The (in)visibility of riches, urban life and exclusion

Author(s):  
Rowland Atkinson

This chapter studies the position of the wealthy and their relationship to society at large. It specifically addresses the question of the relative invisibility of the rich, and a related problem — the issue of connecting the wealthy to the kinds of social problems that are so evident to those who live less-secluded lives. Social research has long observed and analysed those at the social bottom — endless studies of poverty, crime, segregation, and what some have seen as exotic portrayals of the excluded and marginal. From the 1960s onwards, this singular viewpoint generated increasing concerns that sociology and related disciplines were acting as a wing of the state and corporate funders who wished to understand, discipline, and contain problem groups and problem people.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
A.A. KOVALEV ◽  

The purpose of this study is to study the research potential of the phenomenological approach in the social sciences, which emerged in the first half of the XX century as a critique of the dominant method of logical positivism at that time. The following scientific approaches and methods were used in the article: the method of analysis, description and comparison, as well as the phenomenological approach. The author has made an attempt to prove the significance of phenomenology in the social sciences by means of comparison as a way not only to describe facts, but also to explain motives and unobservable meanings. According to the results of the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the solution of urgent problems of society through the practical application of the acquired knowledge about society is possible only if the phenomenological method is actively applied in such a scientific and practical discipline as public administration. This will help to overcome the bureaucratization of the civil service, the isolation of the state administrative apparatus from real social problems, as well as to involve the population itself in the process of public administration, establishing feedback.


Author(s):  
Mélanie Claude ◽  
Stéphanie Gaudet

Cet article pose un regard critique sur la catégorie de l’entrepreneur social présente dans le paysage socioéconomique québécois contemporain. L’objectif est de comprendre comment les processus de formalisation et d’informalisation de l’État participent à la construction de cette catégorie sociale. Pour ce faire, nous établissons quatre périodicités des dynamiques d’informalisation des services sociaux de l’État depuis les années 1960. Ces dynamiques ouvrent la voie à une ambiguïté grandissante du partage des responsabilités sociales. Ce mouvement d’informalisation cependant n’est ni unidirectionnel ni unidimensionnel. Nous expliquons qu’il s’agit de changements dans des dynamiques de partage de pouvoirs entre les sphères du marché et du communautaire que tente de réguler l’État. Ceux-ci bénéficient à certains acteurs institutionnels et ouvrent la voie à une nouvelle catégorie sociale elle-même empreinte d’ambiguïté : l’entrepreneur social.This article takes a critical look at the category of “social entrepreneur” present in the socioeconomic realm of contemporary Québec. Its objective is to understand how State processes of formalization and informalization contribute to the construction of such a social category. To that end, we describe four consecutive periods in the informalization of social services by the State since the 1960s. These four periods, as they unfold, contribute to an increasing ambiguity regarding how social responsibilities are to be shared. This process of informalization, however, is neither one-directional nor onedimensional. In our article, we observe that it reflects fluctuations in power between market and community that the State has been trying to regulate. These fluctuations benefit certain institutional actors and pave the way for a new, somewhat ambiguous, social category, that of the social entrepreneur.


Author(s):  
Arkadyi L. Marshak ◽  

The article analyses the present state of culture in Russia, its multilevel content. It shows the influence of different layers of society on the state and development of the present social structure. Based on perennial research data collected with participation of the author, sociocultural models of social relations and their influence on the cultural potential of the social structure are described. The article emphasizes the necessity of multilevel social research of the cultural potential of Russian society. The main directions of theoretical, methodological and empirical program of such research are formulated.


2021 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Nataliіa Spasiv ◽  
Galyna Kulyna ◽  
Nаdiya Lubkey

Introduction. An important prerequisite for the successful implementation of the social state concept in the country is the effective development of social partnership. Firstly, within the framework of partnership interaction of social subjects the social dialogue is provided, secondly, the social responsibility of business structures and financial institutions is activated, and thirdly, certain social problems and conflicts are leveled. Therefore, the issue of activation of social partnership in Ukraine as an attribute of a developed state and the introduction of an effective mechanism for its development is one of the primary ones, requiring special attention and determination of the ways of solution.Purpose. The goal of the research is to outline the role of social partnership in ensuring the social and economic progress of the state and to outline the practice and problems of its implementation in Ukraine.Methods. Research is based on the dialectical method of scientific knowledge and a systematic approach to the study of the ideology of social partnership and its role in socio-economic development of the state, using the methods of scientific abstractions and analogies, analysis and synthesis.Results. The nature of social partnership is considered and the main arguments and conditions that ensure its existence in the state are defined. The key tasks that are achieved through the effective implementation of the mechanism of partnership interaction in terms of solving a number of social problems and ensuring socio-economic development of the state are highlighted. The index of social development of countries of the world is investigated and the place of Ukraine in the global social space is analyzed. The most important social problems that have arisen in the domestic social sphere and the features of the current system of social partnership have been identified. The necessity of the development of social responsibility in corporate management, social dialogue and the use of economic incentives for the activation of entrepreneurship to ensure the priorities of socio-economic growth of the state has been argued. Prospects. Further research is important to focus on improving the effectiveness of social responsibility management of business as a condition for enhancing its competitiveness and ensuring sustainable development.


Author(s):  
Sasanka Perera

Photography has had a close association with anthropology from the beginning of the discipline. However, this proximity has not been as evident since the 1960s. Despite this seeming discomfort with photographs in contemporary social anthropology in particular, they can play a useful role in social research in general and social anthropology in particular as both sources of information and objects of research. This is not to about using photographs as a decorative element in a written text as is often done. What is useful is to see how photographs can become audible taking into account when and where they were taken and by whom. To do this however, methodological considerations of photography needs to travel from the sub-disciplinary domains of visual sociology and visual anthropology into the mainstreams of these disciplines as well as into the midst of the social science enterprise more generally.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil, or The Two Nations is one of the finest novels to depict the social problems of class-ridden Victorian England. The book's publication in 1845 created a sensation, for its immediacy and readability brought the plight of the working classes sharply to the attention of the reading public. The ‘two nations’ of the alternative title are the rich and poor, so disparate in their opportunities and living conditions, and so hostile to each other. that they seem almost to belong to different countries. The gulf between them is given a poignant focus by the central romantic plot concerning the love of Charles Egremont, a member of the landlord class, for Sybil, the poor daughter of a militant Chartist leader.


Author(s):  
Mikael Aktor

Ritual purity was the self-proclaimed foundation of the authority of the Brahmin authors of Dharmaśāstra and the priestly class in general. Observance of purity rules was at the same time a social display of Brahmin exclusivity, a guarantee of meritorious priestly services for the clients, and an internal social-control mechanism. The chapter discusses the historical origins of this theme in the Dharmaśāstra literature and it gives an overview and examples of the fine-tuned vocabulary and systematic typology of these rules. To observe them demanded all-round control of the mental, verbal, bodily, domestic, and social life of a Brahmin but would also serve as a boundary marker protecting the social status and values of the priestly class. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the rich scholarly literature that emerged from the cross-disciplinary interest in this material during the structuralist turn in the humanities from the 1960s and onward.


Author(s):  
Peter Murray ◽  
Maria Feeney

Chapter 6 examines the relationship between the programming state and social research. Initial crisis conditions had enabled increased social spending to be left off the government programmers’ agenda. The changed politics of increasing prosperity, as well as their own expanding ambitions, meant that this could no longer be sustained during the 1960s. Ireland’s social security provision became an object of both political debate and social scientific analysis in this period. The official response to this ferment was a Social Development Programme to which the ESRI was initially seen as a vital provider of inputs. During the 1960s a Save the West movement challenged both programmers and governing politicians. The official response to this challenge involved new structures for rural development with which the social sciences interacted as well as expanded social welfare provision to a class of smallholders whose resilience would later become an object of significant sociological study. As the 1960s proceeded, however, Irish state plans and programmes had to contend with an increasingly difficult external environment with which they ultimately failed to cope.


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