The term “deep history” refers to historical accounts framed temporally not by the advent of a written record but by evolutionary events (Smail 2008; Shryock and Smail 2011). The presumption of deep history is that the events of today have a history that traces back beyond written history to events in the evolutionary past. For human kinship, though, even forming a history of kinship, let alone a deep history, remains problematic, given limited, relevant data (Trautman et al. 2011). With regard (...) to a deep history, one conjecture is that human kinship evolved from primate social systems in a gradual, more-or-less continuous manner (see Chapais 2008); another conjecture is that kinship, in accordance with the incest account of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1969) or the fanciful, tetradic account of Nicholas J. Allen (1986), “comes into existence with a leap” (Trautman et al. 2011: 176); and yet another, the account to be developed in this paper, is that kinship, as it is understood and lived by culture bearers today, is the consequence of a profound and qualitative evolutionary transformation going from an ancestral primate-like social system predicated on extensive face-to-face interaction to the relation-based social systems that characterize human societies (Read 2012). (shrink)

The cognitive, psychological and sociological mechanisms underpinning complex social relationships among small groups are a part of our primate heritage. However, among human groups, relationships persist over much greater temporal and spatial scales, often in the physical absence of one or other of the individuals themselves. This chapter examines how such individual face-to-face social interactions were ‘scaled up’ during human evolution to the regional and global networks characteristic of modern societies. One recent suggestion has been that a radical change in (...) human sociality occurred with the shift to sedentary and agricultural societies in the early Neolithic. The discussion presents the results of a focused study of the long-term development of regional social networks in the Near East, using the distribution of different forms of material culture as a proxy for the social relationships that underpinned processes of trade, exchange and the dissemination of material culture practices. (shrink)

How do calculative trust and relational trust influence the emergence of institutional-based trust in farmers’ markets? We fill a gap in the literature by studying how diverse forms of trust influence the way frequent consumers evaluate the institutions of a farmers’ market. We analyze a data set of 687 frequent shoppers from the U.S. state of Missouri, assessing the institutional-based trust in farmers’ markets in comparison with the level of institutional-based trust in conventional food systems. The results suggest that calculative (...) trust plays an important role in the consolidation of institutional-based trust in local food systems. More specifically, consumers who shop frequently and live closer to a farmers’ market tend to trust more in local food systems than in conventional food systems. Likewise, affinity towards conventional food systems—i.e., convenience-oriented lifestyle preferences—seems to influence the level of institutional-based trust in local food systems. Consumers who eat out more often tend to trust less in local food systems, possibly due to the lack of repeated experiences with sellers. Following the literature, we also show that consumers search for a broader set of attributes when shopping at a farmers’ market. Even though relational trust is correlated with higher levels of institutional-based trust in alternative food systems, strong ties do not increase the trust in the information found in a farmers’ market. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on understanding why companies adopt environmentally responsible behavior and what impact this adoption has on their performance. This is an empirical study that focuses on the United Nations (UN) Global Compact (GC) initiative as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mechanism. A survey was conducted among GC participants, of which 29 responded. The survey relies on the anticipated and actual benefits noted by the participants in the GC. The results, while not (...) conclusive, indicate that companies have more than one reason for adopting environmentally responsible behavior and that ethical and economic reasons co-exist. In terms of performance, the impact of participation in the GC seems to be particularly high in securing network opportunities and improved corporate image. The results indicate that companies that have participated many years in the GC, have submitted the most projects and have attended the most GC meetings also regard their CSR involvement as having had a strong, positive influence on their market performance. GC participation does not result in significant cost advantages, but this does not seem to have been regarded as a goal anyway. Costs seem to be affected to a␣large extent by existence of in-house research and␣development and the capability of developing environmentally sound technologies. Overall, the company receives both ethical and economic benefits from joining the GC. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze results from 114 face-to-face qualitative interviews of people who had evacuated from the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, interviews that were completed within weeks of the 2005 storm in most cases. Our goal was to understand the role information and knowledge played in people's decisions to leave the area. Contrary to the conventional wisdom underlying many disaster communication studies, we found that our interviewees almost always had extensive storm-related information from a (...) variety of sources, including media reports and (in many cases) other background knowledge gleaned from experiences with previous storms, often from interpersonal sources. However, consistent with a theme in communication research that has been identifiable since at least the 1940s, interpersonal communication networks were most often what ultimately caused these individuals to act on this information, and therefore those with “weak ties” (a concept borrowed from sociology) to the broader “mainstream” community may have been disadvantaged, slower to leave, and thus more vulnerable to the storm's main effects. From our evidence, the end result was less a function of discrimination as it was one of differential activation of a relevant social network. These results argue for the rejection of a “deficit model” that assumes varied reactions to natural disaster result from some kind of an information deficiency, and remind us that behavior under such circumstances is the result of a process of collective behavior, not only individual cognition. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elucidate the notions of explanation and mechanism, in particular of the social kind. A mechanism is defined as what makes a concrete system tick, and it is argued that to propose an explanation proper is to exhibit a lawful mechanism. The so-called covering law model is shown to exhibit only the logical aspect of explanation: it just subsumes particulars under universals. A full or mechanismic explanation involves mechanismic law statements, not purely descriptive ones (...) such as functional relations and rate equations. Many examples from the natural, biosocial, and social sciences are examined. In particular, macro-micro-micro-macro social relations are shown to explain other wise puzzling macro-macro links. The last part of the article relates the author's progress, over half a century, toward understanding mechanism and explanation. (shrink)

Local food systems are growing, and little is known about how the constellation of farms and markets change over time. We trace the evolution of two local food systems over six years, including a dataset of over 2690 market connections between 1520 locations. Longitudinal social network analysis reveals how the architecture, actor network centrality, magnitude, and spatiality of these supply chains shifted during the 2012–2018 time period. Our findings demonstrate that, despite growth in the number of farmers’ markets, grocery stores, (...) farms and restaurants in both counties, each local food system also experienced high turnover rates. Over 80% of the market connections changed during the study period. Farms, farmers’ markets, and grocery stores showed a 40–50% ‘survival’ rate, indicating their role in sustaining local food systems over longer time periods. Other actors, such as restaurants, had a much higher turnover rate within the network. Both food systems became more close-knit and consolidated as the center of gravity for both local food systems pulled away from urban areas toward rural farmland. Evidence of both growth and decay within local food systems provides a new understanding of the social networks behind local food markets. (shrink)

This paper proposes a five-part empirical typology of interconnections of race and class. We describe the mechanisms whereby (1) race is a form of class relation; (2) race relations and class relations reciprocally affect each other; (3) race acts as a sorting mechanism into class locations; (4) race acts as a mediating linkage to class locations; and (5) race interacts with class in determining other outcomes. Rather than insisting on one or another mechanism as the overarching framework for conceptualising the (...) interconnections between race and class, we propose a theoretical integration of all five within a functionalist model. The model reconciles the empirical effects of race variables with a class-functionalist explanation of race. Our typology of interconnections is useful for situating concrete empirical phenomena, and our theoretical integration of those interconnections offers a coherent explanatory system that captures the recursive causality of race and class. (shrink)

This observational study analyzes the impact of Internet use on the quality of life and well-being of the elderly. Specifically, it seeks to understand and clarify the effects of Internet use on relationships in terms of self-esteem, life satisfaction and online and offline social support in a sample of senior and elderly Italian people (over 60 years of age). A cohort of 271 elderly people (133 males, 138 females) aged between 60 and 94 years old participated in the study: 236 (...) were Internet Users while the other 35 were Non-Internet Users. The results showed that the time elderly people spend online has a negative effect on their perception of Offline Social Support (Offline Emotional and Informational, and Offline Affective Social Support) and a positive effect on their perception of Online Social Support (particularly on Online Positive Social Interactions). Surprisingly, Internet Use among elderly people seems to impact positively on the perception of Offline Social Support. Indeed, Elderly Internet Users have a more positive perception of Offline Social Support (particularly Offline Positive Social Interactions and Offline Affective Social Support) than Non-Internet Users. A discussion of this finding is provided, positing that the Internet seems to represent the technological side of a functional organ that allows the elderly to stay in closer touch with their family and friends, and in doing so to also overcome some age-related difficulties. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

Online social networks captured the attention of the masses by offering attractive means of sharing personal information and developing social relationships. People expose personal information about their lives on OSNs. This may result in undesirable consequences of users’ personal information leakage to an unwanted audience and raises privacy concerns. The issue of privacy has received a significant attention in both the research literature and the mainstream media. In this paper, we present results of an empirical study that measure users’ attitude (...) towards interpersonal privacy concerns in OSNs. The results demonstrated a serious mismatch between privacy concerns of users and their information sharing behavior. In addition, it indicated that strangers are part of user social circles, this makes privacy protection more complicated, and introduce an insider threat, whereas all existing privacy tools allow users to manage the outsider threat. Information and friend segregation strategies are suggested on the basis of user information disclosure and interaction pattern. We conclude that sensitivity of information and frequency of interaction, both, play a vital role in information and friend segregation. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze results from 114 face-to-face qualitative interviews of people who had evacuated from the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, interviews that were completed within weeks of the 2005 storm in most cases. Our goal was to understand the role information and knowledge played in people's decisions to leave the area. Contrary to the conventional wisdom underlying many disaster communication studies, we found that our interviewees almost always had extensive storm-related information from a (...) variety of sources, including media reports and other background knowledge gleaned from experiences with previous storms, often from interpersonal sources. However, consistent with a theme in communication research that has been identifiable since at least the 1940s, interpersonal communication networks were most often what ultimately caused these individuals to act on this information, and therefore those with “weak ties” to the broader “mainstream” community may have been disadvantaged, slower to leave, and thus more vulnerable to the storm's main effects. From our evidence, the end result was less a function of discrimination as it was one of differential activation of a relevant social network. These results argue for the rejection of a “deficit model” that assumes varied reactions to natural disaster result from some kind of an information deficiency, and remind us that behavior under such circumstances is the result of a process of collective behavior, not only individual cognition. (shrink)

This study explores some possibilities of social network analysis for studying adolescents’ communication patterns. A full network analysis was conducted on third-grade high school students (15 year olds, 137 students) in Belgium. The results pointed out that face-to-face communication was still the most prominent way for information to flow through the network. Interactions through communication media (e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, mobile phone, and landline phone), however, supplemented this flow of information in a substantive way. Communication media use patterns were (...) characterized by multiplexity and could be placed on a unidimensional scale indicating a media hierarchy. Close friends (strong ties) used all communication media at their disposal to connect with each other; students who were just friends (weak ties) preferred face-to-face communication and social network sites. In the discussion, some other possibilities of social network analysis for studying adolescents’ communication media are discussed. (shrink)

Social networks play a significant role in learning and thus in farmers’ adoption of new agricultural technologies. This study examined the effects of social network factors on information acquisition and adoption of new seed varieties among groundnut farmers in Uganda and Kenya. The data were generated through face-to-face interviews from a random sample of 461 farmers, 232 in Uganda and 229 in Kenya. To assess these effects two alternative econometric models were used: a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model and a (...) recursive bivariate probit model. The statistical evaluation of the SUBP shows that information acquisition and adoption decisions are interrelated while tests for the RBP do not support this latter model. Therefore, the analysis is based on the results obtained from the SUBP. These results reveal that social network factors, particularly weak ties with external support, partially influence information acquisition, but do not influence adoption. In Uganda, external support, gender, farm size, and geographic location have an impact on information acquisition. In Kenya, external support and geographic location also have an impact on information acquisition. With regard to adoption, gender, household size, and geographic location play the most important roles for Ugandan farmers, while in Kenya information from external sources, education, and farm size affect adoption choice. The study provides insight on the importance of external weak ties in groundnut farming, and a need to understand regional differences along gender lines while developing agricultural strategies. This study further illustrates the importance of farmer participation in applied technology research and the impact of social interactions among farmers and external agents. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic disturbed the local film industry heavily since most of the film projects were delayed or cancelled. Despite the fragile situation, local filmmakers adopted flexible and adaptive strategies to survive. The flexible strategies related to fighting (the alternative jobs, project switch) and freezing (work from home). After three months, all film practitioners decided to fight for the new normal as they found job opportunities in social media content, corporate and government service, streaming platforms and film production. The screen (...) industries supported the local filmmakers to survive. During the emergency period, the closed network was beneficial; nonetheless, they should expand their open network to adapt to a new normality. Apart from the resistance, filmmakers are continuously under precariousness, particularly about health threats and underpaid work. (shrink)

Pushing through a logical continuum of closed-to open-system views of organizations necessarily changes the conceptualization of a firm from a strongly bounded entity to a configuration of networks and sub-networks, which exists and operates in a larger systemic network configuration. We unfold a classification of management processes corresponding to views of the firm along the closed/open-systems continuum. We examine ethical issues that are likely to devolve from these classes of management processes, and we suggest typical means by which managers will (...) attempt to control their firms' exposure to such issues. The final class of management processes examined focuses on the achievement of out-comes that are mutually satisfactory in the set of networks and sub-networks that constitute the focal firm, and that support the sustainability of the whole system. The article contributes to organizational theory, business ethics, and computer and information ethics by providing a comprehensive analysis of the impact of managerial views of the firm and of networks - virtual, social, informational - on managerial processes and on our understanding of how business ethics issues are linked to perceptions of what a firm is, does, and can do. (shrink)

Most studies of René Descartes’s legacy have focused on the novelty of his ideas, but little has been done to uncover the conditions that allowed these ideas to spread. Seventeenth-century Europe was already a small world—it presented a high degree of connectedness with a few brokers bridging otherwise disparate regions. A communication network known as the Republic of Letters enabled scholars to trade ideas—including Descartes’s—by means of correspondence. This article offers an analysis—both qualitative and quantitative—of a corpus of letters written (...) during Descartes’s lifetime and mentioning his name. The aim is to unveil the factors that drove the diffusion of Descartes’s ideas. The results are twofold. First, a close reading of the letters reveals that they were not used to create awareness about Descartes and his works but rather to discuss his ideas. Second, a network analysis of the letters shows that ideas do not spread like viruses, thus undermining the ‘social contagion’ model, and that weak ties are not as effective in promoting innovations as they are in circulating information. (shrink)

Social network structure has been argued to shape the structure of languages, as well as affect the spread of innovations and the formation of conventions in the community. Specifically, theoretical and computational models of language change predict that sparsely connected communities develop more systematic languages, while tightly knit communities can maintain high levels of linguistic complexity and variability. However, the role of social network structure in the cultural evolution of languages has never been tested experimentally. Here, we present results from (...) a behavioral group communication study, in which we examined the formation of new languages created in the lab by micro‐societies that varied in their network structure. We contrasted three types of social networks: fully connected, small‐world, and scale‐free. We examined the artificial languages created by these different networks with respect to their linguistic structure, communicative success, stability, and convergence. Results did not reveal any effect of network structure for any measure, with all languages becoming similarly more systematic, more accurate, more stable, and more shared over time. At the same time, small‐world networks showed the greatest variation in their convergence, stabilization, and emerging structure patterns, indicating that network structure can influence the community's susceptibility to random linguistic changes (i.e., drift). (shrink)

Scholars seeking to understand why some students and schools perform better than others have suggested that social capital might be part of the explanation. Social capital in today's terms is argued to be an intangible resource that emerges—or fails to emerge—from social relations and social structure. Use of the term in this sense has been traced to John Dewey's writings in 1900 in The Elementary School Record. The idea that outcomes in education are conditioned by social interactions has intuitive appeal. (...) Schools are more than learning factories where inputs are used to generate outputs; they are fundamentally social environments. Empirical evidence links social capital to higher student and school performance .. (shrink)

The terms ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge capitalism’ have been used with increasing frequency since the 1990s as a way of describing the latest phase of capitalism in in the process of global r...

Network analysis views complex systems as networks with well-defined structural properties that account for their complexity. These characteristics, which include scale-free behavior, small worlds and communities, are not to be found in networks such as random graphs and lattices that do not correspond to complex systems. They provide therefore a robust ground for claiming the existence of “complex networks” as a non-trivial subset of networks. The theory of complex networks has thus been successful in making systematically explicit relevant marks of (...) complexity in the form of structural properties, and this success is at the root of its current popularity. Much less systematic has been, on the other hand, the definition of the properties of the building components of complex networks. The obvious assumption is that these components must be nodes and links. Generally, however, the internal structure of nodes is not taken into account, and links are serendipitously identified by the perspective with which one looks at the network to be analyzed. For instance, if the nodes are Web pages that contain information about scientific papers, one point of view will match the relevant links with hyperlinks to similar Web pages, and another with citations of other articles. We intend to contribute here a systematic approach to the identification of the components of a complex network that is based on information theory. The approach hinges on some recent results arising from the convergence between the theory of complex networks and probabilistic techniques for content mining. At its core there is the idea that nodes in a complex network correspond to basic information units from which links are extracted via methods of machine learning. Hence the links themselves are viewed as emergent properties, similarly to the broader structural properties mentioned above. Indeed, beside rounding up the theory, this approach based on learning has clear practical benefits, in that it makes networks emerge from arbitrary information domains. We provide examples and applications in a variety of contexts, starting from an information-theoretic reconstruction of the well-known distinction between “strong links” and “weak links” and then delving into specific applications such as business process management and analysis of policy making. (shrink)

Multifunctional agricultural systems seek to expand upon production-based benefits to enhance family wellbeing and animal health, reduce inputs, and improve environmental services such as biodiversity and water quality. However, in many countries a landscape-level conversion is uneven at best and stalled at worst. This is particularly true across the eastern rural landscape in the United States. We explore the role of social networks as drivers of system transformation within dairy production in the eastern United States, specifically rotational grazing as an (...) alternative management option. We hypothesize the importance of weak ties within farmer social networks as drivers of change. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York, we conducted 53 interviews with confinement, low-intensity, and rotational grazing dairy producers as well as 35 interviews with associated network actors. Though confinement and grazier networks had similar proportions of strong and weak ties, confinement producers had more market-based weak ties, while graziers had more weak-ties to government agencies and other graziers in the region. These agency weak ties supported rotational graziers through information exchange and cost sharing, both crucial to farmers’ transitions from confinement-based production to grazing systems. While weak ties were integral to initial innovation, farmers did not maintain these relationships beyond their transition to grazing. Of equal importance, grazier weak-tie networks did not include environmental organizations, suggesting unrealized potential for more diverse networks based on environmental services. By understanding the drivers, we can identify barriers to expanding weak tie networks and emergent properties in order to create institutions and policies necessary for change. (shrink)

The role of affective ties and informal social networks in management practices is recognised across many parts of the world; guanxi in China, yongo in Korea, blat in Russia and wasta in the Arab World are some manifestations. This paper explores the role of such informal networks in Pakistan by studying the role of sifarish—the act of achieving ends on the basis of network connections—in hiring in Pakistan using thematic analysis of inductively collected qualitative data from 104 individuals from four (...) large organisations. Using social network and social capital theory, the paper highlights the key characteristics of affective networks in Pakistan, comparing them to social networks in other cultural settings. Further, the concept of ethical relativism is used to create a distinction between ethical and unethical sifarish. Thus, the paper enhances understanding of HRM in Pakistan, and contributes towards the literature on cross-cultural HRM, social networks and ethical relativism. (shrink)

Human societies are examined as distinct and coherent groups. This trait is most parsimoniously considered a deeply rooted part of our ancestry rather than a recent cultural invention. Our species is the only vertebrate with society memberships of significantly more than 200. We accomplish this by using society-specific labels to identify members, in what I call an anonymous society. I propose that the human brain has evolved to permit not only the close relationships described by the social brain hypothesis, but (...) also, at little mental cost, the anonymous societies within which such alliances are built. The human compulsion to discover or invent labels to “mark” group memberships may originally have been expressed in hominins as vocally learned greetings only slightly different in function from chimpanzee pant hoots (now known to be society-specific). The weight of evidence suggests that at some point, conceivably early in the hominin line, the distinct groups composed of several bands that were typical of our ancestors came to be distinguished by their members on the basis of multiple labels that were socially acquired in this way, the earliest of which would leave no trace in the archaeological record. Often overlooked as research subjects, these sizable fission-fusion communities, in recent egalitarian hunter-gatherers sometimes 2,000 strong, should consistently be accorded the status of societies, in the same sense that this word is used to describe tribes, chiefdoms, and other cultures arising later in our history. The capacity of hunter-gatherer societies to grow sufficiently populous that not all members necessarily recognize one another would make the transition to larger agricultural societies straightforward. Humans differ from chimpanzees in that societal labels are essential to the maintenance of societies and the processes giving birth to new ones. I propose that anonymous societies of all kinds can expand only so far as their labels can remain sufficiently stable. (shrink)

This study employs the uses and gratification approach to investigate how different forms of Facebook use are linked to bridging social capital and bonding social capital. A survey of 152 college students was conducted to address research questions and to test hypotheses. Factor analysis identified six unique uses and gratifications: (a) information seeking, (b) entertainment, (c) communication, (d) social relations, (e) escape, and (f) Facebook applications. Findings reveal that intensity of Facebook use and the use of Facebook for social relations (...) are positive predictors of bridging social capital, whereas the use of Facebook for escape is negatively linked to bonding social capital. (shrink)

Managers in ethnic businesses are confronted with ethical dilemmas when taking action based on ethnic ties; and often as a result, they increase the already vulnerable positions of these businesses and their stakeholders. Many of these dilemmas concern the capital that is generated through variations in the use of ethnic stakeholder social ties. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a stakeholder-based model of social capital formation, mediated by various forms of ethnic ties, to explore the duality of ethnicity: (...) it can aid and hinder an ethnic business. Drawing upon the social capital/economic development, stakeholder salience, ethnic businesses literatures, and on social identity theory, we develop a cyclical model of relationships among ethnic business stakeholder attributes and social capital, as mediated by three-way Simmelian bonding and bridging ties, which then, in turn, affects the ethnic stakeholder attributes. We argue that the development of bridging yet strong ties through this cyclical process is relevant for the improvement of the positions of ethnic businesses in terms of both economic success and social responsibility. Specifically, we suggest that, given the duality of ethnicity in business, managers can prioritize stakeholder relationships based upon how these stakeholder ties affect social capital. (shrink)

As a driver of tourist-oriented citizenship behavior, the effect of social support has not been thoroughly investigated. Grounded in a framework integrating the stimulus-organism-response model and self-determination theory, this study investigates how social support influences TOCB through the sense of self-determination. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the survey data collected from 377 tourists in China. It is found that social support have a remarkably positive impact on the sense of self-determination which have an intermediary role in the relationship (...) between social support and TOCB. This study provides empirical evidence for the marketing strategies of tourism destinations and enterprises. (shrink)

Top-tier management journals are advocating for greater relevance from management research to Grand Challenges such as poverty alleviation. However, many scholars struggle to identify linkages between the practical undertaking of poverty alleviation and theory development opportunities in the management literature. Responding to this call, we develop and outline a framework for theorizing from an increasingly common business-based poverty alleviation approach known as ‘market orchestration.’ Core to this framework are a set of contextual difference that contrast with the Western environment in (...) which most management theorizing has taken place. These contextual differences—at the micro, meso, and macro levels—challenge the implicit assumptions underpinning much of the management literature. As a result, a substantial opportunity exists to identify new predictors, contingencies, explanations, and outcomes that can significantly inform theory. Equally important, by focusing on the contextual differences and the challenges they create, management scholars can provide practical guidance to organizations engaged in market orchestration efforts. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore the influence of religious beliefs on social or work-related ties of managers who are member of organizational networks representing two different ideologies in Turkey. In this research, the emergence of secular and devout entrepreneurs is considered as a phenomenon, and special attention is paid to religious transformation and secularism in Turkey. Social network analysis method is used to define the nature of communication links among 80 chairmen who are the members of two (...) conflicting and dominant groups in Turkish business system. The findings show that Protestant work ethic suggested by Weber with regard to Christianity have attained a similar place over the past decade in Islamic organizational networks. The concern of political power in religion leads to organizational networks being nourished by religious norms and creeds in many developing countries. Especially in societies like Turkey where the state is dominant in the business life, organizations and managers prefer to be included in religious networks to make close contacts with the state. Another significant finding is that efforts of the members of religious networks—in spite of their relatively closed characteristics—in terms of being at the center of a network and taking the brokerage role, are highly developed on the contrary to the literature. (shrink)

There is a lively ongoing debate among philosophers and social scientists about the reality of race and among social scientists about the reality of caste and ethnicity. This paper tries to sort out what the issues are and makes some preliminary suggestions about what the evidence shows. Standard philosophical analyses try to find the necessary and sufficient conditions of our concept of race. I argue that this is not the best way to approach the issue and that the reality of (...) these concepts should be taken as a scientific realism question; that is, do our best social scientific accounts of these phenomena show that appealing to the concepts of race, caste, and ethnicity is essential to successful social science explanation? I argue that in some cases that is the case and lay out the empirical issues involved. (shrink)

This paper proffers a dialogical theory of decision-making: decision-makers are engaged in two modes of rational decisions, instrumental and existential. Instrumental rational decisions take place when the DM views the self externally to the objects, whether goods or animate beings. Existential rational decisions take place when the DM views the self in union with such objects. While the dialogical theory differs from Max Weber’s distinction between two kinds of rationality, it follows Martin Buber’s philosophical anthropology. The paper expounds the ramifications (...) of the dialogical theory in understanding structures of exchange considering assessments of diverse thinkers. (shrink)

Until the end of the last century, media sociology was synonymous with the investigation of mass media as a social domain. Today, media sociology needs to address a much higher level of complexity, that is, a deeply mediatized world in which all human practices, social relations, and social order are entangled with digital media and their infrastructures. This article discusses this shift from a sociology of mass communication to the sociology of a deeply mediatized world. The principal aim of the (...) article is to outline a new media-sociological imagination: media sociology as a cross-sectional sociology, a sociology of entanglement, and a new critical sociology of technological deep structures. (shrink)

La tesis central del presente texto es que la emergencia del nuevo paradigma de los movimientos sociales es verificada por la fuerza creciente de la idea de red social al interior de las ciencias sociales. Sin embargo, entendemos que el reconocimiento más amplio de este nuevo paradigma es impedido p..

ABSTRACT The technological revolution has created enormous opportunities for the provision of affordable, accessible, and flexible mental healthcare. Yet it also creates complexities and ethical challenges. While some of these challenges may be similar to face-to-face care, their nuance in the online milieu is different, as relationships, identities and boundaries in this setting are fluid, and there is an absence of physical presence. In this paper we consider the specific ethical complexities involved in the provision of a social networking intervention (...) for depression and problematic alcohol use involving providers and peers. We present a case in which clinicians encountered a participant who repeatedly expressed suicidal thoughts in this online forum, and reflect on how this situation was managed. In analyzing this case, we use relational ethics—which proposes that interpersonal relationships are the fulcrum for ethical decision-making and action—together with actor-network theory—which highlights the power of technology to transform and mediate social and ethical relationships. Our analysis demonstrates the need to move beyond human-centric approaches, to recognize the role of both human and non-human actors in shaping moral decisions and behavior in the provision of e-mental healthcare. (shrink)

As companies increasingly communicate CSR initiatives through social media, viral message propagation has become a crucial prerequisite for CSR success. Evidence from two experimental studies, one based on a national representative online sample, shows that social media peers’ endorsement of a CSR message in terms of number of shares, likes and positive replies contributes to an individual’s intention to share it on the social network and thereby participate in message propagation, and that this process can be explained by normative influences (...) exerted by the social media community through the activation of injunctive and descriptive norms, as well as social identity motives. Findings further confirmed that the norm-activating effects of social media endorsement are moderated by the empowering qualities of the CSR message, the sharing source of the message by affecting CSR credibility, and the recipient’s interdependent self-construal. Corporate communication managers are advised to achieve a high degree of initial social media endorsement of their CSR message, for recipients of the message to perceive social pressure motivating message sharing with their social media peers. (shrink)