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This paper examines how suicide bombers are framed in terrorist communication, focusing on the empirical case of al-Qaeda’s suicide campaigns. Relying on the concept of media of communication in social systems theory, three main communicative levels of terrorist propaganda underlying the representation of suicide bombers are identified. First, on the level of power, armed organizations aim to coerce and deter their enemy by staging a complex set of communicative forms that signal their militants’ determination and resolve. Second, on the level of influence, armed groups exploit the symbolic qualities of suicide missions to gain support from a presumed constituency by referring to suicide attackers’ reputation and their ultimate sacrifice. Finally, by combining references to values and influence, bombers’ behavior and last wills are used as recruitment tools to attract new fighters by appealing to principles rooted in the prestige of martyrs. All of these communicative forms support the hypothesis that the representation of heroism and martyrdom is a crucial component of suicide terrorism. The synergy between the psychological impact of costly actions like suicide missions and framing processes exalting the military, moral and religious qualities of attackers constitutes a sophisticated weapon of a more recent asymmetric warfare involving radical Islamist organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using forms of conservatism as criteria, this paper advances a novel conceptualization and typology of comparative-historical social systems. The paper attempts to do justice to the crucial complexities involved in the relations between a free-market economy, a democratic polity and a free society overall on the one hand and varieties of conservatism on the other. Such attempts are all the more indispensable in light of various simplifications and conflations committed by the conventional wisdom, especially in the USA, in this realm. One of these simplifications is the spurious (American) equation of economic conservatism or the laissez-faire economy with a free society. Another is the broader but also dubious equivalence of the admixture of economic conservatism and formal political democracy, with a free social system. It is the purpose of this article to redress these popular misconceptions. Special emphasis is placed on a peculiar social system denoted authoritarian conservatism or conservative authoritarianism in light of its increasing salience in the USA since the 1980–1990s sequel of its permanent ‘Conservative Revolution’. Given that few endeavors exist to establish a coherent taxonomy of comparative-historical social systems on the basis of these criteria, this paper contributes to filling in a gap in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for sociological institutionalism, particularly its Veblenian variant or connection. This is attempted against a background of the surge of renewed interest in analyzing institutions within modern social science, especially economics and sociology. This is indicated by the emergence of the new institutional economics as the (modified) neoclassical approach to institutions and the revival of economic sociology with its conception of the institutional embeddedness of the economy, respectively. Still, many pertinent differences between economic and sociological institutionalism are overlooked or minimized in the current literature. By exploring such differences, the paper helps span a gap in the literature in which comparative analyses of economic and sociological approaches to institutions are rare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the use, and potential misuse, of the ‘institution’ as a key concept in sociology. The concept of the ‘institution’ is interrogated using ‘family’ as an example and new institutional economics (NIE) as a crucible. The sociological understanding of family as an ‘institution’ is challenged by the distinction between ‘institutions’ and ‘organisations’ in NIE. The blurring of generic non-sociological terms with critical sociological concepts causes confusion between institutions and organisations. This is highly problematic for understanding social change in increasingly complex systems. I conclude that the contextual embedding of sociological concepts remains important to the appropriate use of the term ‘institution’ in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article highlights the paradox in the language, logic, and values of the larger social system vis-à-vis the market economy system. It observes that the language, logic, and values of co-operation have gradually undergone transformation over time and have been mainstreamed today to that of industrial production and organizations in a competitive market economic system. The article argues that the confusions and tensions today in the theory, practice, and policy for recreating sustainable systems essentially arise out of a lack of conceptual clarity and an inability to distinguish the values, logic, and language of competition from that of co-operation. Based on an action research project during 2008–2013 on developing transitional strategies for rebuilding a sustainable community system from within the existing competitive market economy system, the paper provides a way forward for restructuring the organizational design and institutional architecture on the principles of deep relationships, trust, and co-operation for long-term sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological intervention into the everlasting quarrel between poetry and philosophy that this paper attempts might be considered as illegitimate from the point of view of certain sciences, who may have the feeling that their disciplinary boundaries have been violated. Furthermore, because this intervention is interested in the social circumstances of the emergence of the quarrel and is not based on an analysis of its current status, it may well be accused of falling outside the field of sociological competence altogether. Sociology aspired for recognition as a "modern science" that came into existence as a response to the need for self-understanding and an appropriate cognitive approach on the part of modernity. However, with its actual rejection of the distinction between high scientific and low popular language, its actual state of fragmentation or as a postmodernist might put it, its drive for liberation from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief, its often manifested `bad' taste for eclectic theoretical mixtures and approaches and its abandonment of the divine pretension for truth-attainment implicit in the function characteristic of science as a social system.

International scientific collaboration is widely considered a driver of innovation. However, the social processes through which this can occur are complex. It is not only scientists that have a direct interest in international collaboration; but also the institutions or firms that employ them and the governments whose policies are designed to promote collaboration. This article seeks to reveal the social dynamics underpinning this process. Drawing on an empirical study of 79 scientists working in Australia and China we argue that the social process is essentially a system of exchange. Throughout this system, a range of scientific, innovation and social currencies are offered, received and reciprocated. Through the exchange process, scientific and technological capital is accumulated as different expectations are fulfilled and reconciled. Anthropological and sociological literature offers a theoretical framework for the analysis and the findings offer a sociological perspective of scientific collaboration across national innovation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of social system theory, religion is a label by which it is possible to study the relation between the individual expressions of the sacred, on one hand, and the organized system of meanings to be referred to the sacred, on the other, developing a relatively free chain of communication. Therefore, coherently to this approach, the author suggests to assume the notion of religion as communication: a system of belief challenges the complexity of the world, trying to reduce that, transforming the external differentiation into a internal one. This theoretical approach supports three research strategies: (a) overcoming the disputing question secularization/de-secularization, focusing on the dynamics of the relation between a system of belief and the social change occurring in a social context; (b) going beyond the polarization between tradition and modernity, confuting the assumption that modernity means necessarily the decline of religion; (c) reconsidering religion in the light of the social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative and more generally axiological feelings are one of the most important social phenomena and one of the least mastered scientifically. They can be satisfactorily explained if we start from an intuition contained in Max Weber's notion of 'axiological rationality'. This notion can be interpreted as indicating that cognitive rationality can be applied, not only to descriptive, but to prescriptive questions; not only to representational, but to axiological questions. Although the cognitive theory of axiological feelings presented in this article has never been explicitly proposed before, it has been implicitly used by several classical and modern sociologists. Several examples show that it can provide a convincing explanation of empirical data. The cognitive theory of axiological feelings shows that these feelings can be context-bound and yet be rational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to discuss some of the leading features of Erving Goffman's action theory as an alternative to the 'orthodox' paradigms of sociology, viewed as a structuralist and functionalist science that defines social constructs by their shared rules and values, and as a drifting of action, in the sense of intention, toward an individualistic version. The author examines Goffman's shift of the focus of attention from the boundaries of a social sense of action to the social dialectic of 'defining a situation' (W. Thomas) as conducted by the social actors in a renewal of Simmel's 'empowering covenants' (wechselwirkung) in the multiple casual social connections that make up the 'social buzz' in a society. The author moreover discusses Goffman's action as a kind of playacting regulating cognitive and expressive face-to-face 'traffic' between the social actors. This relational dynamic creates an interactive play based on encounters - in which one's opening to another is fraught with risks of deception - regulated by trust as a central resource for social interactions. Trust, in its interpersonal and systemic variants, constitutes a universal social datum and an elementary precondition for social exchanges and the cooperation between individuals. Trust, thus, functions as comparer between reciprocal expectations and a regulator of freedom tending to the stability of the social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on immigration and the underground economy in new receiving South European Countries. In all the countries of southern Europe, it is forbidden for citizens from a non-European country without a residence permit for working reasons to get a registered job, either as an employee or as a self-employed worker. By the mid-1990's, controls on land and sea frontiers were intensified in all countries. The results, however, were very poor everywhere, but in Spain, where new unauthorized entries have slowed down substantially since 1992, so that the 1996 regularization could be devoted only to migrants who had received a previous authorized status. In conclusion it could be said that a strategy capable of dealing with unauthorized immigration as well as a domestic underground economy should be even more complex than is usually forecast. In particular, it should be coupled with an important policy respecting the creation of regular jobs, more generous welfare provisions, and an advertising program to make public opinion aware of how useful the migrants' work is for the receiving society.

In this article the author presents a sociocybernetic approach to social efficiency and its measurement. According to the author the non-profit entities are spreading their social presence and visibility. Non-profit organizations (NPO) do not define themselves through any criteria based on their own exclusive benefit and furthermore they form a heterogeneous universe of activities, organizations and groups. Here the author proposes a theoretical framework to define and to justify an empirical research agenda concerning the social efficiency of NPOs in a society in which complexity is increasing. Sociocybernetics stresses that social values and meanings are always a construction. Knowledge is not just out there, this means concepts are products of a social system, that is, a production of a scientific community, along with other levels in the creation of meanings. Social systems shape reality by creating interpretations. They inform the world of daily life affecting every event. These are considered social facts when they are constitutive of social order. What is external to a social system is chaotic until it has been suitably conceptualized. What is internal to a social system becomes more complex as information about the world increases.

The paradigmatic method of sociocybernetics and systems science is modeling and computer simulation. An essential part in this is the use of systems diagrams, flowcharts, etc. Applied Systems Research, for a long time characterized by the Systems Dynamics method has suffered from serious theoretical deficits. Difficulties are, for instance, to determine the appropriate detail or granularity to be mapped and the mapping of implicit knowledge. One of the important reasons for the non-proliferation of the modeling of social systems outside the scientific community, which is common to all techniques, is the substantial effort and time required for modeling itself as well as for validation and for the communication and explanation of results. The substantial effort in terms of work and time required for developing computer simulations is closely connected to the basic problem of the complexity of the reality to be modeled in non-trivial social science applications. The properties of qualitative variables permit the design, at a certain level of aggregation and abstraction, of a conceptual model of the societal system as a central frame of reference. On the one hand, this can serve as a common framework and, on the other hand, it is easily adaptable to specific research questions and issues to be modeled.

Focuses on the sociology of the 21st century. The traditional purpose of sociology has been mainly to develop theories on social change, to study social institutions and to measure social facts. Sociology originated and evolved into a discipline during the transition from a rural society to an industrial one. The shaping of the analysis of social reality into a scientific discipline in itself cannot be isolated from the onset of industrial society, a new and far more complex kind of society. Sociological knowledge as a particular branch of social sciences arose as a way to identify, understand and interpret the components, interactions and processes of industrial society. However, in contrast to the social reality that 19th and early 20th century sociologists lived in, the global society of the end of the 20th century poses some problems for which their is no knowledge. This fact, together with other outstanding problems, such as the lack of a theory that may be used for empirical research or the lack of a tendency towards a growing individualism makes present sociology appear as an endangered species, according to some authors.

This article analyses the position of elites, mass publics and democratic prospects in postindustrial societies. One basic effect of postindustrial conditions is a change in the alignment of mass political attitudes in relation to occupational experience. Occupational divisions were primary determinants of mass attitudes in all earlier phases of development. But this is much less so in postindustrial societies. The reason is that the preponderant bureaucratic and services component has a finger in every pie. It controls the production and distribution of virtually all economic goods and services, and it is so pervasive that just about every family has at least one member located in, or aspiring to, bureaucratic and service jobs. Since bureaucratic and service skills are in essence information processing skills, they do not readily divide populations in politically relevant ways. Concomitant with the dominance of bureaucratic and service skills is the dominance of mechanical, technological, and automated aspects of economic activity. Industrial age technology greatly reduced the need for human muscle power; postindustrial technology reduces the need for human brain power machines married to computers potentially can do a great deal of what humans now do, and probably better.

The article presents an analytical overview of the macro-structural significance of the family in Korea's political, economic, social and demographic changes. This feature of Korean society is derived not just from its Confucian heritage of family-centered life, but more critically from the processes and manners by which Koreans have coped with various socio-cultural, political and economic forces. The ideological and practical primacy of the family over the individual and society in various domains of life is thus as much a modern invention as a tradition. Modernization has occurred in such a direction that the family functions as social institution, mechanism, arena, and/or corporate actor in various critical aspects of Korean social structure. Thus the family is an aberturra not only for personal life but also for sociopolitical order, production systems, social welfare and demographic structure. Theoretically, much effort is needed in redress the individualist bias of Western sociology to suit the concrete Korean situation.

This article discusses the strategic role of the entrepreneurial function in social terms. Studying and understanding entrepreneurial activity involves outlining in social terms the role that the entrepreneur and the enterprise assume in certain historical, economic and socio-cultural contexts. Because of current social and business reality, the continuous and profound changes occurring and the momentous transformation of world economy, the entrepreneurial factor is strategic and indispensable for the economic survival of the enterprise. This function has always been at the center of economic debate and has been studied in the economic-company and socio-territorial context in different eras. The entrepreneur as an economic institution acts within economic-social institutions, carrying out intentional activity to put into practice his own strategic, creative and innovative decision-making processes in order to reach certain pre-established objectives, adapted to complex environmental conditions. Therefore, the objective of the entrepreneurial function is to define the formula of entrepreneurship, thus rising to a strategic organizational type of function for the development and territorial diffusion of entrepreneurial activity and culture.