Download or read book Social Institutions written by Michael Hechter and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to present a synthesis of rational choice theory and sociological perspectives for the analysis of social institutions. The origin of social institutions is an old concern in social theory. Currently it has re-emerged as one of the most intensely debated issues in social science. Among economists and rational choice theorists, there is growing awareness that most, if not all, of the social outcomes that are of interest to explain are at least partly a function of institutional constraints. Yet the role of institutions is negligible both in general equilibrium theory and in most neoclassical economic models. There is a burgeoning substantive interest in institutions ranging from social movements, to formal organizations, to states, and even international regimes. Rational choice theorists have made great strides in elucidating the effects of institutions on a variety of social outcomes, but they have paid insufficient attention to the social dynamics that lead to the emergence of these institutions. Typically, these institutions have been assumed to be a given, rather than considered as outcomes requiring explanation in their own right. Sociological theorists, in contrast, have long appreciated the role of social structural constraints in the determination of outcomes but have neglected the role of individual agents. Michael Hechter is professor emeritus in the department of Sociology at the University of Washington. He is the author of numerous books. He became an Elected Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and has been featured in Who's Who. He is also currently on editorial boards for a numerous amount of journals. Karl-Dieter Opp is professor of sociology at Univesitat Leipzig. He has been a Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology since 1999 and has been member of the Council and Treasurer since 2000. He is also current on the advisory board for the magazine Mind and Society. Reinhard Wippler is professor of theoretical sociology at the University of Utrecht and scientific director of the Interuniversity Center for Sociological Theory and Methodology.
Download or read book Dynamics Of Social Institutions written by DR. SHWETA and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each society has its own social institutions. These are not buildings or places, but structures of relationship, obligation, role and function. These are social concepts and practices, but also involve cognitive structures.Members of a society have a similar mental concept of right and wrong, order and relationships, and positive values. Those who do not honor these concepts are criminals, or at least antisocial. Social institutions have often been in existence for centuries and thus reflect the deeply enshrined normative value system of people. They can be reflected in the formal institutional framework of a society. Social institution refers to a group of social positions, connected by social relations, performing a social role. It can also be defined in a narrower sense as any institution in a society that works to socialize the groups or people in it. Social institutions comprise norms, values and attitudes. They often manifest themselves in traditions and cultural practices that are performed by the members of a society. Social institution can take many forms, depending on the social context. Our social, economic and political institutions are vital to democracy and fairness in society.
Download or read book Social Institutions written by Karl-Dieter Opp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to present a synthesis of rational choice theory and sociological perspectives for the analysis of social institutions.The origin of social institutions is an old concern in social theory. Currently it has re-emerged as one of the most intensely debated issues in social science. Among economists and rational choice theorists, there is growing awareness that most, if not all, of the social outcomes that are of interest to explain are at least partly a function of institutional constraints. Yet the role of institutions is negligible both in general equilibrium theory and in most neoclassical economic models. There is a burgeoning substantive interest in institutions ranging from social movements, to formal organizations, to states, and even international regimes.Rational choice theorists have made great strides in elucidating the effects of institutions on a variety of social outcomes, but they have paid insufficient attention to the social dynamics that lead to the emergence of these institutions. Typically, these institutions have been assumed to be a given, rather than considered as outcomes requiring explanation in their own right. Sociological theorists, in contrast, have long appreciated the role of social structural constraints in the determination of outcomes but have neglected the role of individual agents.Michael Hechter is professor emeritus in the department of Sociology at the University of Washington. He is the author of numerous books. He became an Elected Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and has been featured in Who's Who. He is also currently on editorial boards for a numerous amount of journals.Karl-Dieter Opp is professor of sociology at Univesitat Leipzig. He has been a Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology since 1999 and has been member of the Council and Treasurer since 2000. He is also current on the advisory board for the magazine Mind and Society.Reinhard Wippler is professor of theoretical sociology at the University of Utrecht and scientific director of the Interuniversity Center for Sociological Theory and Methodology.
Download or read book Dynamics of Social Institutions written by Shaikh Azhar Iqbal and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Economic Theory of Social Institutions written by Andrew Schotter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses game theory to analyse the creation, evolution and function of economic and social institutions. The author illustrates his analysis by describing the organic or unplanned evolution of institutions such as the conventions of war, the use of money, property rights and oligopolistic pricing conventions. Professor Schotter begins by linking his work with the ideas of the philosophers Rawls, Nozick and Lewis. Institutions are regarded as regularities in the behaviour of social agents, which the agents themselves tacitly create to solve a wide variety of recurrent problems. The repetitive nature of the problems permits them to be described as a recurrent game or 'supergame.' The agents use these regularities as informational devices to supplement the information contained in competitive prices. The final chapter explores the applicability of this theory, first by relating it to previous work on the theory of teams, hierarchies, and non-maximizing decision theory, and then by using it to provide a new approach to a variety of questions both within and outside economics.
Download or read book The Political Dynamics of School Choice written by L. Fusarelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-05-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lance D. Fusarelli examines the relationship between the charter school and voucher issues: To what degree does political support for charter schools - from a coalition of teacher associations, school board groups, superintendents, and voucher advocates - slow or even stop the forces for vouchers? Or, do these coalitions, which successfully pushed charter school legislation through the legislature, actually fuel the fires of privatization? Charter schools legislation has enjoyed bipartisan support precisely because the threat of vouchers is so great. And, contrary to the strategy of voucher opponents, the spread of charter school increases, rather than alleviates, the push for vouchers.
Download or read book Human Institutions written by Jonathan H. Turner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis--that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.
Download or read book Social Dynamics of the Life Course written by Walter R. Heinz and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades, research on the life course has successfully combined and integrated different and rather isolated fields of social concerns such as: the labor market, family solidarity, education, employment, retirement, and social policy. It has also developed a special focus on crucial problems of sociological research, which includes the understanding of micromacro phenomena, the dynamics of social change, and international comparisons. Contributors to this volume take an international, comparative approach in applying the life course theoretical framework to issues of work and career. Life course research focuses on the relationship between institutions and individuals across the life span and illuminates the impact of modernization on the shaping of biographies. Industrial service societies are characterized by historically new contingencies of living arrangements and biographies. These contingencies differ according to the extent to which life course patterns are regulated by social institutions. In the continental European context, institutional frameworks continue to define the timing and sequencing of transitions across the life course. In less regulated market societies, like the United States and Great Britain, biographies and living arrangements are shaped more by the interaction of markets, social networks, and individual decisions. In active welfare states, institutional resources and rules continue to mediate the effects of social change on the life course. What the editors and contributors to this fine compendium anticipate is a change on the cultural level toward more equality. This trend supports young people, and women in particular, in their expectations concerning an egalitarian relationship. This expectation is not taken for granted from the point of view of the male partner, but has to be negotiated in decisionmaking processes as an issue that concerns the couple as a unit. Thus, the way in which people interact is profoundly impacted by the values and goals of equity demands. Walter R. Heinz is professor of sociology and social psychology, and director, Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen. Victor W. Marshall is professor of sociology, and director of the Institute on Aging, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina.
Download or read book The Shaping of Socio Economic Systems RLE Social Theory written by Thomas Baumgartner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Actor-systems dynamics is an innovative, multidisciplinary methodology for investigating and analyzing social struggles over economic resources and the related interplay between economic and socio-political institutions and processes. The authors, sociologists and economists, offer a systemic perspective on contemporary socio-economic issues such as economic crisis, unemployment, inflation, economic democracy and development; in their analyses, they identify several of the key factors that drive people to interact, to initiate change and transformation as well as to resist such change. Major underlying themes in the book are: Conflict over the distribution of economic resources and economic policies and institutions; the structural bases of economic inequality and conflict; the shaping and reshaping of socio-economic institutions, and the contradictions, conflicts and instabilities evoked by such developments; the failure of orthodox economic theories, including Keynesianism, in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities; the development and application of an open, dynamic actor-oriented systems theory – grounded in the social sciences – addressing complex socio-economic phenomena in ways diverging substantially from conventional economics. All in all, the papers collected here deal, on the one hand, with social power, conflict, and struggle concerning economic resources and institutions and, on the other hand, the structural and other factors which drive powering initiatives, conflict, and social innovation and transformation. The book is addressed to a broad spectrum of social and managerial scientists concerned with socio-economic issues, institutions, and development.
Download or read book Explaining Social Institutions written by Jack Knight and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Important scholars offer new perspectives on the formation and growth of social institutions
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Institutions written by Dmitri M. Bondarenko and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-12 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel and innovative approach to the study of social evolution using case studies from the Old and the New World, from prehistory to the present. This approach is based on examining social evolution through the evolution of social institutions. Evolution is defined as the process of structural change. Within this framework the society, or culture, is seen as a system composed of a vast number of social institutions that are constantly interacting and changing. As a result, the structure of society as a whole is also evolving and changing. The authors posit that the combination of evolving social institutions explains the non-linear character of social evolution and that every society develops along its own pathway and pace. Within this framework, society should be seen as the result of the compound effect of the interactions of social institutions specific to it. Further, the transformation of social institutions and relations between them is taking place not only within individual societies but also globally, as institutions may be trans-societal, and even institutions that operate in one society can arise as a reaction to trans-societal trends and demands. The book argues that it may be more productive to look at institutions even within a given society as being parts of trans-societal systems of institutions since, despite their interconnectedness, societies still have boundaries, which their members usually know and respect. Accordingly, the book is a must-read for researchers and scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the origins, history, successes and failures of social institutions.
Download or read book Societal Dynamics and Fragility written by Alexandre Marc and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Societal Dynamics and Fragility aims to address the social dimensions of fragility. Prepared as a complement to the 2011 World Development Report, this book frames fragility as a problem not only of state capacity, but also of relationships in society. Drawing on analytical work in Liberia, Central African Republic, Yemen, Indonesia (Aceh) and Haiti, it recommends placing social cohesion at the center of development efforts in fragile environments by cultivating an in-depth understanding of the societal dynamics at play in each context and adapting programs to address the sources of division that hinder state building. Specifically, the book advocates a focus on perceptions of injustice at least as much as measurable inequalities, and for creating space to facilitate constructive connections between institutions, especially between customary and state structures as well as often-nascent civil society institutions.
Download or read book The Power Dynamics Behind Social Institutions written by Tresa Marie Martinez and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Dynamics of the Life Course written by Walter R. Heinz and published by Aldine De Gruyter. This book was released on 2003 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades, research on the life course has successfully combined and integrated different and rather isolated fields of social concerns such as: the labor market, family solidarity, education, employment, retirement, and social policy. It has also developed a special focus on crucial problems of sociological research, which includes the understanding of micromacro phenomena, the dynamics of social change, and international comparisons. Contributors to this volume take an international, comparative approach in applying the life course theoretical framework to issues of work and career. Life course research focuses on the relationship between institutions and individuals across the life span and illuminates the impact of moderniation on the shaping of biographies. Industrial service societies are characteried by historically new contingencies of living arrangements and biographies. These contingencies differ according to the extent to which life course patterns are regulated by social institutions. In the continental European context, institutional frameworks continue to define the timing and sequencing of transitions across the life course. In less regulated market societies, like the United States and Great Britain, biographies and living arrangements are shaped more by the interaction of markets, social networks, and individual decisions. In active welfare states, institutional resources and rules continue to mediate the effects of social change on the life course. What the editors and contributors to this fine compendium anticipate is a change on the cultural level toward more equality. This trend supports young people, and women in particular, in their expectations concerning an egalitarian relationship. This expectation is not taken for granted from the point of view of the male partner, but has to be negotiated in decisionmaking processes as an issue that concerns the couple as a unit. Thus, the way in which people interact is profoundly impacted by the values and goals of equity demands. Walter R. Hein is professor of sociology and social psychology, and director, Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen. Victor W. Marshall is professor of sociology, and director of the Institute on Aging, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina.
Download or read book Dynamics Among Nations written by Hilton L. Root and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative view of the changing geopolitical landscape that draws on the science of complex adaptive systems to understand changes in global interaction. Liberal internationalism has been the West's foreign policy agenda since the Cold War, and the West has long occupied the top rung of a hierarchical system. In this book, Hilton Root argues that international relations, like other complex ecosystems, exists in a constantly shifting landscape, in which hierarchical structures are giving way to systems of networked interdependence, changing every facet of global interaction. Accordingly, policymakers will need a new way to understand the process of change. Root suggests that the science of complex systems offers an analytical framework to explain the unforeseen development failures, governance trends, and alliance shifts in today's global political economy. Root examines both the networked systems that make up modern states and the larger, interdependent landscapes they share. Using systems analysis—in which institutional change and economic development are understood as self-organizing complexities—he offers an alternative view of institutional resilience and persistence. From this perspective, Root considers the divergence of East and West; the emergence of the European state, its contrast with the rise of China, and the network properties of their respective innovation systems; the trajectory of democracy in developing regions; and the systemic impact of China on the liberal world order. Complexity science, Root argues, will not explain historical change processes with algorithmic precision, but it may offer explanations that match the messy richness of those processes.
Download or read book Friendship as a Social Institution written by Michal McCall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the social organization of love, friendship, rivalry, marriage, admiration, collegiality, parenthood, acquaintance, and clientage? How are these types of relationships similar and how do they differ? Few sociological works exist on relationships between friends, business partners, customers and clerks, mailmen and homeowners, and employers and employees, as social rather than role relationships. This classic book remains of interest because it focuses on voluntary personal relationships relationships that people need not enter, whose content is up to the participants, whose rules are what the participants agree they will be. The authors create an analytic framework within which to describe and compare the enormous range of relationships between two persons. They detail the shape and structure of such relationships, consider their organizational dynamics, their range and the nature of deviance in them, and point out analytical variables and dimensions upon which relationships can be located for comparative purposes. Organizational change in terms of how relationships are formed, developed, and transformed is covered, as is their function and dysfunction for the individual and society. By regarding social relationships consistently from the viewpoint of social organization theory, the book assimilates them to sociological concepts in general, but with an eye to the social psychological and organizational features that render them distinctive as a type. Friendship as a Social Institution sustains the study of friendship by making distinctions and outlining the problems connected with the study of social relationships.
Download or read book Social Institutions and Economic Development written by Valpy FitzGerald and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-08 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jan Pronk The role of institutions in economic development has been debated at length. It is a major chapter in the history of economic thought. It was also a key - sue in comparisons of the effectiveness of Eastern and Western economic systems. Understanding the variety of social and cultural institutions has - ways been crucial in analysing development processes in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Less attention has been given to institutions in studies of the economic performance of Western countries. This may be because economic policies in the West were mostly oriented to the short and medium terms rather than to the long-term perspective. In the short run ins- tutions are given, in the long run they lend themselves for change. From the outset, economic institutions (e.g. markets, enterprises) and their underlying values (e.g. efficiency, economicfreedom) received much - tention. Similar attention was given to political institutions (the state, government, the law) and values (democracy, accountability, human rights). Thought also turned to social institutions (entrepreneurship, the middle class, the family household, land-tenure systems) and social values (tradition, gender and age relations, justice). Studies soon followed of cultural insti- tions (religion, ethnicity) and values (material consumerism or the bond between man and nature). Without the insight gained by studying insti- tions, economics would have become a dull discipline.
