The Development of Positive Attributes of Character: On the Embodiment of Specificity, Holism, and Self-System Processes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Lerner ◽  
Marc H. Bornstein ◽  
Pamela Jervis
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Character Development ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Developmental Systems ◽  
Character System ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Holistic Integration ◽  
Positive Character ◽  
Self System

Positive character involves a system of mutually beneficial relations between individual and context that coherently vary across ontogenetic time and enable individuals to engage the social world as moral agents. We present ideas about the development of positive character attributes using three constructs associated with relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory: the specificity of mutually beneficial individual<-->context dynamics across time and place; holistic integration of dynamic processes of an individual with both context and all cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes; and integration of the character-system with other facets of the self-system. These features of RDS-based ideas coalesce on the embodiment of positive character development. We discuss the need for more robust interrogation of embodied features of the character development system by suggesting that coaction of morphological/physiological processes with cultural processes become part of a program of the integrated individual<-->contextual processes involved in the description, explanation, and optimization of positive character attribute development. We discuss moments of programmatic research that should be involved in this interrogation and point to the potential contribution of theory-predicated research about the embodied development of positive character attributes of to enhancing the presence of moral agency and social justice in the world.

Practicing Narrative Inquiry II

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-328
Author(s):  
Arthur P. Bochner ◽  
Andrew F. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Small Story ◽  
The Life Course

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.

scholarly journals Predictors of free-roaming domestic dogs' contact network centrality and their relevance for rabies control

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Warembourg ◽  
Guillaume Fournié ◽  
Mahamat Fayiz Abakar ◽  
Danilo Alvarez ◽  
Monica Berger-González ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Small World ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Contact Network ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Dog Ownership ◽  
Contact Patterns ◽  
Rabies Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Sites

AbstractFree roaming domestic dogs (FRDD) are the main vectors for rabies transmission to humans worldwide. To eradicate rabies from a dog population, current recommendations focus on random vaccination with at least 70% coverage. Studies suggest that targeting high-risk subpopulations could reduce the required vaccination coverage, and increase the likelihood of success of elimination campaigns. The centrality of a dog in a contact network can be used as a measure of its potential contribution to disease transmission. Our objectives were to investigate social networks of FRDD in eleven study sites in Chad, Guatemala, Indonesia and Uganda, and to identify characteristics of dogs, and their owners, associated with their centrality in the networks. In all study sites, networks had small-world properties and right-skewed degree distributions, suggesting that vaccinating highly connected dogs would be more effective than random vaccination. Dogs were more connected in rural than urban settings, and the likelihood of contacts was negatively correlated with the distance between dogs’ households. While heterogeneity in dog's connectedness was observed in all networks, factors predicting centrality and likelihood of contacts varied across networks and countries. We therefore hypothesize that the investigated dog and owner characteristics resulted in different contact patterns depending on the social, cultural and economic context. We suggest to invest into understanding of the sociocultural structures impacting dog ownership and thus driving dog ecology, a requirement to assess the potential of targeted vaccination in dog populations.

If One Does Not Have the Spirit of Christ, One Does Not Belong to Him

2020 ◽  
pp. 134-166
Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Bazzana
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Productive Role

This chapter attends to the social and ethical functions of the religious experience of possession in the Pauline groups. Recent ethnographic literature has illustrated how spirit possession can have a truly “productive” role in shaping social structures, ways of knowing, moral agency, and even the formation of individual subjectivities. This chapter shows that these same traits are recognizable in the Pauline Christ groups. Specific attention are given to the forms in which possession enables a poiesis of the past. The sense of temporality underlying such an experience is remarkably different from the archival and academic study of history typical of western modernity. Through his very embodiment of the πνεῦμα‎ of Christ, Paul (and arguably the other members of his groups) could make the person of Christ present in a way that affectively and effectively informed not only their remembrance of and interaction with the past but also their moral agency and even their subjectification as Christ believers.

Experimental Approaches to Studying Ethical-Unethical Behavior in Organizations

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Klebe Trevino
Keyword(s):  
Unethical Behavior ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Test Theory ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Social Scientific Study ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Field Experimentation ◽  
Social Scientific

The social scientific study of ethical-unethical behavior in work organizations is in an early stage of development. This paper discusses some of the problems of conducting social scientific research in this area and explores the potential contribution of experimental research approaches. Both laboratory and field experimentation allow the investigator to test theory-based hypotheses and to study causal relations. Examples are provided of investigations that have applied these methods to the study of business ethics.

‘You Decide’: Relationship-Based Knowledge and Parents’ Participation in High-Risk Child Protection Crisis Interventions

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1743-1757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Saar-Heiman ◽  
Michal Krumer-Nevo
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Parental Participation ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Risk Child ◽  
Distinguishing Features ◽  
Crisis Situations

Abstract In the scholarly writing on child protection, there is a broad consensus regarding the importance of parents’ participation in knowledge-production processes. However, there is limited research on the conditions required to make parental participation possible in high-risk crisis situations. In particular, there is a dearth of writing that takes into consideration the context of poverty that influences families’ lives and the power imbalances between social workers and parents that are evident in these processes. Through a case illustration of a high-risk crisis situation in the Israeli child protection system, this article examines the potential contribution of a developing critical paradigm—the Poverty-Aware Paradigm—to the promotion of parents’ participation in high-risk crisis situations. Specifically, it points to ‘relationship-based knowledge’ as an organizing axis for knowledge production, and to its derivative, ‘dialogue on power/knowledge’, as a useful practice in child protection interventions. The case analysis reveals three distinguishing features of this dialogue: (i) the social worker holds a dialectic stance regarding knowledge; (ii) the social worker and the parents negotiate their interpretations; and (iii) the social worker shares common hopes and worries with the parents.

scholarly journals Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together: Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation Using Twitter Data

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Barberá
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Latent Variable ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Online Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Party Registration ◽  
Twitter Users

Politicians and citizens increasingly engage in political conversations on social media outlets such as Twitter. In this article, I show that the structure of the social networks in which they are embedded can be a source of information about their ideological positions. Under the assumption that social networks are homophilic, I develop a Bayesian Spatial Following model that considers ideology as a latent variable, whose value can be inferred by examining which politics actors each user is following. This method allows us to estimate ideology for more actors than any existing alternative, at any point in time and across many polities. I apply this method to estimate ideal points for a large sample of both elite and mass public Twitter users in the United States and five European countries. The estimated positions of legislators and political parties replicate conventional measures of ideology. The method is also able to successfully classify individuals who state their political preferences publicly and a sample of users matched with their party registration records. To illustrate the potential contribution of these estimates, I examine the extent to which online behavior during the 2012 US presidential election campaign is clustered along ideological lines.

Missionary Zeal and the Scholarly Stance: Policy and Commitment in Research on Old Age

1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Smith
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThere is a danger that the ‘missionary zeal’ exhibited by some social gerontologists in the interests of those members of society who are older than others, may endanger the subject's ‘scholarly stance’ and the potential contribution to social policy of research on old age. This paper discusses four facets of the matter: (1) the anticipated values underpinning policies of state welfare (2) personal feelings and values in the business of research (3) values and the kind of data we value and (4) the question of whose side we are on. The paper concludes with a theoretical model of the relationship between the social policy process and the social research process as framework for understanding exactly how values about ageing impact both research about ageing and the relationship between that research and relevant social policies.

scholarly journals PENDIDIKAN KARAKTER ISLAMI DAN PEMBERDAYAAN KEARIFAN LOKAL DALAM PAUD

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Syamsul Bachri Thalib
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Character Development ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Environmental Care ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Based

Character education as an effort designed to systematically and continuously to form the personality of students based on noble norms which are upheld highly by society. Cultural factors and social environment including religious values, norms, socio-cultural changes, and the goals or expectations to be achieved which reflected in the social interaction relationship is potentially have an effect and contribution to the character development of students. Therefore, the family-based and the local Islamic wisdom character education should become the main focus from the beginning or from the early childhood. Character values that can be developed include obedient attitudes and behaviors in implementing the values of religion, honesty, discipline, environmental care, social care, and values oriented to the development of noble character. Teachers and education personnels play an important role in stimulating the development of the character and personality of early childhood.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document