The socioculturalist agenda in economics: Critical remarks of Thorstein Veblen's legacy

The article identifies a cluster of heterodox economists, especially followers of Thorstein Veblen, who are critical of the neoclassical axiom of well-defined preferences. They generally have a problem with the reductionist reasoning that preferences of agents are constituted prior to social interaction. Some of them are proposing somewhat well-defined preferences deduced instead from the tastes of the reference groups with whom the agent identifies. The article does not question the relevance, with respect to economics, of the preferences of groups. Rather, it challenges a muscular view of such preferences which is being uncritically borrowed, inter alia, from functionalist sociology and substantivist economic anthropology. Sociologists and anthropologists in general have recently become, from diverse perspectives, critical of the conception of sociocultural tastes as hegemonic. The basic thrust of the article is that the socioculturalist agenda broadly subscribes to a biological/social dichotomy which neglects that tastes also arise from psychobiological developmental processes.     

Consumer Culture,Taste Preferences,and Social Network Formation

One of the most important and consistent findings in the social networks literature is that individuals are socially connected to people who resemble themselves. This finding extends to preferences for consumer culture. Whereas network theorists previously had presumed that social networks generated this outcome through a process of social influence, this traditional conception of the relationship between culture and social networks has been challenged by new theoretical perspectives and novel methodological techniques that enable researchers to empirically test the causal direction of the relationship. In this article, I first discuss how theorists have adjudicated between competing explanations of the relationship of taste preferences and social network structure. Second, I discuss how sociologists have theorized that tastes contribute to variation in network structure. Third, I examine survey and ethnographic research that discusses interactional mechanisms by which people actively mobilize culture to form social relationships. Fourth and finally, I discuss research that explores how consumer culture constitutes the meaning of social relationships and how relationship category affects theorizing of network formation.     

Preferences for redistribution: an empirical analysis over 33 countries

People’s preferences for state intervention in social policies vary. A cross-section analysis on individual-level survey data is conducted here over 33 democracies to highlight the link between the economic position of agents and their specific demand for redistribution. Controlling for a number of factors usually found to affect individual preferences in the literature, this article focuses on the role played by the occupational status of individuals in shaping their preferences. Individual labour market position, as well as family income, is shown to outweigh all other factors shaping preferences for redistribution. The odds of a manager to oppose redistributive policies are increased by 40%, as compared to those of an office clerk, for instance. Moreover, individuals’ perception of personal mobility plays an important role: the odds of holding more positive attitudes towards redistribution are up by 32% for people who think they experienced a downward mobility within the last ten years. Evidence is also found for the fact that the political regime may have a long lasting effect on collective preferences: living in former-East Germany doubles the odds of holding positive attitudes towards redistribution, as compared to living in West Germany. Finally, the research presented here identifies which socio-political groups may be formed on the basis of their preferences for redistribution.     

The common will

This paper discusses the formation of a common will among a group of people from two separate points of view: that of social choice theory and that of discourse ethics. The paper evaluates the formation of a common will by “silent” mechanisms for aggregating individual wishes and preferences, traditionally the domain of social choice theory, from a procedural perspective. I will consider—and answer in the negative—the question of whether or not there exists a mechanism for aggregating individual preferences that is perfectly reflective—in the sense that it can be applied recursively in order to justify or legitimate its own application. I will then consider discourse ethics from a consequentialist standpoint—rather than the traditional, process-oriented perspective from which it usually advanced and defended—and show that its insistence on dialogue as a means for the formation of a common will is based on underlying assumptions about the nature of preferences—such as the discussability of tastes and the malleability of time scales—which run counter to the view of preferences normally associated with standard economic theory. I conclude that, although neither approach to the formation of a common will fares well by the standards normally used to justify the other, proponents of either approach have much to learn from a dialogue with proponents of the other.     

Inter‐ethnic conflict: a role for social work in sub‐Saharan Africa

African social work educators have consistently argued that conventional social work tasks and practice fail to address the critical socio‐economic needs of communities living in the sub‐Saharan region. This paper identifies inter‐ethnic conflict in Africa as both cause and symptom of the inequitable distribution of natural resources and public goods between ethnic groups in conditions of pressing material need. Reporting on results from a survey of social work students at the University of Ghana which explored their own experiences of inter‐ethnic conflict, this article considers alternative strategies for training in anti‐discriminatory practice. Training approaches developed in the United States of America and the United Kingdom are critically examined and the problems of their direct applicability in an African context discussed. In conclusion the need for a distinctively African approach to conflict management and anti‐discriminatory training is advanced.     

The social gradient in cultural consumption and the information‐processing hypothesis

Patterns of cultural consumption have a strong social gradient which is primarily driven by education, but what explains these educational differences in cultural preferences remains unclear. Explanations based on information processing capacity have gained widespread currency; the perceived cognitive ‘difficulty’ of both appreciating high culture, and of maintaining broad, omnivorous tastes. If, on average, high culture is more complex than low culture then a higher level of information processing capacity may be required to derive enjoyment from it. In contrast, socialization theories suggest that exposure to ‘high’ culture, may explain this gradient, particularly among university graduates with degrees in the Arts or Humanities. To test these two theories we use the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey (n = 1,079) and estimate the association between degree type and measures of cultural preference and consumption, including: film directors, artists, and cultural participation. Compared to non‐graduates, arts, humanities, and social science graduates are more likely to enjoy highbrow directors and artists, and are more likely to be cultural omnivores; while graduates from other subjects are not clearly distinct from non‐graduates in their cultural preferences. These findings suggest that information processing plays a minor role in shaping the social gradient in cultural consumption.     

A model of corporate social performance: Social satisfaction and moral conduct

This article discusses corporate social performance (CSP) in manager–consumer interactions. The article identifies CSP with the private provision of public goods. The model analyzes two kinds of social preferences: the consumer's taste for CSP and the manager's taste for CSP. The primary force in determining the level of corporate moral conduct is the resulting social satisfaction in the interactions. A behavioral view identifies an alternative source of inertia as the low level of moral conduct insensitive to the social values. The firm operating at the high level of moral conduct focuses on meeting the expectations of socially conscious consumers and improves the provision of public goods.     

Social exclusion and social capital: A comparison and critique

Social exclusion and social capital are widely used concepts with multiple and ambiguous definitions. Their meanings and indicators partially overlap, and thus they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the inter-relations of economy and society. Both ideas could benefit from further specification and differentiation. The causes of social exclusion and the consequences of social capital have received the fullest elaboration, to the relative neglect of the outcomes of social exclusion and the genesis of social capital. This article identifies the similarities and differences between social exclusion and social capital. We compare the intellectual histories and theoretical orientations of each term, their empirical manifestations and their place in public policy. The article then moves on to elucidate further each set of ideas. A central argument is that the conflation of these notions partly emerges from a shared theoretical tradition, but also from insufficient theorizing of the processes in which each phenomenon is implicated. A number of suggestions are made for sharpening their explanatory focus, in particular better differentiating between cause and consequence, contextualizing social relations and social networks, and subjecting the policy ‘solutions’ that follow from each perspective to critical scrutiny. Placing the two in dialogue is beneficial for the further development of each.     

Consistency between tastes and values: A universalization approach

The object of this paper is to propose a consistency test for an individual involved in collective choice process. Collective choice processes considered in the paper are those that transform individuals ‘tastes’– which reflect the self-interested view point of the individuals – into (social) ranking of alternatives. In addition to her tastes, an individual has values about the way by which collective decision should be made. We distinguish two categories of such values. First, there are end-values that restrict the class of social rankings that the individual considers ethically acceptable. Second there are aggregation-values that specify the way by which the social ranking should depend upon the individuals tastes. The consistency test stands on an hypothetical operation of universalization of the individual tastes to everyone. Five illustrations of the potential usefulness of our approach for interpreting social choice theory and welfare economics are proposed. These illustrations deal with utilitarian aggregation in the presence of income inequality aversion, the so-called ‘ethics of responsibility’ and the aggregation of individual ranking of opportunity sets based on their freedom of choice. A discussion of the relevance of the consistency test for addressing the problem of ‘laundering’ individual preferences is also provided. Received: 25 June 1998/Accepted: 16 March 1999     

Women in the Construction Professions: Achieving Critical Mass

This article addresses the question of whether an increased number of women entering the construction professions is resulting in the build‐up of critical mass, with associated changes in the culture of the construction industry, and thus in its organization and conditions of employment. It was found, from recent research, that little such change has occurred so far. Indeed the construction industry seemed to be so self‐contained and separate from wider social changes, that it was helpful to visualize it as constituting ‘Planet Construction’ upon which live a series of male‐dominated professional tribes, each with its own culture and world view. This article discusses the factors and forces limiting change, and then identifies likely change agents. These comprise top‐down agents such as governmental regulatory bodies, and bottom‐up agents such as minority groups and community organizations. The most effective bottom‐up groups are likely to be those that have a foothold within the professional bodies such as the women‐led Equal Opportunities in Construction Taskforce, which has produced and is promoting guidelines for equal opportunities in the industry. But there is still a long way to go before major changes are likely to occur in the employment status, pay and conditions, as women in construction have hardly reached ‘first base’ in terms of being accepted within the industry. This is reflected in high job turnover among women in construction, occupational isolation, and limited promotion prospects, all factors which work against the build‐up of critical mass and culture change.     

Fair division with uncertain needs and tastes

Previous studies have shown that egalitarianism maximizes expected social welfare in a contractarian original position with equally likely risk-averse agent tastes. The present paper characterizes agents by subsistence needs as well as by tastes, allows infinitely many possible need and taste profiles, and weakens the requirement that all possibilities be perceived as equally likely. Surplusegalitarianism (meeting needs, then equally dividing the remainder) is shown to maximize expected social welfare when tastes are uncertain and needs are known, can be met, and are a priori required to be met; but intuitively unfair allocations may result if either of the latter two conditions fails to hold. Conditions under which egalitarianism maximizes expected social welfare with needs and tastes both uncertain are also determined.A previous version of this paper (Tesfatsion 1984) was presented at the Public Economics Workshop, University of Wisconsin, March, 1984. The author is grateful to D. Friedman and H. Quirmbach for helpful comments     

Analyzing consumers heterogeneity and self-reported tastes: An approach consistent with the consumer’s decision making process

This paper analyses whether self-reported valuation of goods is an adequate proxy for underlying tastes. In this case, different self-reported appraisals, which we can associate with different utility functions, would imply different demand curves. To estimate these kinds of relationships we have used data on reported tastes on new film releases and cinema attendance. We have used a latent class approach in order to imitate the data generating process underlying the demand functions, where consumer’s preferences are determined before consumers purchase. With this procedure we can reject the hypothesis of a unique demand function for all consumers. As expected, moreover, prices have a different influence depending on individuals’ self-reported tastes and specific market policies for each consumer group could therefore be designed.     

Threshold Theory and Social Work Education

Critical reflection is a concept in social work education that holds a significant place—it provides both foundational theoretical ideas about the practice of social work, and is also a process used in career-long learning. Understanding critical reflection as a threshold theory concept—a higher education learning and teaching concept—providing a framework which assists educators in teaching critical reflection. Threshold theory identifies certain concepts as foundational within a discipline—these are transformative in profoundly altering the way students understand the subject. As with critical reflection, they are also integrative, conceptually difficult or ‘troublesome’ and difficult to forget.

The intrinsic nature of critical reflection makes its use as a conceptual model in practice a complex task: it requires the integration of theoretical knowledge, in a multiple-step methodology. Students must fully engage with the process, in identifying the impact of their lived experience, values and beliefs on their practice, as well as power, social structures and influential discourses. This article argues that threshold theory assists educators in understanding the nature of learning that is required for students to master critical reflection in social work education     

From Women's Struggles to Distorted Emancipation

This article develops a critical analysis of transformations of the idea and practice of women's emancipation in late-modern western society under the influence of globalizing advanced capitalism. It builds on analyses of feminist critical theory and critical globalization studies and argues that global capitalism initiates processes in which the practice of emancipation is distorted. Distorted emancipation refers to the social consequences of the marketization and commodification of areas of social life that were previously excluded from market relationships. Care practices, which have been a fundamental issue in women's emancipatory struggles, are used as a reference point. The article argues that even if commodification creates certain possibilities for financial rewards of care, it institutionalizes a double misrecognition of care as both nonproductive work and paid work that cannot be a source of social recognition. Furthermore, distorted emancipation makes positive moments of changing gender patterns available only for some groups of women in socioeconomically, geopolitically or culturally privileged positions. These positive moments are dependent on transnational care practices, which are understood as a manifestation of distorted emancipation.     

Protection or pleasure: female footwear

This article addresses the love for shoes by the perspective of design and emotion. Reviewing the footwear history, we realize that it did not take too long for the shoes start to have new functions, aesthetic and symbolic, which eventually came to have greater relevance in the acquisition of women's shoes. Today, these outweigh the importance of physical comfort for many women, that once feeling pretty, do not realize the discomfort of the shoe. Studies indicate that the objects we love have a strong influence on our sense of identity, especially when dealing with clothing articles that have the power to show on our appearance our identity, tastes and preferences. Crossing the semiotics field, the footwear is analyzed as an object of feminine desire, imbued with symbolic relations. As a result, we propose a framework to describe the emotional relationship between women and shoes.     

Authoring aging: Personal and social constructions

The aim of this paper is to set out some of the context for the journey I have taken as a gerontologist, reflecting both on some of the decisive “turning points” and the links between personal and social constructions of aging. Along the way, the paper examines some questions about the relationship between analytical and biographical themes. The article reviews the various influences affecting my approach to issues about aging, and the contribution of these to my own thinking about critical gerontology. The latter I see as having a long gestation within my own maturing as a gerontologist, following engagement with debates in sociology and social policy. The article identifies a number of important actors and institutions that have shaped my understanding of the social, economic and political relationships underpinning old age.     

On the separability of assembly preferences

Analyses of assembly elections often assume that voters have well-defined preferences over candidates, even though preferences over assemblies are the natural analytic starting point. This candidate-based approach is usually justified by an assumption that preferences over assemblies are separable. We show, however, that if preferences over assemblies are themselves derived from underlying preferences over legislative or economic outcomes, then preferences over assemblies will not in general be separable. Received: 23 June 1997/Accepted: 3 March 1998     

Social Work in the Engaged University

This article identifies the importance of educating social work students and enlisting social work faculty to embrace the university–community engagement arena as a critical subfield of community practice. Through the lens of social work knowledge, values, and skills, the authors present three case studies of social workers who are working in the university–community field. The authors offer some directions for social work education.     

Our favourite melodies: musical consumption and teenage lifestyles

The present study explores the determinants and lifestyle correletes of musical preferences among a large sample of high school students in Toronto, Ontario. Our work is informed by theory and research on cultural stratification and adolescent subcultures. In terms of cultural stratification, we engage with Bourdieu's (1984) and Peterson's (1996) conceptualizations of elite taste, while subcultural theory encourages us to focus upon more dissenting tastes and to explore connections between musical tastes and peer group activity. Our findings suggest that racial and ethnic identity, school experiences and cultural capital are significant sources of variation in musical tastes that loosely correspond to existing typologies; they also confirm what has often been inferred - that musical tastes and peer group cultural practices are closely linked. Our findings are then discussed in the light of current debates about the nature and dimensions of listening audiences for music.     

Mental health social work in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: challenges and opportunities for developing practice

Drawing on their experience of mental health social work in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the authors examine the impact of current legislative and policy change in both jurisdictions. The paper applies Lorenz's theoretical framework to develop a comparative analysis of how global and country specific variables have interacted in shaping mental health social work. The analysis identifies linkages between factors and indicates similarities and differences in mental health social work practice. The paper highlights emerging discourses in this field and explores the impact on practice of developments such as de-institutionalisation, community care, and ‘user rights’ versus ‘public protection’. The article concludes with a review of key challenges facing social workers in both jurisdictions and identifies opportunities for developing mental health social work in ways that can positively respond to change and effectively address the needs of mental health service users and their carers. The analysis provides an opportunity to evaluate Lorenz's theoretical framework and the paper includes a brief critical commentary on its utility as a conceptual tool in comparative social work.