This paper considers the goals and methods of theoretical sociology. The chief goal of theoretical work is a theory in two parts-postulates and predictions-the key challenge being to minimize the number of postulates and maximize the number and variety of predictions. The paper discusses the distinctive character of the sentences in each part of the theory and, in light of that bipartite structure, the two main activities of theoretical analysis: (i) speculative thinking, whereby the theorist identifies the starting ideas for (...) the postulates; and (ii) formal reasoning, whereby the theorist constructs the postulates and derives predictions from them. To illustrate the features of a theory and the tasks of theoretical analysis, the paper briefly sketches the theory of the distributive-justice force. (shrink)

Today the world observes the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, first commemorated in Paris in 1987 and subsequently receiving official designation by the United Nations. It is a day for renewing commitment to the human project – to enable universal human development, making it possible for all humans to achieve their highest potential – and to reflect on poverty, how it thwarts human development, and how it might disappear. The challenge is not new, but it achieves new urgency (...) as we start to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and realize that the damage it caused, to well-being and human development, was deeply intensified by poverty. This volume aims for accelerated growth of knowledge about poverty, its causes and consequences, its links to crises and disasters, its connections to inequality and fairness, the direction and speed of its trajectory in different contexts, and strategies for reducing it and their assessment. (shrink)

La escritura constituye una destreza compleja, puesto que demanda un profundo proceso de madurez cognitiva y, a su vez, por su carácter comunicativo necesita ser divulgativo. Igualmente, a través de la expresión escrita los estudiantes adquieren saberes y conocimientos académicos y personales; por tanto, posibilita el desarrollo cognitivo de estos. Escribir no es solo una mera habilidad motriz, implica destrezas como la organización, la expresividad y la creatividad. Podemos afirmar que el taller de escritura representa un aprendizaje significativo, de cooperación (...) y diversión que tiende un puente hacia la literatura. (shrink)

This article asks how people come to interpret themselves and others as autonomous given their multiple dependencies. We draw on a cross-case comparison of ethnographic studies with two populations for whom autonomy is both central and problematic: elderly patients in post-acute care, and young adults with disabilities in an independent living program. Analyzing the institutional efforts to make their clients “as independent as possible,” we find that staff members at each organization formulate autonomy as a temporal project through an ongoing (...) calibration of open futures, ideal pasts, and situational competence. Constantly adjusting and fine-tuning where in time autonomy “really” is, workers arrange present dependence so that the contours of the future remain open for their clients. In other words, they make use of temporal markers to produce recognizable autonomous subjects whose dependencies are momentary. Theorizing this temporal project enables us to see more clearly how all of us engage in the constant business of “doing” autonomy, and to better understand the role of institutions in producing autonomous selves. (shrink)

En este artículo, nos preguntamos si es pertinente un análisis del personaje de Medea de Eurípides, y más concretamente, de su filicidio, a la luz de la doctrina aristotélica de la acción. Resulta dudoso, y quizás equívoco, hablar de "responsabilidad" (en sentido aristotélico) en el caso de la heroína, ya que sus motivaciones, como las de todo héroe trágico, tienen un doble signo: enfrentado a una ἀνάγκη superior, también desea lo que está forzado a hacer. Además, Medea no es una (...) mujer común: es un personaje ontológicamente complejo que participa, más de lo que frecuentemente se ha enfatizado, del plano divino. In this article we wonder if it is pertinent to analyse the character of Euripides' Medea and, more precisely, her filicide, in the light of Aristotle's doctrine of action. With regard to the heroine, it is doubtful and perhaps confusing to talk about "responsibility" (in Aristotelian terms) because her motivations, as all tragic heroes', are two-sided: faced to a superior ἀνάγκη he wants what he is forced to do as well. In addition, Medea is not an ordinary woman: she is an ontologically complex character that has a share in the divine level, a share which is more crucial than what has usually been emphasized. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza el proceso de patrimonialización de la Pachamama en Jujuy, entre mediados de la década de 1990 y la actualidad. A través del análisis de leyes, documentos periodísticos y observaciones etnográficas, se muestra el modo en que la Pachamama fue caracterizada como un objeto y una práctica religiosa y cultural propia del mundo andino, a la vez que progresivamente significada como “naturaleza” en un sentido moderno. A partir de un análisis que reconstruye las prácticas, procedimientos, actas (...) y normativas impulsados desde el estado provincial jujeño a través de los cuales la Pachamama fue patrimonializada, se analiza cómo este proceso se articuló con la profundización de un modelo económico regional sostenido en el extractivismo en territorios indígenas, y con un imaginario neo-desarrollista en el que la Pachamama fue colocada como “garante” del modelo llevado adelante por el gobierno desde discursos de lavado verde. (shrink)

The Certainty Trap introduced by Redstone reminds us that certainty/uncertainty are endemic to the human condition and merit sustained social science attention. This comment begins with seven preliminary considerations, such as whether the context is objective or subjective and the variety of words involved. Next we summarize some theoretical and empirical lines of attack. The theoretical approaches include three theories of varying type, all involving both certainty/uncertainty and happiness, signaling a link between certainty/uncertainty and happiness. The empirical approaches include both (...) testing theoretical predictions and assembling an archive of data on certainty/uncertainty, including numerical versions of response categories. We end with the possibility that a large and lifelong field of opportunities to assess certainty/uncertainty may build both cognitive and noncognitive skills, protecting against the Certainty Trap. (shrink)

The goal of sociology, and all social science, is to produce reliable knowledge about human behavioral and social phenomena. To reach that goal, we undertake three kinds of activities: theoretical work, empirical work, and, even more basic, we develop frameworks that assemble the fundamental questions together with the fundamental tools that will be used to address them. This article examines the three sets of activities and their interrelations. Both deductive and nondeductive theory are highlighted, as are three kinds of empirical (...) work—testing the predictions of deductive theories, testing the propositions produced by nondeductive theories, and extratheoretical measurement and estimation. Illustrations are drawn from the fields of status, justice, and migration. (shrink)

La gráfica como compañera: la exposición Giro gráfico. Como en el muro la hiedra, curada por la Red de Conceptualismos del Sur.

Las crisis económicas están generando desigualdades, producto de la violencia estructural; éstas están derivando en las maneras en que los jóvenes construyen y dibujan los sentidos sociales. Los jóvenes deberían ser sujetos que se mueven en toda una temporalidad sin embargo, sus condiciones materiales de vida, no les permiten pensar en un futuro con certezas. Más bien, éstas se desdibujan para ellos y hoy más que nunca aparecen sus sueños postergados y aplazados por la propia violencia de la que son (...) objeto. De ahí, nuestro interés en ver cómo los jóvenes egresados de la universidad, están construyendo dichos sentidos.Economic crises are generating inequalities resulting from structural violence; they are drifting in the ways in which young people build and draw social senses. Young people should be the subjects of movement along temporariness; nevertheless, their material living conditions do not allow them to think in their future with certainty. For our young generations these conditions are blurred, and now more than ever their dreams are deferred and delayed by the violence they are subjected to. Hence, our interest in finding out how young university graduates are building these senses. (shrink)

Sociedades caracteriza das por un alto grado de complejidad y diferenciación que rebasan los marcos teóricos con los cuales se le han interpretado, dan lugar a nuevas perspectivas. Cobra sentido el objeto de este trabajo, el cual es analizar la propuesta teórica de Niklas Luhmann. Los contenidos y a..

El texto se pregunta sobre el impacto que tienen en la conformación de las subjetividades juveniles los diferentes modelos pedagógicos que proponen innovaciones escolares que hoy están en desarrollo. Estas innovaciones se agrupan en tres tipos puros: los modelos organizados en base de la disciplinas de las pruebas, los que sostienen la escolarización en la incorporación de un sistema de tutelas y el modelo posdisciplinar. Se establecen las posibles consecuencias en conformación de las subjetividades y su relación con las tecnologías (...) y la construcción fragmentada del campo escolar. Palabras claves: modelos pedagógicos, subjetividades, tecnologías, fragmentación. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In recent years, and in close connection with a number of well-known financial malpractice cases, public debate on business ethics has intensified worldwide, and particularly in ethics-unfriendly environments, such as Spain, with many recent fraud and corruption scandals. In the context of growing consensus on the need of balancing social prosperity and business profits, concern is increasing for introducing business ethics in higher education curricula. The purpose is to improve ethical behaviour of future business people, and of accounting professionals in (...) particular. In this study, from a sample of 551 business students at a Spanish university, the importance of accounting ethics is investigated. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we attempt to examine students’ overall perceptions of business ethics in unfriendly environments and, specifically, their views on the importance and goals of accounting ethics education. Second, we intend to investigate whether potential differences in such perceptions depend on previous business ethics courses taken, gender, and age of students. Our results show that those students who have previously taken an ethics course are especially prone to considering that accounting education should include ethical considerations, and show greater interest in further introducing this subject in their curricula. These facts should encourage universities offering business degrees in ethics-unfriendly environments to extend the implementation of ethics courses in their curricula. Besides, significant differences in students’ perceptions on the importance of accounting ethics are found depending on their gender and age. In line with previous research findings, female and older students show more ethical inclinations than, respectively, male and younger students. Thus, ethics-unfriendly environments can be treated as contexts where general trends on students’ ethical attitudes are also clearly visible. This fact, together with the evidenced impact of ethics courses on students’ ethical inclinations, places ethics-unfriendly environments as crucial research settings for further inquiring into the nuances that help explain students’ attitudes towards accounting ethics and the role of ethics courses in business degree curricula. (shrink)

The Research Topic “On poverty and its eradication” was inspired by the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, first commemorated in Paris in 1987 and formally designated by the United Nations. This day is dedicated to renewing the commitment to universal human development, enabling all individuals to achieve their highest potential, and reflecting on how poverty hinders this progress. The urgency of addressing poverty has increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated existing issues and highlighted the critical need for (...) effective poverty eradication strategies. The studies included in this Research Topic aim to expand knowledge about poverty, its causes, consequences, and connections to crises, inequality, and fairness, and to assess policy measures for poverty reduction. The included contributions use various theoretical, empirical, quantitative, and qualitative approaches to drive sociological and policy-related discussions and initiatives, promoting fair and inclusive societies. (shrink)

Explainable artificial intelligence has become a vitally important research field aiming, among other tasks, to justify predictions made by intelligent classifiers automatically learned from data. Importantly, efficiency of automated explanations may be undermined if the end user does not have sufficient domain knowledge or lacks information about the data used for training. To address the issue of effective explanation communication, we propose a novel information-seeking explanatory dialogue game following the most recent requirements to automatically generated explanations. Further, we generalise our (...) dialogue model in form of an explanatory dialogue grammar which makes it applicable to interpretable rule-based classifiers that are enhanced with the capability to provide textual explanations. Finally, we carry out an exploratory user study to validate the corresponding dialogue protocol and analyse the experimental results using insights from process mining and argument analytics. A high number of requests for alternative explanations testifies the need for ensuring diversity in the context of automated explanations. (shrink)

8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

Ethical conflicts (ECs), dilemmas auditors face when personal values or professional obligations clash with their actions, pose significant challenges to the auditing profession, potentially influencing turnover intention (TI). This study addresses a knowledge gap in the related research by focusing on two critical EC triggers: workload (WL) and perceived auditor ethical failure (PAEF: ethical sensitivity), which refers to auditors’ perceptions of ethical violations within their profession. Grounded in role theory and ethical climate theory, our study investigates the impact of WL (...) and PAEF on ECs and explores how these conflicts mediate the relationship between PAEF/WL and TI. Additionally, we examine the moderating role of organisational ethical climate (EtC) in these relationships. Using a survey of auditors and employing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), our results reveal that both WL and PAEF increase ECs, thus escalating TI. The findings suggest that a firm’s perceived EtC can negatively moderate the relationship between PAEF and ECs. The study underlines the importance of fostering a strong EtC to manage ECs effectively and provides valuable implications for professionals, regulators, and academics seeking to improve ethical practices within auditing firms and to reduce auditor turnover. (shrink)

Las crisis económicas están generando desigualdades, producto de la violencia estructural; éstas están derivando en las maneras en que los jóvenes construyen y dibujan los sentidos sociales. Los jóvenes deberían ser sujetos que se mueven en toda una temporalidad sin embargo, sus condiciones materiales de vida, no les permiten pensar en un futuro con certezas. Más bien, éstas se desdibujan para ellos y hoy más que nunca aparecen sus sueños postergados y aplazados por la propia violencia de la que son (...) objeto. De ahí, nuestro interés en ver cómo los jóvenes egresados de la universidad, están construyendo dichos sentidos.Economic crises are generating inequalities resulting from structural violence; they are drifting in the ways in which young people build and draw social senses. Young people should be the subjects of movement along temporariness; nevertheless, their material living conditions do not allow them to think in their future with certainty. For our young generations these conditions are blurred, and now more than ever their dreams are deferred and delayed by the violence they are subjected to. Hence, our interest in finding out how young university graduates are building these senses. (shrink)

This paper discusses some problems related to the practical experience of social research in university institutions. It describes the process of access to field work and the relationship with university managers as key informants during a qualitative research about the present politics of economic..

The assembly of products or components by operators in industries is a complex task with recurring problems. In these processes, operators often make errors that can lead to defective products. Therefore, they need to be inspected later to verify their correct assembly. The main problems are caused by several reasons including high employee turnover, lack of experience in manufacturing specific products or confusion in interpreting instructions to assemble similar components. In this paper, a novel structured language aimed to describe the (...) required actions to manufacture a product in industrial assembly environments is presented. The main contribution is to provide a formal language to feed automatic systems that can verify through visual control whether the actions performed by the operator are carried out following the standard described by this language. In general, the use of this formal language will allow to minimize the negative impact of errors during assembly and to reduce waste in many forms in the industry. (shrink)

El objetivo fue examinar el valor del ocio lúdico y cultural compartido entre abuelos y nietos para el bienestar de ambas generaciones. Se utilizaron técnicas cuantitativas -cuestionario ad hoc administrado a 1080 estudiantes de primaria- y cualitativas-2 grupos de discusión-. Las actividades lúdicas y culturales fueron preferentesen el ocio compartido, practicándose más con las abuelas. Como aportacionesdestacaron el incremento de la comunicación, la diversión, el aprendizaje mutuo y elbienestar afectivo. La práctica de ocio cultural y lúdico intergeneracional se asociópositivamente con (...) la valoración de una mejor relación entre nietos y abuelos. (shrink)

Transition experienced by trans people shakes Social Sciences conven-tional understanding of time and space as static analytical units based on tradi-tional biological and physical axioms. Overcoming sexual binarism entails also questioning time and space as isolated elements to become, instead, entangled realities. Departing from trans studies and Halberstam´s concepts of queer temporalities and space as theoretical framework, this papers lines up the indi-vidual story of a trans man with physical disability and ASD with social “trans-formations”, by linking the exposition of (...) the body with the transgression of heteronormative cis time, to be replaced, gradually by trans temporality and new ways of cohabitating spaces. (shrink)

Pode o mestre ensinar algo através da fala? Uma análise sobre as obras De Magistro de Santo Agostinho e Tomás de Aquino Resumo: O presente artigo tem como objetivo investigar nas obras De Magistro de Santo Agostinho e Tomás de Aquino a possibilidade do ensino através da figura do mestre e/ou de um agente externo ao discípulo ou indivíduo. Agostinho defende a tese da qual só Deus ensina e a figura do mestre torna-se apenas como um auxiliador no processo de (...) aprendizagem para a verdade interior do discípulo, tese essa formulada através da sua Teoria da Iluminação. Tomás de Aquino não contradiz completamente Agostinho, mas defende o papel e a importância do mestre sobre o tipo de conhecimento que o mesmo pode fornecer ao discípulo, tendo papel substancial para o processo de aprendizagem para adquirir conhecimento. Ambos se preocupam em que medida o mestre pode ensinar, o que ensina e como ensina, visando compreender como se dá o processo de conhecimento do ser humano o relacionando-o com a verdade das coisas. Palavras-chave: Santo Agostinho; Tomás de Aquino; De Magistro; Ensino; Aprendizagem. Can the master teach something through speech? An analysis of the works De Magistro of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas Abstract: This article aims to investigate in the works De Magistro of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas the possibility of teaching through the figure of the master and / or an external agent to the disciple or individual. Augustine defends the thesis that only God teaches and the figure of the master becomes only as a helper in the learning process for the disciple's inner truth, a thesis formulated through his Theory of Enlightenment. Thomas Aquinas does not completely contradict Augustine, but he defends the role and the importance of the master on the type of knowledge that he can provide to the disciple, having a substantial role in the learning process to acquire knowledge. Both are concerned with the extent to which the master can teach, what he teaches and how he teaches with a view to understanding how the human being's knowledge process takes place, relating it to the truth of things. Keywords: Saint Augustine; Thomas Aquinas; De Magistro; Teaching; Learning. ¿Puede el maestro enseñar algo a través del habla? Un análisis de las obras De Magistro de San Agustín y Tomás de Aquino Resumen: Este artículo tiene como objetivo investigar en las obras De Magistro de Santo Agostinho y Tomás de Aquino la posibilidad de enseñar a través de la figura del maestro y / o de un agente externo al discípulo o individuo. Agustín defiende la tesis de que sólo Dios enseña y la figura del maestro se convierte sólo en un ayudante en el proceso de aprendizaje de la verdad interior del discípulo, tesis formulada a través de su Teoría de la Ilustración. Tomás de Aquino no contradice completamente a Agustín, pero defiende el papel y la importancia del maestro sobre el tipo de conocimientos que puede aportar al discípulo, teniendo un papel sustancial en el proceso de aprendizaje para adquirir conocimientos. Ambos se preocupan por la medida en que el maestro puede enseñar, lo que enseña y cómo enseña, con el objetivo de comprender cómo se produce el proceso de conocimiento del ser humano, relacionándolo con la verdad de las cosas. Palabras-clave: San Agustín; Tomás de Aquino; De Magistro; Enseñando; Aprendizaje. Data de registro: 16/08/2020 Data de aceite: 16/12/2020. (shrink)