VERY LOCAL STRUCTURE IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Triadic configurations are fundamental to many social structural processes and provide the basis for a variety of social network theories and methodologies. This paper addresses the question of how much of the patterning of triads is accounted for by lower-order properties pertaining to nodes and dyads. The empirical base is a collection of 82 social networks representing a number of different species (humans, baboons, macaques, bison, cattle, goats, sparrows, caribou, and more) and an assortment of social relations (friendship, negative sentiments, choice of work partners, advice seeking, reported social interactions, victories in agonistic encounters, dominance, and co-observation). Methodology uses low dimensional representations of triad censuses for these social networks, as compared to censuses expected given four lower-order social network properties. Results show that triadic structure is largely accounted for by properties more local than triads: network density, nodal indegree and outdegree distributions, and the dyad census. These findings reinforce the observation that structural configurations that can be realized in empirical social networks are severely constrained by very local network properties, making some configurations extremely improbable.     

Competing Failure Risk Analysis Using Evidence Theory

Safety systems are important components of high-consequence systems that are intended to prevent the unintended operation of the system and thus the potentially significant negative consequences that could result from such an operation. This presentation investigates and illustrates formal procedures for assessing the uncertainty in the probability that a safety system will fail to operate as intended in an accident environment. Probability theory and evidence theory are introduced as possible mathematical structures for the representation of the epistemic uncertainty associated with the performance of safety systems, and a representation of this type is illustrated with a hypothetical safety system involving one weak link and one strong link that is exposed to a high temperature fire environment. Topics considered include (1) the nature of diffuse uncertainty information involving a system and its environment, (2) the conversion of diffuse uncertainty information into the mathematical structures associated with probability theory and evidence theory, and (3) the propagation of these uncertainty structures through a model for a safety system to obtain representations in the context of probability theory and evidence theory of the uncertainty in the probability that the safety system will fail to operate as intended. The results suggest that evidence theory provides a potentially valuable representational tool for the display of the implications of significant epistemic uncertainty in inputs to complex analyses.     

The relationship between marriage and family therapists and complementary and alternative medicine approaches: a national survey

Respondents to a mail survey of a random sample (N = 424) of Clinical Members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy provided information about their contexts of practice, use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and relationships with CAM providers. Consistent with both national trends and the experience of psychologists as reported in a similar survey, the results of this survey suggest that marriage and family therapists have been affected significantly by and have a growing awareness of CAM practices. Limitations of the study and implications for the field are discussed.     

A retrospective visual study of social change: the pulp-logging industry in an Upper Peninsula Michigan county1

This article outlines a strategy for reconstructing and visually documenting social change after the change is already largely completed. The example used is the pulp-logging industry in Ontonagon County, Michigan, in which change occurred slowly until 1970–1985, when a profound transformation took place.     

Visual sociology: A practical pedagogy

As a part of an organisational sociological study of Danish film projects, I followed the development of a feature film over a one-year period in 2006–2007. Coincidentally, this film came to be about a drama in the academic world. Thus, while I researched the filmmakers, they investigated life in Academia, using me as an informant. In that way, the positions of researcher and informants were turned upside-down. Or rather, a two-way relation of mutual investigations was introduced between the filmmakers and me. In the empirical analysis of the filmmaker's work, I employ the concept of symmetrical ethnography, which has been introduced by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Vivieros de Castro in an attempt to equalise the knowledge practices of informants to those of ethnographers. Vivieros de Castro suggests that such symmetry entails a turn from epistemology to ontology. Hence I discuss whether the filmmakers’ work can be seen as an invention of ontologies. Whereas studies in organisational aesthetics and sociological appraisals of documentaries within visual sociology have a tendency to compare art to academic work, I suggest looking into the filmmakers’ ‘point of view on point of view’, suggesting that the filmmakers and I may not be representing the same world differently but representing different worlds.     

Modernist misapprehensions of Foucault's aesthetics

Abstract

Several critics of Foucault, notably Alan Megill and Jürgen Habermas, accuse Foucault of being an ‘aestheticist’. As such, Foucault fails to realise that the very appeal to aesthetics is made possible by modernity's rationalization, which offers better resources for emancipation than dangerous aestheticizations. This paper argues that such criticisms mistakenly deploy only certain modernist notions of aesthetics against Foucault. There are some fair grounds for holding that Foucault does appeal to such conceptions of aesthetics in his theorization of transgression, not least because of his interest in modernist, avant‐garde writers and artists such as Roussel and Magritte. Yet, overall, Foucault's interest in avant‐garde aesthetics is not modernist in the sense understood by his critics. Foucault tends to focus on modernist illustration of the absence of foundations for representation and language, adopting a paraesthetic angle of critique. The limiting conditions that make representation possible can be seen in this light as both contingent yet necessary. Foucault's model of critique is developed in his early analyses of avant‐garde art and then expanded to cover subjectivity and the aesthetics of existence in his later philosophical critical ethos of modernity. Foucault uses avant‐garde art as a critical mode of reflection, to analyse and rethink the limits of the present.     

The nature of bank money,a case study of transformation in the Czech banking sector

The article examines the nature of bank money on two complementary levels. The first level deals with theoretical considerations. Here, the departure point is Social Positioning Theory, which provides a framework to investigate the nature of money. Within the theory, the paper situates bank money in credit-debt relations, that are themselves integral part of a wider productive-consumptive nexus of the economy. In this perspective, bank money is the relation, accounting economic positions of participating members, resulting from their economic activities realized within the context of the overall society. The second level uses the methods of Oral History and Memory Studies and, through semi-structured interviews, provides empirical material illustrating ideas about the nature of money in a specific historical form. The article thus explores the contrasting experiences of banking in the context of a centrally planned economy and banking in the transformation to a market economy. These two contrasting episodes are illustrative because of the significant change in the form of bank money, which brings to light various aspects of its nature. Moreover, the article utilizes interviews that present the lived experience of bankers with years of involvement in the sector, enriching the perspective on the issue under study.