Interaction, Social Worlds, and Figurational Structures

2022 ◽  
pp. 19-45
Author(s):  
John Scott
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).


Author(s):  
David S. Kirk

This book is about building credible science to address the challenge of criminal recidivism. It does so by drawing upon a unique natural experiment that presented an opportunity to witness an alternate reality. More than 625,000 individuals are released from prison in the United States each year, and roughly half of these individuals will be back in prison within just three years. A likely contributor to the churning of the same individuals in and out of prison is the fact that many released prisoners return home to the same environment with the same criminal opportunities and criminal peers that proved so detrimental to their behavior prior to incarceration. This study uses Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment for examining the question of whether residential relocation away from an old neighborhood can lead to desistance from crime. Many prisoners released soon after Katrina could not go back to their old neighborhoods, as they normally would have done. Their neighborhoods were devastated by a once-in-a-generation storm that damaged the vast majority of housing units in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina provided a rare opportunity to investigate what happens when individuals move not just a short distance, but to entirely different cities, counties, and social worlds. This study draws upon both quantitative and qualitative evidence to reveal where newly released prisoners resided in the wake of the Katrina, the effect of residential relocation on the likelihood of reincarceration through eight years post-release, and the mechanisms revealing why residential change is so important after release from prison.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Dinah Birch

A man … is so in the way in the house!’ A vivid and affectionate portrait of a provincial town in early Victorian England, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women. Undaunted by poverty, but dismayed by changes brought by the railway and by new commercial practices, the ladies of Cranford respond to disruption with both suspicion and courage. Miss Matty and her sister Deborah uphold standards and survive personal tragedy and everyday dramas; innovation may bring loss, but it also brings growth, and welcome freedoms. Cranford suggests that representatives of different and apparently hostile social worlds, their minds opened by sympathy and suffering, can learn from each other. Its social comedy develops into a study of generous reconciliation, of a kind that will value the past as it actively shapes the future. This edition includes two related short pieces by Gaskell, ‘The Last Generation in England’ and ‘The Cage at Cranford’, as well as a selection from the diverse literary and social contexts in which the Cranford tales take their place.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine V Talbot ◽  
Pam Briggs

Abstract People with dementia can experience shrinkage of their social worlds, leading to a loss of independence, control and reduced well-being. We used ‘the shrinking world’ theory to examine how the COVID 19 pandemic has impacted the lives of people with early to middle stage dementia and what longer-term impacts may result. Interviews were conducted with 19 people with dementia and a thematic analysis generated five themes: the forgotten person with dementia, confusion over government guidance, deterioration of cognitive function, loss of meaning and social isolation, safety of the lockdown bubble. The findings suggest that the pandemic has accelerated the ‘shrinking world’ effect and created tension in how people with dementia perceive the outside world. Participants felt safe and secure in lockdown but also missed the social interaction, cognitive stimulation and meaningful activities that took place outdoors. As time in lockdown continued, these individuals experienced a loss of confidence and were anxious about their ability to re-engage in the everyday practises that allow them to participate in society. We recommend ways in which the government, communities and organisations might counteract some of the harms posed by this shrinking world.


Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Siragusa ◽  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

Abstract Communication, an apparently intangible practice, does in fact affect the way people engage with their social worlds in very material ways. Inspired by both ethnographic and archival-driven research, this special issue aims to fill the gap in studies of language materiality by addressing entanglements with other-than-human agencies. The contributions of this special issue on verbal and non-verbal communicative practices among Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Global North and the South interpret language materiality as practice- and process-oriented, performative, and embodied relations between humans and other-than-human actors. The articles cover three major sub-themes, which ostensibly intertwine to a greater or lesser degree in all the works: (in-)visible actors and elements-related language; language materiality narrating and producing sociality; and the emotions and affect of language. The topic of this special issue, the materiality of languages, manifested in multiple engagements with the environment, proves particularly critical at the moment, given the current environmental crisis and the need to comprehend in more depth social relations with numerous other-than-human agencies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
RACHAEL DOBSON

AbstractThis article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.


1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Leyendecker ◽  
Michael E. Lamb ◽  
Axel Scholmerich ◽  
Maria P. Fracasso

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Lodge

This article examines the role played by the social worlds of primary school children in producing and reproducing a range of masculine identities. It describes the relatively gender-segregated nature of the culture of middle-childhood, arguing that the specific institutional context reinforces this segregation. The article outlines the range of masculinities documented in the primary school playground and examines the ways in which both the school institution and the peer-group define and police the boundaries of masculinity. The school negatively labels dominant, assertive males through certain institutional practices and attitudes. Certain boys with more androgynous styles are of higher status with peers in this context. The impact of other identities on the relative status of boys is examined. It is shown how those boys who are differently abled are of lower status. Peers perceive them as less socially mature. Their relative invisibility and stigmatisation is partly a consequence of institutional practices.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 650-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie J. Shook ◽  
Russ Clay

A considerable amount of research indicates that political conservatives and liberals perceive their social worlds very differently, with conservatives perceiving the world more negatively than liberals. Two studies examined how these varying perceptions may develop by exploring the relation between political ideology and attitude formation. In both studies, participants completed an evaluative conditioning paradigm in which novel stimuli were paired with either positive or negative images. Political conservatives were more susceptible to conditioning with negative stimuli than conditioning with positive stimuli as compared to political liberals. Specifically, conservatives were less susceptible to conditioning with positive stimuli than liberals. Conditioning with negative stimuli did not differ by political ideology. These findings suggest fundamental differences in the formation of positive versus negative attitudes between conservatives and liberals.


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