The changing electoral market in Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale

The underlying purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that the country’s electoral marketplace is more open than it once was and that, consequently, the competition for votes between parties is also more extensive. We begin with a consideration of how the electoral marketplace came to be relatively ‘closed’ in the first place, which entails an account of the historically derived linkages between parties and social groups in Britain, as well as the social psychology of fixed political identities. Following this, we examine how the electoral market began to open up after 1970, through a review of the widespread evidence of growing electoral instability since then. In truth, there never was an entirely closed electoral market in the UK, but since 1970 the evidence of significant electoral change suggests that the scope of competition has increased in line with an expansion of the market for ‘available’ votes.

Author(s):  
Ю.В. Ковалева

Представлен историографический анализ развития понятия большие социальные группы и историко-психологический анализ социальных феноменов , связанных с массовыми общественными явлениями в России. Сформулированы актуальные проблемы психологии больших социальных групп, к которым относятся неоднородность оснований для их выделения, недостаточная дифференцированность со сходными понятиями, неравномерность исследований в различные временные периоды и идеологическая нагруженность их разработки. Данная работа была ответом на необходимость восполнения знаний о процессах в таких группах, происходивших в различные исторические периоды развития социальной психологии, с соответствующим им уровнем научного осмысления, а также обобщением этой целостной картины на уровне современного понимания и формулировка перспективных направлений исследований. Целью исследования является установление связи между определением и основными свойствами понятия «большие социальные группы» (его синонимов, аналогов) и особенностями социальной ситуации в определенный период времени, а также реконструкция социальных процессов данного исторического этапа. Проверялась гипотеза о том, что большие социальные группы как феномены социальной жизни формировались в соответствии с историческим временем, а соответствующее им понятие и его свойства с одной стороны отвечали уровню развития гуманитарного знания, а с другой - пытались удовлетворить общественный и политический запрос в объяснении и управлении социальной ситуацией. Использовались методы историографии социальной психологии и психолого-исторической реконструкции . Первая часть статьи посвящена анализу первых двух этапов развития социальной психологии - с середины XIX до начала XX вв. и в 1920-е гг. XX в. The historiographic analysis of the development of the concept of large social groups and historical and psychological study of social phenomena associated with mass social phenomena was presented. Topical problems of the psychology of large social groups are formulated, including heterogeneity of the grounds for their isolation, insufficient differentiation with similar concepts, uneven research in various periods, and ideological loading of the history of its development. The study's main problem was the need to replenish the processes in such groups that took place in various historical periods of social psychology development as well as a synthesis of this holistic picture at the level of modern understanding and the formulation of promising areas of research. The study's purpose was to establish a connection between the definition and the basic properties of the concept of "large social groups" (and its synonyms, analogs) and the peculiarities of the social situation in a certain period, as well as the reconstruction of social processes of this historical segment. The hypothesis was tested that large social groups as phenomena of social life were formed under the past time. The concept and its properties were corresponding to them, on the one hand, compared to the level of development of humanitarian knowledge. On the other, they tried to satisfy the social and political requests to understand and manage the social situation. Methods of the historiography of the history of social psychology and psychological and historical reconstruction were used. The article's first part was devoted to the analysis of the early two stages of the development of social psychology - from the middle of the XIX to the beginning of the XX centuries and 1920 of the XX century.


Author(s):  
Lucy Nicholas

The contact hypothesis has been the go-to social psychology concept for promoting better relations between unequal social groups since its inception in the context of ‘racial’ de-segregation in the USA. The idea that contact between groups reduces prejudice has been applied to a range of dominant / subordinate social groups such as ethnic groups, homo/heterosexuals, cis and trans people. This chapter will question whether the aims and premises of contact theory are still useful in the context of increasingly subtle and systemic biases and inequalities, and whether and how it might be usefully extended to relations between more complex identities than simple pre-defined oppositional ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups.  To do so, it considers some examples of intergroup othering using case studies pertaining to backlashes against gender, sexual and ethnic diversity in the contemporary Australian context. This chapter proposes the fruitful combination of queer ethics, post-tolerance political theory and the social psychology concept of ‘allophilia’ (love for the other) to move towards fostering ‘positive regard’ as an alternative way to tackle prejudice. It suggests that queer ethics can lend a convincing strategy here, which I call ‘reading queerly’, that is, being able to approach an other with an openness that neither homogenises nor subordinates difference.


2021 ◽  
pp. 027614672110407
Author(s):  
Anthony John Samuel ◽  
Gareth Reginald Terence White ◽  
Ken Peattie ◽  
Robert Thomas

Social Enterprises are becoming a significant force of social as well as economic good despite facing many difficulties that are brought about by their unique characteristics. Chief among these is the question of their perceived legitimacy that impinges upon their ability to gain funding, acquire contracts and appear as capable organisations to potential partnering institutions. This study explores the means by which Social Enterprises are legitimized through participation in the Social Enterprise Place (SEP) programme in the UK. By examining the Boundary Objects (BO) that span the intersections of the incumbent social groups it identifies three pillars upon which SEPs have facilitated SE legitimacy. These pillars comprise (i) the place-based language (syntactic BO), that enables the identification of (ii) common social goals (semantic BOs), and thereby enables the (iii) mobilization of resources toward their resolution (pragmatic BOs). This research provides insight into the facilitation of legitimacy for Social Enterprises that are engaged in a place-based initiative. By responding to Peterson’s (2016) call for macromarketers to take more note of meso level marketing dynamics in different industries the paper highlights the potential for place to facilitate the legitimacy of SEs. In addition, it reveals a further macromarketing dimension to Boundary Object plasticity whereby they may evolve through syntactic, semantic and pragmatic forms over time.


2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Mercea ◽  
Kutlu Emre Yilmaz

The article examines the UK movement People’s Assembly against Austerity. It probes the extent to which opposition to austerity expressed on Twitter contributes to building bridges among disparate social groups affected by austerity politics and to enabling their joint collective action. The study aims to add to the scholarship on anti-austerity protests since the credit crunch. Numerous of those protests have been accompanied by vibrant activity on social media. Rather than to propose yet another examination of participant mobilisation on social media, the analysis delineates and seeks to evidence a process of social learning among the social media following of a social movement. Relying on a combination of social network, semantic and discourse analysis, the authors discuss movement social learning as a diffusion process transpiring in the communication over an extended period of substantive and organisational issues, strategy and critical reflections that crystallised a cohesive in-group among the participant entities in the People’s Assembly.


Author(s):  
Ю.В. Ковалева

Представлено продолжение историографического и психолого-исторического анализа научных представлений о больших социальных группах в соответствии с этапами развития социальной психологии и статуса таких групп в различные исторические периоды жизни страны. Начало этого анализа представлено в публикации (Ковалева, 2020), в которой была реализована первая задача исследования по определению исторических рамок, в которые понятие «большие социальные группы» получило свое развитие. Также было показано решение второй задачи, а именно была дана характеристика общественно-политическим условиям и уровню гуманитарного знания для двух первых из выделенных периодов - становления социально-психологического направления исследований в России (вторая половина ХIХ - начало ХХ вв.) и развития социальной психологии в 1920-е и до середины 1930-х гг. Продолжение статьи посвящено решению второй задачи для трех последующих периодов - латентного этапа в становлении социальной психологии (середина 1930-х - 1950-е гг.), возрождения отечественной социальной психологии (1960-е - середина 1970-х гг.) и оформления современной отечественной социальной психологии в систему научного знания (середина 1970-х - 1980-е гг.). Описаны масштабные события, приводившие к значительным и очень разнородным трансформациям общественной структуры в изучаемые годы, приведены редко публикуемые данные о социальной динамике в стране в годы Великой Отечественной войны, а также об усложнении социальной структуры и общественных настроений после Победы. В связи с этим отмечаются упущенные возможности по социально-психологическому исследованию больших социальных групп, но одновременно подчеркивается высокий прогресс в накоплении теоретического и эмпирического материала после восстановления социальной психологии как научной отрасли. The continuation of historiographic and historical-psychological analysis of scientific ideas about large social groups in accordance with the stages of development of social psychology and the status of such groups in various historical periods of the country's life was presented. The beginning of this analysis is presented in a publication (Kovaleva, 2020), in which the first task of the study was realized to determine the historical framework in which the concept of «large social groups» was developed. The solution of the second problem was also shown, namely, the characterization of socio-political conditions and the level of humanitarian knowledge was given for the first two of the selected periods - the formation of the socio-psychological direction of research in Russia (second half of the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries) and the development of social psychology in the 1920s. The continuation of the article was devoted to solving the second problem for three subsequent periods - the latent stage in the formation of social psychology (1930-50s), the revival of domestic social psychology (1960s) and the design of modern domestic social psychology into the system of scientific knowledge (1970-80s). Large-scale events leading to significant and very heterogeneous transformations of the social structure in the studied years are described, rarely published data on the social dynamics in the country during the Great Patriotic War, as well as on the complication of the social structure and public sentiments after the Victory. In this regard, there are lost opportunities for socio-psychological research of large social groups, but at the same time high progress in the accumulation of theoretical and empirical material after the restoration of this scientific industry is emphasized.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022110235
Author(s):  
Anna Stefaniak ◽  
Michael J. A. Wohl

The racial demographic shift occurring in many Western countries provides a unique context to study the reactions of a high-power group (White people) to the potential loss of their privileged position in society. Three experiments ( N = 77, N = 302, N = 555) conducted in Canada, the US, and the UK showed that White people who are reminded about the ongoing demographic changes and who see race relations as a zero-sum game whereby any gains by minorities must come at the expense of the majority, experience stronger collective angst and, to a lesser extent, fear (but not anger). In turn, collective angst, but not the other negative group-based emotions, fuels their motivation to protect the existing intergroup hierarchy by withdrawing support for progressive social movements and increases anti-immigration sentiments. Downregulating the existential threat experienced by White majorities in the face of a racial demographic shift may be one way to reduce acrimonious behavioral intentions aimed at preserving their place in the social hierarchy.


1996 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-47
Author(s):  
Thomas O. Blank
Keyword(s):  

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
Charles G. McClintock ◽  
D. Michael Kuhlman

1977 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 403-403
Author(s):  
KARL E. WEICK
Keyword(s):  

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