Dimensions of Cultural Variation

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Multilevel Modeling ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Measurement Bias ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So

To understand cultural differences, we need to find ways to characterize the variations in the social contexts in which people are located. To do so, we must focus on differences between contexts rather than differences between individuals. Most research of this type has examined differences between nations in terms of dimensions. Treating each nation as a unit, contrasts have been identified in terms of values, beliefs, self-descriptions, and social norms. The most influential difference identified concerned the dimension of individualism–collectivism, which has provided the theoretical framework for numerous studies. The validity of this type of investigation rests on close attention to aspects of measurement to ensure that respondents are able to make the necessary judgments and to respond in ways that are not affected by measurement bias. Where many nations are sampled, multilevel modeling can be used to show the ways in which dimensions of culture affect social behaviors.

Profiling “User Bases” of Online Social Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-126
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Current User ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Practices

One aspect of profiling to enhance teaching and learning involves the various contexts in which learners will engage, such as particular social media ecosystems and their attendant microcultures (the social norms and common practices in these spaces), particularly if learners will be engaging with individuals outside of the formal classroom. Understanding the larger online social context helps define the affordances and constraints of what can be effectively taught and learned. This involves profiling the current user base of the online social spaces where the learners will be engaging and interacting and co-creating knowledge.

scholarly journals Cultural differences in memory for faces and associated perceptual versus social contexts.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingqian Li
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Race Effect ◽  
The Social ◽  
Face Stimuli ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Cue Words ◽  
Context Memory

The current study investigates cultural differences in memory for faces and their associated contexts between East Asian and Western cultures. Thirty-six Caucasian Canadian (age range = 17 - 30, M = 21.00, SD = 3.94) and 35 native Chinese (age range = 19 – 27, M = 22.06, SD = 2.33) young adults participated in the study. At encoding, participants subjectively rated face stimuli according to the cue words within social (“FRIENDLY” vs. “SUCCESS”) and perceptual (“HEIGHT” vs. “WEIGHT”) contexts. At test, participants performed a context recognition task to identify whether the test stimulus was a new face or an old face associated with a specific context cue word. Results did not show any cultural difference in memory. However, both cultures showed better recognition in the social context than in the perceptual context condition. In addition, the other race effect was observed in context memory for Canadian, but not Chinese participants.

Norms: An Integrated Framework

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Horne ◽  
Stefanie Mollborn
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Integrated Framework ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Do So

Norms are a foundational concept in sociology. Following a period of skepticism about norms as overly deterministic and as paying too little attention to social conflict, inequalities, and agency, the past 20 years have seen a proliferation of norms research across the social sciences. Here we focus on the burgeoning research in sociology to answer questions about where norms come from, why people enforce them, and how they are applied. To do so, we rely on three key theoretical approaches in the literature—consequentialist, relational, and agentic. As we apply these approaches, we explore their implications for what are arguably the two most fundamental issues in sociology—social order and inequality. We conclude by synthesizing and building on existing norms research to produce an integrated theoretical framework that can shed light on aspects of norms that are currently not well understood—in particular, their change and erosion.

scholarly journals Cartography of Critical Legal Theories: Notes for a Reflection on the Relation between Law and Power

2021 ◽  
pp. 242-262
Author(s):  
Victor Merino-Sancho
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Asylum Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This paper proposes an identification of the main arguments suggested by certain critical theories concerning the relationship between law and power. In order to (re)think the function of law as an instrument not only of power, but as an element of social transformation, we promote here a reflection on aspects raised by these theories; among others, the same notion of power, oppression, intersectionality or decoloniality. These categories are relevant to examine how law regulates the experiences of discrimination of specific social groups, highlighting the intimate relationship between the social contexts, the premises and the legal answers. To do so, we examine in particular how asylum law responds to claims grounded on sexual orientation and gender identity. Finally, this reasoning suggests a conception of law oriented to action and the social change.

Imperfect competition in the economic thought of italian corporatism and its influence in Spain

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Begoña Pérez Calle ◽  
José Luis Malo Guillén
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Imperfect Competition ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Mathematical Economics ◽  
Free Competition ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So

In Mussolini’s Italy, the concept of Corporate Economics was developed for Economics. The new science was to be reborn within the corporatist-fascist machine, and to do so it was necessary to rework both principles and tools. This paper tries to explain that the result was heterogeneous and the forms of study of Corporate Economics ranged from the links with Political Science to the more rigorous Mathematical Economics. In terms of imperfect competition there was a frequent rejection of the situation of private monopoly, understanding a world of monopolies as the ultimate consequence of free competition, but there were also other positions that admited it. We will try to show the debate by taking a comparative tour and classifying these positions from the theoretical and from the social-moral spheres. We will also seek to view how, from both areas, the link with the Spanish tradition is perfectly appreciated. We can observe this in the ways of understanding imperfect competition within the Spanish corporativist essay. Apart from thought and ideology, the most rigorous theoretical framework for economic science of the time was also of Italian influence. Keywords: fascism, corporatism, economic science, imperfect competition, monopoly.

scholarly journals Behavioral Ecology of the Family: Harnessing Theory to Better Understand Variation in Human Families

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Paula Sheppard ◽  
Kristin Snopkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Selection Of

Researchers across the social sciences have long been interested in families. How people make decisions such as who to marry, when to have a baby, how big or small a family to have, or whether to stay with a partner or stray are questions that continue to interest economists, sociologists, demographers, and anthropologists. Human families vary across the globe; different cultures have different marriage practices, different ideas about who raises children, and even different notions of what a family is. Human behavioral ecology is a branch of anthropology that is particularly interested in cultural variation of family systems and how these differences impact upon the people that inhabit them; the children, parents, grandparents. It draws on evolutionary theory to direct research and generate testable hypotheses to uncover how different ecologies, including social contexts, can explain diversity in families. In this Special Issue on the behavioral ecology of the family, we have collated a selection of papers that showcase just how useful this framework is for understanding cultural variation in families, which we hope will convince other social scientists interested in family research to draw upon evolutionary and ecological insight in their own work.

scholarly journals Social Media-Innovation: The Case of Indigenous Tweets

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Ní Bhroin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Innovation Studies ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
The Social

Twitter presents new opportunities for individual communication.  Consequently, it may be a relevant arena in which to address the social need of minority language maintenance.  The Indigenous Tweets website presents a directory of minority language users on Twitter (www.indigenoustweets.com).  It aims to create new opportunities to use these languages, thus to address a social need through media innovation.  In this article, I draw on a theoretical framework from Media Innovation- and Social Innovation Studies, to delineate the concept of Social Media-Innovation.  I propose three distinguishing attributes.  Firstly, users of these innovations must consider them relevant to address identified social needs. Secondly, the communication capabilities they present must support addressing these needs.  Thirdly, they should facilitate mediated interaction that enhances society’s capacity to act.  Having delineated the concept I explore how its attributes are manifest in practice with reference to the case of Indigenous Tweets.  I find that the relevance of Indigenous Tweets is negotiated with regard to culturally specific needs in different social contexts.  The development and use of its communication capabilities are supported by incremental experimentation and learning.  Furthermore, while it facilitates mediated interactions that are designed to enhance society’s capacity to act, these occur in a hybrid media context and are influenced by the range of agents involved.  This article makes two important contributions to the field of Media Innovations Studies.  It delineates the concept of Social Media-Innovation according to three central attributes.  It also analyses how these are manifest in practice with reference to the case of Indigenous Tweets.

Facing Multiple Audiences in Engineering and R&D Writing: The Social Contexts of a Technical Report

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Organizational Power ◽  
Technical Report ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Audiences

The customary approach to classifying multiple audiences for written discourse is to recognize primary, secondary, and immediate audiences, and, in some cases, gatekeeping audiences. Based on findings from an ethnographic case study of engineering authors in an R&D setting, this article suggests that authors should also attend to watchdog audiences as they write. A watchdog audience pays close attention to the written transaction between the author and the primary audience. Authors must direct their discourse toward the primary audience, but they must also keep the motives and purposes of the watchdog audience in mind as they write and revise. The watchdog audience in my case study, while it had no direct leverage or other organizational power over the authors, still influenced the authors extensively as they revised their text. Evidence indicates that, beyond the apparent and traditional sources of power, there are more contextual, hidden, socially mediated power relationships equally capable of shaping written discourse.

Living in The Merry Ghetto

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trever Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Do So

Living in the Merry Ghetto reframes how people use music to build resistance. To do so, Hagen addresses the social context of illegal music-making in Czechoslovakia during state socialism, asking “How Do Aesthetics Nurture Political Consciousness?”. He tells the story of a group of rock ’n’ rollers who went underground after 1968, building a parallel world from where they could flourish: the Merry Ghetto. The book examines the case of the Czech Underground, the politics of their music and their way of life, paying close attention to the development of the ensemble the Plastic People of the Universe. Taking in multiple political transitions from the 1940s to the 2000s, the story focuses on non-official cultural practices such as listening to foreign radio broadcasts, seeking out copied cassette tapes, listening to banned LPs, growing long hair, attending clandestine concerts, smuggling albums via diplomats, recording in home-studios, and being thrown in prison for any of these activities. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Undergrounders, archival research, and participant observation, Hagen shows how these practices shaped consciousness, informed bodies, and promoted collective action, all of which contributed to an Underground way of life.

scholarly journals Cultural differences in memory for faces and associated perceptual versus social contexts.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingqian Li
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Race Effect ◽  
The Social ◽  
Face Stimuli ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Cue Words ◽  
Context Memory

The current study investigates cultural differences in memory for faces and their associated contexts between East Asian and Western cultures. Thirty-six Caucasian Canadian (age range = 17 - 30, M = 21.00, SD = 3.94) and 35 native Chinese (age range = 19 – 27, M = 22.06, SD = 2.33) young adults participated in the study. At encoding, participants subjectively rated face stimuli according to the cue words within social (“FRIENDLY” vs. “SUCCESS”) and perceptual (“HEIGHT” vs. “WEIGHT”) contexts. At test, participants performed a context recognition task to identify whether the test stimulus was a new face or an old face associated with a specific context cue word. Results did not show any cultural difference in memory. However, both cultures showed better recognition in the social context than in the perceptual context condition. In addition, the other race effect was observed in context memory for Canadian, but not Chinese participants.

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