scholarly journals Class Distinction-Making through Etiquette, a Computational Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Voyer ◽  
Zachary D. Kline ◽  
Madison Danton
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Computational Approach ◽  
Word Embeddings ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Class Distinction

Social scientists of class and inequality have documented the rise of omnivorousness, informality, ordinariness, and emphasis on meritocracy. This apparent decline in class closure contrasts sharply with rising inequality and declining economic mobility. How are these competing developments reflected in everyday class distinction-making? In this article, we answer this question by applying Goffman’s work on the symbols of class status to the analysis of unique data. We use word embeddings to isolate and quantify the salience of six dimensions of class (affluence, cultivation, education, employment, morality, and status) to class distinction-making within a corpus of etiquette books published between 1922 and 2017. We find that education and employment are increasingly salient dimensions while status, affluence, cultivation, and morality decline as salient dimensions of class distinction-making. These results signal a decline of class operating as a status group through cultural closure, the rise of education and employment as the carriers of class in everyday life, and the corresponding legitimation of class position and class inequality on the basis of supposedly meritocratic grounds. This research opens up new avenues for research on class and the application of computational methods for investigations of social change.

Creativity and cooking: Motherhood, agency and social change in everyday life

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryann McCabe ◽  
Timothy de Waal Malefyt
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Everyday Life

Pietro Basso,Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Livesin the Twenty-first Century. London: Verso, 2003. pp. 275. $27.00 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Gerd-Rainer Horn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Working Time ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

For some time now, sociologists, economists and assorted futurologists have flooded the pages of learned journals and the shelves of libraries with analyses of the continuing decline of industrial and other forms of labor. In proportion to the decline of working time, those social scientists proclaim, the forward march of leisure has become an irresistible trend of the most recent past, the present and, most definitely, the future. Those of us living on planet earth have on occasion wondered about the veracity of such claims which, quite often, appear to stand in flat contradiction to our experiences in everyday life. The work of the Italian sociologist Pietro Basso is thus long overdue and proves to be a welcome refutation of this genre of, to paraphrase Basso, obfuscating hallucinations.

‘Who Wants to be a Social Engineer? A commentary on David Blunkett's Speech to the ESRC’

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hodgkinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Uk

This article is a response to a speech addressed to the Economic and Social Research Council which was made, in February this year, by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett. The speech was entitled ‘Influence or Irrelevance: can social science improve government?’ . Blunkett's programme for engaging social science in the policy process is far from unique and many of the arguments have been heard before. However, the curiosity of the speech lies in the fact that the conception of social science which Blunkett advocates mirrors the approach New Labour itself has to politics and government. This raises some rather interesting difficulties for social scientists. How do we engage in a debate about the role of social scientific research in the policy process when our own conception of the discipline may be radically at odds with that of the government? Furthermore, New Labour's particular conception of the relationship between social and policy-making means that we not only have to contest their notion of what it is we do, but also challenge their conception of the policy process. We cannot ignore this engagement, even if we wanted to. The challenge is to address it and to do so, moreover, in terms which Blunkett might understand. This article is an attempt to start this process.

Conflict Resolution

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Morton Deutsch ◽  
Ellen Brickman
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Disorder ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Reasonable Degree ◽  
Scientific Issue ◽  
The People ◽  
Positive Functions ◽  
Better Than

An Orientation to Conflict Conflict is like sex: it is an important and pervasive aspect of life. It should be enjoyed and should occur with a reasonable degree of frequency, and after a conflict is over the people involved should feel better than they did before. Some psychiatrists and social scientists have given conflict a bad reputation by linking it with psychopathology, social disorder, and war. Conflict can be dysfunctional, but it also can be productive. It has many positive functions, including preventing stagnation and stimulating interest and curiosity. It is the medium through which problems can be aired and solutions developed. It is the root of personal and social change. The practical and scientific issue is not how to eliminate or prevent conflict but rather how to have lively controversy rather than deadly quarrels. A conflict exists whenever incompatible activities occur. The incompatible actions may originate in one person, group, or nation (intrapersonal, intragroup, or intranational) or they may reflect incompatible actions of two or more persons, groups, or nations (interpersonal, intergroup, or international). An action that is incompatible with another action prevents, obstructs, interferes, injures, or in some way makes the latter less likely or effective. A potential conflict exists when the parties involved perceive themselves to have incompatible values, interests, goals, needs, or beliefs.

The Millennial/Gen Z Leftists Are Emerging: Are Sociologists Ready for Them?

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-427
Author(s):  
Elaine Bell Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Do So

Sociology is being challenged by the new generation of students and scholars who have another view of society. Millennial/Gen Zs are the most progressive generation since the 1960s. We have had many opportunities to discuss and imagine power, diversity, and social change when we teach them in our classes or attend their campus events. Some Millennial/Gen Z believe, especially those in academia, that social scientists are tied to old theories and ideologies about race and gender, among other inconsistencies. These old ideas do not resonate with their views regarding equity. Millennials are not afraid to challenge the status quo. They do so already by supporting multiple gender and race identities. Several questions come to mind. How do we as sociologists with our sense of history and other issues such as racial and gender inequality help them along the way? Are we ready for this generation? Are they ready for us?

Creating modern women: The kitchen in postcolonial Singapore, 1960–90

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-434
Author(s):  
Ying-kit Chan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The State ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Class Status

This article examines the modern kitchen as a technological artefact and a mechanism through which the postcolonial Singaporean state and agents of household consumerism such as advertisers, retailers, home economists, and social scientists constructed the image of a modern Singaporean woman. By revealing how the female consumer-cum-homemaker became a symbol of material success and middle-class status in Fordist Singapore, the article highlights two types of domestication: the subordination of women to the patriarchal imperatives of family and nation, and the transformation of hard successes in the economy into soft comforts in the kitchen. This article suggests that although the state had narrowed the gap between popular expectations for improved living standards and its ability to fulfil them, it also unwittingly enmeshed definitions of femininity, womanhood, and female citizenship in a series of contradictions and tensions that had implications for contemporary Singaporean society.

Fleeting Sentiment of the Sacred

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-6
Author(s):  
Lionel Obadia
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Traditional Patterns

According to the contemporary master narratives, globalization processes entail transformations of territories such as deterritorialization , transnationalisation , and even dissolution since it affects the traditional patterns of spatiality. In the context of globalization, indeed, space might become fluid and rhizoid, but it also can be mineralized by means of frontiers . Such an empirical context requires a revision of the commonly accepted models of culture and social change, and of religious dynamics. Religions are indeed logically affected by the changes in their material, social and symbolic environments, which are reshaped by the forces of globalization and of modernization. Yet, social scientists and scholars in religion have, however, put primary emphasis on the transformations observed in the moral, social and symbolic aspects of religion, but undoubtedly, new patterns in the spatial forms and dynamics of religion are profoundly changing our perspectives on these topics .

scholarly journals Virtuous Persons and Virtuous Actions in Business Ethics and Organizational Research

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Alzola
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
New Science ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Empirical Approaches ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude.

Urban Design and Dilemmas of Space

1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Madanipour
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Time Constant ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
The City ◽  
Psychological Dimensions ◽  
Meaningful Communication

My aim in this paper is to find an understanding of the concept of space which could be used in urban design, but which could also be shared by others with an interest in space. Social scientists, geographers, architects, urban planners, and designers use the term space in their academic and professional involvement with the city. But when they meet each other their discourse seems to be handicapped partly because of a difference in their usage and understanding of the concept of space. I will argue that to arrive at a common platform in which a meaningful communication can become possible, we need to confront such fragmentation by moving towards a more unified concept of space. I will argue for a concept of space which would refer to our objective, physical space with its social and psychological dimensions, a dynamic conception which accommodates at the same time constant change and embeddedness, and that can only be understood in monitoring the way space is being made and remade, at the intersection of the development processes and everyday life.

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