Throughout the Middle East, Islamist charities and social welfare
organizations play a major role in addressing the socioeconomic needs of Muslim
societies, independently of the state. Through case ...studies of Islamic medical
clinics in Egypt, the Islamic Center Charity Society in Jordan, and the Islah
Women's Charitable Society in Yemen, Janine A. Clark examines the structure and
dynamics of moderate Islamic institutions and their social and political impact.
Questioning the widespread assumption that such organizations primarily serve the
poorer classes, Clark argues that these organizations in fact are run by and for the
middle class. Rather than the vertical recruitment or mobilization of the poor that
they are often presumed to promote, Islamic social institutions play an important
role in strengthening social networks that bind middle-class professionals,
volunteers, and clients. Ties of solidarity that develop along these horizontal
lines foster the development of new social networks and the diffusion of new
ideas.
Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In ...authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials they believe will perform well and to remove them when they do not. The answer, Lily L. Tsai found, lies in a community's social institutions. Even when formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are weak, government officials can still be subject to informal rules and norms created by community solidary groups that have earned high moral standing in the community.
The Society of Algorithms Burrell, Jenna; Fourcade, Marion
Annual review of sociology,
01/2021, Volume:
47, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The pairing of massive data sets with processes-or algorithms-written in computer code to sort through, organize, extract, or mine them has made inroads in almost every major social institution. This ...article proposes a reading of the scholarly literature concerned with the social implications of this transformation. First, we discuss the rise of a new occupational class, which we call the coding elite. This group has consolidated power through their technical control over the digital means of production and by extracting labor from a newly marginalized or unpaid workforce, the cybertariat. Second, we show that the implementation of techniques of mathematical optimization across domains as varied as education, medicine, credit and finance, and criminal justice has intensified the dominance of actuarial logics of decision-making, potentially transforming pathways to social reproduction and mobility but also generating a pushback by those so governed. Third, we explore how the same pervasive algorithmic intermediation in digital communication is transforming the way people interact, associate, and think. We conclude by cautioning against the wildest promises of artificial intelligence but acknowledging the increasingly tight coupling between algorithmic processes, social structures, and subjectivities.
Rural decline is an inevitable process as human society transforms from the agrarian to the urban-industrial economy, and further on to the knowledge economy. Through an extensive literature review, ...this paper aims to interpret why some rural areas decline while some others do not. The findings show that it is by the interactions between rural areas and the external environment that rural communities either grow, decline or even vanish. The paper emphasizes the necessity to improve rural communities' resilient capacity through adjusting their internal components' function and structure to survive the external changes. In this process, rural livelihood diversification, the creation of market oriented institutions and strong social capital are considered to enhance rural resilience and build up sustaining rural communities. Finally, three conditions for sustainable rural development in the knowledge economy are discussed: 1) development of new economic activities that can respond to potential urban demand; 2) local entrepreneurship that can establish and expand these new activities; and 3) social capital that can support the entrepreneurship in new activities with access to credits, labor, human capital, external markets and external knowledge for learning and innovation.
•Rural decline is an inevitable phenomenon as human society transforms.•Interactions between rural areas and the external environment decide rural evolution.•Rural communities' resilient capacity must be enhanced against external challenges.•Collaboration within & between local actor groups is needed for rural revitalization.
Institutions count Portes, Alejandro; Smith, Lori D
2012., 20121006, 2012, 2012-09-12, 20120101
eBook
What leads to national progress? The growing consensus in the social sciences is that neither capital flows, nor the savings rate, nor diffuse values are the key, but that it lies in the quality of a ...nation's institutions. This book is the first comparative study of how real institutions affect national development. It seeks to examine and deepen this insight through a systematic study of institutions in five Latin American countries and how they differ within and across nations. Postal systems, stock exchanges, public health services and others were included in the sample, all studied with the same methodology. The country chapters present detailed results of this empirical exercise for each individual country. The introductory chapters present the theoretical framework and research methodology for the full study. The summary results of this ambitious study presented in the concluding chapter draw comparisons across countries and discuss what these results mean for national development in Latin America.
How do periods of conflict and peace shape women's empowerment around the world? While existing studies have demonstrated that gender inequalities contribute to the propensity for armed conflict, we ...consider how the anticipation and realization of armed conflict shape women's opportunities for influence in society. Some scholars have pointed to the role that militarization and threat play in entrenching male dominance, while others have argued that periods of warfare can upend existing gender hierarchical orders. We posit mechanisms by which the preparation for and experiences during war affect change in women's empowerment. We develop and test observable implications using cross-national data from 1900 to 2015. We find that, at least in the short and medium term, warfare can disrupt social institutions and lead to an increase in women's empowerment via mechanisms related to role shifts across society and political shifts catalyzed by war. Reforming institutions and mainstreaming gender during peace processes stand to have important legacies for gender power relations in postconflict societies, though much more may be needed for more permanent change.
Ausgehend von der Theorie operational geschlossener Systeme und dem damit zusammenhängenden Informationsbegriff kann das Verhältnis solcher Systeme zu ihrer Umwelt über den Begriff der strukturellen ...Kopplung erläutert werden. Wenn man diese Konzepte auf das Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Recht anwendet, können klassische Fragestellungen neu analysiert werden: So können Eigentum und Vertrag als evolutionär entstandene gesellschaftliche Einrichtungen der Kopplung beider Systeme verstanden werden, die einerseits Systemzustände und andererseits Systemereignisse koordinieren - und dies mit ganz unterschiedlichen Folgen für beide Systeme. Entsprechend gestaltet sich auch die Entwicklungsgeschichte der entsprechenden Semantiken im Zuge der funktionalen Ausdifferenzierung der Gesellschaft. Die gesellschaftsevolutionär erfolgreiche Etablierung der Kopplungsformen bedeutet aber noch keine Zukunftsgarantie. Insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der sich ändernden Temporalstrukturen der modernen Gesellschaft in der Form von Technikfolgen, der Ökologiefrage und der Sensibilisierung für Risiken wird vielmehr das geräuschlose Funktionieren der strukturellen Kopplungen, wie es z. B. die liberale Theorie von Eigentum und Vertragsfreiheit postulieren, zunehmend in Frage gestellt.
To assess how the transition from state socialism to a market economy has impacted the social stratification order in China, some prior studies have debated whether the economic privileges of the ...political redistributors have declined relative to the emerging market elites, while others have examined the coevolution between the two in urban institutional contexts. This study provides new insights into how political capital influences economic inequalities in contemporary rural China by revisiting informal social institutions. Drawing upon a unique nationally representative household survey and using surname sharing with the village cadres to infer shared lineage membership, we find that lineage-based political ties help rural Chinese households to materialize income as well as asset advantages over fellow villagers bereft of such ties. Furthermore, the economic privileges of political connections are larger in villages with lineage groups than those without, and larger for villages of more frequent kin interactions than those of less frequent kin interactions. Our results extend prior findings on the coevolution between political and market elites by going beyond formal institutions and examining grassroots-level evidence in contemporary rural communities.
The fenomenon of domestic violence, especially against women, becomes a serious social problem. Law enforcement is required in order to eliminate domestic violence. The purpose of this study is to ...find out how the form of legal protection against women as victims of violence in households and to know what factors affect the occurrence of violence in the household. This research method using normative law research method. The data used is secondary data from the Baubau city resort police in 2017. Data were analysis using qualitative analysis. The results of the study indicate that the form of legal protection against women as victims of violence in households is the protection of preventive and repressive law. In two forms of legal protection, preventive law protection is more dominant than repressive.
Celebrating 50 years of legal socialization Trinkner, Rick; Reisig, Michael D.
Journal of social issues,
June 2021, 2021-06-00, 20210601, Volume:
77, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article presents the 2021 JSI special issue on legal socialization, which we planned to celebrate the legal socialization scholarship that was largely initiated by a special issue of JSI (1971, ...Vol. 27, Issue 2) published 50 years ago. In its broadest sense, legal socialization refers to the process by which people develop their relationship with the law. Undergirding this process is the acquisition, formation, and development of legal values, attitudes, and reasoning capacities. This intellectual tradition rests on four pillars—foundationality, reciprocity, ubiquity, and continuity—that provide order to a field of study where scholars are trained in different disciplines, employ different methodologies, and pursue different questions involving people's relationship with the law. Much like in 1971, today many people are questioning the role of law in society, its purpose, its function, its history, and its efficacy. It is more important than ever to understand how people develop their orientation toward this social institution and the influence of that orientation on legal behavior. This issue features an eclectic group of scholars and a broad array of legal socialization research. This body of scholarship is intended to push the boundaries of the field both theoretically and in scope. This introduction situates each article within the rich historical tradition of legal socialization.
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