scholarly journals Authority Relationship From a Societal Perspective: Social Representations of Obedience and Disobedience in Austrian Young Adults

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Fattori ◽  
Simone Curly ◽  
Amrei C. Jörchel ◽  
Maura Pozzi ◽  
Dominik Mihalits ◽  
...  

Obedience and disobedience have always been salient issues for both civil society and social psychologists. Since Milgram’s first studies on destructive obedience there has not been a bottom-up definition of what obedience and disobedience mean. The current study aimed at investigating the social representations young adults use to define and to co-construct knowledge about obedience and disobedience in Austria. One hundred fifty four (106 females, 68.8%) Austrian young adults (Mean age = 22.9; SD = 3.5) completed a mixed-method questionnaire comprising open-ended questions and free word associations. Overall obedience and disobedience are respectively defined as conformity and non-conformity to regulations, ranging from implicit social norms to explicit formal laws. Authority is multi-faceted and has a central role in orienting obedience and disobedience. Further fundamental determinants of the authority relationship and relevant application of the results are discussed in this paper.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 187-194
Author(s):  
Anagonou L ◽  
Saria B ◽  
Klikpo E ◽  
Salifou S ◽  
Houinou Ebo B ◽  
...  

Social and familial maladjustment is the inability to conform to a group's habits and norms and to participate in its activities and productions. The purpose of this study is to study the social representations of the social and familial maladjustment of adolescents and young people. This is a case study, using a mixed method essentially qualitative, set in a closed educational center in the Department of Littoral in Benin. The study concerned adolescents and young people admitted to the center and their referents. The respondents in the target population were all male and aged 10 to 23 with an average age of 18 years. The social representations of maladjustment, according to young people and their referents are similar. They concern social disqualification, inadequate educational attitudes, the absence of familial model, educational failure linked to adolescents or young people and mystical-religious representations. Adolescents and young people define themselves as deviants while their referents define them as delinquents. This create an insecurity feeling and a need to protect society. Adults have to integrate themselves earlier in the prevention of this phenomenon with the help and /or child psychiatrist lead.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Nathalie Plante ◽  
Lilian Negura

Child psychological maltreatment (CPM) was incorporated into the Quebec Youth Protection Act (YPA) in 2006. At that time, various civil-society actors were invited to present to Parliament their views on these legislative changes. The objective of this article is to document the social representations mobilized by the stakeholders in the parliamentary committee in relation to the inclusion of CPM in the Quebec YPA. After explaining our research objectives, questions, and methodology, we will discuss our results, in particular about the distinctive nature of children as a representational object. This specificity will be analyzed in order to better understand the type of communication it generates and the corresponding hegemonic representation of parents. Specifically, implications related to the representational dynamics identified are discussed in relation to our collective capacity (or incapacity) to debate sensitive issues such as child abuse.


Author(s):  
Bruno Machado

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as representações sociais dos procuradores da República sobre a persecução penal em casos de corrupção e delitos econômicos no sistema de justiça federal no Brasil. O texto orienta-se pelos seguintes questionamentos: como os procuradores avaliam a investigação criminal dos crimes econômicos e corrupção? Como representam o inquérito policial como procedimento investigatório? No relatório de pesquisa foi possível compreender distintas visões dos atores envolvidos e as práticas da persecução penal da corrupção dos delitos econômicos. Questões organizacionais relacionadas à gestão de recursos escassos, tanto humanos quanto materiais, a definição de prioridades internas, as interações entre as unidades e a definição da unidade de atuação mediante critérios construídos pelas câmaras de coordenação e revisão. Ao final, o percurso exterioriza imagens e autorrepresentações dos sujeitos da pesquisa sobre a persecução penal. This article intends to analyze the social representations of the federal prosecutors concerning the investigation of corruption and economic crimes in the Brazilian federal justice system. The text is guided by the following questions: how do federal prosecutors assess the criminal investigation of corruption and economic crimes? How do they represent the inquérito policial as an investigative procedure? In the research report we described many applicable interrogations concerning the visions of the actors involved and the practices of the penal prosecution, such as organizational topics and the managing of the resources, both human and material, and the definition of priorities and the interactions between different units. Finally, the itinerary evidences images and self-representations of prosecutors concerning the criminal prosecution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camila de Alencar PEREIRA ◽  
Silvana Carneiro MACIEL ◽  
Dayse Barbosa SILVA ◽  
Luã Medeiros Fernandes de MELO

Abstract This study sought to identify the structure of legal professionals’ representations of child and adolescent sexual abuse anchored by the central core theory of social representations. The sample included 31 professionals responsible for implementing public policies in relation to victims, their family members, and aggressors. A sociodemographic questionnaire was employed with a free word association task. The resulting data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 21.0 and the R Interface for Multidimensional Analyses of Texts and Questionnaires, respectively. The central core of the professionals’ representations included the terms “violence”, “trauma”, and “grief”; furthermore, they pathologized the abuser, and their representations were anchored by criminological and psychological explanations of sexual abuse. This fragmented view of sexual abuse lacks macroexplanations that address cultural and social factors as well as proposals that involve society as a whole.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saidin Ernas

This paper aims to explain that the social dynamics in Papua does not always present the story ofconflict and disintegration, but also about the social integration, harmony, and peace as can be observedin the Fakfak community in West Papua Province. By using the methods of descriptive analysis of thequalitative data collected from field observations, interviews and documentation studies, the authorsmanaged to formulate several important findings. First, the results of acculturation between religiousvalues and culture are important elements that make the social norms of harmonious and tolerant inFakfak, as described in the local knowledge of “the three furnaces stone”. Second, the institutionalizationof values and social integration processes in the community can work well, if the support of local forcesand civil society groups work together to promote peace. At the same time, this paper also reminds thatthe conflict issues, such as religious radicalism and separatism, if not handled carefully can potentiallydamage the social integration that has been well maintained.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-180
Author(s):  
I. V. Trotsuk ◽  
M. V. Subbotina

Despite the understandable and predictable lack of sociological interest in the issues related to heroism, the search for clear and unambiguous conceptual and empirical definitions of the hero in the contemporary society seems to be a relevant sociological task, especially under the current pandemic which made the criteria of heroism interesting for the wider public. The authors briefly outline the main aspects of the traditional scientific interpretations of heroism as presented in the social-cultural narratives worldwide, and proceed to the issues that constitute the field of the sociological studies on heroism. The first research question is not so much a single definition of the hero as types of heroes based on social representations of when and how heroes reveal themselves in decisions and actions. The authors rely on the traditional typologies of heroes usually based on the psychological aspects of heroic thinking and behavior to suggest a sociologically relevant typology based on both literature and the Russian public opinion polls. This typology implies answers to the questions of why the society needs heroes and what makes someone a hero in the eyes of the society, and allows to better understand and to more precisely define the false/pseudo/antiheroism. The second research question is about the sources of images and understanding of heroism, which focuses on the mass media and especially cinemas potential to represent certain social practices as heroic and to construct heroic images. The third research question is about the possibilities of the empirical sociological study of the types of heroes and their representation in the media (cinema). The authors argue that sociology should use its own methods (in a combination with techniques for studying the audiences perception of movies) - content analysis and surveys, especially the unfinished sentences technique, and provide some examples of how this can be done, for instance, to compare the social representations of a real hero and a movie hero among different age groups and generations. The authors conclude with mentioning a new issue associated with heroism, which became evident under the pandemic - changes in the social representations of heroism determined by heroization of healthcare workers due to their selfless fight against the coronavirus epidemic.


AJS Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Jacob Neusner

Mishnah's division of Damages presents a complete and systematic account of a theory of Israelite civil law and government. While drawing on diverse materials of earlier ages, beginning, of course, with the diverse Mosaic codes themselves, Mishnah's system came to closure after the Bar Kokhba War. Like its account of the Temple and its cult, Mishnah here speaks of nonexistent institutions and prohibited activities. There being no Israelite government, Mishnah's legislation for a high priest and Temple, a king and an army, speaks of a world which may have been in times past (this is dubious) but did not exist at the time of the Mishnaic discourse on the subject. The division of damages is composed of two subsystems which fit together logically, one on the conduct of civil society—commerce, trade, real estate, the other on the institutions of civil society—courts, administration. The main point of the former subsystem is that the task of society is to maintain perfect stasis, to preserve the status quo, and to secure the stability of all transactions. In the interchange of buying and selling, giving and taking, torts and damages, there must be an essential equality of exchange. No one should come out with more than he had at the outset. There should be no sizable shift in fortune or circumstance. The stable and unchanging economy of society must be preserved. The aim of the law is to restore the antecedent status of a person who has been injured. When we ask whose perspective is represented in a system of such a character and such emphases, we turn to examine the recurrent subject-matter of the division's cases. The subject of all predicates, in fact, is the householder, the small landholder. The definition of the problems for Mishnah's attention accords with the matters of concrete concern to the proprietary class: responsible, undercapitalized, overextended, committed to a barter economy (in a world of specie and currency), above all, aching for a stable and reliable world in which to do its work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafina Petrova ◽  
Rocio Garcia-Retamero ◽  
Joop van der Pligt

AbstractWhen we make risky decisions for others, we tend to follow social norms about risks. This often results in making different decisions for others than we would make for ourselves in a similar situation (i.e., self-other discrepancies). In an experiment, we investigated self-other discrepancies in young adults’ decisions to purchase a vaccine against a sexually-transmitted virus for themselves or for another person (i.e., the target of the decision). When the target’s preferences were in line with social norms, surrogates showed large self-other discrepancies in line with these norms. When the target’s preferences were contrary to social norms, surrogates did not show self-other discrepancies in line with these preferences; instead they still followed social norms, F(1, 140) = 21.45, p < .001, ηp2 = .13. Surrogates with lower numeracy, F(2, 128) = 3.44, p = .035, ηp2 = .05, and higher empathy, F(2, 128) = 3.72, p = .027, ηp2 = .06, showed self-other discrepancies more in line with the target’s preferences, even when these were contrary to the norm. Surrogates whose own risk attitudes were contrary to social norms showed larger self-other discrepancies, F(1, 128) = 5.38, p = .022, ηp2 = .04. These results demonstrate that perceived social norms about risk can predict self-other discrepancies in risky decisions, even when the target’s preferences are known and at odds with the social norm. Further, the surrogates’ numeracy, empathy, and propensity to take risks influence the extent to which risky decisions for others resemble risky decisions for oneself.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumarashwaran Vadevelu

ABSTRACT This mixed-method study analysed the impact of the transition of transgender adolescents and young adults on their social support systems as well as its consequences in the Provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, Southern Thailand. With the aid of open-ended, semi-structured questionnaires, interviews were conducted focussed on how they had experienced their sexual identity, the levels of their feminine, inner selves, the different ways in which they expressed their femininity, the ages at which they had started transitioning, and the unique consequences of their transitioning in society. Content analysis identified the themes and sub-themes that emerged from the data analysis. The research concluded that transitioning had negative effects on the lives of respondents and on the social support systems which they had relied on for acceptance, recognition, inclusion in society, and for ongoing help in addressing adjustment challenges. The study recommended ways whereby acceptance of and social support for transitioning adolescents and young adults might be advanced.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-142
Author(s):  
Anne Brunon-Ernst

The text looks into the conditions justifying the use of a social norm as the basis for establishing a legally binding rule. It starts with the definition of some key-terms (nudges, behavioural insights, social norms) before describing initiatives led by the UK Nudge Unit and other behaviourally-informed policies, such as default options, used in a legal context. This helps to highlight the type of problems related to the incorporation of social norms in legal norms, especially the importance of deviance to the social norm. Jeremy Bentham’s and Michel Foucault’s writings can be used to solve the problems raised. A framework can be devised to explain when a social norm can legitimately be incorporated in a legal norm. Indeed, beyond statistical evidence which identifies recurring patterns of behaviour, only a meta-norm can justify the choice of a legal norm. It is the efficacy of the norm which appears as a legitimising factor as it allows the promotion either of the productive forces in society (according to Foucault) or of utilitarian principles (according to Bentham). However, it seems that this meta-norm can be legitimately imposed only if it emanates from a strict deliberative discipline and is publicised. The article thus concludes that deliberation and publicity are the two means allowing to check that the legal norm complies with the meta-norm, thus legitimising the use of a social norm as a legally binding rule.


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