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Presents observations on the conference papers on cultural systems and organizational processes in the U.S. Basis for descriptive precision; Identification of the most basic empirical questions regarding culture; Distinct formalization of social systems.

Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution. The third is when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity on the part of the authorities. One recent example of this is the impeachment process against the Chief of Government of Mexico City. The author approaches this problem by exploring the consequences of such experiences for the development and functioning of personality structure and personal relations, as well as their repercussions for individuals living together in the community and for the necessary relation between them and the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decades have seen efforts to increase digital inclusion for women worldwide, with the ultimate aim to advance gender equality. However, progress is slow, despite important advances in moving beyond a focus on 'digital access' (as measured by network coverage and hardware) towards a more holistic understanding of inclusion that considers abilities, awareness and agency. Here, we propose a further theoretical shift that draws on social system theories (e.g., Luhmann, 1984) and on the theory of 'intersecting inequalities' (Kabeer, 2010). We propose to understand the gender digital gap, particularly in mobile and internet usage, not merely descriptively but dynamically – since even factors like agency and awareness change over time – by applying concepts of feedback loops, low-equilibrium traps, multi-dimensional exclusion and systems analysis. This paper highlights how women may become locked in a state of low-inclusion unless the feedback loops between digital, social, economic and political exclusion are addressed through policies that tackle multiple dimensions. The paper reviews research on gender digital gaps with particular focus on developing countries, and with direct implications for policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of Bakó & Zana's paper, "The Reality of Trauma; the Trauma of Reality," will be organized in several parts: the first will summarize their promising ideas, integrating large systems with psychoanalysis; the second, will roughly outline some shortcomings; the third, will highlight some salient differences between the Hungarian and American socio-political contexts and provide a discussion of the author's evolution toward a socio-centric psychoanalysis. This conception of a socio-centric psychoanalysis, in addition to addressing the impact of the social unconscious on the traditional consulting room, seeks to move psychoanalysis outward – outward to group interventions and socio-political deliberation – culminating in two experimental practices: the "psycho-social citizenship dream group" and whole systems change relying on social dreaming and systems psychodynamics applied to "deliberative democracy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the Internet, the agricultural product circulation standard system needs to undergo corresponding changes to adapt to the modern fast-paced social system. Based on the summary of domestic and foreign theoretical research, this paper adopts five methods including literature research, field investigation, case comparison analysis, model construction, qualitative and quantitative methods to study the agricultural product circulation system. Moreover, this paper analyses the connotation of agricultural products and agricultural product circulation system, and takes the agricultural product circulation system as the research object, and uses field investigation as the research method to systematically analyse the contents of the agricultural product circulation subject, circulation channel, and logistics operation mode. In addition, this article combined with examples to quantitatively analyse my country's agricultural product logistics operations. Finally, this article combines the agricultural product logistics system with fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to analyse the product circulation standard under the Internet background and customer needs to put forward several suggestions for improvement, and builds an improved agricultural product circulation standard system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study unveils a unique case in the Paralympic Games through investigating the negotiation between the International Paralympic Committee and the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games for the change of the emblem of the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games two years after its official release. Qualitative data is collected through interviews with senior personnel and archival documents and is analysed through employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework to highlight the change in the belief system of the two parties and the interaction between the policy subsystem and the broader political and social economic system. The findings reveal the shift in the belief system of respective Coalitions and the change in the power dynamics. The paper concludes with a discussion concerning the ACF's four pathways of policy change and a response to one of the questions that is raised in the ACF literature for further researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern complex societies with profoundly interlinked sectors and sub-sectors, policymakers and scholars need to adopt systemic thinking as an analytical lens for mapping the intersections and interdependencies between social systems and their related vulnerabilities. This paper argues for an integrated governance approach to manage the risks and opportunities arising from the interactions between human mobility (HM) and disaster risk (DR). The analysis of HM and DR governance frameworks at the international and national levels (including through the case study lens of Bangladesh) shows that some progress has been made in integrating aspects of HM into DR governance and vice versa. Although respective frameworks have been integrated to a certain extent, further points of convergence and overlap still need to be adequately addressed. The policy integration process can be guided and facilitated by combining two conceptual frameworks originating in the HM and DR governance fields: the human mobilities perspective and the systemic risk approach. The paper concludes by proposing an HM-DR governance framework informed by these perspectives and steered by an interagency standing committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-hydrology has expanded and been effective in exposing the hydrological community to ideas and approaches from other scientific disciplines, and social sciences in particular. Yet it still has much to explore regarding how to capture human agency and how to combine different methods and disciplinary views from both the hydrological and the social sciences to develop knowledge. A useful starting ground is noting that the complexity of human–water relations is due to interactions not only across spatial and temporal scales but also across different organizational levels of social systems. This calls for consideration of another analytical scale, the human organizational scale, and interdisciplinarity in study methods. Based on the papers published in this journal's Special Issue Advancing Socio-hydrology over 2019–2022, this paper illuminates how the understanding of coupled human–water systems can be strengthened by capturing the multi-level nature of human decision making and by applying an interdisciplinary multi-method approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the meaning of authenticity in making places with heritage values through the case of the Algerian medinas. Because of their particular and exclusive histories in the Maghreb, these historical settlements founded in the Islamic period have sometimes undergone radical transformations that have undermined their universal heritage eligibility. The latter is based on the criterion of authenticity. This is currently being questioned because of its rigidity, which has ensued from transformations in ideological field related to notions of culture and identity. Additionally, universal heritage eligibility has been shaped by the emergence of intangible heritage. This article is between a 'Viewpoint' type of paper and an empirically grounded research paper. The results of such an approach highlight the contradictions related to the authorities' choices concerning the heritage of the Algerian medina. A process made according to a vision that was impregnated by a constructed authenticity. The latter was based on the primacy of the original Islamic model according to issues of decolonization and autochthony. The article calls into question the normative reading of heritage as a set of essences favouring a social construction of systems of representation that claim truth, identity and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The key organizing theme for this special issue is "Sustaining Rural Systems: Rural Vitality in an Era of Globalization and Economic Nationalism." The multiplicity of roles that rural communities play in economic and social systems are often overlooked in conversations about globalization and economic nationalism. Yet rural communities, economies and landscapes are closely tied to global industries, migrant flows and markets, while simultaneously subject to nationalist economic policies and strategies. These articles are drawn from the 2019 International Geographical Union Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems Colloquium and examine the interplay between rural places and the competing narratives of globalization and nationalism. The studies come from Croatia, Belgium, Australia, the USA, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Italy and Spain. In each article, the authors seek to elucidate the nuanced ties between people and industries that are at once intensely local and simultaneously tied to regional and global processes. The articles challenge us to critically examine oversimplified messaging of highly complex systems and provide insights into processes of change at local scales across major global regions, highlighting the contemporary status of rural change through the lens of sustainability and set within current competing narratives of globalization and economic nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activists and writers on injustice have highlighted as a structural problem that injustice is experienced differentially. What injustices of privilege lie hidden in my daily academic life? Three deeply discomforting moments relating to Class, climate, and Whiteness privilege, form the core of an account of gradually admitting to my passive acceptance of injustice in the form of privileges from which I benefit. My ignorance has perpetuated privilege despite this not being my conscious will. From this crisis, the paper explores the inner work for healing injustice individually, and the outer work of changing collective habits of dominance within the Academy. A starting point is befriending my will to injustice and facing up to my privileges. Effort needed from White, Middle Class academics 'like me' includes uncovering ways in which we benefit from privilege whether or not we want to. Proposals are made for inner growth through building community among academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant meta-theories in contemporary sociolinguistics include interactionism, social constructivism, poststructuralism and similarly relativist, anti-realist approaches (hereby grouped within the broader category of interpretivism). This paper argues that anti-scientific, anti-realist tendencies in contemporary sociolinguistics are ill-justified, confuse science with positivism, and weaken sociolinguists' necessary commitment to objectivity (hereby understood as commitment by scientists to explain the ontological order, or what exists regardless of whether it is known by people). The anti-realism in interpretivist sociolinguistics also considerably diminishes the ability of sociolinguists to, for example, make ontological claims about language and its users, study phenomena including linguistic hierarchies and linguistic/social oppression as systems, and develop robust and effective strategies for critical engagement and social emancipation. By reaffirming sociolinguistics as part of the scientific project, and by reframing sociolinguistics within critical realism (CR), this paper offers conceptual alternatives to the dominant interpretivist tendencies in contemporary sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key aspect of Friedrich von Hayek's thought is the importance he places on the concept of complexity and the way that it limits human capacities for knowledge and control. Interrogating the intersection of complexity, neoliberal theory and systems of gender relations, this paper examines the place of masculinity in Hayek's work. Reading against the grain of Hayek's texts, I draw out the gendered assumptions that are embedded in them to consider how hegemonic masculinities may provide sustenance to neoliberalism. Focusing on The road to serfdom and The fatal conceit, the paper argues that Hayek ultimately fails to fully embrace complexity because his texts enact and rely upon a masculine subject position that limits awareness of human embeddedness in social and natural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China implemented a universal two-child policy in 2016. But its earlier one-child policy resulted in a large population of one-child parents who face miserable later lives if their only-child passes away before them. China's Current social assistance to such Shidu families is not supportive enough and provides insufficient coverage. Using demographic methods, this paper estimates both the mortality of only-children and the population of Shidu parents over 49 years-old. Furthermore, it advocates for improvements to the standard of social assistance for Shidu families and measures the financial sustainability of that suggested standard. After analyzing Chinese national census data and China Fertility Status Survey data, we found that the risk of death for a rural only-child was higher than for an urban only-child in every age group. Following the concept of period parity progression, we estimated the scale of Shidu parents, which will gradually increase to a peak of 1.05 million in 2030. Considering present policies and the Shidu parents' unmet needs, we argue that China's central government should increase its economic support of such families, include those support policies in a comprehensive social security system, and offer more emotional care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present guest editorial offers a review of the different conceptualizations of families in business used in research to date, shedding light on the unique characteristics of each type. Understanding the family through the lens of social systems theory offers a means for researchers to study contextually embedded family systems, offering a foundation for studying differences among families. We demonstrate that the family business system (ownership, business, family) is incomplete without a fourth component, that of the family in business. We then present the papers included in this special issue and highlight the collective contribution to research in the fields of family business and family entrepreneurship and provide directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context is a key concept in developing realist causal explanations but its conceptualisation has received comparatively less attention. We conducted a review to explore how context is conceptualised within realist reviews and evaluations. We purposively selected 40 studies to examine: How is context defined? And how is context operationalised in the findings? We identified two key 'narratives' in the way context was conceptualised: 1) Context as observable features (space, place, people, things) that triggered or blocked the intervention; assuming that context operates at one moment in time and sets in motion a chain reaction of events. 2) Context as the relational and dynamic features that shaped the mechanisms through which the intervention works; assuming that context operates in a dynamic, emergent way over time at multiple different levels of the social system. These two context narratives have different implications for the design, goals and impact of realist reviews and evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cohousing is widely celebrated as a socially and environmentally sustainable housing model, but remains a small sector with a distinct social profile: White, highly educated and with middle-high income. Drawing on mixed-methods research and using a Bourdieusian analysis, this paper argues that culture, and not affordability, is the main barrier to inclusion. Contrary to previous claims, the study found that awareness of cohousing is born within like-minded circles and not locally. The quantitative aspect provides up-to-date data on the social profile of cohousing communities in England, and the qualitative data show how cohousing is reproduced as a White and middle-class space due to cultural capital and habitus – an invisible social system that maintains privilege. At the same time, the data also show that cohousing is in fact more diverse than is perceived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of climate change, social theory has been subject to a surge of new materialist and posthuman approaches that reconfigure ontology and politics beyond the modern nature/culture binary which the Anthropocene has rendered untenable. But their (re-)turn to ontological speculation brackets the socio-epistemic situatedness and productivity of the way we think nature and its relationship to society. This paper reads Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as a posthuman perspective that can address the epistemological blind spot of materialist-ecological thought. Luhmann's ecology aligns with the former on the posthuman framing of shaping power, the productivity of an environmental outside that remains unknown, and the call for political modesty which follows. On the other hand, Luhmann's theory poses a critical challenge to materialist-ecological thought: the society/environment binary is here constitutively necessary, and its mapping onto a nature/culture binary functionally advantageous for subjects and social systems because it offers opportunities for complexity-reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the invention of the European Union (EU) common market and the lifting of national border controls produced a mobility-control vacuum within the EU and its member states. Building on ethnographic research in the German city of Munich and symptomatic policy-paper analysis (2013–2021), it traces the emergence of a new policy field that targets 'poverty migration' and 'benefit fraud' in this vacuum. This internal border work builds on transformations of the German social system from an ethos of welfare to active labour-market policy. With the classical toolbox of national migration regimes no longer working for intra-EU movers, their mobility rights and right to residence have been increasingly restricted by making economic self-reliance a conditionality of stay and excluding those not engaged in wage labour or self-employment from welfare services. Social policy is used as a tool for controlling mobility, which we refer to as 'workfare-state borders.' This is because it reinforces the radicalization of the workfare state by either pushing the racialized and migrantized poor into precarious wage labor or depriving them of social protection. This internal border work reconnects meritocratic logics with classical articulations of racism, thus contributing to the finely tuned reinvention of a racial order in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online aggression is an increasingly significant problem in Internet-based communication systems (e.g., commenting platforms) with potentially negative effects on online participation and quality of online discourse. Similar to offline aggression, online aggression has been shown to be contagious and to spread through online platforms as a result of exposure to aggressive content. Among other demographics, young adults report experiencing online aggression at alarming rates. In this paper, we examine the short-term effects of exposure to different levels of online aggressive behavior, and investigate whether it leads to an increase in online aggression among 118 young adults. Using an emulated commenting environment, we found evidence for the contagious nature of aggressive commenting. Even when individuals knew comments were synthetic (and not generated by actual peers), exposure to higher levels of aggressive comments resulted in a statistically significant increase in user aggression. Surprisingly, our results show that anonymity neither increased nor decreased the aggression response, which could indicate a change in user behavior since the advent of Internet 2.0 technologies or qualms related to experimenter-subject anonymity. Consequently, the results in this paper support the hypothesis that even in transient online interactions, young adult participants mimic their peers in an attempt to minimize social stress. Moreover, this mimicking occurs even when the participants know they are participating in an artificial social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a conceptual paper which is exploring the adaptation of social protection for digital platform workers in Souths Africa within the realm of substantive equality. The paper examines how a substantive conception of equality can contribute toward shaping social protection in South Africa into the digital work era where a new form of work is emerging which does not fit into the framework of traditional contributory social protection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using follow-the-thing methods and insights from ethnographic fieldwork, this paper traces the meteorological mobilities entwined within Bangladesh bricks. Following the extended lifecycle of the Bangla brick from sediment to clay, from clay to brick and from brick to sediment, and the role that monsoon weathering plays in these processes, reveals complex entanglements of mobilities and materialities. A more-than-human mobilities perspective highlights the myriad human and nonhuman circulations that constitute the brick, as well as the geological, atmospheric and hydrological dynamics that brickmaking sets in motion. Through the becoming and unbecoming of the brick, the paper explores how the mobile materiality of the monsoon is enmeshed within the building blocks of Bangladesh's cities and the infrastructures on which they depend and how, in turn, the mobile materiality of the brick influences monsoonal environments. These intra-active entanglements trouble perceived dichotomies between society and meteorological forces and highlight the agentive role of weather systems in social worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy and vision of the RPAA is very familiar to us: a diverse group of talented urban reformers wanted to restructure social and economic systems to create decentralized, interconnected clusters of contained settlements in the form of garden cities protected by open space, with healthy, nearby industry providing ample employment opportunities. Regions would be linked by geography, culture, and climatic unity. The problem of great cities would be approached 'not from within but from without'. In this paper, I consider three urban issues currently dominating our urban discourse a century after the RPAA was formed – the pandemic and its impact on urban life, gentrification and displacement, and climate change – and conjecture about what the RPAA might have thought or done if confronted with such challenges. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the RPAA, what can we surmise about a likely response from this influential group of urban and regional reformers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst "spatiality" and "architecture" have become recognized as important dimensions of urban conflict, contemporary forms of power push our gaze toward symbolic landmarks such as Belfast's "peace walls." This paper uses Belfast as a case study to instead highlight the fundamental role occupied by "everyday" urban space and architecture. It reveals evidence of an undisclosed body of divisive architecture put in place through a confidential process of security planning between 1977 and 1985 to physically segregate and spatially fragment Catholic and Protestant communities in contested areas of Belfast. Termed here as hidden barriers, they are formed from "everyday" roads, housing, shops, offices, factories and landscaping, and the ways in which they continue to promote division represents a crucially undervalued aspect of conflict-transformation planning. The paper examines the complex urban challenges that they pose, arguing for a reevaluation of the role of everyday architecture and space in conflict and peacebuilding processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is a classical modeling method for dealing with spatial non-stationarity. It incorporates the distance decay effect in space to fit local regression models, where distance is defined as Euclidean distance. Although this definition has been expanded, it remains focused on physical distance. However, in the era of globalization and informatization, where the phenomenon of remotely close association is common, physical distance may not reflect real spatial proximity, and GWR based on physical distance has clear limitations. This paper proposes a geographically weighted regression based on a network weight matrix (NWM GWR) model. This does not rely on geographical location modeling; instead, it uses network distance to measure the proximity between two regions and weights observations by improving the kernel function to achieve distance attenuation. We adopt the population mobility network to establish a network weight matrix, modeling China's urbanization and its multidimensional driving factors using network autocorrelation and NWM GWR methods. Results show that the NWM GWR model has more accurate fit and better stability than ordinary least squares and GWR models, and better reveals relationships between variables, which makes it suitable for modeling economic and social systems more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much work in care ethics and disability studies is concerned with the flourishing of human animals as an independent species. As a result, it focuses on how the built environments and the social structures that produce them restrict and exclude us. This paper addresses this problem and provides tentative first steps towards sketching an account of ethics that is structured around the interdependent nature of human and more than human life. I argue that our embodied existence places us in a shared condition of vulnerability with all forms of life on earth. This allows us to conceive of caring as an essential condition of the sustainability and well-being of social and ecological life systems. To this end, I discuss the notion of anthropocentrism – and the attendant notion of Anthropocene – and argue that the conception of human animality that underwrites it posits a disembodied and homogenous 'anthropos' that is equally responsible for and equally affected by unsustainable social systems. Further, I examine the debate that opposes realist and constructivist accounts of nature, and I argue that it is inadequate to look at nature through the lenses of the predatory social systems that are responsible for ecological injustices in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology that generates and links high-resolution spatial data on households and housing units with heterogeneous characteristics (i.e., size, tenure status, occupied, and vacant) to residential buildings which in turn are linked to critical infrastructure. The methodology utilizes areal demographic data from the US Census, which are probabilistically linked to an inventory of housing units located in residential buildings. By allocating high-resolution household socio-demographic data to housing units in single and multi-family residential structures themselves linked to critical infrastructure systems, coupled engineering-social science modeling is possible. This paper presents a workflow for linking social science and engineering data to enable integrated models for community resilience. The methodology is applied to Seaside, Oregon, a coastal community with a year-round population of over 6,000 persons. The application highlights the benefits of integrating social science and engineering data. Benefits include facilitating coupled modeling, accounting for uncertainty, visualization, and spatial exploration of modeled results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the evolution of intergenerational educational mobility in Poland since 1920. We use a novel empirical method allowing for the measurement of mobility at a constant rank in the education distribution, not among education levels. This paper finds that intergenerational mobility increased after WWII. This increase was only temporary. When the new social system stabilized, intergenerational mobility decreased. The transition to a free market economy decreased intergenerational mobility but it recovered after the first 15 years of the transition. Despite these identified fluctuations, intergenerational mobility has been rather stable over time [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an empirical study on moral reasoning. It seeks to answer two questions: in the moral framing of tourism matters, what does this reasoning consist of? How are these elements mobilized by actors to reach moral pronouncement(s)? Through the means of group interviews, abduction and retroduction, this study finds that moral muteness (i.e. silence to socially unacceptable conduct) seems to be the moral pronouncement that the participants are likely to conduct in a condition whereby the social and cultural systems being perceived insufficient to protect individuals who pursue a righteous action. The analysis reveals that (1) moral template, reflexivity, self-efficacy and emotions are constitutive elements of moral agency; (2) these agential properties permit the emergence of four moral reasoning processes, which explain moral muteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a scholar/activist's reflections on some key conceptual and political articulations shaping current food systems analysis to illustrate that crucial knowledge about food systems and social transformation is generated in a variety of sites and ways. Drawing on personal experiences as one of the initial leaders in the global movement, La Via Campesina, the author explores the emergence of food sovereignty, the struggles of agrarian feminists for gender parity, the recognition of women's work, and agro-ecology as sites for the generation of knowledge needed for justice, food systems transformation and the restoration of rural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the tension between the desire to claim predictive ability for Agent-Based Models (ABMs) and its extreme difficulty for social and ecological systems, suggesting that this is the main cause for the continuance of a rhetoric of prediction that is at odds with what is achievable. Following others, it recommends that it is better to avoid giving the impression of predictive ability until this has been iteratively and independently verified, due to the danger of suggesting more than is empirically warranted, especially in non-modellers. It notes that there is a restricted and technical context where prediction is useful, that of meta-modelling – when we are trying to explain and understand our own simulation models. If one is going to claim prediction, then a lot more care needs to be taken, implying minimal standards in practice and transparent honesty about the empirical track record – the over-enthusiastic claiming of prediction in casual ways needs to cease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro-entrepreneurship literature underscores the role of individual perceptual factors in structuring the social inclusion of women while considering the social systems which shape it. However, untangling the way individual perceptual factors relate to the entrepreneurial outcome, remains a challenge, due to the social systems of women. Based on responses of 459 women micro-entrepreneurs operating in Madina, Nungua, and Tema, this paper examines the influence of women micro-entrepreneurship on social inclusion with entrepreneurial self-efficacy, fear of failure and resilience as moderators. The value of this study lies in providing significant insights on micro-entrepreneurship increasing the probability of women's social inclusion with a better strengthening of the relationship based on fear of failure and resilience. The study provides some useful academic insights and offers some practical suggestions for improving policy aimed at using women micro-entrepreneurship as a strategy for social inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of diverse technologies fuels business-model transformation, evolving new applications. Industry 4.0 utilizes emerging-technologies like IoT, AI to make next-generation manufacturing-processes more efficient and agile. Cyber physical systems (CPS) augmented with social, thinking technologies effectuate cyber physical social thinking systems (CPST). Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) like Blockchain are synergistic with architectural-elements of such industry-blueprints. Extant literature explores contextual-roles of distinct technology-components as-well-as their limited-combinations; clearly necessitating consideration of integrated-applications. This contemporary conceptual paper: (i) concisely analyses potential-synergies amongst Blockchain, CPST technologies; (ii) proposes novel integrated architecture; (iii) outlines underlying challenges, opportunities and performance considerations; bearing benefits beyond traditional-ecosystems to societal-stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the report on a therapy with an 8-year-old boy provided by Simona Caprilli. A complex systems theory perspective is adopted to explore certain developments and characteristics of this case history. The therapist's impact on the patient's social system of reference is examined, with particular attention to her mode of procedure, attitudes, and commitments. This paper identifies Caprilli´s consistent contextualization as a key aspect of her empathic approach. In addition, special attention is paid to the feelings that arise in the intersubjective field and to the structure of the therapeutic relationship. The discussion of the case study illustrates that the emergence of new organizational patterns in the system opens up new possibilities and expands the scope in the therapeutic relationship. This emphasizes the interconnectedness of systemic and individual levels and highlights the significance of shared emotions for this change process. The clinical example is used to demonstrate how psychoanalytic change processes can also be understood as systemic changes, not just personal developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social accountability is a powerful concept. It is applied to medical education to encourage future doctors to take action to address health inequalities and overlooked health needs of disadvantaged populations. Problem-based learning (PBL) provides an ideal setting to teach medical students about these topics. The objective of this study is to explore how well the components of social accountability are covered in a pre-clinical PBL medical curriculum and to determine the usefulness of an adapted validated social accountability framework. We identified Irish health needs and social issues through a literature review. The retrieved documents were aligned to four values (relevance, equity, cost-effectiveness and quality) from a validated social accountability inventory, to generate a map of social accountability values present in the Irish health system and population. We then used the adapted validated social accountability inventory to evaluate the content of the PBL medical curriculum at an Irish medical school. We identified 45 documents, which upon analysis lead to the identification of health and social issues related to social accountability. 66 pre-clinical PBL cases included demographic, health and psychosocial issues similar to the local population. Analysing along the four social accountability values, the PBL cases demonstrated room for improvement in the equity and relevance domains. Topics for expansion are Traveller health, LGBTI health, alcohol use, climate change and more. Medical educators can use the paper as an example of how to apply this methodology to evaluate PBL cases. Adapting and applying a validated framework is a useful pedagogical exercise to understand established societal values related to social accountability to inform a medical curriculum. We identified opportunities to improve the PBL cases to depict emerging global and social issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the concept and practice of meritocracy in Chinese national oil corporations' (NOCs) graduate recruitment and selection. It focuses on the post-2008 NOC reform period, which sees NOCs place increasing rhetorical emphasis on meritocratic or 'fair' recruitment and selection. However, this paper argues that, in practice, these sentiments remain unrealized. The NOCs continue to use some sub-optimum applicant assessment measures and misuse or misunderstand the more optimum ones. Likewise, the prioritization of certain criteria, such as elite education, has merely advantaged graduates with strong Bourdieu capitals. Hence, this produces a flawed meritocracy that neither maximizes fairness nor efficiency, but strengthens elitism. Moreover, its capacity to serve political interests is questionable too. These insights, then, enhance existing academic debates over China's engagement with meritocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the West African Sub-Region and its spread occurred through a vast array of epidemic management misinterpretations, challenges, and channels. This discussion paper however engages these issues within the context of balancing cultural imperatives and health standards. Data sources (archival sources -- newspaper reviews: July 2014--January 2015; and academic literature) were theoretically and methodological engaged. The aim of the paper was to establish that social systems thrive through a subsystem of exchange. Hence, it was ascertained that through biological and social exchange, Ebola is capable of causing social systems breakdown and death. The paper concludes that the lower degree of permeability present in the Nigerian social system, which is a function of multiple factors, related to space, time, and technology accounted for the outcome of management, control, and containment of the EVD in Nigeria West Africa. The implication of these vis-à-vis the nursing practice and profession was documented to reflect the health system and its extent of functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Function creep – the expansion of a system or technology beyond its original purposes – is a well-known phenomenon. Correction: it is a well-referenced phenomenon. Yearly, hundreds of publications use the term to criticise developments in technology regulation and data governance, but surprisingly, no-one has ever written a paper about the concept itself. This paper fills that gap in the literature, by analysing and defining 'function creep'. This creates conceptual clarity that can help structure future debates and address function creep concerns. After analysing the term 'function creep' itself, I discuss concepts that share family resemblances, including other 'creep' concepts and many theoretical notions from STS, economics, sociology, public policy, law, and discourse theory. Function creep can be situated in the nexus of reverse adaptation and self-augmentation of technology, incrementalism and disruption in policy and innovation, policy spillovers, ratchet effects, transformative use, and slippery slope argumentation. Based on this, I define function creep as an imperceptibly transformative and therewith contestable change in a data-processing system's proper activity. Argumentation theory illuminates how the pejorative 'function creep' functions in debates: it makes visible that what looks like linear change is actually non-linear, and simultaneously calls for a much-needed debate about this qualitative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an attempt to reflect 1960s rural Spain under Franco’s dictatorship, Mario Camus’s Citation1984 film adaptation of Miguel Delibes’s Los santos inocentes [The Holy Innocents], published three years before, depicts the daily coexistence of human and non-human animals in an Extremaduran cortijo. Within the highly hierarchized social structure of the Francoist regime, the elderly male characters that are physically or mentally disabled are consistently exploited and humiliated by the caste of señoritos as a metaphorical reproduction of the type of class-based hierarchy established after the Spanish Civil War between the victors and the defeated. The aim of this paper is to examine how the aging, disabled male body of the dispossessed contributes to deepening the class divide through their animalization. By aesthetically emphasizing the blurring of species boundaries in the lower social strata, Camus recreates the type of rural Spain that, under the auspices of the dictatorship, endorses an understanding of the normative, young masculine body as one that distinguishes itself through biological, class-based and androcentric determinism. This triply reinforced canon of the male subject, so irreparably bound to tautologies between class and species, places the aging, masculine body at the heart of an oppressive social system that seeks to justify its hierarchy, mythologizing it as the only viable option through which to erect an empowered, reputable nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a step back from considering expertise as a social phenomenon. One should investigate how people become knowers before assigning expertise to a person's actions. Using a temporal-sensitive systemic ethnography, a case study shows how undergraduate students form a social system out of necessity as they fabricate knowledge around an empty wording like 'conscious living'. Tracing the engagement with students and tutor to recursive moments of coaction, I argue that, through the subtleties of bodily movements, people incorporate the actions of others as they become knowers. Knowing for a person solidifies as they imbue concepts, terms, facts, etc. with their own understanding. While coaction refers to the interlocking of actions in a specific moment, the fabrication of knowledge resides in temporally distributed moments of coaction where students deliberately incorporate and build on past occurrences in a present moment. In so doing, people cannot be separated from their systemic embedding. Linking coaction with systemic cognition, people fabricate knowledge within wider systemic structures. Within these boundaries, knowers come to fabricate knowledge for themselves and a wider system. Thus, knowing must be seen as an active, embodied, dialogical and multiscalar activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-sought self-sufficiency goal of contemporary social welfare systems has been mostly elusive, even in developed countries. This paper presents a revised version of the Self-Sufficiency Framework as a pragmatic strategy for welfare reform, investigating how the current neoliberal approach centered on promoting employment (workfare) could be made more socially just and freedom-oriented. Thus, the framework proposed here accepts the central goal of promoting employment (self-sufficiency) at the core of current welfare systems, but complements that goal with a strong and non-stigmatizing welfare support package and with labor market reforms aimed at combating exploitative forms of employment. Furthermore, the proposed model emphasizes the need for financial inclusion, notably in the banking system and the mortgage industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual modesty is the social, cultural, interpersonal, and psychological systems – defined by the tenets of Script Theory – that regulate individuals' sexual expression and experience at the social, legal, and interpersonal boundaries of acceptable/not-acceptable, private/public, and personal/social. Almost all aspects of sexual expression and experience are touched by the pervasive modesty standards for sexual communication, sexual display, sexual relations, and sexual behaviors. Sexual modesty influences an array of sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Many aspects of sexual modesty are enforced by legal as well as social, cultural, and religious proscriptions, including social shaming and ostracism as well as corporal and capital punishments. The purpose of this paper is to summarize a diverse literature related to sexual modesty from the years 2000 to 2021 in order to clarify its role in sexual health and sexual wellbeing and to identify directions for new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper complements Vetter's position paper, ‘Development and sustainable management of rangeland commons – aligning policy with the realities of South Africa's rural landscape’ (Vetter in this issue). It seeks to advance the debate regarding the contemporary nature of livestock keeping in South Africa. It sheds some anthropological light on the role of ‘culture’ in accounting for people's values and practices in relation to livestock and reflects on the implications of this for policy-making in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which a fitness landscape (FL) perspective on complex social systems offers useful insights for both theory and practice in public administration. It has been claimed that FL models have strong potential for integrating existing theory and facilitating the development of models for theory development and testing as well as offering the prospect of a better understanding of  the adaptive moves of agents in search of a better ‘fit’ with their environment. In this paper, we examine these claims through a thematic synthesis of recent literature purporting to adopt this perspective in public management. Through a systematic review of the literature, we identify the key themes in the application of FLs to theory and practice and the extent to which authors are reaching any conclusions on the precise use of each of the elements of FL models in public management contexts. We conclude that the use of FL models is underdeveloped and that further development would be particularly useful in the context of governance network theory. We close with four specific recommendations for further research and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods can be devastating to communities and result in fatalities and injuries, negatively impacting the economy, and quality of life. This paper presents a review of community resilience research with a focus on flood hazard including recent advances in flood risk quantification methods and trends to integrate socio-economic factors. The focus of this review was placed on flood risk components including hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to move the current research from deterministic to probabilistic approaches in order to propagate uncertainties through flood modeling, damage, loss, and recovery. Both short-term and long-term impacts of different flood resilience measures are included. The largest gap identified in flood risk research was the need for a standardized quantitative assessment tool or framework that could measure the impact of approaches to improve resilience at the community level. That tool should include the interactions between the different community systems (physical infrastructure, economic systems, and social systems). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an essay published in 2006 in Environment and Planning A and in a second essay published in 2016 in this journal, Mimi Sheller and John Urry have made the case for the emergence of a new social science paradigm – "the new mobilities paradigm". Sheller and Urry argue that the spectrum of published mobility-related theory and empirical research, taken in its entirety, may be described as a paradigm. This use of the term "paradigm" only minimally resembles Thomas Kuhn's description of a paradigm. Moreover, the mobilities literature they cite in support of the claim that a mobilities paradigm is emerging in the social sciences is informed not by a mobilities paradigm but by a diversity of extant social science paradigms. As described by Sheller and Urry, the central theoretical characteristic of this paradigm has been to conceptualize mobility as composed of complex social systems. The term "the new mobilities paradigm" is a misnomer; it is not a mobilities paradigm but a systems theory paradigm with a mobility focus. Given the continued academic prestige attached to the designation "paradigm" since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, there are symbolic and material benefits to be gained in describing the theory and research cited by Sheller and Urry as a "paradigm". Nevertheless, the general acceptance of the paradigm claim by mobility scholars stands in the way of adequately conceptualizing what kind of intellectual endeavor mobility studies might be, as well as efforts to "mobilize" mobility scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community resilience has been addressed across multiple disciplines including environmental sciences, engineering, sociology, psychology, and economics. Interest in community resilience gained momentum following several key natural and human-caused hazards in the United States and worldwide. To date, a comprehensive community resilience model that encompasses the performance of all the physical and socio-economic components from immediate impact through the recovery phase of a natural disaster has not been available. This paper summarizes a literature review of previous community resilience studies with a focus on natural hazards, which includes primarily models of individual infrastructure systems, their interdependencies, and community economic and social systems. A series of national and international initiatives aimed at community resilience are also summarized in this study. This paper suggests extensions of existing modeling methodologies aimed at developing an improved, integrated understanding of resilience that can be used by policy-makers in preparation for future events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalizing school is a process that comes with challenges. It requires strategic leadership and transformational change to work processes. Nevertheless, some succeed, and it is useful to understand what makes for success. This paper studies the challenges of leading digitalization of education in a city which decided to implement an IT-supported method for teaching literacy in primary schools. The method required transformational change; teachers not only had to learn to use technologies, they also had to review their pedagogy. This study is guided by the Diffusion of Innovation theory and draws on interviews with school principals. We find that the critical factors relate to the communication channel, the social system within and across schools, and the time perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]