Control and Responsibility: Moral and Religious Issues in Lay Health Accounts

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Medical Sociology ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Health Accounts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Health Field

In sociological work of an empirical nature the concept of control tends to have a taken-for-granted quality. Similarly in the field of medical sociology when control is mentioned in relation to health and illness it is often presented in a unidimensional manner. This article analyses the relationship between control and responsibility for health in the lay accounts of male Glaswegians. Activist and fatalist dimensions were found in their thinking. However, activist thinking was seen to have three strands: personal activism, social activism, and religious activism. Further, fatalistic thinking was not about passive submission but rather the belief that control lay outwith the person in the realm of the social, natural or supernatural worlds. These findings demonstrate the subtle ways in which people relate to issues of control and responsibility in the health realm – a subtlety which is not fully brought out either in the theoretical or empirical work of social scientists researching in the health field.

Social Representations and Health Psychology

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Joffe
Keyword(s):  
Health Psychology ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Health Field ◽  
Specific Contribution

The author examines the specific contribution that social representations research has made to health psychology. In particular, the approach highlights the symbolic, emotive and social aspects of how lay people make meaning of facets of health and illness, and emphasizes the importance of the evolution of these meanings. Empirical work on health and illness is used to cast light on the specific workings of social representations and on the enrichment of the health field offered by this naturalistic perspective. Distinctions are drawn between the social representations approach and other social constructionist approaches in the health field. In addition, the differentiation between social representations and more mainstream approaches to health issues is examined. Primarily, the social representations approach eschews the notion of human thought as analogous to information processing, with the attendant individualist, cognitivist and rationalist assumptions, and recognizes the importance of non-verbal material in the study of the human psyche.

Bioethics and Social Studies of Medicine: Overlapping Concerns

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEIGH TURNER
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Practical Recommendations

Polemicists and disciplinary puritans commonly make a sharp distinction between the normative, “prescriptive,” philosophical work of bioethicists and the empirical, “descriptive” work of anthropologists and sociologists studying medicine, healthcare, and illness. Though few contemporary medical anthropologists and sociologists of health and illness subscribe to positivism, the legacy of positivist thought persists in some areas of the social sciences. It is still quite common for social scientists to insist that their work does not contain explicit normative analysis, offers no practical recommendations for social reform or policy making, and simply interprets social worlds.

Imagination and Art

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Swedberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the role of imagination and the arts in helping social scientists to theorize well. However deep one's basic knowledge of social theory is, and however many concepts, mechanisms, and theories one knows, unless this knowledge is used in an imaginative way, the result will be dull and noncreative. A good research topic should among other things operate as an analogon—that is, it should be able to set off the theoretical imagination of the social scientist. Then, when a social scientist writes, he or she may want to write in such a way that the reader's theoretical imagination is stirred. Besides imagination, the chapter also discusses the relationship of social theory to art. There are a number of reason for this, including the fact that in modern society, art is perceived as the height of imagination and creativity.

scholarly journals What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 671-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Mesny
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Public Sociology ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to clarify or to reposition some of the controversies generated by Burawoy’s defense of public sociology and by his vision of the mutually stimulating relationship between the different forms of sociology. Before arguing if, why, and how, sociology should or could be more ‘public’, it might be useful to reflect upon what it is we think we, as sociologists, know that ‘lay people’ do not. This paper thus explores the public sociology debate’s epistemological core, namely the issue of the relationship between sociologists’ and non-sociologists’ knowledge of the social world. Four positions regarding the status of sociologists’ knowledge versus lay people’s knowledge are explored: superiority (sociologists’ knowledge of the social world is more accurate, objective and reflexive than lay people’s knowledge, thanks to science’s methods and norms), homology (when they are made explicit, lay theories about the social world often parallel social scientists’ theories), complementarity (lay people’s and social scientists’ knowledge complement one another. The former’s local, embedded knowledge is essential to the latter’s general, disembedded knowledge), and circularity (sociologists’ knowledge continuously infuses commonsensical knowledge, and scientific knowledge about the social world is itself rooted in common sense knowledge. Each form of knowledge feeds the other). For each of these positions, implications are drawn regarding the terms, possibilities and conditions of a dialogue between sociologists and their publics, especially if we are to take the circularity thesis seriously. Conclusions point to the accountability we face towards the people we study, and to the idea that sociology is always performative, a point that has, to some extent, been obscured by Burawoy’s distinctions between professional, critical, policy and public sociologies.

scholarly journals Ancient Greek History and Contemporary Social Science

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
State Government ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Greek History ◽  
The Relationship

Social scientists and political theorists have recently come to realize the potential importance of the classical Greek world and its legacy for testing social theories. Meanwhile, some Hellenists have mastered the techniques of contemporary social science. They have come to recognize the value of formal and quantitative methods as a complement to traditional qualitative approaches to Greek history and culture. Some of the most exciting new work in social science is now being done within interdisciplinary domains for which recent work on Greece provides apt case studies. This book features essays examining the role played by democratic political and legal institutions in economic development; the potential for inter-state cooperation and international institutions within a decentralized ecology of states; the relationship between state government and the social networks arising from voluntary associations; the interplay between political culture, informal politics, formal institutions and political change; and the relationship between empirical and formal methods of analysis and normative political theory. In sum, this book introduces readers to the emerging field of “social science ancient history.”

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

scholarly journals Prototipos interpretativos, prácticas de apropiación y luchas simbólicas. Replanteando las relaciones entre estos términos a la luz de un estudio empírico sobre la recepción del tango

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 1089
Author(s):  
María de los Ángeles Montes
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
Previous Operation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Toda práctica de apropiación supone dos cosas: por una parte, se encuentra motivada por los intereses del agente social. Por la otra, supone a la interpretación como operación lógicamente anterior. Tan anterior se la concibe, que la semiótica cognitiva prescindió por completo del estudio de los usos de los signos. Sin embargo, creemos que existen razones para revisar el vínculo entre apropiación e interpretación, y la relación de esto último con los intereses de los intérpretes. Esta es la tesis que pretendemos desarrollar, que surge como resultado de un trabajo empírico sobre la recepción del tango por parte de milongueros.All appropriation practices suppose two things: on the one hand, it is motivated by the interests of the social agent. On the other, it assumes interpretation as a logical previous operation. This is so to such an extent that cognitive semiotics completely disregarded the study of the uses of signs. However, we believe that there are reasons to review the link between appropriation and interpretation, and the relationship of the latter with the interests of the interpreters. This is the thesis that we intend to develop, which arises as a result of an empirical work on the reception of tango by milongueros.

Equalitarianism: A source of liberal bias

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo M Winegard ◽  
Cory J Clark ◽  
Connor R Hasty ◽  
Roy Baumeister
Keyword(s):  
Order Effects ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liberal Ideology ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So ◽  
Liberal Bias

Recent scholarship has challenged the long-held assumption in the social sciences that Conservatives are more biased than Liberals, contending that the predominance of Liberals in social science may have caused social scientists to ignore liberal bias. Here, we demonstrate that Liberals are particularly prone to bias about victims’ groups (e.g. Blacks, Muslims, women) andidentify a trait that consistently predicts this bias. This trait, termed Equalitarianism, stems from an aversion to inequality and is comprised of three interrelated assumptions: (1) demographic groups do not differ biologically; (2) prejudice is ubiquitous; (3) society can, and should, make all groups equal in society. This leads to bias against information that portrays a perceived privileged group more favorably than a perceived victims’ group. Eight studies (n=3,274) support this theory. Liberalism was associated with perceiving certain groups as victims (Studies 1a-1b). In Studies 2-7, Liberals evaluated the same study as less credible when the results concluded that a privileged group (men and Whites) had a superior quality relative to a victims’ group (women and Blacks) than vice versa. Ruling out alternative explanations of Bayesian (or other normative) reasoning, significant order effects in within-subjects designs in Studies 6 and 7 suggest that Liberals think that they should not evaluate identical information differently depending on which group is said to have a superior quality, yet do so. In all studies, higher equalitarianism mediated the relationship between more liberal ideology and lower credibility ratings when privileged groups were said to score higher on a socially valuable trait.

scholarly journals A legacy of silence: the intersections of medical sociology and disability studies

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2021-012198
Author(s):  
Gareth Martin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Medical Sociology ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Interdisciplinary Dialogue ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

Disability remains on the margins of the social sciences. Even where disability is foregrounded as a category of analysis, accounts regularly emerge in silos, with little interdisciplinary dialogue acknowledging the potential intersections and points of convergence. This discord is particularly acute within medical sociology and disability studies, yet there is mostly a legacy of silence about the relationship between the two disciplines. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study with parents of disabled children in the UK, I show the value of meshing ideas and tropes from medical sociology and disability studies to make sense of parents’ lived experiences. They described the challenges of living with 'impairment' and a need to readjust expectations. At the same time, parents were keen to not align with a deficit framing of their lives. They talked in affirmative terms about their children as sources of joy and vitality, perceived themselves as ‘normal’, and described convivial, even unremarkable, interactions in public spaces. Yet, parents encountered difficulties when navigating institutional settings and bureaucratic arrangements, or what was commonly referred to as ‘the system’. Their troubles were not located in their children’s bodies, but in—as per a disability studies sensibility—cultural and structural systems preventing their capacity to live well. I argue that both disability studies and medical sociology offer something to the analysis, thereby recognising the gains of not simply buying into the tradition of one worldview. I conclude by imploring for more concrete conversations between both disciplines.

History, Villagers, and the Social Scientists: Wrestling with the Past in the Present

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Tracy McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Urals ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Historical Ethnography ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

What is the relationship between the historical Soviet countryside and the post-Soviet present both for the scholars who study them and for the population that inhabits them? Together Margaret Paxson, Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village; Jessica Allina-Pisano, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth; and Douglas Rogers, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals create a rich, nuanced portrait of contemporary rural life in parts of the former Soviet Union. When one reads the three books together, one finds evidence of interesting continuity alongside dynamism and change that varies depending on the region and on the questions that motivated the researcher. The three works ask in varied ways how individuals in post-Soviet society perceive their world and attempt to live in it. The three studies extend far and wide across the territory of the former Soviet Union: Solovyovo, three hundred miles north of Moscow; the Black Earth, more than four hundred miles to the south; and Sepych, about one thousand miles to the east.

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