and indicate benefits of informal peer support for autistic adults. Lay abstract Although autistic people may struggle to interact with others, many autistic people have said they find interacting with other autistic people more comfortable. To find out whether this was a common experience, we did hour-long interviews with 12 autistic adults. We asked them questions about how it feels when spending time with their friends and family, and whether it felt different depending on whether the friends and family were autistic or neurotypical. We analysed the interviews and found three common themes in what our participants said. First, they found spending with other autistic people easier and more comfortable than spending time with neurotypical people, and felt they were better understood by other autistic people. Second, autistic people often felt they were in a social minority, and in order to spend time with neurotypical friends and family, they had to conform with what the neurotypical people wanted and were used to. Third, autistic people felt like they belonged with other autistic people and that they could be themselves around them. These findings show that having time with autistic friends and family can be very beneficial for autistic people and played an important role in a happy social life.


Author(s):  
Anne Koch

Religion is in many ways an economic phenomenon and can be analyzed as such. By economy most economists understand systems for the allocation of resources. In this light, this chapter notes various ways in which religious organizations are engaged in sectoral markets and produce private and public goods, entailing products and services. Religion and economy are interdependent and relate to each other in distinct ways across societal subsystems. Economy both permeates religious structures and is a co-system. This is generally studied by political economy: recent moves beyond neoclassical economic theory (which saw culture as an exogenous factor) emphasize the economy’s embeddedness in social relationships and its variation across cultures. The chapter considers ways in which religious phenomena reflect recent changes in capitalist systems and ways in which religious economies function as explicit economic systems.


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