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.
In recent years, there has been widespread concern that misinformation on social media is damaging societies and democratic institutions. In response, social media platforms have announced actions to ...limit the spread of false content. We measure trends in the diffusion of content from 569 fake news websites and 9540 fake news stories on Facebook and Twitter between January 2015 and July 2018. User interactions with false content rose steadily on both Facebook and Twitter through the end of 2016. Since then, however, interactions with false content have fallen sharply on Facebook while continuing to rise on Twitter, with the ratio of Facebook engagements to Twitter shares decreasing by 60%. In comparison, interactions with other news, business, or culture sites have followed similar trends on both platforms. Our results suggest that the relative magnitude of the misinformation problem on Facebook has declined since its peak.
Es sabido que hay consenso científico sobre la existencia de problemas ecológicos que, de no ser abordados, pueden comprometer el futuro de las sociedades actuales. Para resolverlos, se requiere ...cambiar sustancialmente las relaciones entre naturaleza y sociedad. Esta necesidad ha sido remarcada por la denominada teoría política medioambiental. Sin embargo, las aportaciones de este campo no han cristalizado en las instituciones y las prácticas sociales. Este trabajo compara dos formas de acortar esta distancia entre teoría y acción medioambientales. Teniendo el Antropoceno como marco de análisis de las relaciones socionaturales, reivindica un papel activo de la teoría política en la provisión de conceptos y argumentos a otros actores en la esfera pública e institucional. Esta tesis se defiende de dos maneras. Primero, se argumenta que esto puede hacerse sin menoscabo de estándares lógicos y epistemológicos convencionales. Segundo, se muestran las deficiencias de otros actores propuestos para desempeñar esta tarea, centrándonos en los movimientos por la justicia medioambiental y los movimientos por la justicia climática.
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.
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.
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.
Social resilience is one of the vital social capitals for youth, especially in Bandarharjo, North Semarang, a marginalized area with many juvenile delinquents. Social resilience is an attempt to ...transform social behavior in a place that is safe, conducive, and upholds tolerance. Therefore, this article aims to examine the social institution's role in building youths' social resilience in Bandarharjo North Semarang and analyze the youths' social resilience in Bandarharjo with Bourdieu's theory as the leading theory. This research employed a qualitative approach with a phenomenological description study that investigated the individual's subjective experience through the social institution leaders and youths in Bandarharjo. The results showed that the social institutions involved in the establishment of social resilience are family, village community, religious institutions, and educational institutions; youth social resilience predominantly comes from religious and family social institutions; and social resilience can alter most of the negative behaviors of marginalized youth in Bandarharjo and sustain them through internal and external negative influences. This research reinforces Bourdieu's theory that a good environment and social capital affect individuals' habits in developing social resilience.
Understanding social media logic van Dijck, Jose; Poell, Thomas
Media and communication (Lisboa),
07/2013, Letnik:
1, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Over the past decade, social media platforms have penetrated deeply into the mechanics of everyday life, affecting people's informal interactions, as well as institutional structures and professional ...routines. Far from being neutral platforms for everyone, social media have changed the conditions and rules of social interaction. In this article, we examine the intricate dynamic between social media platforms, mass media, users, and social institutions by calling attention to social media logic--the norms, strategies, mechanisms, and economies--underpinning its dynamics. This logic will be considered in light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which has helped spread the media's powerful discourse outside its institutional boundaries. Theorizing social media logic, we identify four grounding principles--programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication--and argue that these principles become increasingly entangled with mass media logic. The logic of social media, rooted in these grounding principles and strategies, is gradually invading all areas of public life. Besides print news and broadcasting, it also affects law and order, social activism, politics, and so forth. Therefore, its sustaining logic and widespread dissemination deserve to be scrutinized in detail in order to better understand its impact in various domains. Concentrating on the tactics and strategies at work in social media logic, we reassess the constellation of power relationships in which social practices unfold, raising questions such as: How does social media logic modify or enhance existing mass media logic? And how is this new media logic exported beyond the boundaries of (social or mass) media proper? The underlying principles, tactics, and strategies may be relatively simple to identify, but it is much harder to map the complex connections between platforms that distribute this logic: users that employ them, technologies that drive them, economic structures that scaffold them, and institutional bodies that incorporate them.
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