Download or read book Sociology of Altruism written by Koji YOSHINO and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2024-10-11 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of altruism from a sociological perspective. P.A. Sorokin addresses contemporary issues, presents a framework for studying altruism, and delves into the sociological and psychological underpinnings of altruistic behavior. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and practical examples, Sorokin makes a compelling case for the transformative power of altruism in society. This book is a significant contribution to the field of sociology, offering deep insights into the nature of altruism and its potential to shape a more compassionate and peaceful world.
Download or read book Beyond the Dichotomy Between Altruism and Egoism written by Emiliana Mangone and published by IAP. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The birth of the social sciences and specifically of sociology begets some open questions, among which the debate on altruism and the concept of social solidarity. The term altruism was firstly used by Auguste Comte. It is one of the few terms born within the scientific field that will enter the common language roughly maintaining the same meaning. For the positivist Comte, altruism represented the powerful impulse to the intellectual and moral development of humanity to which we must strive as a future state. The term commonly means all those actions whose benefits fall on others and not on the agent (actor). In short, for Comte, altruism means "to live for others" (vivre pour autrui). The centrality of altruism as part of the reflections of social sciences can be found in many classic authors. Durkheim, for example, explains the foundations of social solidarity in modern society precisely through the opposition between altruism and egoism and defines its implications in the book Le Suicide in 1897, also identifying what will later become the main typology of suicide by contrasting altruistic suicide with egoistic suicide. Likewise, both Weber and Marx, while not using the term altruism as such, refer to it indirectly. The former, when describing the ethics of love for the charismatic authority as opposed to legal and rational authority, the latter, when corroborating his polemics against Christian charity. The interest in altruism as an object of study of social sciences, however, is progressively waning - especially in Europe. From the second half of the last century, theoretical and empirical studies show the indifference of social scientists towards this object, except for the Russian-American sociologist Sorokin, who in 1949 founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism. In recent years, however, the topic seems to take renewed vigor, especially in the United States with the birth in 2012 of the section "Altruism, Morality & Social Solidarity" within the American Sociological Association. It considered these three aspects as a single field of disciplinary specialization, since they are significantly dependent on socio-cultural reality. This is the situation in the United States. In Europe, there is a renewed interest in studies on altruism, especially in French-language sociology, above all starting from the numerous contributions to reading and re-reading work on Marcel Mauss's on gift of 1925, and in following the anti-utilitarian movement and studies of the school of social representations of Moscovici, which leads to the definition of the elementary forms of altruism. The book aims to analyze the concept of altruism starting from classical philosophy up to the systems of ideas of contemporaneity, considering the approaches and authors of reference in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary way. The representations of altruism and egoism in contemporary society are constantly changing, following the transformations of society itself. Having abandoned the idea that the factors leading to altruism or egoism lay only in human nature, we find them in people’s conduct, freedom, relationships, their associative forms and society. The attention is thus turned to two elements of the daily life of individuals: culture and social relations. The book tries, therefore, through the meso-theories developed in recent decades, which study the relationships between life-world and social system, to describe the links between altruism, egoism, culture and social relations. We will pay particular attention to the relationality of individuals, in an attempt to overcome the dichotomy altruism/egoism by reading some aspects little considered by previous studies - or contemplated only indirectly or marginally. The ultimate goal is to highlight how positive actions are necessary for the contemporary society and how social sciences must go back and study positive socio-cultural actions and phenomena, not only negative, as a way to promote them for the well-being of the society.
Download or read book The Genetics Of Altruism written by Scott Boorman and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Genetics of Altruism covers the primary findings on social evolution, social trait, and altruism from a population genetics standpoint to establish a system of genetic boxes. It presents an evolutionary question with two faces: Why are there so many social species? Why, in all the diversity of the animal kingdom, are the social species so few? To address the evolutionary question, this book focuses on recognition of the fact that on an evolutionary time, scale genetics must underlie all changes in the capacity for social structure and other aspects of organic evolution. It presents comparative analyses framed in mathematical terms; mathematical concepts as a means of getting outside human, perhaps more generally primate and carnivore; frames of reference; and alternative network combinatorics as a natural basis for comparing social structures that are phylogenetically remote. It also discusses the comparative biology of social behavior on a purely descriptive basis through the social and evolutionary structures emergent. The book concludes by discussing major evolutionary pathways, various kinds of preadaptedness for sociality, and the use of cascade principle to suggest ways in which human evolution may have been a special case. This book is a valuable resource for biologists, social scientists, researchers, students, and all those who want to broaden their knowledge in the field of social behavior and altruism.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism Morality and Social Solidarity written by V. Jeffries and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of altruism, morality, and social solidarity is an emerging field of scholarship and research in sociology. This handbook will function as a foundational source for this subject matter and field, and as an impetus to its further development.
Download or read book Altruism in Cross Cultural Perspective written by Douglas A. Vakoch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective provides such a scholarly overview, examining the intersection of culture and such topics as evolutionary accounts of altruism and the importance of altruism in ritual and religion. The past decade has seen a proliferation of research on altruism, made possible in part by significant funding from organizations such as the John Templeton Foundation. While significant research has been conducted on biological, social, and individual dimensions of altruism, there has been no attempt to provide an overview of the ways that altruistic behavior and attitudes vary across cultures. The book addresses the methodological challenges of researching altruism across cultures, as well as the ways that altruism is manifest in difficult circumstances. A particular strength of the book is its attention to multiple disciplinary approaches to understanding altruism, with contributors from fields including psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, communication, philosophy, religious studies, gender studies, and bioethics.
Download or read book Last Best Gifts written by Kieran Healy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual—often anonymous—may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers. Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent—contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor’s altruism or the size of a financial incentive.
Download or read book Embracing the Other written by Pearl Oliner and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1995-07 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All but buried for most of the twentieth century, the concept of altruism has re-emerged in this last quarter as a focus of intense scholarly inquiry and general public interest. In the wake of increased consciousness of the human potential for destructiveness, both scholars and the general public are seeking interventions which will not only inhibit the process, but may in fact chart a new creative path toward a global community. Largely initiated by a group of pioneering social psychologists, early questions on altruism centered on its motivation and development primarily in the context of contrived laboratory experiments. Although publications on the topic have been considerable over the last several years, and now represent the work of representatives from many disciplines of inquiry, this volume is distinguished from others in several ways. Embracing the Other emerged primarily as a response to recent research on an extraordinary manifestation of real-life altruism, namely to recent studies of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during World War II. It is the work of a multi-disciplinary and international group of scholars, including philosophers, social psychologists, historians, sociologists, and educators, challenging several prevailing conceptual definitions and motivational sources of altruism. The book combines both new empirical and historical research as well as theoretical and philosophical approaches and includes a lengthy section addressing the practical implications of current thinking on altruism for society at large. The result is a multi-textured work, addressing critical issues in varied disciplines, while centered on shared themes.
Download or read book Does Altruism Exist written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.
Download or read book The Heart of Altruism written by Kristen Renwick Monroe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-21 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is all human behavior based on self-interest? Many social and biological theories would argue so, but such a perspective does not explain the many truly heroic acts committed by people willing to risk their lives to help others. Kristen Monroe boldly lays the groundwork for a social theory toward altruism by examining the experiences described by altruists themselves.
Download or read book Altruism Morality and Economic Theory written by Edmund S. Phelps and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1975-05-21 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of papers by economists theorizing on the roles of altruism and morality versus self-interest in the shaping of human behavior and institutions. Specifically, the authors examine why some persons behave in an altruistic way without any apparent reward, thus defying the economist's model of utility maximization. The chapters are accompanied by commentaries from representatives of other disciplines, including law and philosophy.
Download or read book Solidarity and Prosocial Behavior written by Detlev Fetchenhauer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-08-29 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the product of an intensive cooperation between psych- ogists and sociologists who study solidarity and prosocial behavior, and its fruits are briefly summarized in Chapter 1. The topics of so- darity and prosocial behavior are at the core of both disciplines and thus one might expect that an intensive cooperation like the one that produced this book is not uncommon. Surprisingly however, it is extremely rare that sociologists and psychologists get together to c- bine their knowledge in these fields. Instead, researchers from both disciplines tend to ignore each other’s work quite generally, and the work on prosocial and antisocial behavior is no exception. The conviction that sociology and psychology can benefit from each other’s work led us—a group of sociologists and psychologists at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands)—in 1999 to launch a joint research project on solidarity and prosociality. The aim was to find a common ground on which insights from each discipline could contribute to a broader understanding of solidarity and prosocial behavior. This interdisciplinary research project was called Prosocial Dispositions and Solidary Behavior and it was financed by the University of Groningen as a so-called breedtestrategie program (i.e., a program for broadening disciplinary approaches).
Download or read book The Invention of Altruism written by Thomas Dixon and published by . This book was released on 2008-05-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how Victorian philosophers, scientists, clergymen, and novelists debated the meaning of the new term 'altruism'. Including a reappraisal of Charles Darwin's ideas and insights into the rise of popular socialism, this study is highly relevant to contemporary debates about altruism, evolution, religion, and ethics.
Download or read book Altruism Socialization and Society written by J. Philippe Rushton and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1980 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Fraught Embrace written by Ann Swidler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals from faraway places descended on Africa to offer help and save lives. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of altruists who dream of transforming lives, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this incisive, irreverent book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of policy and practice. All who want to do good—from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals—depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. The mutual misunderstandings among these players create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. A Fraught Embrace unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.
Download or read book Altruism in Humans written by Charles Daniel Batson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We send money to help famine victims halfway around the world. We campaign to save whales and oceans. We stay up all night to comfort a friend with a broken relationship. People will at times risk - even lose - their lives for others, including strangers. Why do we do these things? What motivates such behavior? Altruism in Humans takes a hard-science look at the possibility that we humans have the capacity to care for others for their sakes rather than simply for our own. Based on an extensive series of theory-testing laboratory experiments conducted over the past 35 years, this book details a theory of altruistic motivation, offers a comprehensive summary of the research designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis, and considers the theoretical and practical implications of this conclusion. Authored by the world's preeminent scholar on altruism, this landmark work is an authoritative scholarly resource on the theory surrounding altruism and its potential contribution to better interpersonal relations and a better society.
Download or read book On the Practice of Sociology written by Pitirim A. Sorokin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-08-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) rose from a peasant childhood in Russia to become one of the most insightful figures in the history of sociology. At the Harvard Research Center for Creative Altruism, he developed a blueprint for social reconstruction. This collection includes essays that range from his early Russian years to his final works in the '60s.
Download or read book Emergency Intervention written by Jane Allyn Piliavin and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
