scholarly journals Charitable giving and reflexive individuals: How personal reflexivity mediates between structure and agency

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balihar Sanghera
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
The World

This article examines how individuals are reflexive beings who interpret the world in relation to things that matter to them, and how charitable acts are evaluated and embedded in their lives with different degrees of meaning and importance. Rather than framing the discussion of charitable practices in terms of an altruism/egoism binary or imputing motivations and values to social structures, the article explains how reflexivity is an important and neglected dimension of social practices, and how it interacts with sympathy, sentiments and discourses to shape giving. The study also shows that there are different modes of reflexivity, which have varied effects on charity and volunteering.

On Structure and Agency in Ethnographies of Education: Examples from This Special Issue and More Generally

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 572-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Beach
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Observational Practice ◽  
Development Possibility

The articles in this collection are about the development, possibility, exercise and possible frustration of human agency within educational exchanges. They are also all based on ethnography, which is now a common approach to educational research. Ethnography is not a seamless, neutral observational practice but is instead variable in relation to theoretical perspectives and methodological application. However, central to all approaches is an emphasis on an active and creative citizen and an assumption that there is a dialectical relationship between human social practices, human consciousness and social structures. The similarities and differences within education ethnography are apparent even in the articles present here and in the ways in which they depict, define and describe agency in this special issue.

Food and Drink, The declining importance of cultural context

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Ritzer ◽  
Anya Galli
Keyword(s):  
Fast Food ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Global Citizens ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Fast Food Restaurants ◽  
Food And Drink

When we pop open a can of Coca Cola or reach into a bag of potato chips, we are most-likely consuming a product available to consumers in many locations across the globe and made of ingredients produced in multiple countries. While food and drink remain an integral part of cultural practices and identities today, very few of the products we purchase at the supermarket or in chain restaurants are actually local. What processes have contributed to the seemingly limitless availability of out-of-season produce, the global spread of name-brand food and drink, and the prominence of low cost ‘convenience’ foods and fast food restaurants in cities across the globe? There is no question that national and ‘local’ social structures and cultures continue to be important throughout the world. Similarly, today’s global citizens continue to have agency through which they make an array of choices and, more importantly, construct their social and cultural worlds. In other words, the dialectics between culture and agency (Archer, 1988), and structure and agency (Giddens, 1984) continue to be of great importance. This is true globally, as well as nationally and locally.

scholarly journals Discourse Analysis as a Means to Scrutinize REDD+: An Issue of Current Forest Management Debate of Nepal

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
Dilli Prasad Poudel ◽  
Tor Halfdan Aase
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Sustainable Management ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Communication Analysis ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Multiple Meanings

This article shows how discourse analysis can be a methodological tool to scrutinize texts under the aegis of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, sustainable management of forest, and conservation and enhancement of carbon (REDD+). A discourse is a perspective of an individual or an organization, which always tries to achieve a dominant position in the society. Texts used in discourses are impossible to understand properly in isolation. They are the reflections of social practices. Discourses, which contain multiple meanings, are also used as devices to make texts meaningful in regular communication. Analysis of discourses is called discourse analysis. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) believe that social structures (norms, rules and institutions) are created by pre-existing discourses of society, thereby we humans conceive objective reality according to the existing discourses. Alternatively, Fairclough (1995) believes that discourses not only reflect social structure but are also bounded by them. Both perspectives have been used as methodologies to analyse discourses, nonetheless Fairclough’s discourse analysis is more pragmatic than Laclau and Mouffee’s. The term ‘REDD+’ implies a discourse about forming new forestry institution in developing countries like Nepal, which is articulated in the name of mitigating deteriorating climate of the world. We suggest combining both perspectives to scrutinize the issue like REDD+. We found that discourse analysis is a suitable method to scrutinize REDD+ in the Nepalese context where people consider forest as a vital source of earning livelihoods and the foundation of sustaining local environment.Journal of Forest and Livelihood 13(1) May, 2015, page: 44-55

Social Glocalisation and Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Hobelsberger
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Practical Theology ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Local Effects ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Work Health

This book discusses the local effects of globalisation, especially in the context of social work, health and practical theology, as well as the challenges of higher education in a troubled world. The more globalised the world becomes, the more important local identities are. The global becomes effective in the local sphere. This phenomenon, called ‘glocalisation’ since the 1990s, poses many challenges to people and to the social structures in which they operate.

scholarly journals The Epidemiological Characteristics of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Europe: Focus on Italy

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 2942
Author(s):  
Giovanni Gabutti ◽  
Erica d’Anchera ◽  
Francesco De Motoli ◽  
Marta Savio ◽  
Armando Stefanati
Keyword(s):  
Social Structures ◽  
World Population ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Reporting Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Epidemiological Characteristics ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Epidemiological Situation

Starting from December 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has forcefully entered our lives and profoundly changed all the habits of the world population. The COVID-19 pandemic has violently impacted the European continent, first involving only some European countries, Italy in particular, and then spreading to all member states, albeit in different ways and times. The ways SARS-CoV-2 spreads are still partly unknown; to quantify and adequately respond to the pandemic, various parameters and reporting systems have been introduced at national and European levels to promptly recognize the most alarming epidemiological situations and therefore limit the impact of the virus on the health of the population. The relevant key points to implement adequate measures to face the epidemic include identifying the population groups most involved in terms of morbidity and mortality, identifying the events mostly related to the spreading of the virus and recognizing the various viral mutations. The main objective of this work is to summarize the epidemiological situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and Italy almost a year after the first reported case in our continent. The secondary objectives include the definition of the epidemiological parameters used to monitor the epidemic, the explanation of superspreading events and the description of how the epidemic has impacted on health and social structures, with a particular focus on Italy.

scholarly journals Social Identity, Group Behavior, and Teams

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 691-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Charness ◽  
Yan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Group Behavior ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Identity Group ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
Positive Force

The issue of one's identity has loomed large recently and has unfortunately been used more and more as a wedge to separate subgroups. It is important to understand the ramifications of identity, both to limit the negative consequences (such as so-called identity politics) and to be able to use one's sense of identity as a positive force in the world. What are effective approaches to allow positive identities and pride about one's social identity to be reinforced for the greater good? Recent work suggests that some forms of team competition can induce greater effort, which can be applied to areas such as microlending, charitable giving, and organization of the gig economy. And yet many fascinating questions remain; for example, what is the interaction of salience, social norms, and preferences on the effects of social identity in our society?

scholarly journals Reply to Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates About Inside Knowledge in Māori Society’, by Toon Van Meilj

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Sissons
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Indigenous Epistemology ◽  
The World ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ways Of Being

Van Meijl is right to insist that epistemology must be about active, socially contested ‘ways of knowing’ and that understanding the relationship between such ways and their products is as much an ethnographic problem as it is a philosophical one. Ways of knowing, as social practices, are also, more generally, ways of being or becoming and so are not, in my view, radically distinct from the ontologies they produce and reproduce. Phillipe Descola argues strongly that his four ‘ontologies’ are also schemas of practice, fundamental ways that people know, experience and inhabit the world. I think Van Meijl is mistaken, therefore, when he characterises the ontological turn in anthropology as being about different relations between mind and matter. For me, it is most significantly about the different ways that personhood or subjectivity can be understood and embodied.<br>

scholarly journals Affect, Belief, and the Arts

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rami Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
Tertiary Level ◽  
Cooperative Groups ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge

The cultural project is a therapeutic melding of emotion, symbols, and knowledge. In this paper, I describe how spiritual emotions engendered through encounters in imaginative culture enable fixation of metaphysical beliefs. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through the social practices of imaginative culture so as to adapt people to live in culturally defined cooperative groups. Conditioning, as well as tertiary-level cognitive capacities such as symbols and language are enlisted to bond groups through the imaginative formats of myth and participatory ritual. These cultural materializations can be shared by communities both synchronically and diachronically in works of art. Art is thus a form of self-knowledge that equips us with a motivated understanding of ourselves in the world. In the sacred state produced through the arts and in religious acts, the sense of meaning becomes noetically distinct because affect infuses the experience of immanence, and one's memory of it, with salience. The quality imbued thereby makes humans attentive to subtle signs and broad “truths.” Saturated by emotions and the experience of alterity in the immanent encounter of imaginative culture, information made salient in the sacred experience can become the basis for belief fixation. Using examples drawn from mimetic arts and arts of immanence, I put forward a theory about how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and the imagination.

Energy Consumption as Part of Social Practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Horta
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Practice Turn

This chapter examines social practices as an alternative and promising approach to conventional social science research on energy consumption. It highlights the emergence of practice theory in social science research on energy consumption that focuses on the interaction between social structures and everyday life, including materiality. After providing an overview of the evolution of social science research on energy consumption, the chapter summarizes the “practice turn” in sociology and its extension to research on energy consumption. It then considers the most prominent features of practice theory used in the field of research on energy consumption and concludes by describing the process of formation of the practice of managing the mobile phone as an example of how energy consumption can be analyzed using a practice theory approach.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 276-284
Author(s):  
Adam J. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Reciprocity ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Conducive Environment

This epilogue reflects on the manifold ways that charitable institutions benefited from commerce—whether from their own commercial activities or those of their patrons. Church reformers criticized hospitals for accepting donati, who were permitted to receive room and board without taking vows. The reality, however, was that the donati at times brought in valuable resources that could be used to serve the poor and sick. In addition, the increased commercialization of late twelfth- and thirteenth-century society, particularly in a region like Champagne, may have contributed to the idea of a moral economy, including the obligation of charitable giving and service. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century social conditions that created a conducive environment for the flourishing of commerce were also advantageous for fostering charity and pious giving more generally. During a period of urban transformation, which created greater prosperity for some but also increasing poverty and insecurity for many others, the medieval hospital opened up new opportunities for social reciprocity and mutual assistance. For those with various kinds of needs, the hospital served as a source of physical, social, and material support in this earthly world, with all of its vagaries and vulnerabilities. In addition, though, the medieval hospital held out the promise of spiritual redemption in the world to come.

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