scholarly journals Commensality and Individual Eating: Mediating Social Relationships during Work Breaks

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 342-361
Author(s):  
Irma Šidiškienė ◽  

Based on an analysis of eating during work hours, this article looks at the issue of maintaining informal social relations. Various forms of the gathering together of individuals are important in the maintenance of social relations. Very often, casual or leisure-time gatherings, whether they are to mark an important event or celebration, or are just a coffee or lunch break during work hours, involve eating or drinking. However, colleagues and co-workers do not always eat at the same time, especially regarding day-to-day eating during work hours. In this paper, the focus is on the relative importance of eating alone or eating in a group when researching the maintenance of informal relations. The first objective of this research is to clarify the social aspects in research on eating and to survey the scientific literature on commensality and eating alone. Second the paper looks at how eating in a group as opposed to individual eating are expressed as part of the daily eating routine with ones co-workers. By going through these objectives, the question is raised – how would ways of maintaining informal relations change if there an ever greater number of co-workers decided to eat alone?

Author(s):  
Dennis Eversberg

Based on analyses of a 2016 German survey, this article contributes to debates on ‘societal nature relations’ by investigating the systematic differences between socially specific types of social relations with nature in a flexible capitalist society. It presents a typology of ten different ‘syndromes’ of attitudes toward social and environmental issues, which are then grouped to distinguish between four ideal types of social relationships with nature: dominance, conscious mutual dependency, alienation and contradiction. These are located in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) social space to illustrate how social relationships with nature correspond to people’s positions within the totality of social relations. Understanding how people’s perceptions of and actions pertaining to nature are shaped by their positions in these intersecting relations of domination – both within social space and between society and nature – is an important precondition for developing transformative strategies that will be capable of gaining majority support in flexible capitalist societies.


Author(s):  
Alicja Szerląg ◽  
Arkadiusz Urbanek ◽  
Kamila Gandecka

Background: The analysis has involved social interactions in a multicultural environment. The social context has been defined by the Vilnius region (Lithuania), where national, religious, and cultural differences exist across generations (multicultural community). The space of “social relationships”, as one of the modules of the WHO quality of life assessment, has been studied. An innovation of the research has been related to the analysis of the phenomenon of community of nationalities and cultures as a predictor of quality of life (QoL). The social motive of the research has been the historical continuity (for centuries) of the construction of the Vilnius cultural borderland. Here, the local community evolves from a group of many cultures to an intercultural community. Interpreting the data, therefore, requires a long perspective (a few generations) to understand the quality of relationships. We see social interactions and strategies for building them as a potential for social QoL in multicultural environments. Methods: The research has been conducted on a sample of 374 respondents, including Poles (172), Lithuanians (133), and Russians (69). A diagnostic poll has been used. The respondents were adolescents (15–16 years). The research answers the question: What variables form the interaction strategies of adolescents in a multicultural environment? The findings relate to interpreting the social interactions of adolescents within the boundaries of their living environment. The description of the social relations of adolescents provides an opportunity to implement the findings for further research on QoL. Results: An innovative outcome of the research is the analysis of 3 interaction strategies (attachment to national identification, intercultural dialogue, and multicultural community building) as a background for interpreting QoL in a multicultural environment. Their understanding is a useful knowledge for QoL researchers. The data analysis has taken into account cultural and generational (historical) sensitivities. Therefore, the team studying the data has consisted of researchers and residents of the Vilnius region. We used the interaction strategies of adolescents to describe the category of “social relationships” in nationally and culturally diverse settings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-114
Author(s):  
L. Yemel’yanova ◽  
S. Kazantsev

The Object of the Study. Competition and CompetitionThe Subject of the Study. Competition and competition as a form of interaction between subjects of professional activityThe Purpose of the Study. Competition and competition as a form of interaction between subjects of professional activityThe main Provisions of the Article.The authors reveal the features of manifestation of socialist emulation and competition in connection with the social structure of the state and the system of social relations existing in it and generating them. The distinctive characteristics of socialist emulation and competition as two social phenomena and forms of interaction between subjects of professional activity have been studied. The great importance of socialist emulation in solving important tasks for the state is shown, in the intensification of labour, the achievement of better results in the production of material and spiritual goods, the development of socialist society as a whole, the realization of the interests of society and each of its participants. In the particular the features of socialist emulation are revealed: its essence, functions, forms, basic principles and types of stimulating its participants.Besides the work reveals the social aspects of competition, its manifestations in society and professional activity in comparison with the socialist emulation. The main approaches to the study of competition as an interdisciplinary phenomenon are presented. The author's understanding of the essence of competition of subjects of professional activity as one of the types of social competition is given. The structure of competition of collective subjects of professional activity, its positive and negative functions, the nature of the course, the main approaches to its management are presented. As the main differences between socialist competition and competition of subjects of professional activity, their differences in motivation, behavior, methods used by them and means of achieving victory are examined. Competition and competition are manageable, both by the state itself, and by the subjects themselves.The features of the manifestation of socialist competition and competition are connected with the system of social relations existing in the state, which give rise to them. Competition and competition are the most important forms of interaction and relationships between the subjects of professional activity, but having their own manifestations.


Sociology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janeen Baxter ◽  
Heidi Hoffmann

The term gender refers to the cultural and social characteristics attributed to men and women on the basis of perceived biological differences. In the 1970s, feminists focused on sex roles, particularly the socialization of men and women into distinct masculine and feminine roles and the apparent universality of patriarchy. More recent work has critiqued the idea of two distinct genders, calling into question the notion of gender dichotomies and focusing attention on gender as a constitutive element of all social relationships. Gender has been described as a social institution that structures the organization of other institutions, such as the labor market, families, and the state, as well as the social relations of everyday life. In addition, scholars have pointed to the ways in which gender is constructed by organizations and individual interactions. Gender not only differentiates men and women into unequal groups, it also structures unequal access to goods and resources, often crosscutting and intersecting with other forms of inequality, such as class, race, and ethnicity.


2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Chess

Games such as FarmVille and other casuals played on social networks and mobile devices have recently become increasingly popular. Research on Social Networking Games (SNGs) often focuses on the “social” aspects—how this newer style of games engenders social relationships from disparate locations. This essay examines the genre of gaming in terms of their industry category, “Invest/Express Games.” Using the Invest/Express label as a means of rethinking the role of interstitial time, this essay proposes that the gaming style taps in to what can be understood as “feminine leisure style.” In many ways, the significance of Invest/Express embodies a shift toward a feminization of popular video games.


Author(s):  
Konstantin Evgenevich Shilekhin

The subject of this research is the social relations in the context of bringing to legal responsibility, as well as normative legal acts and scientific literature that reflect such relations. The problem of classification of the types of legal responsibility is relevant in the context of substantiation of the autonomy of its individual types. The attempts to substantiate the autonomy of one or another type of legal responsibility entail the revision of the grounds for classification. The goal of this article consists in revealing the natural grounds for definition of the concept of “legal responsibility” to build consistent and exhaustive classification. The main conclusion lies in determination of the criterion for classification of the types of legal responsibility. Emphasis is placed on the social relations underlying the legal relations, namely legal relations in the area of bringing to legal responsibility. On the example of responsibility for committing tax fraud, the article demonstrates the failure of attempts to find qualification criteria on the basis of the normative legal acts outside the entirety of social relations. The article determines the close link between social relations in the economic sphere, as well as their impact upon legal relations emerging in the context of bringing to legal responsibility as a whole and administrative responsibility in particular.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-110
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Chmielewska ◽  
Mariusz Z. Jędrzejko

Abstract Polish pedagogical and psychological literature as well as mass media more and more often inform about disorders of competences and social relations of teenagers, as a result of abuse of digital technologies, especially smartphones. The authors analysed 31 cases of patients with cyberabuse and addictions at the Social Prevention Centre in terms of the occurrence, intensity and character of the disappearance of their real social contacts, as well as their behaviour in small natural peer groups. The obtained results were compared with 49 groups of adults and parents of patients. Research based on participatory observation and in-depth interviews showed that teenagers devote over 62% less time to personal social relations than their parents, their time of real social relations with parents is about 38 minutes per day, create atomistic attitudes towards family (e.g. refusal to participate in common meals), have shallow and narrow groups of friends, and prefer borrowed contacts (through social media). The average declared number of teenagers’ friends in social media exceeds 540, while their parents use smartphones in less than 140. Young respondents use smartphones in almost every social and life context (e.g. in toilets, in church, at school, during meals). The research confirmed the occurrence of digital technology abuse. The article ends with preventive delegations.


Author(s):  
Vincenzo Auletta ◽  
Angelo Fanelli ◽  
Diodato Ferraioli

Friedkin and Johnsen (1990) modeled opinion formation in social networks as a dynamic process which evolves in rounds: at each round each agent updates her expressed opinion to a weighted average of her innate belief and the opinions expressed in the previous round by her social neighbors. The stubbornness level of an agent represents the tendency of the agent to express an opinion close to her innate belief. Motivated by the observation that innate beliefs, stubbornness levels and even social relations can co-evolve together with the expressed opinions, we present a new model of opinion formation where the dynamics runs in a co-evolving environment. We assume that agents’ stubbornness and social relations can vary arbitrarily, while their innate beliefs slowly change as a function of the opinions they expressed in the past. We prove that, in our model, the opinion formation dynamics converges to a consensus if reasonable conditions on the structure of the social relationships and on how the personal beliefs can change are satisfied. Moreover, we discuss how this result applies in several simpler (but realistic) settings.


2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Ball

AbstractThis article describes inalienability in the Wauja (Arawak) language in the context of Brazilian Upper Xinguan culture. Wauja grammar encodes a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession that marks kin, body parts, and other terms and that largely but not perfectly overlaps with a local cultural category of emblematic possessions. I analyze how grammatical and cultural aspects of inalienable possession combine in discourse and exchange to contribute to the social identities of possessors. I present an ethnographic account of the role of inalienability in Wauja grammar and discourse in the disruption and repair of social relationships between groups in Upper Xinguan ritual. I argue for a mutually reinforcing relationship between grammatical categories and sociocultural meaning. I suggest that attention to language and possession, in addition to language and identity, is important for cross culturally comparative sociolinguistic analysis of such connections. (Inalienable possession, grammatical categories, discourse, exchange, Upper Xingu, Wauja (Arawak), ethnolinguistic identity)*


Author(s):  
Andrew Talle

Chapter seven discusses the place of music in the education and leisure time of boys and men who had no intention of pursuing musical careers. Unlike their female counterparts, male amateur musicians were encouraged to cultivate knowledge of music theory and to celebrate the social opportunities offered by music making, especially in university Collegium Musicum ensembles. This chapter draws from diverse sources including novels, poems, music manuscripts, and diaries. It concludes with case studies of two jurists: Johann Stephan Pütter of Göttingen and Johann Heinrich Fischer of Fulda. For Pütter, a musician of limited skills, performance quality was less important than the social aspects of making music. For Fischer, music theory was of great interest and led him to admire the music of the Lutheran composer J. S. Bach, despite the fact that Fischer was Catholic.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document