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This paper describes the application of a "biosocial" approach to informal health and science education. As an engagement between biological and critical social sciences, biosocial theory has sought to re-articulate human bodies as fundamentally the product of interrelationships between the biological and social dimensions of human life. Applying this approach to health and science education, we conducted approximately 200 public demonstrations at a science museum with school-aged participants over a two-year period. These demonstrations were designed to describe cutting edge research into "biosocial mechanisms" such as allostatic load and epigenetics. We examined survey responses and informal conversation with participants in order to characterize key themes that emerged within these interactions. Our analysis identifies a distinct biosocial "science talk" characterized, at varying degrees of complexity, by an emphasis on complex inter-relationships between environments and biology, the mutability of bodies, and the role of social structures and personal experiences in shaping health outcomes. We argue that these forms of science talk reflect the highly individualized and relational functioning of the biosocial mechanisms. We contend that this approach is not only accessible and easily adaptable to informal science education, but of increasing relevance given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One outcome of more than three decades of social and political transformation around the world, the result of processes broadly referred to as globalisation, has been the emergence of a complex (and at first glance, contradictory) conceptual language in the social sciences that has sought to grasp hold of these developments. Throughout the 1990s, theorists began to emphasise a world in "motion", deploying concepts like "liquid modernity" (Zygmunt Bauman) to signal rapid and profound changes at work in the social structures, relations, and spatialities of societies (Neil Brenner) that were reconfiguring state-citizen relations (Saskia Sassen). Recently, however, researchers have concentrated on the study of "borders" and "containers" as a corrective to the preoccupation with mobility, arguing it is not possible to imagine a world which is "only" borderless and de-territorialised, because the basic ordering of social groups and societies "requires" categories and compartments. This paper focuses attention on processes of bordering and ordering in contemporary education systems, suggesting that comparative educators--whose main intellectual project is to understand how (different) education processes are re/produced within and across time, space and societies--would get much greater purchase on transformations currently under way.

This paper deals with the discourses related to race and anti-racism in a social sciences textbook for grade 12 Ontario students that was published in 2002. It is argued that the complexities of race and anti-racism are not dealt with systematically and cohesively. The textbook does not adequately address the topics of race and racism within the present Canadian social structure, leaving the discussion of complex and controversial ideas concerning race and racism virtually unexplored. In addition, the opportunity to make use of current scholarly work has been ignored or distorted. This is particularly important in light of recent developments regarding the impact of September 11, and the ensuing "war on terror" and the changing dynamic of race relations in North America. (Contains 7 notes.)

Conference workshops on gender, experiential learning through the lifespan, and action research provide examples of methods of enhancing understanding of social structures and political interventions in academic and professional communities. One challenge in this method is the unpredictability of the outcomes of experiential events. (SK)

Every culture has a distinct cosmology according to which social structures, beliefs and relations are ordered. Despite the concrete differences between communities, there are also evident similarities. The main commonalities I have recognized when writing this paper are connecting the physical and the metaphysical, something ordering and explaining the universe, something that provides meaning for existence and the socio-political utilization of spirituality. This similarity and uniqueness of diverse cultures proves that although every community is different, the similarities, both in themes and in the fact that every culture has a belief system, demonstrate that the various members of humanity are akin. This paper aims to provide a theoretical overview of the similarities and differences between cosmologies and discuss the importance of this in the modern world. To study these themes, five distinct cosmologies from around the world were chosen, namely the idea of Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, the Yekuana people in Mesoamerica, the principle of maat in Ancient Egypt as a sample for the diverse cultures in Africa, the cosmological beliefs of the Maya, and geo-cosmology in Bali. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Sullivan's book is that it is one of the first to tackle the issue of the psychologist's attitude toward subjects. Sullivan develops theories regarding interpretation of the personal world, distinguishing human sciences from physical sciences, and explaining how social structures reproduce themselves in the habits of individuals. (MT)

The concept of power evokes controversy in relation to the American social mind. Americans both want and fear power. Power is a fundamental concept in social science, and, while involving the features of organizational hierarchy and social relations, the forms of power are conceived as force, fiction, fealty, and ethics. (JN)

Identifies problems of socio-ecological synthesis by applying them to the development of a hypothetical "eco-city." Levels of knowledge and action proceed from fundamental research, applied research, urban design, construction, and shaping of the city. Integration occurs at cultural-historical, socio-functional, and spatial-temporal levels. (KC)

Describes the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) project in a mountain region in Switzerland, which is trying to halt depopulation and preserve the environment. Fourteen research units analyze relationships within and among the ecosystem, the economy, and the socio-cultural system. (KC)

The multiple problems that the planet is currently experiencing—climate crisis, conventional and unconventional wars, planetary disenchantment with political systems, growth of inequality, increase in all kinds of intersectional violence, destructuring of the political economy of morality, etc.—are not a favorable scenario for thinking about hope. This paper nevertheless offers a summary presentation of the sociology of hope, presenting some of its central sources and components as well as a proposed study agenda for the future. This article seeks to foster discussion of what could be the central axes of a sociology of hope. To achieve this purpose, the following argumentative strategy was chosen: (a) the "place" of hope is explored in some classics of sociology, (b) the central components of a sociological investigation of hope are synthesized, and (c) an agenda is presented as a summary for a future development of a sociology of hope. The article seeks to draw attention to the urgency of hope as an important element for the future of sociology and social sciences in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this volume generally represent new developments in anthropology and cultural theory. Inevitably, in an evolutionary flowering, divergence can occur. Two of the papers represent a very new approach to theory for anthropology. This note discusses issues related to construction of theory that distinguish those papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following reflections by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, this paper is concerned with the changing meaning of the profession as a sociological category for analyzing modern society. Professions are practical academic occupational groups oriented to certain social values, to which a special significance for society was attributed in the social sciences for a long time, thus marking a connection between professions' research and theory of society. This paper now describes that the causal relationship between profession and society is limited to a historically relatively early period. In the transition to modern society, this close network of relationships begins to dissolve, and now professions operate in the context of some function systems of society whose task is the professional assistance of single clients, such as in the fields of health, law, and pastoral care. However, the professions' highlighted position in the knowledge and action structure of single function systems seems to dissolve more and more today so that one can ask whether we can speak here already of an end of the social form profession. This would correspond with the observation that actually the professions no longer appear at all in the newer theories of society and therefore their function as an important mechanism of social structure formation is no longer attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the contributions of professor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown to the study of social organization. What Radcliffe-Brown did was to distinguish between the search for historical and evolutionary origins, the preoccupation of ethnology, and the study of the laws of custom and social organization, the province of social anthropology. Those social scientists other than anthropologists who know Radcliffe-Brown's work, tend to pay attention only to his methodological articles. But the vital theoretical contribution lies in his ethnographically centered papers. It is in them that Radcliffe-Brown's adherence to the view that there are laws of social life which can be established by systematic and empirical investigation, is brilliantly justified. These papers are mainly concerned with problems of social organization, or as Radcliffe-Brown now prefers to call it, social structure. Radcliffe-Brown shows that the merging or identification of alternate generations fits in with the widespread concept of the completion of the cycle of the generations in three successive steps, and with the contrasting roles of grandparent and parent in family systems. It is ethnography based on a theoretical discipline, the discipline of structural analysis as first given shape by Radcliffe-Brown.

This article presents information about the book "Sociological Theory, 1983," edited by Randall Collins. The bulk of the book is devoted to nine separately authored chapters, averaging about thirty pages each. The most provocative paper is Michael Hammond's analysis of the role of affect in sociologist Emile Durkheim's writings, "The Sociology of Emotions and the History of Social Differentiation." Hammond defines affectivity as physiological capacities for emotion, and argues that Durkheim regarded affectivity in two ways. It binds people together in an established social order, but it is also the basis for the social order. Hammond recognizes that the second view is not often noted by Durkheim's disciples, so he promotes it. The argument is that if social structures require emotional attachments, and such attachments have physiological constraints, then social density will lead groups of people to distance themselves from others and to stratify the differences in order to keep their affective ties in a limited range.

Social networks influence health-related behavior, such as obesity and smoking. While researchers have studied social networks as a driver for diffusion of influences and behavior, it is less understood how the structure or topology of the network, in itself, impacts an individual's health behavior and wellness state. In this paper, we investigate whether the structure or topology of a social network offers additional insight and predictability on an individual's health and wellness. We develop a method called the Network-Driven health predictor (NetCARE) that leverages features representative of social network structure. Using a large longitudinal data set of students enrolled in the NetHealth study at the University of Notre Dame, we show that the NetCARE method improves the overall prediction performance over the baseline models—that use demographics and physical attributes—by 38%, 65%, 55%, and 54% for the wellness states—stress, happiness, positive attitude, and self-assessed health—considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the modeling of complex social systems by methods of the mathematical kinetic theory for active particles. Specifically, a recent model by the last two authors is analyzed from the social sciences point of view. The model shows, despite its simplicity, some interesting features. In particular, this paper investigates the ability of the model to describe how a social politics and the disposable overall wealth may have a relevant influence towards the trend of the wealth distribution. The paper also outlines various research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “household” is an important concept in the health and social sciences and in the government census. It is often treated as an independent socioeconomic unit contained in a single physical structure. The household appears on the surface—especially to White non-Indigenous researchers—to be a benign and straightforward concept. However, how the “household” is defined and how household membership is assigned when doing research in northern Indigenous communities is problematic. It does not accurately reflect how many people live today. It is often at odds with how Indigenous community members define their own family relationships. Furthermore, use of household and related concepts like “overcrowding” in research can cause harm in Indigenous communities, by shaping how government resources or services end up being provisioned—or denied—to people. Drawing from the historic kinship literature in Alaska and Canada’s North, contemporary northern studies of household organization, and the author’s ethnographic and kinship research in northern Indigenous communities, this paper critiques current ways of defining household in research. Using my work in Aklavik as an example, I make suggestions for building more accurate and culturally appropriate ways of assessing households, family groupings, and social organization in northern communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has a dual purpose: to build a conceptual approach to authoritative relations in organizations that permits a reasonable interpretation of existing research; and to encourage significant future research. Its focus is upon several concepts common in the study of authority, which are often treated as being more or less mutually exclusive but which may also be usefully considered as interacting overlays of authoritative relations. Thus, in this paper authoritative relations are conceived as "integrative," that is, as having "traditional," "functional," and "behavioral" component overlays. In the application of the integrative conceptual approach illustrated here, the crucial issue is the increase of the congruence of the several overlays so that they substantially reinforce one another. The relevant literature is sampled, both to illustrate applied techniques and to sketch an organization structure appropriate for increasing the congruence of the several overlays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the logic behind lay people’s ideological position taking and how this is determined by class position. I therefore examine to what extent there exists a similarity between the configuration of the political field and the structure of the space of social classes. The paper includes a brief description of the two most salient political alignments today, namely the old economic alignment and the new cultural alignment, and an explanation of how this two-dimensional political structure pertains to the rise of the new middle class. Directly related to this, I also present a discussion on the importance of the ethical habitus to understand the mechanism behind class determined political position taking. Subsequently, based on survey data and using multiple correspondence analysis, I empirically reproduce this political structure for Flanders (Belgium). Finally, relying on the visualized regression technique, I demonstrate that there exists a clear structural similarity between the political field and the space of social classes, which is a strong indication that the class-engendered ethical habitus is, in fact, the underlying factor that gives structure to the variations in political attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro-blogging systems have become one of the most important ways for information sharing. Network structure and users’ interactions such as forwarding behaviors have aroused considerable research attention, while mention, as a key feature in micro-blogging platforms which can improve the visibility of a message and direct it to a particular user beyond the underlying social structure, is seldom studied in previous works. In this paper, we empirically study the mention effect in information diffusion, using the dataset from a population-scale social media website. We find that users with high number of followers would receive much more mentions than others. We further investigate the effect of mention in information diffusion by examining the response probability with respect to the number of mentions in a message and observe a saturation at around 5 mentions. Furthermore, we find that the response probability is the highest when a reciprocal followship exists between users, and one is more likely to receive a target user’s response if they have similar social status. To illustrate these findings, we propose the response prediction task and formulate it as a binary classification problem. Extensive evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of discovered factors. Our results have consequences for the understanding of human dynamics on the social network, and potential implications for viral marketing and public opinion monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that the social sciences have undergone a “mobility turn” over the last decade: a paradigm shift in which movement is seen to have become increasingly important to our social worlds. For the most part, housing studies is yet to extensively engage with this “paradigm shift”. In an attempt to engage with the ideas that the “mobility turn” has thrown up for housing studies this paper grapples with two key questions. First, where does housing studies fit in the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences? And, second, how can housing studies contribute to this paradigm shift? This paper does this through an examination of how a politics of mobility can be usefully employed and extended by housing researchers. Looking specifically at two current dimensions of this politics: mobility as a right, and mobility as a resource, this paper argues that a third dimension – mobility as governmentality – should be introduced to the mobility turn’s politics of mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the course of this paper, I examine the concepts of ‘discourse’ and the ‘subject’ in relation to social organization and action. The paper argues that these concepts represent a form of explanation that reduces the complexity of the social. Through a reconnection with processes relating to social organization and action, the paper argues that the current ‘deepening’ of subjectivity can be informed by sociological ideas. Indeed, the paper makes the claim that moves to develop the concept of subjectivity through ‘interiority’ and ‘relationality’ would benefit from a dialogue with interactionist ideas. The paper discusses three programmes of work that illustrate how subjectivity can be informed through a reconnection with interactionist sociology.Subjectivity (2009) 26, 69–86. doi:10.1057/sub.2008.33 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines and explores reproductive loss and, drawing on a social sciences perspective, reflects on the lack of attention that has been given to the subject within the study of human fertility. The authors argue that whilst reproductive loss (broadly defined) is exceptionally common, scholars have - with some exceptions - focused on the study of reproductive 'success', and continue to do so. The paper examines the implications of this for policy, practice and the role of healthcare professionals and focuses on the significance of appreciating difference and diversity in the study of reproductive loss and the importance of placing such experiences within the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replies to Porpora, King, and Varela's responses to my earlier paper “For Emergence”, focussing on the relationship between the concepts of social structure and social relations. It recognises the importance of identifying the mechanisms responsible whenever we make claims for the emergence of causal powers, and discusses the mechanism underlying one case of social structure: normative institutions. It also shows how critical realism reconciles the claims that both social structures and human individuals have emergent causal powers that combine to produce actual social events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper draws its inspiration from the provocation which Merton offered sociology both to engage with empirical data and to perform analyses adequate to guide intervention beyond the particular case. Whilst contemporary STS is very different both in its models of theory and its forms of methodology, this paper suggests Merton's concerns with engagement and adequacy provide a useful way to interrogate current approaches. Specifically, the paper explores some recent anthropological conceptions of ethnographic fieldwork that have provided potent models for the study of scientific and technological cultures. These multi-sited approaches have also provided the opportunity to develop new notions of intervention and explore alternative ways of making contributions to development of theory and practice. In the process of pursuing the goals of engagement and adequacy notions of ethnography have however become stretched. This sense of detachment from methodological canons accentuates the need for methodological debate and skill-sharing in STS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of social capital in professional-client relationships. We consider exploring the effects of social capital on the creation of human capital, a subject which is worthwhile investigating within all professions. In this paper, we concentrate on what are known as the structural and attributive dimensions of social capital and aim to understand their effects on the knowledge acquisition of professional practitioners. We analyse the association between social capital and human capital (i.e., knowledge acquisition) in the context of the lawyer-client relationship. Through the application of social capital theory, this paper seeks to advance our knowledge of the relations between professionals and clients. More importantly, the study contributes to improving our understanding of the role of social capital in influencing a lawyer's ability to retain and win new clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Japanese social documentary photographer, Hashiguchi George (b. 1949) explores his own society and culture much like a visual sociologist. Little known outside of Japan, Hashiguchi implicitly poses questions and provides pictorial responses to problems of social order and Japanese social organization. Much of Hashiguchi's work includes portrait photography accompanied by written transcriptions of questions answered by his subjects. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, he produces a unique overview of Japanese society. The paper addresses the kinds of sociologically centred questions and interpretations found in Hashiguchi's work as well as his methods, portrait style, aesthetic preferences and model of documentation. Comparisons are made to German photographer, August Sander. Hashiguchi strives to present readers with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity. Examples are discussed from several of Hashiguchi's photo‐texts, namely, 17's Map (1988), Children's Time (1999), Shoku 1991–1995 (Work) ( 1969 ) and Yume (Dream) (1997). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objects are produced within, and simultaneously affect, the process of organizing as a consequence of their interaction within social collectives. This paper discusses the impact and influences of the growth of post-social relations, between human and technological objects, on social and organizational arrangements. The paper presents a discussion largely at the conceptual level and draws from a variety of literatures, including the burgeoning sociology of science literature. The discussion in this paper is based on a view that posits the growth of intimate links with epistemic objects within organizations and society. Organizing through networks of post-social relations increasingly comes to affect the manner in which differing groups of organizational participants, and particularly various categories of knowledge workers, experience time and spatial arrangements within organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proportional hazards models are powerful methods for the analysis of dynamic social processes and are widely used in sociology to estimate the effects of covariates on event timing (e.g., time to arrest, birth, marriage). The proper statistical modeling of failure time data is an important analytical issue in sociology, but to date the field has largely neglected the application of these models to multiple failure time data in which the conventional assumption of the independence of failure times is not tenable. This paper critically describes a class of models known as variance-corrected proportional hazards models that have been developed by statisticians to take into account a lack of independence among failure times. The purpose is to provide an exposition and comparison for sociologists of several such models and associated methods for handling multiple failure time data that can be readily estimated in commonly available statistical software packages. We pay special attention to the data requirements necessary for estimation of the models. The paper concludes with an illustrative application of the models to analyze the arrest patterns of a sample of California Youth Authority parolees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses spatial inequality as an emerging specialty area in sociology. Rural sociologists have long attended to spatial inequalities. The authors tend to view their work as uniquely centered on the rural experience, as opposed to occupying the forefront of spatializing stratification theory and of sociology as a whole. First the development of sociological interest in spatial inequality is discussed, providing an overview of factors that have contributed to a spatial trend in the study of stratification. Then, the implications for rural sociology are discussed, describing how rural sociologists contribute to research on spatial inequality, and distinguishes the approach of rural sociology from those of other subfields and disciplines. Finally, some examples of research in this emerging specialty area are highlighted by drawing from papers included in this issue. The authors call for the development of research based on qualitative approaches to provide deeper insights into the processes linking space with stratification, both from the perspective of people who are disadvantaged and from the standpoint of those who enjoy an advantage because of such a connection. They encourage the development of international and cross-national research on spatial inequality to broaden the understanding of the links between space and inequality.

The article comments on a paper exploring the notion that nighttime social life in urban areas resembles social life on former land frontiers, published in one of the previous issues of the journal. The paper was authored by sociologist Murray Melvin. The author of the article objects the use of historical materials and evidences to test the hypothesis that nighttime urban social organization parallels frontier social organization. It is opined that Melvin exhibits a cavalier expediency with regard to historical data which both weakens a potentially useful argument as well as nullifies any test of relationships. Further, the importance of accurate archival data to Melbin's argument cannot be overlooked. This archival evidence as presented, is no more than introductory sociology term paper tactics. The use of historical materials cannot be taken lightly. The utility of this approach is to observe concepts and variables in a context of closure and control. While there is inevitable error in these sources, the strength of the context which provides closure, control, and no recurrent input gives yet another framework with which to understand the dynamics of society.

This paper presents a case study of a psychiatric intervention as an example of an institutional ethnography of psychiatric work. Institutional ethnography, a mode of inquiry outlined by Dorothy Smith (1987), is conceived here as an approach to the analysis of work in institutions as the contingent, local and context-bound insertion of a particular "case" - a patron, a pupil, a client, a patient - into both institutional and other social (e. g. gender, class) relations. The case presented in this paper, shows how a psychiatric factual account is the outcome of a process of the recognition, and/or the production, of "mentionables," followed by the documentary interpretation of mentionables as symptoms. Subsequently it is demonstrated that, and how, the recognition of mentionables depends on non-professional interpretations which by their nature express other social (such as gender, class, etc.) relations. This description of psychiatric diagnostic work is produced by means of a method of discourse analysis that consists of the juxtaposition of the various institutional texts (the two reports) with the transcript of the interview. An analysis of only the interview data would undoubtedly have resulted in some insights about psychiatric interviewing but would have shown neither how the interview functioned as a stage in the institutional process of (re)writing reports nor how ideological evaluations entered the diagnostic process. On the other hand, an analysis of only the two reports would have resulted in some insights about psychiatric reporting but would not have shown how these reports were produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry pioneered by Dorothy E. Smith, and introduces a collection of papers which make distinctive contributions to the development of this novel form of investigation. Institutional ethnography is presented as a research strategy which emerges from Smith‘s wide-ranging explorations of the problematic of the everyday world. Smith‘s conception of the everyday world as problematic involves a critical departure from the concepts and procedures of more conventional sociologies. She argues for an alternative sociology which begins with the standpoint of the actor in everyday life, rather than from within a professional sociological discourse aligned with the society‘s ruling institutions. The familiar sociologies of everyday life do not suffice for this purpose, since they deal with local settings and social worlds, but stop short of examining how these are knitted into broader forms of social organization. In contrast, institutional ethnography examines how the scenes of everyday life are shaped by forms of social organization which cannot be fully grasped from within those scenes. The principal tasks of institutional ethnography include describing the coordination of activities in the everyday world, discovering how ideological accounts define those activities in relation to institutional imperatives, and examining the broader social relations in which local sites of activity are embedded. The four papers which follow demonstrate that specific contributions to institutional ethnography can be made in relation to a wide array of topics, methods, and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of economic and social systems is in general based on the assumption that the structure of the system docs not vary over time. Such an assumption is seldom fulfilled. Often, at least some of the behavioral relations of a system are characterized by structural variability. The problem of reduced form estimation and prediction in systems with such partial structural variability is considered in the paper. A robust SF-RF strategy, combining e-direct, unrestricted and indirect, restricted reduced form estimation, is emphasized. This strategy, as well as more commonly applied alternatives of L[sub1- and L[sub2-]norm estimation, is studied numerically within a small interdependent system with partially occurring, discrete parameter shifts. The different estimation techniques are evaluated with respect to structural form estimation and prediction performance. The study indicates advantages of the SF-RF strategy over considered alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article appraises the book ""Atomic Power Development." Law and Contemporary Problems." This is a symposium by ten authors, each of whom is interested in some legal or social science aspect of nuclear energy. The separate contributions are diverse, ranging over the basic technical situation, the role of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, democratic control, public investment, public power, patent aspects, the role of the states, and foreign policy, all in relation to atomic power development. Despite this diversity, there is inevitably a considerable overlap of discussion in related articles. There is also substantial agreement on the technical and social facts but, as might be expected, the interpretation of these facts is not uniform and reflects variations in the authors' separate viewpoints. Sociologists will find the volume under review somewhat apart from their usual professional interests. Nevertheless, there is much basic material here for students of social change and of the impact of innovation on social structures.

The following article discusses theoretical considerations problematizing issues related to "help-giving" or the "gift of sacrifice", and presents the service of volunteers of the National Service of Civil Protection in Italy. The authors of the paper support the thesis that (pro)social behaviors are a special type of structures fixing interpersonal relations. What's more, they contribute to strengthening social capital in the situation of all kinds of threats. Verifying the thesis, the authors refer to the most important terms creating the meaning repertoire of the most adequate theoretical concepts. Although the significance of the gift theory is emphasized rarely in the field of social sciences, these concepts are not only extremely interesting cognitively, but also their explanatory value enriches our view of social reality. M. Mauss's theory of transactions or exchange of gifts serves as a background for reflection on the service of volunteers of the Italian Civil Protection. The "gift of help" of volunteers for the communities affected by the threats of the forces of nature becomes an important driving force for rebuilding the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on communities often fails to meet two important criteria which permit valid generalizations from the findings. First, studies generally fail to apply the scientific comparative approach and the techniques of multivariate analysis in their design and execution. Second, theory fails to distinguish between properties of communities and properties which are properly classified in other systems. Sociologists who study communities do not share a precise definition of community, nor do they agree how observations about community phenomena are to be incorporated into sociological theory. The discussion that follows will be facilitated, however, if one can make reasonably clear the sense in which this paper deals with the sociological study of community. Community is viewed in this paper as a territorial system. The more comprehensive territorial definitions of community view it as a form of social or ecological organization arising from the fact that people share a common area for their daily activities.

Patronal groups represent a significant category of social organization; they are worthy and even necessary subjects of social science theory, and will require for adequate analysis models which address aspects and institutions of social life that seem inherently unstable, or at least that do not lend themselves to the kind of equilibrium theories now so prominent in studies of group action. Though the patronal group presents problems apparently having to strictly determined analytical solutions (See Section III above), certain suggestive concepts and hypotheses nevertheless emerge. These look to fruitful lines of inquiry, and to a better understanding of such groups. First, there is the notion of "achievement of equity" in burden-sharing through enforced taxation as a specific purpose of group action, theoretically separable from other group goals, such as production of some group good. And, from the foregoing analysis of this notion, are the two core hypotheses presented in this paper: that patronal groups tend to repeat essentially self-defeating cycles of increasing and decreasing taxes and budgets unless this tendency is consiciously inhibited by adoption of an "unnecessarily" high tax level; and -- a related but separate hypothesis -- that there exists no "optimum" or equilibrium budget or tax level in any aggregate which approximates to the ideal type of a patronal group. In suggesting these new lines of thought, as well as the "patron-protege concept" from whose analysis they emerge, it is hoped that this paper represents a contribution to group theory which recognizes and uses, but at the same time goes beyond, the equilibrium concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows how the emotional phases that accompany market crisis can be related to an underlying cycle of actions, attributions, and regulatory reactions among participants in the market environment. The action-attribution-regulation process is here called "enactment," in order to focus on how market participants create the environment that then impinges on their activity. We illustrate this process with a case study of the 1980 crisis in the silver futures market, when prices soared from $10 per ounce to $50 per ounce and fell back to $10 per ounce in seven months. The traditional mania/distress/panic model of speculative bubbles is reframed as a cycle of organizing, focusing on the strategic actions of buyers, sellers, bankers, and government agencies. The paper shows how the crisis, enacted by market participants who created speculative opportunities, was resolved through the cooperation of powerful organizations that sought to protect the solvency of insiders and the integrity of the market. This view of market process suggests a cycle of action and institutional constraint that shapes the structure of market environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]