Social Structure and Social Relations

This paper replies to Porpora, King, and Varela's responses to my earlier paper “For Emergence”, focussing on the relationship between the concepts of social structure and social relations. It recognises the importance of identifying the mechanisms responsible whenever we make claims for the emergence of causal powers, and discusses the mechanism underlying one case of social structure: normative institutions. It also shows how critical realism reconciles the claims that both social structures and human individuals have emergent causal powers that combine to produce actual social events.     

Gerontology as a Graduate Social Work Concentration

Abstract

Gerontology education in one graduate school of social work is advancing across a life course. From its origins of three students, now over 100 graduates serve elders and significant others. Grounding, growing, and sustaining gerontology as a “concentration” comes with challenge and reward. This article denotes the origins of a gerontology concentration, describing “community as impetus” and “outreach to students.” It proceeds to concentration outcomes, presenting “alumni as partners” and “community as beneficiary.” Sustainment of gerontology as a concentration is attributed to internal and external investment in a gerontologically- and geriatrically-sophisticated social work force.     

Siting Praxeology. The Methodological Significance of “Public” in Theories of Social Practices

The concept of “site” is at the center of current debates in theories of social practices as well as in cultural anthropology. It is unclear, however, how to assess the associated methodological assumption that overriding social structures or cultural formations can manifest themselves in sites. The article draws on the conception of social practices and introduces the notion of “publicness” in order to explicate how and why sociality and social structures can be accessed through “siting”. Sites as well as social practices, it is claimed, have to be conceptualized as essentially public and thus principally observable phenomena. This assumption of publicness implicit to both site ontology and theories of social practices is unfolded on the basis of a praxeological reformulation of the paradigm of joint attention elaborated in developmental psychology. To avoid presentist misinterpretations, we then conceptualize sociality as chains of practices across time and space, drawing on the works of Theodore Schatzki, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anthony Giddens and Bruno Latour. The public carriers of practices (artifacts, symbols, media, bodies) and the translocal structures they establish acquire particular significance in these approaches. In a further step, we present some methodological consequences of the “publicness assumption” and support our arguments by referring to Pierre Bourdieu's study on Distinction.     

The Social Composition of China's Private Entrepreneurs: Class and Cohort Differences*

On the basis of survey data on Chinese private enterprises over the years, we try to respond to the classic subject of “the social composition of private entrepreneurs (siyingqiyezhu 私营企业主).” In nearly forty years of development, the overall composition of private entrepreneurs has undergone major changes. The group contains a growing proportion of people who have a market background and higher education and are non-political CPCs. On further classifying the occupational mobility of private entrepreneurs into categories such as “xiahai 下海” (jump into business), “gaizhi 改制” (restructuring), “kuajie 跨界” (crossover), “tiaoban 跳板” (springboard) and “caogen 草 根” (grassroots), we find there are significant differences in the occupational mobility of entrepreneurs in large, medium, and small enterprises in terms of what they did before they founded their businesses. In particular, entrepreneurs in large enterprises are more likely to have “jumped into business” from inside the government system or after restructuring, while most small and medium entrepreneurs develop outside the system. Multiple regression and coefficient clustering analysis shows that education level and political status have varying effects on the occupational mobility of entrepreneurs in terms of class and cohort.     

From “State and Society” to “Institutions and Life”: A Shift in the Study of Social Change in China

Abstract

The term “institutions and life” is proposed as an alternative perspective to “state and society.” Here, “institutions” refers to formal institutions set up in the name of the state and supporting its agents at various levels and in different departments in the exercise of their functions. “Life” refers to the everyday activities of social beings, involving not only the interests, powers and rights-based claims of expedient production and life strategies and techniques, but also relatively routine popular mores and informal institutions. The purpose of constructing and applying this perspective is to probe the complex mechanism of the interaction between living subjects and the agents of formal institutions in institutional practice and thereby analyze the actual logic and changing direction of China’s formal institutions and explore the mechanisms behind changes in mores so as to grasp the main thread running through China’s modern nation building.     

Microfinance, the Labour Market and Social Inclusion: A Tale of Three Cities

Great hopes have been held out for microfinance and other community development finance institutions (CDFIs) in industrialized countries as an instrument of “financially sustainable welfare provision”, following on from their success in many developing countries. Using interview data drawn from an exploratory sample of 45 clients, this paper examines the social and economic impact of three microfinance institutions in Glasgow, Sheffield and Belfast. The tentative conclusion is that most loans we examined do hit the target of the “financially excluded but bankable”, and exert an impact on poverty and social exclusion through the labour market and through helping to build social networks which reduce interpersonal risk. Our initial estimate is that each loan studied here was responsible for about 0.67 exits from unemployment over the two years 2000–2. If this ratio holds good outside the sample (and we emphasize the limitations of small sample size), this could mean that in the absence of microfinance services, the national unemployment total would be higher by some 2.4 per cent (or 22,000 individuals). The loans we have examined also save about £0.4 million on what would otherwise have been social security payments; grossed up again to all microfinance organizations, this implies an annual saving of about £250 million (1.4 per cent) on the total social security budget. However, to achieve this optimal impact microfinance institutions need to diversify their product: for example by switching from business loans into consumption loans, micro‐insurance, and equity, particularly in the rehabilitation of run‐down council estates.     

Mending Nets in the South: Anti-poverty Policies in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain

The marginal role of social assistance and the absence of minimum income programmes have long been thought to constitute defining characteristics of the southern European model of welfare. Nevertheless, over the 1990s significant innovations in this field have taken place. The paper aims to contribute to the analysis of recent developments by critically examining the experience of anti‐poverty policies in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. It is argued that the “patchiness” of safety nets in southern Europe is due to a unique set of constraints, the most relevant of which are the role of families and the “softness” of state institutions. A review of national profiles reveals that new policies introduced in all four countries mark progress towards redressing some of the historical imbalances of that welfare model. In particular, fully fledged minimum income schemes now operate in Portugal and in certain Spanish regions, while an experiment involving a number of Italian municipalities is still in progress. In spite of this, the paper concludes that social safety nets in southern Europe remain frail in terms of institutional design as well as political support and legitimacy.     

Redefining “Old Age” and “Dependency” in East Asia: Is “Prospective Aging” A More Helpful Concept?

East Asian societies are currently some of the most rapidly aging in the world. Projections of the traditional old‐age dependency ratios (OADR) present a daunting future of the size of the aged population both in absolute terms and, in the context of low fertility, relative to the future workforce. Recently scholars, especially Sanderson and Scherbov, have argued that OADR is inadequate as a guide to future levels of dependency based, as it is, on past scenarios of “old age” and “dependency” rather than current and future notions. Indeed, in the context of rapidly aging settings in East Asia with developmental welfare states, the OADR has probably never been truly relevant, is profoundly unhelpful and could lead to policy paralysis. As such, Sanderson and Scherbov suggested a new method to measure aging prospectively to take into account both improved life expectancy and health across the life‐course. We introduce these new measurements as a possible new, more radical and optimistic way to think about aging in East Asia. These measurements more accurately demonstrate the “boundaries” to “dependency” and, hence, demonstrate the potential room for social policy interventions to maximize “active aging” for the population currently, perhaps incorrectly, defined as “old” and “dependent”.     

Sensing Bodies and Digitally Mediated Distress

ABSTRACT

In The Five Senses (2008) Michel Serres shows how the body is not an abstracted, dislocated surface that allows for the objectification of the senses and instead illustrates how it is a process: one of continually infolding sensitivities that translate our bodily feelings into a fluid sense of the world. In this article we explore what it means to be a body in the mediated environments of everyday lives of those who visit social media sites that are designed to help people deal with mental distress. We will discuss the way that “bodies” must tack between oft-competing pressures and draws, which emanate from the performance of sense that is contained within these sites. Attempts to “make” sense of the body in such terrains often require an increasingly sophisticated set of skills and expertise and can, despite our best efforts, result in the body being transported to unexpected places. In order to capture a sense of movement, people must try to transform their offline experiences into a set of actions that can be rendered meaningful in terms of an online domain, which we argue is against the way that people sense. We develop a theory of sensory bodies as subject to continual “movement,” drawing on the work of Serres, Simondon, and Manning, before discussing three examples of social media use in mental health, and the potential implications for people having to learn to sense in and through such online spaces.     

A Multi-Dimensional Conceptual Framework for Trauma-Informed Practice in Addictions Programming

Previous research has conceptualized trauma-informed practice in relation to five key values: safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. This research identifies key organizational, programmatic, and interpersonal characteristics in community-based residential addictions treatment programming that exemplify each of these principles. Utilizing qualitative research methods, involving open-ended, one to one interviews with clients in residential substance misuse treatment (n = 41), respondents identified the importance of experiencing “safety” in relation to physical safety, confidentiality, reassurance, rule enforcement, and peer relationships. “Trust” was manifested in sharing, staff availability, nonjudgmental interactions, positive relationship dynamics, and caring. “Choice” was articulated in relation to individual needs, participation, opportunities, and focus of efforts. “Collaboration” was characterized in relation to opportunities for feedback, planning, goal setting, specificity, and support. Finally, “empowerment” was characterized by comfort in sharing, trigger management, trauma awareness, and understanding. The findings provide a conceptual framework for a trauma-informed social services organizational practice environment. Findings can inform adaptations to social service delivery processes and programs to become aligned with the values of trauma-informed practice. Future research can build on this framework by testing the study findings with quantitative methods along with replicating current methods in other social service delivery sectors.     

Realism and Contingency

This paper constitutes an extended response to Athanasia Chalari's paper The Causal Impact of Resistance, which suggests that one may derive from internal conversations a causal explanation of resistance. In the context of our engagements with critical realism and digital research into social movements, we review Chalari's main argument, before applying it to a concrete case: the student protests in London, 2010. Whilst our account is sympathetic to Chalari's focus on interiority, we critique the individualism that is implicit in her argument, arguing that it emerges because of an underlying neglect of the relational aspects of resistance. Instead, we offer a relational realist analysis that treats resistance as process within an ontologically stratified account of reality that is mindful of the contingency of political acts. Taking this route, we establish resistance as an emergent relation, generative of distinctive “relational goods” in the context of collective action, which we locate at different levels of reality, as we move from an analysis of individual to collective reflexivity. In doing so we offer a sympathetic critique of Chalari, building on the thought provoking arguments contained within it, whilst also making a contribution to the theorisation of social movements and the “relational turn” within realist social theory (Archer, 2010, 2012).     

Pension reform in the Baltic States: Convergence with “Europe” or with “the world”?

Abstract The Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – join the European Union in 2004. This paper examines pension reform in the three countries over the past decade in the light of the “European social model” and the “World Bank model”. Part one seeks to define these two models. It shows how the former emphasizes income adequacy and solidarity while the latter stresses fiscal sustainability, savings and economic growth. Part two looks at reforms made and proposed. Initial reforms involved raising the retirement age and relating benefits more closely to earnings and service. This resulted in the establishment of pension systems similar to those in many European countries. Subsequent reforms involved attempts to shift from a publicly financed, purely “pay‐as‐you‐go” system to one based upon “funding” and private, individual accounts. Such systems have been promoted by the World Bank. The appropriateness of this approach – its high transition costs, potentially high administration costs, and longer‐term implications for the relative income status of retired people – is questioned. Part three draws conclusions. In the short and medium term, policymaker should safeguard income adequacy rather than seek the doubtful advantages of funding – in other words, look more to “Europe” than to “the world”.     

Taking social policy personally: How does neuroticism affect welfare state attitudes?

The role of the “Big Five” personality traits in driving welfare state attitudes has received scant attention in social policy research. Yet neuroticism in particular—a disposition to stress, worry, and get nervous easily—is theoretically likely to be an important driver of welfare attitudes precisely because welfare states deliver social “security” and “safety” nets. Using cross-sectional data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we study three distinct attitude types (dissatisfaction with the social security system, feelings of personal financial insecurity, and preferences for state provision) and multiple social need contexts (including unemployment, ill health, old age, and nursing care). Controlling for established explanations such as self-interest, partisanship, and socialization, neuroticism does not systematically affect support for state provision. But it robustly increases general dissatisfaction with social security, as well as financial insecurity across various need contexts. Neurotic people are thus less happy with welfare state programmes across the board, yet they also appear to need these programmes more. This trait may be an important deeper layer driving other social attitudes.     

Governance, Forced Migration and Welfare

This paper explores the welfare of forced migrants (i.e. refugees, asylum‐seekers, those with humanitarian leave to remain, and “failed asylum‐seekers/overstayers”) at three linked levels. First, it considers the governance of forced migrants at a supranational (in this case European Union) level. Second, particularly, but not exclusively in the context of the UK, it considers the extent to which the welfare rights of forced migrants in EU member states have been subject to a process of “hollowing out” or “dispersal”. Third, utilizing data from a recently completed qualitative research project, the paper outlines the complex local systems of governance that exist in relation to the housing and social security rights of forced migrants in the UK. The consequences of these networks are highlighted.     

Measuring Support Provisions for People Living With Disabilities in South Asia: An Accessibility Index

ABSTRACT

The terms “empowerment,” “rights,” and “inclusiveness” are now commonly used in public policy, but little emphasis is placed on “accessibility” issues in the integration of disabled people. This article proposes a composite index to measure economic support provisions, such as employment, vocational training, microfinance, and safety nets. The index was tested in a case study (N= 245) of two districts in Pakistan. Results support a “cost/benefit”-based philosophy, rather than the “means–ends” goal, where the disabled poor are viewed as unproductive and risky payers, instead of giving them an opportunity to exercise their potential. Change for the disadvantaged poor can be brought about with the mandatory use of this index in local annual audits. Future research might examine the impact of the index and standardize it for global use.     

Structures of seeing: blindness,race, and gender in visual culture

This essay draws on critical disability studies and blindness studies to rethink our commonsense understanding of vision and unsettle the normative sensory subject that is lodged in visual culture studies. Through a disability studies critique of visual culture studies and a juxtaposition of blind studies alongside the canonical images of the “male gaze” and the “white gaze” this paper argues that (visual) difference does not exist in the world waiting to be seen, but that difference is produced in visual power relations. This essay proposes that the possibilities of visual culture are determined by structures of seeing, rather than physiology or optics, arguing that as long as visual culture and social justice studies are lodged within a Cartesian conception of the subject, they falter in conceptualizing the social construction of perception and difference, for they have not destabilized the “distribution of the sensible” (Rancière) of their own epistemic tradition. Race, gender, and disability are apprehended here not primarily as identity categories, but as possibilities of the body that develop(ed) in tandem in complex socio-historical formations.     

The Intrinsic Influence of the Poetics of Yanzhi on Modern Chinese Literature

否定与批判“言志”诗学, 曾是中国现代文学转型的标志。但从五四新文学开 始, “言志”诗学不仅没有被剔出中国现代文学的审美范畴, 相反, 却借助于西方 话语得到合理的传承。“言”救亡图存的启蒙之“志”, 与“抒”忧国忧民的个人 之“情”, 中国现代文学都未摆脱“志”者“大情”、“情”者“小志”的传统思 维, 具体表现在: 主“思”派提倡文学创作的功利意识, 进而以“志”代“情”回归 “道”统; 主“情”派则提倡文学创作的真情实感, 进而以“情”传“志”, 回归 “道”统。中国现代文学的理论与实践, 虽然涂抹着光怪陆离的“西化”色彩, 但 其重新“释道”与巧妙“言志”的本质特征, 恰恰表明了它对传统文化的价值认同, 而不是简单地抛弃“传统”后走向了“西方”。

关键词: “言志”诗学 “志”与“道” “志”与“情” 古典主义

Rejection and denunciation of the poetics of “yanzhi” (literally “expressing one’s thought or ideals”) was once a marker of Chinese literature’s modern transformation. However, right from the beginning of May Fourth new literature, the poetics of “yanzhi” was not only not cast out of the aesthetic canon of modern Chinese literature but was, on the contrary, legitimately transmitted via Western discourse. Whether modern Chinese writers were expressing enlightenment ideas of saving the nation or voicing their personal feelings for their country and their people, they remained convinced that “zhi” was “feelings” writ large and “feelings” were a lesser form of “zhi.” Specifically, the school stressing the idea that “literature expresses thought” advocated utilitarian literary creation and returned to the traditional Chinese poetics of “yanzhi” by replacing “feelings” with “zhi.” Those stressing the idea that “literature expresses feelings” advocated writing with genuine emotion; they went on to express “zhi” via “feelings,” thus returning to the traditional Chinese way of thought. Both the theory and practice of modern Chinese literature have a strange “Western” tint. Nevertheless, this literature’s essential character of “reinterpreting the ‘dao’ (way)” and sophisticated “expression of thought” or “yanzhi” indicate its value identification with traditional culture rather than the simple abandonment of “tradition” in pursuit of “the West.”     

Examining the link between democracy,social policy,and inclusive development in South‐East Asia

This research investigates the impact of democracy on inclusive development and mainly addresses the question “Does democracy matter in the delivery of larger and more effective social policies that improve inclusive development?” The four cases selected to empirically analyze the relationship among three variables (democracy, social policy, and inclusive development) were Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The three main variables were modeled and analyzed by partial least squares–structural equation modeling technique. The finding revealed that social policy was one of the potential variables linking democracy and inclusive development, especially when the development of democratic institution runs stably.     

The Epistemological Significance of the Theory of Social Representations

The theory of social representations must be understood in terms of its proper epistemology so that it can accomplish its full potential in social sciences. This is often difficult to achieve because researchers comprehend it in terms of concepts that are part of static and individualistic Newtonian epistemology rather than in terms of dynamic and relational Einsteinian epistemology. This article considers three signposts that Moscovici identifies and analyses in the theory of relativity, namely the relation between epistemology and science, theory and method, and the argument against the explanation of effects by their causes. The following question is posed: are these signposts also characteristic of the theory of social representations? This question is examined focusing on interactional epistemology, theory and method and the diversity of natural thinking and communication. Moscovici's Psychoanalysis shows that natural thinking appears in a plurality of modes according to the situation in which it takes place and according to social groups towards which it is directed. Natural thinking is controversial and communication‐centred. Different professionals, groups and lay people use different kinds of speaking and different communicative genres when they try to resolve “the same” problem. The article suggests that bringing together dialogicality, dialogical linguistics and the theory of social representations may open up new possibilities for theoretical developments in social psychology.