4. Paths and Semipaths: Reconceptualizing Structural Cohesion in Terms of Directed Relations

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Grannis

In a groundbreaking article, Moody and White (2003) introduced the concept of structural cohesion, simultaneously characterizing emergent communities and their internally embedded layers by the number of node-independent paths interconnecting individuals. Like many studies, however, they “corrected” the directionality discovered in some of their data. While often done for important purposes, doing so potentially confounds structural cohesion with unrelated concepts. Some relations, especially those relating to the dynamic aspects of social life, are inherently directed, in whole or in part, and it may prove worthwhile to respect this directionality. In this article, I recast structural cohesion in terms of directed social relations and identify four distinct ways of measuring it. In two example data sets—hiring relations among graduate programs and trust relations among neighborhood residents—I show that only strong embeddedness, a type of structural cohesion emerging from directed relations, proves to be a powerful, robust, independent explanatory factor. I further show that if the directionality in the data in these examples had been “corrected,” the importance of structural cohesion would have been dramatically undervalued.

1997 ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Valentyna Bodak

Society is a person in its social relations. If the term "society" is used to determine reality as a system of interconnections and relationships between people, then its social system appears as an entity in which human societies are diverse in character and social role. Social life is expressed in the grouping of members of society on the basis of certain objectively predetermined types of relations between them. The integrity and unity of religious communities, their qualitative specificity determines the content of the doctrine and cult, on which they grow.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 567
Author(s):  
Feng Qu

The case study in this paper is on the Daur (as well as the Evenki, Buriat, and Bargu Mongols) in Hulun Buir, Northeast China. The aim of this research is to examine how shamanic rituals function as a conduit to actualize communications between the clan members and their shaman ancestors. Through examinations and observations of Daur and other Indigenous shamanic rituals in Northeast China, this paper argues that the human construction of the shamanic landscape brings humans, other-than-humans, and things together into social relations in shamanic ontologies. Inter-human metamorphosis is crucial to Indigenous self-conceptualization and identity. Through rituals, ancestor spirits are active actors involved in almost every aspect of modern human social life among these Indigenous peoples.


1981 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Brow

An adequate understanding of the complex connections between changes in the social relations of production and changes in the bases of group formation demands an historical approach in which consciousness and its ideological products are viewed dynamically, not as the mechanically determined superstructural reflections of material relations but as an active and constituent components of everyday social life. The concepts required for such an analysis are developed here, drawing on the seminal work of both Marx and Weber, as well as on more recent scholarship, and are applied to recent changes in agrarian relations and ideological practice in Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewi Yermawati Enjhela

AbstractThe challenges in today’s global word are increasingle surprising human life, especially at the end of 2019, with the emergence of a pendemic, namely the Corona Virus (Covid-19). The emergence of this pandemic raises various concerns for the world and especially for social life. Of these challenges the autor treis to provide various explanations about these challenges and in relation to how our attitudes or interactions with others, especially in the world of cristian education. This article offers an approach using qualitative approach literature in Theological theory research, and qualitive desciptive research, that the application of cristianeducational behavior in responding to chelenges in this pandemic era is the value of applying the faith of a Cristian in social relations between people in the mids of challenges. In times of this pandemic.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-71
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Cash

Research on godparenthood has traditionally emphasized its stabilizing effect on social structure. This article, however, focuses attention on how the practices and discourses associated with marital sponsorship in the Republic of Moldova ascribe value to the risks and uncertainties of social life. Moldova has experienced substantial economic, social, and political upheaval during the past two decades of postsocialism, following a longer period of Soviet-era modernization, secularization, and rural–urban migration. In this context, godparenthood has not contributed to the long-term stability of class structure or social relations, but people continue to seek honor and social respect by taking the social and economic risks involved in sponsoring new marriages.


Author(s):  
Hanne Veber

“Society” appears a difficult notion. We use it all the time. But is it any good as an analytical concept? Sociologists seem to agree it is not. Few societies have the empirical characteristics of the bounded entity that structural-functionalist theory assumed. Constructivist notions of society as “imagined community” appear to be tied up with the existence of the State or with the spread of information technology. This leaves contemporary anthropology with “society” as a residue, the left-over from culture’s gluttonous theoretical supper. Still, social science aims to explain or understand social relations, interactions, and the processes by which structures and functions are worked into social systems as implied by the notion of society. The notion of society allows us to assume the existence of objective structures of order in the social life of people. Unlike the notion of culture, however, the notion of society has not been critically scrutinized by anthropologists. In contemporary Danish anthropology with its focus on culture and cultural representations, writers tend to simply take society for granted as the intrinsic empirical context of culture. From the perspective of Durkheimian notions of “the social”, the paper provides a brief review of interpretations that retrospectively have appeared analytical dead-ends. The author goes on to suggest that the notion of “symbolically generalized media of communication” may offer a productive opening that embraces both sides of the culture/society dichotomy in the search for structured systems of social existence whether subjectively or objectively conceived. The idea of “symbolically generalized media or communication” was originally formulated by Talcott Parsons and subsequently reworked by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Rather than an interrelated series of parts that make up a whole plus something else in the classic Durkheimian sense, society from this perspective appears in the form of structured sets of actions oriented by a horizon of possibilities and expectations, symbolically constituted, yet always provisional and emergent. Inspired by analyses of two different cases in Amazonian research the paper offers a brief hint at how the notion may be employed in anthropology.


2020 ◽  
pp. 304-318
Author(s):  
Ikhtiar Hatta

This study suggests the application of the syiar method as part of the relationship between the Alawiyyin to build their unity in living their social life with other communities. This study applies a historical approach that looks at how the Alawiyyin started with the construction of a social arena through an operational life order with Islamic faith and the noble values of the Alawiyyin, how the Alawiyyin lives and maintain the existing order in social relations. The results shows that through the institutions, norms, and symbolic apparatus covering the life of the Alawiyyin. Functionally, it could support their existence as a foreign Alawiyyin community in Maluku. Furthermore, this study reveals that the Alawiyyin builds their social arena by relating religious life and daily life practices. Through the teaching mode of the life of his ancestors, the prophet Muhammad, can form belief and devotion to Allah. In addition, it contributes positively to maintaining the lineage (genealogy) of the Alawiyyin in the middle of the arena of social life that continuously mix through the process of amalgamation. Apparatus that supports stability, commitment to love/loyalty of those around them is maintained through practice, grave pilgrimage, reading ratib, dhikr, proselytization, becoming a muhibbin, tasawuf, tawassul, barsanji, and kafaah marriage.


Harmoni ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-240
Author(s):  
M. Alie Humaedi

The relationship between Islam and Christianity in various regions is often confronted with situations caused by external factors. They no longer debate the theological aspect, but are based on the political economy and social culture aspects. In the Dieng village, the economic resources are mostly dominated by Christians as early Christianized product as the process of Kiai Sadrach's chronicle. Economic mastery was not originally as the main trigger of the conflict. However, as the political map post 1965, in which many Muslims affiliated to the Indonesian Communist Party convert to Christianity, the relationship between Islam and Christianity is heating up. The question of the dominance of political economic resources of Christians is questionable. This research to explore the socio cultural and religious impact of the conversion of PKI to Christian in rural Dieng and Slamet Pekalongan and Banjarnegara. This qualitative research data was extracted by in-depth interviews, observations and supported by data from Dutch archives, National Archives and Christian Synod of Salatiga. Research has found the conversion of the PKI to Christianity has sparked hostility and deepened the social relations of Muslims and Christians in Kasimpar, Petungkriono and Karangkobar. The culprit widened by involving the network of Wonopringgo Islamic Boarding. It is often seen that existing conflicts are no longer latent, but lead to a form of manifest conflict that decomposes in the practice of social life.


Author(s):  
Yevhen Tkachenko ◽  

As a result of this study, the family law regulation of matrimonial property relations was found to have its specific mechanism which is defined as a single system of legal ways and means providing mainly dispositive legal influence on family relations that allows significant influence of individual self-regulation and restrictions of prohibitions. At the present stage of study, this mechanism is considered as a ‘complex’ phenomenon which has several layers. Therefore, different interpretations of the mechanism for family law regulation of matrimonial property relations, derived at various levels, show not only their distinctive but also their common features. Determination of heterogeneous circumstances affecting the matrimonial property relations requires an analysis of the content and legal regulation of the relations related to property ones, since they are influenced by the mechanism for family law regulation of matrimonial property relations. Therefore, the methodology is the most essential element of this mechanism: it reveals the basic legal principles of family law regulation and directly connects legal tools with the objectively determined needs of social life by using the regulatory functions of law. The structure of the methodology of the mechanism for family law regulation of matrimonial property relations includes permits, prohibitions, instructions, incentives, obligations, sanctions and other ways to influence proper relationships. Methods of family law regulation are determined as methods of legal influence on the relevant social relations. They reflect the essence of a particular legal regime of regulation, while serving as a unifying principle which groups the system of family law and other legal phenomena within the institutions of family law. In this sense, the main methods of legal regulation are the method of subordination and the method of coordination. As a result, it is determined that each family law method reflects a special legal regime of regulation and depends on the formation of a specific set of techniques and means of regulation, among which a special place is occupied by general permits and general prohibitions.


Author(s):  
Michael Szonyi

This chapter shows how military households strategized within the Ming state's registration system and how their assignment to the region generated new kinds of social relations. It explains how Ming military institutions have shaped local social life over the centuries and how their legacies shape social relations even up to the present day. The chapter also discusses the variety of approaches and methods members of military households used to integrate into the existing communities around them, sometimes infiltrating and taking over existing community organizations such as temples and thereby developing and maintaining a separate communal identity within the larger society, sometimes integrating as individuals and families with that society and blending into it. It explores the families' process in moving between different regulatory systems and tried to even take over existing social organizations. A small temple in the village of Hutou provides an illustration of how these new social relations could endure.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document