Network constraints on social action: preliminaries for a network theory

The network approach to social reality lacks a theoretical body that backs up the assumption of the working of structural rules. This contribution is an attempt toward investigation of the possibility of a theory of the effects of network properties on social action. The structure and effects of social networks vary along with the aims put forward in the relations of which they are composed. Considering those aims, three different sorts of networks can be distinguished — sentiment-, interest- and power-networks — involving distinct action logics. When the nature of the ties is known, predictions about the structure of the resulting social networks, type of social control and type of exchange taking place within them, can be made.     

Raising Societal Support for Development Cooperation: The Role of Students’ Exchange Programs

This article analyzes the development education and exchange activities of the Dutch development organization Edukans with its longstanding experience in the “Going Global” program among secondary schools in The Netherlands. Based on a survey with 186 direct participants in the foreign exchange program and 608 schoolmates at 126 secondary schools, a detailed analysis is made of differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior with respect to international cooperation, and tolerance regarding ethnic minorities. To guarantee unbiased impact assessment, the same data is collected among 276 students of a comparison group. Propensity score-matching techniques are used for data analysis, controlling for intrinsic differences among the three groups. Results show that international exchange programs have a significant positive impact on all four dimensions of societal support of the direct participants compared to their schoolmates. Only knowledge and attitudes changes are registered in the scores of the schoolmates compared to the comparison group. These outcomes remain robust when corrected for individual and school characteristics, parental background, and political preferences, and when unobserved heterogeneity is included.     

Digraph Competitions and Cooperative Games

Digraph games are cooperative TU-games associated to domination structures which can be modeled by directed graphs. Examples come from sports competitions or from simple majority win digraphs corresponding to preference profiles in social choice theory. The Shapley value, core, marginal vectors and selectope vectors of digraph games are characterized in terms of so-called simple score vectors. A general characterization of the class of (almost positive) TU-games where each selectope vector is a marginal vector is provided in terms of game semi-circuits. Finally, applications to the ranking of teams in sports competitions and of alternatives in social choice theory are discussed.     

Why most sociologists don't (and won't) think evolutionarily

The general failure of sociologists to understand, much less accept, an evolutionary perspective on human behavior transcends mere ignorance and ideological bias, although it incorporates a good deal of both. It also includes a general anthropocentric discomfort with evolutionary thinking, a self-interested resistance to self-understanding, and a trained sociological incapacity to accept the fundamental canons of scientific theory construction: reductionism, individualism, materialism, and parsimony.     

Notes on Theory and Practice in Social Work: a Comparative View

Please address reprint requests to Robert van Krieken, Department of Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. Summary There are still a number of problems surrounding the relationshipbetween theories of social work practice and that practice itself.This paper examines the factors underlying those problems andemphasises their roots in the failure to examine the diversityof social work theories and practices. We refer to one attemptto resolve the problems—the distinction between ‘practicetheory’ and ‘theory of practice’—pointout some difficulties with it and suggest an alternative, three-folddistinction within theorising: between (a) materialist socialtheory, (b) strategic practice theory and (c) working concepts. As an example of how those distinctions can be used, we thenbriefly discuss the work of Oskar Negt and its introductioninto the Dutch welfare context, as it was the issues raisedby that which stimulated the ideas in this paper. We concludeby arguing that only this kind of perspective on theorisingcan produce ideas which are of real use to progressive socialwork practitioners.     

Economic psychology

Economic psychology studies the economic behavior of consumers and entrepreneurs. Economic behavior involves decisions on money, time, and efforts. The models of Katona and Strümpel are discussed and a new model is proposed. This new model stresses the cyclical character of economic behavior on a micro and a macro level. Economic psychology is related to organizational psychology, marketing research, mass communication research, economic sociology, and the household production approach. A proposition of the aims and scope of the Journal of Economic Psychology concludes this introductory article.     

Using cluster random assignment to measure program impacts. Statistical implications for the evaluation of education programs

This article explores the possibility of randomly assigning groups (or clusters) of individuals to a program or a control group to estimate the impacts of programs designed to affect whole groups. This cluster assignment approach maintains the primary strength of random assignment--the provision of unbiased impact estimates--but has less statistical power than random assignment of individuals, which usually is not possible for programs focused on whole groups. To explore the statistical implications of cluster assignment, the authors (a) outline the issues involved, (b) present an analytic framework for studying these issues, and (c) apply this framework to assess the potential for using the approach to evaluate education programs targeted on whole schools. The findings suggest that cluster assignment of schools holds some promise for estimating the impacts of education programs when it is possible to control for the average performance of past student cohorts or the past performance of individual students.