Search results

Ernest Gellner's understanding of the social role of absurdity is discussed & illustrated with examples of how different kinds of irrationality have social consequences. Gellner notes that anthropologists often attempt to explain away apparent incongruities with two principles of charitable interpretation: elastic contextualization & underlying structuralism. It is argued that moral & cognitive uncertainty is universal & expressed through incoherence. Absurdity may also be the consequence of a mistake or stupidity. Carlo M. Cipolla's (1989) useful analysis of stupidity is shown to be widely applicable. There is considerable reluctance to call stupid incoherence perceived by ethnographers, but not their hosts. It is argued that the recognition of absurdity is often superior to the principle of charity when interpreting societies. 28 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Caught up in current social changes, we do not fully understand the reshaping of social life. In sociological analyses there is a conceptual gap between subjectivities and social structural processes, and we face real difficulties in understanding social change and diversity. Through analysis of key areas of social life, here, Sarah Irwin develops a new and exciting resource for better understanding our changing social world. Breaking with conventional approaches and reconnecting the subjective with the objective, Irwin's book develops a new conceptual and analytical perspective with social relationality, interdependence and social context at its heart. The new perspective is developed through grounded analyses of empirical evidence, and draws on new data. It explores and analyzes: * significant changes in family forms, fertility, gender relations and commitments to employment, children and care, both now, and with comparisons to early twentieth century developments * the meshing of norms and social relations in contexts of change * diverse values, norms and perceptions of fairness, analyzed with respect to diversity over the life course, and in respect of gender, ethnicity and social class. Through analysis of context, Irwin offers new insights, and tackles puzzles of explanation. Reshaping Social Life offers a fascinating and innovative way of slicing into and re-interrogating our changing social world, and is sure to become a landmark resource for students, scholars and researchers.

▪ Abstract  Two features have marked the sociological analysis of violence: (a) disparate clusters of research on various forms of violence that have been the object of urgent social concern, and relatedly, (b) an overwhelming focus on forms of violence that are socially deviant and motivated by willful malice. The resulting literature is balkanized and disjointed, and yet narrowly focused. The systematic understanding of violence as a broad genus of social behavior has suffered accordingly. I examine the issues that have clouded the analysis of violence: the importance of physical injuries vs. psychological, social, and material injuries; the weight placed on physical vs. verbal and written actions; the role of force vs. victim complicity in the infliction of injuries; and the emphasis on interpersonal vs. corporate agents and victims. That discussion highlights the widely varying forms of violence in social life, including many instances that are neither driven by malicious intent nor socially repudiated. I consider the diverse motives that drive violent actions and the variant social acceptance or repudiation that they meet. I propose a generic definition of violence, freed of ad hoc restrictions, that encompasses the full population of violent social actions. This directs us to more systematic questions about violence in social life.

1. Introduction -- 2. Envisioning social landscapes of interconnection -- 3. Reshaping difference and interdependence : the transformation of family life and divisions of labour into the twentieth century -- 4. Contemporary transformations in gender, work and family -- 5. Disposition and position : norms, attitudes and commitments to children, work and self -- 6. Life course transitions and the changing landscape of opportunity and constraint --7. Ethnicity and contexts of belonging and exclusion -- 8. Difference, hierarchy and perceptions of social justice -- 9. Conclusion.

The case of the Danish "cartoon war" was a premonition of things to come: accelerated social construction of inequalities and their accelerated symbolic communication, translation and negotiation. New uses of values in organizing and managing inequalities emerge. Values lead active social life as bourgeois virtues (McCloskey, 2006), their subversive alternatives or translated "memes" of cultural history. Since social life of values went global and online, tracing their hybrid manifestations requires cross-culturally competent domestication (Magala, 2005) as if they were "memes" manipulated for further reengineering. Hopes are linked to emergent concepts of "microstorias" (Boje,2002), bottom-up, participative, open citizenship (Balibar,2004), disruption of stereotypical branding in mass-media (Sennett, 2006). However, Kuhn's opportunistic deviation from Popperian evolutionary epistemology should fade away with other hidden injuries of Cold War, to free our agenda for the future of social sciences in general and organizational sciences in particular (Fuller, 2000, 2003).

Our use of media touches on almost all aspects of our social lives, be they friendships, parent-child relationships, emotional lives, or social stereotypes. How we understand ourselves and others is now largely dependent on how we perceive ourselves and others in media, how we interact with one another through mediated channels, and how we share, construct, and understand social issues via our mediated lives. This volume highlights cutting edge scholarship from preeminent scholars in media psychology that examines how media intersect with our social lives in three broad areas: media and the self; media and relationships; and social life in emerging media. The scholars in this volume not only provide insightful and up-to-date examinations of theorizing and research that informs our current understanding of the role of media in our social lives, but they also detail provocative and valuable roadmaps that will form that basis of future scholarship in this crucially important and rapidly evolving media landscape.