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Purpose: This paper introduces a conceptual lens for leading social change in slums and informal settlements. In line with this aim, the purpose of this case study is to describe the public problem-solving approach of a social change organization situated in an informal settlement through the lens of adaptive leadership, complexity theory and social change leadership (SCL). Design/methodology/approach: This paper follows an engaged reflection tradition. First, the author-practitioners describe an informal settlement case hereafter called ISC in southeast Iran where many people have historically remained undocumented and uneducated. Using complex adaptive systems theory, adaptive leadership and SCL as the conceptual lens, the paper analyzes ISC as a complex adaptive context in which the community and the government are in tension in solving problems, particularly illiteracy. The instrumental case study draws from participant observation and document analysis to describe and examine the endeavors of a community office operating within ISC. Through this reflective analysis, the authors illustrate how a social change organization can effectively tackle public issues like illiteracy within informal settlements. Findings: This paper applies complexity leadership theory to a social context. The study illustrates how social change organizations can support the transformation of informal spaces into adaptive spaces to enact social change. Originality/value: This paper reflects on engagement activity near the insecure borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By extending an organizational-level theory to the public sphere, this paper contributes theoretically to the complexity theory literature. Moreover, it provides a practical insight for community development and slum upgrading projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay embraces a notion of critical scholarship concerned with proposing normative and actionable alternatives that can create more inclusive societies and focuses on the role of institutionalizing experimental places for inclusive social innovation as a bottom-up strategic response to welfare state reforms. By mobilizing the notions of utopias and heterotopias in Foucault, the paper sheds light on the opportunity to move from policy utopias to democratic heterotopias, discussing the politics embedded in this cognitive shift and the democratic nature of social innovation changing social and governance relations by interacting with politico-administrative systems. Some obstacles to institutionalizing social innovation are highlighted, as well as some key governance mechanisms that can be activated either by public and/or social purpose organizations to try to overcome those obstacles. Finally, we discuss the importance of linking inclusive social innovation with democratic, rather than market logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies indicate that individuals experiencing psychological distress often face various forms of discrimination, prejudice, and stigma which leads them to hide their problems. However, contrary to this generalization, some research demonstrates that individuals tend to use diagnosis as a label in a medical system. In this study, we argue that within the context of changing social structures and discourses, the tendency to hide psychological problems due to stigma has transformed into a tool for recognition within a medical system. Of course, our viewpoint does not negate the impact of stigma and prejudice on the subject. Our emphasis here is that for certain symptoms and processes like OCD, this situation can function differently. In this paper, we will first review the views that stigma leads to the concealment of mental issues, and then elaborate on studies that support the opposite view. More specifically, we will analyze the assertion that OCD is an illness within the framework of symptom-specific characteristics. We will subsequently delve deeper into this counterargument theoretically. In this context, we will evaluate the power of medicine and the discourse of medicalization, as discussed in the works of Foucault, Illich, and Timurturkan, as well as Lacan's theory on the mirror stage, the moment of recognition, and the subject who supposed to know. This study has significant implications, especially in the field of psychotherapy, for assessing and understanding how individuals relate to their own psychological states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social structure of an animal population can often influence movement and inform researchers on a species' behavioral tendencies. Animal social networks can be studied through movement data; however, modern sources of data can have identification issues that result in multiply-labeled individuals. Since all available social movement models rely on unique labels, we extend an existing Bayesian hierarchical movement model in a way that makes use of a latent social network and accommodates multiply-labeled movement data (MLMD). We apply our model to drone-measured movement data from Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) and estimate the effects of sonar exposure on the dolphins' social structure. Our proposed framework can be applied to MLMD for various social movement applications. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both within and outside of sociology, there are conversations about methods to reduce error and improve research quality—one such method is preregistration and its counterpart, registered reports. Preregistration is the process of detailing research questions, variables, analysis plans, etc. before conducting research. Registered reports take this one step further, with a paper being reviewed on the merit of these plans, not its findings. In this manuscript, I detail preregistration's and registered reports' strengths and weaknesses for improving the quality of sociological research. I conclude by considering the implications of a structural-level adoption of preregistration and registered reports. Importantly, I do not recommend that all sociologists use preregistration and registered reports for all studies. Rather, I discuss the potential benefits and genuine limitations of preregistration and registered reports for the individual sociologist and the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will try to consider the usual allegations of determinism that are directed towards Bourdieu's notion of habitus from a slightly different perspective. One of the most common arguments found in these types of charges is that Bourdieu unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile objective and subjective aspects of social life under one notion. According to critics, habitus is not a viable solution to structure vs. agency debate simply because it cannot be both determined by social structure and open to contingency of autonomous subjective interpretations of the social world. I will show that this critique of Bourdieu actually is inspired by incompatibilist philosophy which maintains that regarding human action either determinism or free will can be true. However, those sociologists who, in criticising Bourdieu's understanding of habitus, follow the incompatibilist line of reasoning usually overlook the compatibilist side of this old debate in moral philosophy. In that regard, I will argue that Frankfurt and Taylor's compatibilist account of second order desires and strong evaluations can help us to better understand how habitus can be determined by environmental social factors and, at the same, time not only foster free will, but also provide a theoretical insight into radical forms of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last several decades, the concept of social innovation has been a subject of scientific and practical discourse. As an important paradigm for innovation policies, social innovation is also an object of criticism and debate. Despite a significant proliferation of literature, the rate at which social innovation is a catalyst for coping with challenges of modern societies remains unclear. The goal of the paper is to gain a better understanding of social innovation by integrating past and present views on the concept. Applying a historical overview covering the period from the 19th to the 21st century, we outline the milestones in the evolution of social innovation and distinguish seven trajectories that illustrate the commonalities in its interpretation. We consolidate the findings into a three-dimensional model that defines social innovation as an intervention that is targeted toward structural changes within a social dimension that, in terms of different functional settings (e.g., technological, business, organizational), are oriented on systemic improvements of societies. Reflecting on future avenues, we consider social innovation as an integrative part of a holistic intervention that acts across single societal dimensions and provides systemic impact for the sustainable development of societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how gamification influences the macro- and micro-level social structures in an industrial organization. Based on qualitative content analysis applied in an interpretative case study, we demonstrate how the implementation of a gamification application successively leads to a number of changes in the micro- and macro-level social structures of the investigated organization. The workers in the gamified work process changed their focus of attention, developed new goals and identities, and altered their social interaction; these changes in turn led to modifications in the organizational practices and identities in the sense of work routines and acceptance of the organizational structure during the sample period. With our explanations on how gamification can transform an organization at least temporarily, we contribute to the research stream that proposes a more holistic view of gamification. Our findings also advocate for a more comprehensive view of which people are part of the gamified environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the processes taking place in the formation of a Kazakh bureaucratic elite and its integration into the Russian imperial system of administration. It developed due to certain changes in the social structure of Kazakh society during the second half of the 19th-early 20th centuries. As a new class of Kazakh officials was created, most of them became faithful executors of Russian imperial policies in the steppe. The state encouraged the activities of all kinds of Kazakh officials with awards commensurate to their rank. However, only a few of these Kazakh officials had high-achieving careers. The analysis here focuses on the biographies of the sultans Ghazi (Ghazy) Bulatovich Valikhanov, and Ish Muhamed Suyuk-ogly Abylaikhanov, which illustrate the predominance of those with illustrious origins being among the prominent Kazakh employees of that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the case of Cerro Esperanza, in Valparaíso (Chile), the article investigates nostalgia experienced and expressed by two generations of inhabitants who are members of long-time resident families. Historically a blue-collar sector, it built over the 20th century and has not undergone many changes in its social structure or spatial organization since. In addition, despite not having lived the same experiences in the neighborhood, inhabitants of both generations feel nostalgia for the barrio of before and express discomfort at what they perceive as a progressive loss of neighborhood identity. The article explores their day to day nostalgic narratives, shedding light on the contradictions among identity and imaginaries associated with the past and present. This work seeks to understand the activation of nostalgia in these inhabitants and the meanings they give to this feeling, as mediated by their generational identity. The paper discusses the role of this latter in the activation, construction and use of a collective nostalgia and proposes to understand and analyze it not from the material changes to the context of the groups of inhabitants, but from their external, and internal, social changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies experiential processes through which social structures become taken for granted, termed processes of "structure marginalization". Passive processes of structure marginalization relegate social structures to the margin of experience without the use of higher-order cognitive acts such as evaluation and reflection. Examples include adapting to social structures via routine and habitual practices (material reification), a lack of conscious awareness of the complexity, historical formation, and other details of social structures (ignorance), and rendering social structures irrelevant when they are unreflectively judged to be of no value for achieving ends (nullification). Active processes of structure marginalization reflectively and discursively relegate social structures to marginal consciousness. Examples include the use of naturalistic and necessitarian explanations for the social order that implicitly justify it as inalterable or "just the way things are" (discursive reification), normative justifications for the status quo (legitimation), and conscious awareness of one's powerlessness to control social-structural conditions (helplessness). Active processes of structure marginalization originate in passive processes. The goal of the typology is to explain, at the level of experience, why social structures typically remain unproblematic and unnoticed in everyday life, even during periods of social crisis and change or when existing structures produce harmful effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contentiousness of markets has recently been assessed by the social movements literature. Activists can use a broad range of tactics to compel corporations to change their practices. This paper examines the outcomes of this contentiousness. It draws on an empirical study of a disruptive tactic used by anti-corporate activists: the shame-on-you prize. I propose to adopt an economic sociological perspective to understand the mechanisms by which social movement organizations seek to undermine the values that underpin the economic order. Activists provide new categories for valuating economic activities that challenge the existing ones. Social movement organizations legitimate these valuations as coming from civil society and reflecting public expectations about what should count in valuations of economic activities. As such, they may encourage public decision-makers to undertake regulatory action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study that is focussed on the conversion from the social sin and on the transformation of the social structures affected by sin must take into account not only the strictly religious and ecclesial field, but also the phenomena in socialcommunity life. According to the way in which the paradigm of the change of values in the society is interpreted and to the consequences that result from it on the realization and organization of life on a personal and social level, in this paper at first it is described a mostly optimistic thesis. In a second step, it is presented a thesis with rather pessimistic tendencies. Finally, a realistic thesis is analyzed, which emphasizes the ambivalence of changing values and highlights the significance of the synthesis of values for a good direction of life in modern society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the notion of degrowth has gained traction in recent times, scholarship on degrowth transformations has yet to provide a conceptualisation that captures key attributes of what such transformations entail: (1) the reduction of some items and the expansion of others and (2) profound changes in various dimensions of social being, including in how humans interact with nature, non-humans, and one another, changes in social structures and changes in how we are as human beings. The present paper develops a comprehensive and non-reductionist conceptualisation of degrowth, understanding it to involve deep transformations on four interrelated planes of social being: material transactions with nature, social interactions between persons, social structure, and people's inner being. On each plane, these transformations consist in reducing, and ultimately absenting, some currently existing items while expanding others. The paper considers the implications of the conceptualisation for degrowth practice and theorising, focusing on top-down eco-social policies, bottom-up initiatives and self-transformation. It is found that degrowth would benefit from considering more seriously the effects of policies and initiatives across all four planes and from acknowledging diversity on each plane. Moreover, it is concluded that more attention should be paid to the plane of peoples' inner being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burials provide valuable information to study social structures based on the assumption that burials and associated grave goods can represent social roles and relations in a society. To study social relationships, network analysis has been increasingly applied to archaeological data to infer interactions and relationships between entities. Statistical approaches to network analysis, such as exponential random graph models (ERGMs), provide a way to test hypotheses about dynamic processes of network formation. However, computational difficulties and sensitivity to uncertainties limit the application of ERGMs. In this paper, we introduce a Bayesian framework on ERGMs that enables an efficient computational process, effective quantification of uncertainty, and robust model evaluation of network properties. We tested a hypothesis of social change relative to the arrival of Europeans by studying burial data from Kiwulan, an Iron Age site in northeastern Taiwan. The results indicate a transition among the burials from network ties based on ritual objects to wealth objects, and a more centralized structure with increased social differentiation after the European presence was established in the 17th century. Our case study demonstrates the effectiveness of Bayesian network analysis for archaeological data, and expands the use of burials in understanding the impacts of colonial presence on Indigenous groups in a pericolonial context. • We present Bayesian inference on exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to model archaeological networks. • We explore social processes and network structures in archaeological data from two time periods. • Differences in network statistics imply change over time in social structures influenced by foreign presence. • Bayesian ERGMs are efficient and useful for evaluating and interpreting networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]