The concept of social structure is ill defined in the literature despite the perennial problem and ongoing discussion about the relationship between agency and structure. In this paper I will provide an outline of what the term social structure means, but my main focus will be on emphasizing the value of the concept for nursing research and demonstrate how its erasure in some research negatively effects on our understanding of the nurses' role in clinical practice. For example, qualitative (...) research in nursing has largely focused on agency through such theories as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism. The result is that social structure may be erased or seen as epiphenomena of agency. My purpose is to provide a theoretical discussion of social structure and how such a discussion can help us to understand how nurses live and experience clinical practice. While not denying the importance of agency, I will argue that the thinned out approach to social structure places limits on our understanding of the constraints nurses experience in their working lives. The result is that nurses' attitudes and clinical failings are individualized, resulting in ever more calls for improved education, when a more thorough examination of structural issues may elucidate more fundamental problems. (shrink)

The concept of social structure, present in social ontology since the 19th century, hasbeen used in various, not always clearly specified, meanings. The present use of the concepthas been decisively influenced by the elaborations in the hands of the so-called “newstructuralists” of the 1970s: Pierre Bourdieu, Roy Bhaskar and Anthony Giddens. To understandthe contemporary developments, it is necessary to be acquainted with its formative influences.In the paper, we compare the approaches of Bhaskar and Giddens, especially in the context (...) oftheir mutual compatibility and the challenges facing anyone wanting to develop their ownconcept of social structure based on the elaborations of the concept by Bhaskar and Giddens.The most fundamental issues appear to be especially the mode of existence of social structures,the heterogeneous character of different kinds of social structures, and the transition from theontology of the natural world to that of the social world by Bhaskar. (shrink)

This study utilizing correlation, regression, confirmatory factor analyses, ANOVA, moderation and mediation analysis investigated connections of stereotypes, emotions, and sociocultural variables in a single-sample/single-group design. Prior to data processing, Georgian versions of the Stereotype Content Model questionnaires were validated through CFA. The study looked at Georgian students' attitudes to: representatives of German-speaking countries and representatives of English-speaking countries. Emotions predicted to these groups by social–structural antecedents—vitality and fear of assimilation—and stereotypes were admiration, pride, and sympathy. In addition, envy was (...) predicted for the English-speaking group. The prediction of envy is explained by moderation analysis according to which it is elicited by the interplay of warmth and competence, as well as fear of assimilation and competence. The former interaction mediates the link between social–structural antecedents to emotions. Thus, distant out-groups elicit envy as a result of their perceived vitality, fear of assimilation, warmth, and competence. Social–structural antecedents come forward to elicit emotions of envy independently as well as in interaction with stereotypes when small country representatives evaluate representatives of the influential group of English-speaking people. (shrink)

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint (...) that not every arbitrary collection of people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

Advocates anthropology as a science focused on social structure.

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

Society and social structures play an important role in the formation and evaluation of concepts and practices in clinical ethics. This is evident in the ways the authors in this issue explore a wide range of arguments and concepts in clinical ethics including moral distress and conscience based practice, phenomenological interview techniques and gender dysphoria, continuous deep sedation (CDS) at the end of life, the notion of patient expertise, ethically permissible medical billing practices, the notion of selfhood and (...) patient centered care in dementia patients, and the definition of minimal risk as used in research regulations. (shrink)

We generalize the concept of a cooperative non-transferable utility game by introducing a socially structured game. In a socially structured game every coalition of players can organize themselves according to one or more internal organizations to generate payoffs. Each admissible internal organization on a coalition yields a set of payoffs attainable by the members of this coalition. The strengths of the players within an internal organization depend on the structure of the internal organization and are represented by an exogenously given (...) power vector. More powerful players have the power to take away payoffs of the less powerful players as long as those latter players are not able to guarantee their payoffs by forming a different internal organization within some coalition in which they have more power.We introduce the socially stable core as a solution concept that contains those payoffs that are both stable in an economic sense, i.e., belong to the core of the underlying cooperative game, and stable in a social sense, i.e., payoffs are sustained by a collection of internal organizations of coalitions for which power is distributed over all players in a balanced way. The socially stable core is a subset and therefore a refinement of the core. We show by means of examples that in many cases the socially stable core is a very small subset of the core.We will state conditions for which the socially stable core is non-empty. In order to derive this result, we formulate a new intersection theorem that generalizes the KKMS intersection theorem. We also discuss the relationship between social stability and the wellknown concept of balancedness for NTU-games, a sufficient condition for non-emptiness of the core. In particular we give an example of a socially structured game that satisfies social stability and therefore has a non-empty core, but whose induced NTU-game does not satisfy balancedness in the general sense of Billera. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality are often cited as structural rather than individual in nature. What does it mean to invoke a social structural explanation, and how do such explanations relate to individualistic ones? This article explores recent philosophical debates concerning the nature and usages of social structural explanation. I distinguish between two central kinds of social structural explanation: those that are autonomous from psychology, and those that are not. This distinction will help (...) clarify the explanatory power that each type of SSE has, points of convergence with methodological traditions such as critical theory and rational choice theory, and the difficulties that each type of SSE faces. (shrink)

The simplest and no doubt the most persistent of the ideas held on the relationship between society and power, from Menenius Agrippa to Auguste Comte, is that of an analogy between the social body and the human body. Both these men deduced that power is nothing other than the supreme regulating function of all functional activities, as harmoniously integrated in society as they are in human physiology. Ethnographic study often strengthened this organicist conception through description of the various (...) class='Hi'>social functions as necessary or vital for the cohesion and the existence of primitive society. But historic societies provide a spectacle quite different from that of an integrated organism. In them social functions are not abstractions but are seen rather in the form of human groups whose relationships can scarcely be said to show an organic solidarity. Within these groups and working to set them against each other, powers have their own interests which they must protect against the inroads of ambitions. The permanence of certain functions (military, religious, and economic, for example) does not imply permanence in the structures which implement them or in the real or fictional power which accompanies them. Their meaning is ambivalent. Obviously, they contribute to the architecture of a society; they may have a latent content which is a disintegrating factor from the moment when their hierarchy no longer suits the changing stratifications of the social body. (shrink)

The view that Islamicate science went into decline while European science was getting started is still commonly held among historians of science and almost universal in general history and popular presentations. Different versions of the decline thesis make it start in the 11 th century with the work of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Ghaz ā l ī ; in the 13 th century with the sack of Baghdad, or at latest with the beginning of the “Scientific Revolution” in Europe. However, it (...) is now increasingly apparent that Islamicate science was healthy well into the period of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. There are many reasons for the continued attraction of the decline theses. In addition to the inaccessibility of sources, these include mistaking the nature of credentialing in Islamicate science, and mistaking the nature of the sources in which original science was appearing. In this paper, I will sketch a more appropriate social structure for understanding Islamicate science by describing the institutional structures for training scientists and awarding credentials, and the practices of recording and transmitting research in writing. Taking the Safavid scholar Bahā ʾ al-D ī n al- ʿ Ā mil ī as an example, I will suggest that these structures supported an active research community well into the early modern period, further undermining the decline thesis. (shrink)

This paper shows that, if the performance of the economy is independent of the identities of individuals, then many welfare criteria yield sets of optimal social states that are equal to the Pareto optimal set. This result is proved for income distributions and extended to more general social choice problems. If the independence condition holds, then the set of optimal states is invariant to the adoption of an anonymity axiom, and to the utility information available.

The results of two observational studies of clinical directorates (CDs) are presented. The paper exposes fresh perspectives about the management of hospitals and CDs, and suggests that the most important axis on which hospital decision-making rests continues to be profession rather than the CD, even though CDs are designed at least in part to mitigate professional tribalism and bridge professional divides. In empiricising social structural and cultural theories it seems clear that changes to the prescribed organisational framework, which CDs (...) represent, have had negligible effects on behaviour. This being the case, the paper questions the benefits alleged to have accrued from establishing CDs and calls for more effective, micro-behavioural change strategies than merely altering the structure. (shrink)

Christian ethics has from the beginning been concerned with moral agency and culture, and Christian social ethics has acknowledged the power of social structures for the last 150 years. But ethics has yet to employ extensively the resources of that discipline that specializes in understanding structure and culture: sociology. Out of a concern to defend human freedom, Catholic social teaching has employed an individualistic approach that misdescribes the characteristics of social evil as little more than (...) the sum of individual choices and proposes individual conversion as a remedy. This book presents a refined sociological understanding of social structures and culture: critical realist sociology. It briefly describes the roots of critical realism in the natural sciences, its understanding of social structure and culture, and how structure and culture have causal impact on human decisions - through freedom, not cancelling it. It makes clear how, in most cases, people "go along" with the restrictions and opportunities offered them but, when there is sufficient frustration with these, how decisions can transform both structure and culture. The analysis is then applied in more detail to provide needed illumination in three areas: the ecological crisis, economic life, and virtue ethics. The core claims of the volume, offering an explanatory account of moral-agency-amidst-structure-and-culture for use in social ethics, would be of great interest to all those working in the field, both Catholic and Protestant. (shrink)

This paper takes up the current discussion and disagreement among ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts concerning how conversation analysis should address questions of social structure. It also discusses the question of whether conversation analysis can address questions concerning the organisation of work as developed in the studies of work program of ethnomethodologists. Five different types of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies are delineated in order to show that, altough they differ in problem selection and formulation, methodological preference and foci, they (...) are not incompatible but complementary. (shrink)

Advances in molecular technologies have the potential to help remedy health inequities through earlier detection and prevention; if, however, their delivery and uptake are not more carefully considered, there is a very real risk that existing inequities in access and use will be further exacerbated. We argue this risk relates to the way that information and knowledge about the technology is both acquired and shared, or not, between health practitioners and their patients.A healthcare system can be viewed as a complex (...) social network comprising individuals with different worldviews, hierarchies, professional cultures and subcultures and personal beliefs, both for those giving and receiving care. When healthcare practitioners are not perceived as knowledge equals, they would experience informational prejudices, and the result is that knowledge dissemination across and between them would be impeded. The uptake and delivery of a new technology may be inequitable as a result. Patients would also experience informational prejudice when they are viewed as not being able to understand the information that is presented to them, and information may be withheld.Informational prejudices driven by social relations and structures have thus far been underexplored in considering equitable implementation and uptake of new molecular technologies. Every healthcare interaction represents an opportunity for experiencing informational prejudice, and with it the risk of being inappropriately informed for undertaking such screening or testing. Making knowledge acquisition and information dissemination, and experiences of informational prejudice, explicit through sociologically framed investigations would extend our understandings of equity, and offer ways to affect network relationships and structures that support equity in delivery and uptake. (shrink)

Imagine first the case of J (who might be anybody, jemand). J used to inhabit a social order, or rather an area within a social order, where socially approved roles were unusually well-defined. Responsibilities were allocated to each such role and each sphere of role-structured activity was clearly demarcated. These allocations and demarcations were embodied in and partly constituted by the expectations that others had learned to have of those who occupied each such role. For those who occupied (...) those roles to disappoint those expectations by failing to discharge their assigned responsibilities was to invite severe disapproval and other sanctions. To refuse to find one's place within the hierarchies of approved roles, or to have been refused a place, because judged unfit for any such role, was to be classified as socially deviant and irresponsible. The key moral concepts that education had inculcated into J were concepts of duty and responsibility. His fundamental moral beliefs were that each of us owes it to others to perform her or his assigned duties and to discharge her or his assigned responsibilities. A good human being performs those duties, discharges those responsibilities, and does not trespass into areas that are not her or his concern. A philosopher who comes across the likes of J will understand his attitudes as cultural parodies, in part of Plato (conceiving of justice as requiring ‘that each do her or his own work and not meddle with many things’ Republic 433a) and in part of Kant (doing one's duty just because it is one's duty and not for the sake of any further end), authors who had influenced J's school teachers. A sociologist will entertain the suspicion that in certain types of social order it may be only in the form of parodies that some types of concept can continue to find expression. But for the moment let us put this thought on one side and return to J. (shrink)

Starting from R. K. Merton's now classic criticism of 'holistic' functionalism, i.e. of a functionalism which postulates social unity, universality and functional in-dispensability, the author stresses certain implications of this criticism more than they have been stressed hitherto. Classical and holistic functionalism) from H. Spencer, B. Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, etc to T. Parsons, postulates certain total unities (a global culture, an integrated system, etc.) in which each item (existence, actions, structures, etc.) is considered and defined on the (...) grounds of its consequences for the maintenance of the system as a whole; therefore holistic functionalism as a method is, in effect, the study of the consequences of the system on the items that compose it, since each of these items is defined within the sphere of the system and of its integrative functions. Merton's 'neo-functionalism', on the other hand, is remarkable not only in that it takes into account the 'dysfunctional' and 'nonfunctional' consequences of certain items on the system, but more especially because, within the context of functional analysis, it stresses the possible existence of structural substitutes and alternatives of functions, and therefore of latent structures which are foreign to objective functional consequences, as well as being able to deal with unanticipated and unexpected items and their consequences on the system. 'Neo-functionalism', which is susceptible of further development, is not limited to the study of the consequences of the system on its items: it can also reverse this scheme and study the consequences of certain items on the system. Merton's criticism of holistic functionalism therefore implies a broadening of the scientific resources of this method and a renewal of its interpretative scheme, thanks to which functional analysis ceases to appear as 'the* method of explaining sociology as a science, and becomes an interpretative method which complements the analysis of social structures and relations. Seen in this light the concept of structure becomes emancipated and independent of the concept of system and function; whereas, within the framework of universal functionalism, it was ancillary to the concept of function. Finally, latent structures and unconscious structures, conditions of possibility and subjective dispositions are favourable to social structures and social relations, not excluding those that are neither visible nor observable. This analysis, the author notes, is extremely meaningful and has great possibilities of development, especially in view of the structuralism recently to be noted in the human and social sciences: anthropology, history, linguistics, etc. (shrink)

On Jaeggi’s reading, the immanent and progressive features of ideology critique are rooted in the connection between its explanatory and its normative tasks. I argue that this claim can be cashed out in terms of the mechanisms involved in a functional explanation of ideology and that stability plays a crucial role in this connection. On this reading, beliefs can be said to be ideological if (a) they have the function of supporting existing social practices, (b) they are the output (...) of systematically distorted processes of belief formation, (c) the conditions in which distorting mechanisms trigger can be traced back to structural causal factors shaped by the social practice their outputs are designed to support. Functional problems thus turn out to be interlocked with normative problems because ideology fails to provide principles to regulate cooperation that would be accepted under conditions of non-domination, hence failing to anchor a stable cooperative scheme. By explaining ideology as parasitic on domination, ideology critique points to the conditions under which cooperation stabilizes as those of a practice whose principles are accepted without coercion. Thus, it seems to entail a conception of justice whose principles are articulated as part of a theory of social cooperation. (shrink)

Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure takes sociology in a new direction. It examines key aspects of social structure by using a fresh understanding of emotions categories. Through that synthesis emerge new perspectives on rationality, class structure, social action, conformity, basic rights, and social change. As well as giving an innovative view of social processes, J. M. Barbalet's study also reveals unappreciated aspects of emotions by considering fear, resentment, vengefulness, shame, and confidence in the (...) context of social structure. While much has been written on the social consequences of excessive or pathological emotions, this book demonstrates the centrality of emotions to routine operations of social interaction. Dr Barbalet also re-evaluates the nature of social theory, for once the importance of emotions to social processes becomes clear, the intellectual constitution of sociology, and therefore its history, must be rethought. (shrink)

The notion of transgenerational community is usually based on two diachronic interactions. The first interaction consists of present generations taking up the legacy (not only economic, but also institutional, artistic, cultural, and so forth) of past generations and giving it continuity, exercising a form of active agency. The second interaction occurs when present generations pass on their legacy to future generations. This is supposed to expand the boundaries of the community in a transgenerational sense (both backward- and forward-looking). In this (...) article we argue that the transgenerational community can be grounded on a different ontological insight: future generations play the role of fictional actors for present generations, i.e., present generations entertain a present-time interaction with future generations, insofar as future generations are functional for the realization of transgenerational actions. This lays the foundations for more solid community-based bonds of intergenerational justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I (...) contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view. (shrink)

Conformity is an often criticized feature of human belief formation. Although generally regarded as a negative influence on reliability, it has not been widely studied. This paper attempts to determine the epistemic effects of conformity by analyzing a mathematical model of this behavior. In addition to investigating the effect of conformity on the reliability of individuals and groups, this paper attempts to determine the optimal structure for conformity. That is, supposing that conformity is inevitable, what is the best way for (...) conformity effects to occur? The paper finds that in some contexts conformity effects are reliability inducing and, more surprisingly even when it is counterproductive, not all methods for reducing its effect are helpful. These conclusions contribute to a larger discussion in social epistemology regarding the effect of social behavior on individual reliability. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Haslanger 2016), Sally Haslanger argues for the importance of structural explanation. Roughly, a structural explana- tion of the behaviour of a given object appeals to features of the struc- tures—physical, social, or otherwise—the object is embedded in. It is opposed to individualistic explanations, where what is appealed to is just the object and its properties. For example, an individualistic explanation of why someone got the grade they did might appeal to features of the essay they (...) wrote—its being well-written, answering the set question, etc. But if the class is graded on a curve, then a better explanation will appeal to features of the class—of the social structure in which the student is embedded. That she wrote a better paper than 90% of the class explains better than that she wrote a well-argued paper. In this paper, I get clear as to various candidate concepts of structure that we might appeal to in structural explanations, argue that Haslanger’s preferred account is lacking, and present an alterna- tive that is more conducive to social structural explanation. (shrink)

The problem of structure and agency has been the subject of intense debate in the social sciences for over 100 years. This book offers a solution. Using a critical realist version of the theory of emergence, Dave Elder-Vass argues that, instead of ascribing causal significance to an abstract notion of social structure or a monolithic concept of society, we must recognise that it is specific groups of people that have social structural power. Some of these groups are (...) entities with emergent causal powers, distinct from those of human individuals. Yet these powers also depend on the contributions of human individuals, and this book examines the mechanisms through which interactions between human individuals generate the causal powers of some types of social structures. The Causal Power of Social Structures makes particularly important contributions to the theory of human agency and to our understanding of normative institutions. (shrink)

Recent work on social injustice has focused on implicit bias as an important factor in explaining persistent injustice in spite of achievements on civil rights. In this paper, I argue that because of its individualism, implicit bias explanation, taken alone, is inadequate to explain ongoing injustice; and, more importantly, it fails to call attention to what is morally at stake. An adequate account of how implicit bias functions must situate it within a broader theory of social structures (...) and structural injustice; changing structures is often a precondition for changing patterns of thought and action and is certainly required for durable change. (shrink)

This paper summarizes and discusses three studies of patterns in the recall of persons in socially bounded communities. Individual sin three different communities (a graduate academic program, a religious fellowship, and a department in a formal organization) free-listed the names of persons in their respective communities. Results indicate that the individuals in each community share a common cognitive structure of community members that is based on the community’s social structure. These studies, combined with the results of other research, strongly (...) suggest that persons are organized in memory according to social structural principles and that affiliation and dominance are the principal dimensions of social cognition. Suggestions are offered for future research to test the generality of these findings. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructivism as a Key Towards Further Understanding of Communication, Culture and Society” by Raivo Palmaru. Upshot: Palmaru invites us to distinguish a “bottom-up” perspective of constructivism that emphasizes human action and a “top-down” one of social constructionism that brings social structures to the foreground. It is argued here that rather than opposing these two dimensions, it is necessary to thematize their mutual relationship.