Critical Latitude

From his educational background both in France and America, Professor Pavel not only expresses his endorsement, understanding and judgment of the concept of “imposed interpretation,” but also his opinion and further academic expectations. The article has three parts. First, he confirms the existence of the specific problems of “imposed interpretation,” “subjective assumption prior to interpretation,” and “reversed route of cognition.” Second, he points out that the phenomen on of imposed interpretation is not unique in contemporary times and has existed in Western literary research since the beginning of the 19^th century— from the Zeitgeist of the age of Hegel, the social environment of positivism, the narratology of structuralism, and to contemporary literary critique, all of which have the feature of using concepts to cover the multiformity of literary works. Pavel finally points out that the contemporary phenomen on of “imposed interpretation” embodies the features of American culture and exposes the problem of American education. He hopes that scholars can keep critical latitude and vitality while rectifying the errors in literary research.     

The Generality of Theory and the Specificity of Social Behavior: Contrasting Experimental and Hermeneutic Social Science

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological‐deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico‐deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: (1) the problem of situational specificity, and (2) the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition.     

Deliberate Trust and Intuitive Faith: A Dual‐Process Model of Reliance

Drawing on the dual process framework from social and cognitive psychology, this paper reconciles two distinct conceptualizations of trust prevalent in the literature: “rational” calculative and irrational “affective” or normative. After critically reviewing previous attempts at reconciliation between these distinctions, we argue that the notion of trust as “reliance” is the higher order category of which “deliberate trust” and “intuitive faith” are subtypes. Our revised approach problematizes the conflation of epistemic uncertainty with phenomenological uncertainty while providing sound footing for a key sociological insight: that reliance on the routine social order is both the cognitive default and based on substantial practical evidence. We develop two broad suggestions for future research from these implications: (1) sociological research should examine the role of intuitive faith—as opposed to deliberate trust—in late modern societies, and (2) analysts should challenge the role of deliberate trust as the “modal” form of reliance in contemporary research.     

Norms and rationality. Is moral behavior a form of rational action?

This article addresses major arguments in the controversy about the “rationality” of moral behavior: can moral behavior be explained by rational choice theory (RCT)? The two positions discussed are the incentives thesis (norms are incentives as any other costs and benefits) and the autonomy thesis claiming that moral behavior has nothing to do with utility. The article analyses arguments for the autonomy thesis by J. Elster, A. Etzioni, and J. G. March and J. P. Olsen. Finally, the general claim is discussed whether norm following and norm emergence are utility maximizing. The conclusion is that the autonomy thesis is not tenable if one applies a wide subjectivist, social psychological version of RCT that includes the assumption of “bounded rationality.” The autonomy thesis is only compatible with a narrow version of RCT that excludes internal outcomes and that refers to norms that do not have external outcomes. It is argued that such a narrow version is not capable of explaining many forms of behavior social scientists are interested in.     

Development of the Distinction Among the "Desirable", Morality, and Personal Preference

Israeli children of grades 1, 4, and 7 were asked, with respect to nine types of behavior, whether such behavior is bad, whether a child should be brought up to behave otherwise (and why), whether a child should be required to behave otherwise, and whether such behavior should be punished. Analysis of their responses and the reasons they provided supports the hypothesized distinction between three categories of behaviors or reasons for action—morality, “the desirable” and personal preferences—in terms of two dimensions: desirability and obligatoriness. Specifically, moral norms were perceived as both desirable and strictly obligatory, and were justified in terms of inherent goodness/badness and the welfare of others. Behaviors in the category of “the desirable” were perceived as desirable but not obligatory, and were justified in terms of self-development and long-term utility. Behaviors in the category of personal preferences were perceived as non-obligatory and neither desirable nor undesirable, and were justified in terms of personal choice. This distinction was less sharp among first graders, who exhibited some tendency to view desirables and preferences, as well as moral behavior, as obligatory. In light of these findings, it is suggested that the young child's “intuitive morality” relates only to the dimension of desirability and not to that of obligatoriness, which seems to develop somewhat later.     

Professional and Functional Alternative Social Workers: A Case Study of Malaysia

The objective of this study was to compare “professional” (PW) and “functional alternative” (FA) social workers. The findings suggested that there were no significant differences between PWs and FAs in intervention, evaluation methods, work ethics, and values. The PWs, in clients' eyes, were better at delivering services, while FAs' services were more satisfactory to the clients. While PWs were supposed to be “professional,” FAs were more “professional” than PWs in their performance despite their lack of recognition as “professional social workers”. These critical findings should encourage academics and practitioners for further discussion on conceptual implications of both practices and expand future research.     

What Happened to the “Social” in Social Psychology?*

This article describes the historical abandonment of the distinctive conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior embraced by American social psychologists in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is suggested that part of the reason why the original conception of the social was abandoned by American psychologists was because of its association with theories of the "group mind," the apparent threat it posed to cherished principles of rationality and autonomy, and the impoverished conception of the social inherited from European crowd theorists that came to inform the experimental study of social groups. It is suggested that while these factors partly explain the neglect of the social in American social psychology, none represent particularly good reasons for abandoning the original conception of the social. Consequently there are in principle no impediments to the revival of the theoretical and experimental study of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior in contemporary American social psychology.     

Moral discourse on domestic labor: gender,power, and identity in families

This paper responds to a recent article by Ahlander and Bahr (1995) on moral dimensions of housework in families. The purpose of this paper is to point out important ways in which Ahlander and Bahr’s work represents an academic form of “backlash” against feminist scholarship and leaves much social science research on housework either unsynthesized in their review or misinterpreted much of the work they did cite, particularly the work of feminist scholars. A second goal of this paper is to offer a perspective in which researchers can simultaneously examine moral dimensions of housework and explore issues of gender, power, and identity in families.     

中国大陆社会心理学适应性重建初探--基于社会转型期知识社会学的视角

以社会转型为背景,以知识社会学为视角,梳理当前中国大陆社会心理学的两种主要范式———“实验社会心理学”与“本土（化）社会心理学”,揭示其与本土“历史—社会现实”的疏离状况,进而对其本体论的缺陷进行反思与批判,探讨以消解疏离为目标、以“本土（化）社会心理学”为基底、以“社会转型”为基本背景框架与研究内容、以本体论的重构为切入点与着力点的大陆社会心理学重建之路。     

G.H. Mead's Understanding of the Nature of Speech in the Light of Contemporary Research

The following analysis demonstrates that G.H. Mead's understanding of human speech (what Mead often referred to as “the vocal gesture”) is remarkably consistent with today's interdisciplinary field that studies speech as a natural behavior with an evolutionary history. Mead seems to have captured major empirical and theoretical insights more than half a century before the contemporary field began to take shape. In that field the framework known as “Tinbergen's Four Questions,” developed in ecology to study naturally occurring behavior in nonhuman animals, has been an effective organizing framework for research on human speech. It is used in this paper to organize the comparison of Mead with contemporary scholars. The analysis concludes that Mead was, in a sense, “beyond” the Four Questions by recognizing the limitations of reductionist methods in understanding the nature of conscious phenomena, especially language. Mead's socially situated model of the nature of human speech makes him relevant to today's field where some see an undervaluation of the treatment of language as a social process.     

代际气候正义中的历史责任沉思--兼与徐峰博士商榷

气候变化问题的生成既是一个具体的社会历史进程，也是一个不断地由地方性转向全球性的过程。作为现代工业文明的产物，气候变化问题是现代性的后果。代际气候正义处理的是代际之间在气候资源配置与消费上的正义关系，主要包括前代人应该承担什么样的历史责任和当代人对未来人具有什么样的义务。在代际气候正义的历史责任认定上，“可原谅的无知”不能为发达国家或前代人的大气污染行为免责。因为“无知”不等于“不知”，“可原谅的无知”带来了责任认定上的契约主义，不利于贯彻代际气候正义原则。发达国家承担历史责任的依据在于“合理的谨慎”。原因在于引发气候变化问题的各主体都存着道义上义务---“合理的谨慎”，这是代际气候正义得以实现的重要原则。人类必须在资源有限的条件下展开社会合作，“合理的谨慎”能够保证社会合作与社会发展的顺利实现；气候变化问题是现代性风险的重要体现，“合理的谨慎”是应对气候变化问题的有效理念；气候变化问题归责的立足点在于各方主体的行为，正是各方主体未能履行“合理的谨慎”义务，才引发了全球性的温室效应。     

Addiction science and the perception of freewill

Do people think individuals with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) have freewill? How does addiction science inform views on the issue? We distinguish between two senses of freewill: 1) libertarian freewill , in which freedom turns on a particular metaphysical conception of action (sometimes operationalized as “could have done otherwise”), and 2) compatibilist freewill , in which freedom depends on the relation between the actor's psychology and her actions (e.g., “was the act what she wanted to do?”). We argue that, in different ways, scientific accounts can impact conceived freewill by linking addictive behavior to mechanisms that observers view as peripheral to the actor ( motivation modularity) . While a variety of impacts on conceived compatibilist freewill are plausible, we argue that contemporary addiction science has no direct bearing on conceived libertarian freewill. Addiction science may, however, indirectly impact conceived libertarian freewill by priming an explanatory framework in which intention is superfluous (especially materialism).     

Guanxilization or categorization: psychological mechanisms contributing to the formation of the Chinese concept of “us”

中国社会心理学在面对急速的社会变迁中，需要以变迁与文化的视角来选择研究 问题，而中国社会文化中群己关系的社会心理机制，即“我们”概念的形成机制及其 转换的可能与条件，正是一个体现着双重视角的基本问题。对这一问题的探讨不仅有 助于解释社会凝聚力、群体行动的逻辑，讨论国家与个人、社会与个人、类别与个人 的关系；也有助于培植社会转型时期的社会心理资源和社会支持系统，从而促进社会 合作。与以往单一机制的分析框架不同，通过对两个个案的讨论，研究提出了一个 新的分析框架，即：中国人“我们”概念是在社会情境的启动和价值取向等因素影响之 下，经由相互交织的“关系化”与“类别化”双重过程形成的。

关键词: “我们”?概念?群己关系?关系?关系化?类别化

Faced with rapid social transformation, the discipline of social psychology in China needs to choose its research topics from the perspective of both change and culture. A basic issue reflecting precisely these two perspectives is that of the formation of the social psychology mechanism of individual‐group relations, namely the formation of the concept of “us” in Chinese society and culture, as well as the possibility and conditions for the transformation of this mechanism. Exploring this issue will not only help us to understand social cohesion and the logic of group behavior and to discuss the relationship between the state and the individual, society and the individual, and the category and the individual; it will also help cultivate social psychology resources and support systems at a time of social transition, and thus promote social cooperation.. Unlike previous analytical studies that focused on a unitary mechanism, this study uses the discussion of two cases to put forward a new framework for analysis: that is, the Chinese concept of “us” comes into being through the mingling of “guanxilization” and “categorization” under the influence of social context priming, value orientation and other factors.     

Shape Shifting Capital: New Management and the Bodily Metaphors of Spiritual Capitalism

There is a burgeoning and increasingly institutionalized discourse within organizational theory and business practice dedicated to exploring the intersections of “religion” and “spirituality” at work. Turning especially to the broadly influential management theory of Margaret Wheatley, I locate “spiritual” management within a contemporary management ethos characterized by both an increasing interest in transitive phenomena and pre‐conscious understanding and the wholesale deregulation of industrial metaphors for society in favor of holistic, cybernetic and global metaphors for a networked society. Turning to the phenomenological and existential anthropology of the anthropologist, Michael Jackson, I argue that social theories, whether industrial or post‐industrial, can never claim a full and final grasp over the total processes of life itself. Methodologically, I argue that we might seek to attend to the personal and social dimensions of new “workplace spirituality” contexts by paying careful empirical attention to the practical deployments and personalizations of the lived metaphors of “spiritual” capitalism, considered for these purposes to be important “patterns of intersubjective experience”. What Jackson refers to as “phenomenological and existential deconstruction” has a political edge to it because it always seeks to force abstract theory into a more empirically grounded relationship with life as it is actually lived. As Marx and various critical theories have suggested, the particular experiences of workers often resist and confound the sanitized and universalized ideologies of capital.     

Dual conditionality in welfare and housing for lone parents in Ireland: Change and continuity?

This article focuses on multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing from the perspective of lone parents in Ireland. The Irish case echoes historical experiences elsewhere and is offered not as an exceptional or extreme case but as an in-depth single case study and a lens for comparison. Although contemporary forms and combinations of conditionalities are new to Ireland, the experience of multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing is not new. Hence, a historical perspective is used to examine contemporary multiple conditionalities in benefits and housing. In the past, conditional regimes for lone parents were justified in terms of moral reformation for first time mothers and avoiding moral contagion of mothers with subsequent pregnancies. In contemporary times, in the case of employment, lone parents are problematised as working part-time and “nesting” on in-work-benefits, and in the case of homelessness, lone parents who prioritise the security of tenure embedded in social housing are accused of “gaming” the system. While acknowledging ambiguities, the paper finds the overlap of welfare and housing discourses contribute, intentionally or unintentionally, to epistemological foundations or understandings of lone parents, shifting public perceptions, and framing them as “problems” to be solved. They simultaneously temper lone parents' expectations. Increased precarity and disempowerment is associated with dual conditionality, and ontological uncertainty is multiplied when experienced cumulatively across employment, social protection, and housing regimes in a context of generally poor public services and labour market precarity and in the historical context of stigmatisation. Nonetheless, lone parents demonstrate considerable agency.     

Relationalism through Social Robotics

Social robotics is a rapidly developing industry‐oriented area of research, intent on making robots in social roles commonplace in the near future. This has led to rising interest in the dynamics as well as ethics of human‐robot relationships, described here as a nascent relational turn. A contrast is drawn with the 1990s’ paradigm shift associated with relational‐self themes in social psychology. Constructions of the human‐robot relationship reproduce the “I‐You‐Me” dominant model of theorising about the self with biases that (as in social constructionism) consistently accentuate externalist or “interactionist” standpoints as opposed to internalist or “individualistic”. Perspectives classifiable as “ecological relationalism” may compensate for limitations of interactionist‐individualistic dimension. Implications for theorising subjectivity are considered.     

社会的生产

在当今全球化的潮流中,国家权力和市场联袂登台,携手推进商品化。这个急剧扩展的进程将经济（和政治)领域极大地膨胀起来,挤压了社会领域。这就迫使“保卫社会”成为当代社会学的核心议题。不过,在中国市场转型期的独特背景下,由于以往的“再分配体制”从根本上压抑了自组织的社会生活,因此,“生产社会”而不是“保卫社会”成为第一位的任务,它既是一个社会实践的任务,也是社会学认知的任务。同样由于历史条件的独特聚集,“生产社会”表现为二重性,即我们不得不在同一个时空条件下,将波拉尼意义上的“能动社会”与葛兰西意义上的“公民社会”共同地生产出来。此种社会生产的特殊性决定了人们在社会行动的层面上必须同时打造“阶级”和打造“公民”。本文旨在说明“社会生产”的二重机制,并借以探讨“公民社会”的微观基础。     

Why Do They Help People with AIDS/HIV Online? Altruistic Motivation and Moral Identity

Abstract

With the help of information and communication technologies, people can enjoy online social services, especially some stigmatized groups. In China, it is popular for AIDS patients to seek help online since the anonymity of cyberspace can protect people from stigmas and mocking evaluations. This article conducts a content analysis on 216 volunteers’ applications in an AIDS forum and measures their online helping behavior after application to explore what motivates volunteers to help AIDS patients online, how it affects them, and why the moral implication attached to AIDS fails to prevent them. The author indicates that helping behavior may be inspired by varied motivation from altruism to egoism, including kindness, values, sympathy, reward, atonement and benefit. Among them, the closer to altruism the motivation is, the more likely it is to be mentioned, while the “reward” motivation has the most significant effect. This article then examines volunteers’ moral identity of AIDS, arguing that the moral identity of humanitarianism can counteract the moral criticism of high-risk behavior related to AIDS. Future research in this area should examine the relationship between motivation and moral identity, the change in different phases, and compare different helping situations to encourage more forms of social services and supportive behavior.     

“数字鸿沟”：当代社会阶层分析的新视角*

当代社会，随着信息技术的发展以及信息重要性的增强，以互联网等为基础的电子信息网络已经浸透于社会的各个领域之中，在产业、经济和社会中生成着一种新的信息场域，影响着人们的社会生活。本文从社会阶层的研究视角出发，透过“现代——后现代”的二维分析模式对信息及信息技术带来的“数字鸿沟”现象进行理论上的阐释，对其究竟是实现着“阶层化”还是“去阶层化”进行探讨，并对信息化高度发达的日本社会进行了“数字鸿沟”的实证分析。可以看出：信息、信息技术已经成为一种新的变量，并与社会阶层之间产生着密切的关系，重塑着社会阶层化机制。     

Patterns of practice: An exploratory factor analysis of child and family social worker skills

There is relatively little research on the communication skills that social workers use in direct practice with families. This study explores patterns of practice skill found in child and family social work home visits. The study analysed 127 practice interactions in family homes, coding for seven dimensions of worker skill using a coding framework drawn from motivational interviewing. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to establish patterns of skill within the data and to group key dimensions of skill. The findings make two contributions. First, three fundamental dimensions of good practice emerged, which we characterize as care and engagement, good authority, and support for behaviour change. Second, in exploring the relationship between “care” and “control” elements of social work, skilled social workers were able to combine good authority and empathic engagement, whereas those who were less skilled in use of authority were also less good at engagement. This contributes to debates about care and control in social work. The usefulness of these dimensions for conceptualizing practice in child and family social work is discussed and directions for further research are suggested.