Commodities in Action: Measuring Embeddedness and Imposing Values

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Koponen
Keyword(s):  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Economic Action ◽  
Politics Of Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Market Relations

Recent approaches in political economy look at the effects of technology and social values on economic action. Combining these approaches with those of economic anthropologists, this article poses that the way the economy is instituted can be understood by looking at reasons actors have for participating in actor-networks of production, distribution and consumption. Using the author's research on American recycling, this article first shows that much of the ‘making’ or instituting of the economy happens outside the market, through political machinations, contracts and standards. Second, it suggests that these relationships impose value upon goods differently than do market relations. The details of the recycling ‘chain’ show the ways actors shape the network and demonstrate that the social values that add ‘economic value’ to goods are not uniform, but are highly contextual. Starting from Mark Granovetter's notion of ‘social embeddedness’, the article explains that the measure of social embeddedness is not as important as the values imposed upon other actors through social structure in the economy. It calls for a close observation of economic action in the locales within which production takes place to understand better the ‘actions-at-a-distance’ where the politics of technology, social movements and power create the empirical, instituted economy. The central question for sociological theory can then be put as follows: How is it possible that subjective meanings become objective facticities? Or, in terms appropriate to the afore mentioned theoretical positions: How is it possible that human activity (Handeln) should produce a world of things (choses)?

Commodities in Action: Measuring Embeddedness and Imposing Values

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Koponen
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Economic Action ◽  
Politics Of Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Market Relations

Recent approaches in political economy look at the effects of technology and social values on economic action. Combining these approaches with those of economic anthropologists, this article poses that the way the economy is instituted can be understood by looking at reasons actors have for participating in actor-networks of production, distribution and consumption. Using the author's research on American recycling, this article first shows that much of the ‘making’ or instituting of the economy happens outside the market, through political machinations, contracts and standards. Second, it suggests that these relationships impose value upon goods differently than do market relations. The details of the recycling ‘chain’ show the ways actors shape the network and demonstrate that the social values that add ‘economic value’ to goods are not uniform, but are highly contextual. Starting from Mark Granovetter's notion of ‘social embeddedness', the article explains that the measure of social embeddedness is not as important as the values imposed upon other actors through social structure in the economy. It calls for a close observation of economic action in the locales within which production takes place to understand better the ‘actions-at-a-distance’ where the politics of technology, social movements and power create the empirical, instituted economy.

scholarly journals Do People Value Recorded Music?

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
Dramatic Decline ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
The Way

How much do the majority of people value music, and can or should that level of value be reflected in music’s economic value? The dramatic decline in the economic value of recorded popular music in the 21st century has prompted much debate about music being ‘devalued’ and the perceived ‘value gap’ between music’s socio-cultural and economic values. Using the economic decline of recorded music as a springboard, this article takes a different approach, however. It offers a theoretical analysis of popular music consumption practices organised thematically in terms of ‘music as object’ (focusing on the social values generated and perceived by recorded music artefacts) and ‘music as sound’ (focusing on the way that most contemporary musical experiences are characterised by music being background sound or accompaniment). Overall, the argument is that ‘music’ may not be as culturally valued by people as is commonly assumed. The way that music operates as a low-value entity to many people is perhaps reflected in the cultural and economic contours of the digital music industry, though they are not caused by digitisation per se.

“Samples Are Precious”: Value Formations in the Potentiality and Practices of Biobanking in Singapore

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392110691
Author(s):  
Erik Aarden
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
The Social

Biobanking in Singapore is characterized by contested relations between funding ambitions and research practices, and different notions of what the (potential) value of storing samples and data for medical research is. Different biobanking efforts anticipate the production of public goods from stored materials in specifically situated ways. These efforts to produce public goods in the form of scientific and economic value can be fruitfully understood in terms of extraction, a complex sociotechnical process of retrieving (potential) value from raw materials, which both informs and is informed by specific social values. In exploring the extraction of potential value in relation to practice values, I propose the notion of value formations to account for the coproduction of and intersections between different forms of value(s) in scientific practices situated in particular social contexts. I trace value formations across the life span of biobanking collections, which range from recruitment, collection, and processing of samples to their storage, retrieval, and use. Observations along this life span show the social and temporal complexity of value-making in biobanking in Singapore, pointing to the contextual specificity of how biobanking is understood as a public good.

On the Specifics of Economic Institutions in the Social Sphere (Theoretical Aspect)

2005 ◽  
pp. 50-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu. Olsevich ◽  
V. Mazarchuk
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Theoretical Aspect ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Market Relations

The authors consider the organizations in different branches of the social sphere (schools, clinics, theatres) as complex institutional formations where the "cluster" of economic norms and rules is subordinated to the "cluster" of social values. These organizations perform the dual function: formation of human capital and compensation of poverty of poor people. According to the authors' opinion, complex reforming of the health care branch requires creation of new economic norms and rules combining plan, semimarket and market relations. This approach will rise the effectiveness of this sphere and will not undermine its social function.

scholarly journals "OPEN DATA MEANS BUSINESS": WHEN MONETARY POTENTIAL IN OPEN DATA USURPS ASPIRATIONS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPERANCY IN THE SMART CITY

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunes Tavmen
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Close Observation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Governmental Strategy ◽  
Transparency And Accountability

As opposed to technocratic and top-to-bottom smart city discourses, open data has been deployed to transform these into “citizen-centric” ones. London is one of the prime examples of such positioning of open data in pursuit to create an alternative to corporate-driven smart city narratives. Prior to this, open data was already a governmental strategy in the UK in their pursuit of Transparency Agenda due to the assumptions that having access to governmental data would automatically yield transparency and accountability. However, shortly after, the economic value in open data displaced the social impact to periphery. As a result, the Open Data Institute (ODI) was established to unlock the economic value in open data. Located at the heart of London’s tech-scene, the ODI has attempted to contest what they referred to as “corporate-driven smart city”. Nevertheless, born out of a discourse in which lucrative potential usurped democratic aspirations, the ODI has subsequently been an environment that materialised, contributed and reiterated the prevailing smart city discourse. By way of a close observation of the ODI’s activities between late 2014 to mid-2017, as well as an analysis on the transformation of UK government's open data discourse, I argue that once advocated as tool for accountability and transparency, open data is mostly promoted for its monetary value.

Conceptual foundations for the development of J.G.Turner’s general sociological theory: Metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and analytical scheme

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Reznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Analytical Scheme ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The article discusses the conceptual foundations of the development of the general sociological theory of J.G.Turner. These foundations are metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and an analytical scheme. Turner began to develop a general sociological theory with a synthesis of metatheoretical ideas of social forces and social selection. He formulated a synthetic metatheoretical statement: social forces cause selection pressures on individuals and force them to change the patterns of their social organization and create new types of sociocultural formations to survive under these pressures. Turner systematized the basic concepts of his theorizing with the allocation of micro-, meso- and macro-levels of social reality. On this basis, he substantiated a simple conceptual scheme of social dynamics. According to this scheme, the forces of macrosocial dynamics of the population, production, distribution, regulation and reproduction cause social evolution. These forces force individual and corporate actors to structurally adapt their communities in altered circumstances. Such adaptation helps to overcome or avoid the disintegration consequences of these forces. The initial stage of Turner's general theorizing is a kind of audit, modification, modernization and systematization of the conceptual apparatus of sociology. The initial results obtained became the basis for the development of his conception of the dynamics of functional selection in the social world.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

Diffusion and Adoption of Corruption in Developing Economies: Evidence from Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Solomon A. Keelson ◽  
Thomas Cudjoe ◽  
Manteaw Joy Tenkoran
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Developing Economy ◽  
Theoretical Underpinning ◽  
Institutional Failure ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Diffusion

The present study investigates diffusion and adoption of corruption and factors that influence the rate of adoption of corruption in Ghana. In the current study, the diffusion and adoption of corruption and the factors that influence the speed with which corruption spreads in society is examined within Ghana as a developing economy. Data from public sector workers in Ghana are used to conduct the study. Our findings based on the results from One Sample T-Test suggest that corruption is perceived to be high in Ghana and diffusion and adoption of corruption has witnessed appreciative increases. Social and institutional factors seem to have a larger influence on the rate of corruption adoption than other factors. These findings indicate the need for theoretical underpinning in policy formulation to face corruption by incorporating the relationship between the social values and institutional failure, as represented by the rate of corruption adoption in developing economies.

Performing Masculinity and the Crisis of Transclass Man in August Wilson’s Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
North End

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

A Simple Inter-Industry Model of Pakistan, with an Application to Pakistan's Sixth Five-Year Plan

1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 531-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suleiman I. Cohen ◽  
Ivo C. Havinga ◽  
Mohammad Saleem
Keyword(s):  
Econometric Model ◽  
Social Accounting Matrix ◽  
Social Activities ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Social Accounting ◽  
Output Table ◽  
The Social ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
Industry Relations ◽  
Current Modelling

The macro-econometric model of Pakistan's economy by Naqvi et al. (3) is the first completed work in a renewed effort to model significant economic and social activities and issues in Pakistan. One of the current modelling efforts in which the authors are participating aims at combining elements from the macro-econometric model, inter-industry relations, factor market relations, and social accounting frameworks. This effort is now made possible by the compilation of the relevant statistics relating to an input-output table and the social accounting matrix ....................................................................................................

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document