Mead’s Analysis of Social Conflict: A Radical Interactionist’s Critique

Because Mead entered the pantheon of classic sociological thinkers much later than Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, sociologists have unsurprisingly devoted much more critical attention to their ideas than his. Perhaps, nowhere is the lack of this attention on their part more glaring than in his explanation of social conflict. Mead views the emergence and resolution of conflict as taking place within the social act, in which either individuals or groups may be the acting units, and attitudes, roles, significant symbols, and attitudinal assumption operate as the common, key components. As far as the emergence of conflict is concerned, he accounts for it on the basis of insufficient differentiation of roles, non-meritorious allocation of roles, and adoption of self-centered attitudes on the part of the participants during their construction of a social act. As far as the resolution of conflict is concerned, he predictably explains it on the basis of their expansion of role differentiation, distribution of roles on basis of merit, and the adoption of other-centered attitudes. Despite that Mead’s explanation of the resolution and emergence of conflict is relatively consistent and offers many profound insights, it suffers from several irresolvable problems. All these various problems can be traced back to his decision to rest his explanation on his much cherished principle of “sociality,” rather than domination, and thereby, ultimately, his rejection of a radical interactionist’s perspective. Thus, it is now long overdue for sociologists to consider the merits of a new, more radical interactionism as a replacement for his much older and more conventional counterpart, symbolic interactionism.     

A Remarkable Heritage: The ‘Daily Round’ of the Children of the Harkis,between Merger and Vilification

Strictly speaking, the word ‘harkis’ originally denoted one of the categories of former Muslim auxiliaries in the French army who had served on a voluntary basis under the French flag during the War of Algerian Independence (1954–62). When Algeria achieved independence in 1962, those former auxiliaries of the French army who were able to escape the National Liberation Front's bloody reprisals (conservative estimates suggest some 65,000 perished) were forced to seek exile in mainland France. In spite of the restrictive measures enacted by the highest state authorities with a view to preventing the migration to France of people generally considered undesirable, and in spite of rudimentary reception arrangements, some 95,000 to 100,000 former auxiliaries and family members established themselves in France after choosing French nationality. But in a society increasingly restructured by strong migratory flows from the Maghreb (particularly from Algeria) and characterized by strong prejudice against Arabs (in part linked to the transfer of the memory of ‘French Algeria’), today in France the sons and daughters of the harkis find themselves in a situation where their identity is very insecure and one which forces them to cope with a burdensome legacy at both the socio-cultural and symbolic levels.     

The ��Semiotic Self��: From Peirce and Mead to Wiley and Singer

Norbert Wiley (1994) provides a synthesis of Peirce??s and Mead??s views on the self. The Peirce-Mead ideal type model of the self involves the I and the me as well as the I and the you. Hence, at each moment we are a combined ??me-I-you?? in past, present and future. Milton Singer (1989) discovers the semiotic self through his anthropological research, but does not apply the concept as rigorously as one might hope. Peirce??s triadic epistemology and Pragmatism is explored to frame his contribution to the semiotic self. His categories of Firstness, Secondnes and Thirdness are briefly considered. Some anecdotal information about the self in Indic Civilization is discussed. It is argued that the INSOR model can be useful. The key is to move beyond Cartesian notions and to see the semotic self as a ??semiotic object,?? always subject to interpretation by the person engaged in symbolic interaction and exchange.     

The Search for Meaning: Revisiting Herbert Blumer’s Interpretation of G.H. Mead

Herbert Blumer’s interpretation of George Herbert Mead’s work has set the intellectual foundation for the symbolic interactionist tradition. However, the adequacy of this interpretation has been challenged, leading to a series of highly charged debates in the 1970s–80s. This article reflects back on these debates, and reconsiders the contrast between the Blumerian and Meadian epistemologies from a contemporary perspective. It is demonstrated that while Mead’s work is able to adapt to and contribute to emerging challenges to dualism in contemporary interpretive theory, Blumer’s root epistemological position fails in this regard, and creates an inconsistent framework for social reality.     

Organisationsentwicklungsorientierte Potenzialeinsch?tzung �C Pr?missen und Gestaltungsprinzipien

While common potential assessment is perceived as a human resource task, today??s organizations need to integrate organizational and human development. The concept of organizational design suggests a conceptual framework to align strategy, structure, processes, human resources, and reward systems to help organizations be innovative and responsive to changes. However there is also a need to innovate potential assessment processes themselves. Thise paper illustrates the interactions among potential assessment and organizational development. This requires understanding the relevance of dynamic roles and distributed leadership, and their impact on the growing need of meta-competences of members of the organization to successfully profile their roles as well as to add value to the entire organizational design. A critical issue pertains to the professional use of tests, including principles of multiple diagnoses and acknowledging the psychodynamic and cultural influences on how to take a test. Thise paper provides practical guidelines on how to design assessment processes, incorporating learning for all participants in team settings, self assessment and shifting from judging towards exploring relationship among managers, participants and assessors. This way of practicing potential assessment turns out to be a powerful approach for both, potential development on the individual level as well as core competence development on organizational level.     

Health and income poverty in Ireland, 2003�C2006

Recent advances in the measurement of bi-dimensional poverty are applied to a measure of poverty which incorporates income and health poverty. The correlation between income and poverty is examined using the Receiver Operating Characteristics curve. Following from this uni-dimensional and bi-dimensional poverty indices are calculated for Ireland for the years 2003–2006. Income poverty shows a fall over the period while health poverty falls and then rises. Bi-dimensional poverty generally moves in line with the individual indices depending upon the relative weight for each dimension. The results are generally not sensitive to the degree of poverty aversion or the substitutability between the different dimensions of poverty.     

Konstruktionen der Geschlechtsidentit?t �C Widerspr��che aktueller Sozialisationsprozesse

I will first describe in four aspects a frame about gender socialization. Then I will study actual contradictions in the gender socialization of four international research areas. Doing so, I can also relate to own empiric studies about family??s biographies and gender roles (Macha und Witzke 2008; Macha 2009). The four example research areas are:

1. Typical gender socialization in the family and the stability of time structures,
2. gender socialization in the school
3. Typical gender socialization for and through the employment market, taking as an example, the academic career.
4. Typical gender socialization for and through the employment market, taking as an example, the leadership positions in the economy and the income of men and women.

     

Beliebt und immer beliebter? Fernsehen und Freizeit in Deutschland 1987�C2007

The hypothesis that Germans devote an ever bigger share of their increasing leisure time to television is justified by a comparison with further leisure activities: Television exceeds all these??except the internet??by its increasing supply and increasing differentiation. This hypothesis is examined using the so-called Media-Analysen 1987?C2007. It is confirmed by regression analyses of the absolute and relative television viewing time on time points or on the extent and the differentiation of television supply, controlling for opportunities and preferences as well as cohort membership, region and gender. Thus, television does not lose leisure shares to new media, but crowds out old leisure pastimes.     

F��hrung durch Selbstf��hrung �C Konzept, Messung und Korrelate

In this article, an empirical study on super-leadership is documented. Based on the self-leadership approach a questionnaire was developed to evaluate super-leadership. 175 employees from various branches have participated to this study. Explorative factor analysis revealed two dimensions of super-leadership which could be interpreted as ??coaching and communicative support?? and ??promoting autonomy and self-responsibility??. Further data analysis showed positive correlations between super-leadership and perceived leadership effectiveness. Partly depending on the degree of organizational decentralization, positive correlations were also found between super-leadership and overall job satisfaction. Implications for research and potential applications will be discussed.     

A Decade-Long Partnership

THE Children's Choir of the China Central Philharmonic Society was founded in 1983 by Yang Hongnian, a leading conductor and a professor at China's Central Conservatory of Music. The 160 members of the Choir are from various mid-     

A Wine-Water Container

This exquisite bronze object is a combination wine container and water container. It was excavated from the tomb of Zeng Houyi, a prince of the State of Zeng. The upper part is a wine container, measuring 30. 1 cm tall and the lower part is a water or ice container, measuring 58 cm in diameter. The two parts resemble a     

A Permanent Memory

My mind is filled with unbearable sorrow when I recall my dearest mother. The calender on the desk where mother worked still shows November 29 1995, the day my mother went out and was killed in a traffic accident. I leave the calender at this date because a very important part in my life stopped still on this day also. Mother was the only daughter in her family. My grandmother lived with my parents after my grandfather passed away. I was born during the War of     

A Physics Teacher

~~A Physics Teacher@尚雅萍     

DOES A GOOD CENTRAL BANKER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

The personalities of central bankers moved center stage during the recent financial crisis. Indeed, several central bankers even became “superstars.” In this article, we investigate whether superstar central bankers have an impact on economic performance. We employ school grades given to central bankers by the financial press, defining as superstars those central bankers receiving the top grade. First, we explain the grades in a probit estimation with measures of economic performance, institutional features, and personal characteristics. Second, we employ a matching approach to account for the endogeneity of grading with respect to economic performance. Using entropy balancing, we identify credible counterfactuals for top‐graded central bankers, that is, nonsuperstar central bankers who face similar situations. Comparing the economic performance of both groups, we find that superstars do indeed matter: a top‐graded central banker faces a significantly more favorable output‐inflation tradeoff than his peers. This effect is driven by outstanding central bankers in both advanced and emerging economies and is especially prevalent in the precrisis subsample. (JEL E52, E58)     

A Scholarly Director

TDWN Head Zhao: "How tired and good-for-nothing I am! To help ordinary people become richer, I got the money by a deal using my own son against my conscience. But now they think I'm a town traitor. High leaders demand that I build a big free market,     

Zur Gesellschaftsdynamik der Interkulturalit?t �C Implikationen f��r Supervision und Organisationsberatung

Migration has led to growing social diversity. The organisations have to deal with new challenges. Supervision and organisation??s consultancy try to understand the underlying dynamics and deep structures triggered by intercultural situations and to offer adequate consultancy. Experiencing the situations of exclusion or belonging plays a key role for the understanding of the social dynamic of interculturality. To understand the intercultural broadmindedness of the institutions which has been neglected for so long, ??Shifting Baselines?? will be presented as a new concept for supervision and organisation??s consultancy.