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| 2. |
- Aspers, Patrik, Professor (chair), 1970-
(författare)
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Forms of uncertainty reduction : decision, valuation, and contest
- 2018
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 47:2, s. 133-149
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Uncertainty is an intriguing aspect of social life. Uncertainty is epistemic,future-oriented, and implies that we can neither predict nor foresee what will happenwhen acting. In cases in which no institutionalized certainty about future states exists,or can be generated, judgment is needed. This article presents the forms by whichuncertainty is reduced as a result of judgments made about different alternatives in aprocess involving several actors. This type of uncertainty may exist, for example, aboutwhich artist is the best, which offer in the market is more valuable, which football teamis better than all the rest, or which research proposal will get a grant. The result ofdifferent forms of uncertainty reduction is increased certainty concerning alternatives inrelation to one another, such as good and bad, rank lists, scores, quality assessment, andBwinner and losers.^ Based on the result, uncertainty is reduced and action is facilitated.The forms are structural and comprise roles; may be legitimate in a smaller or largerdomain; and may exist in all spheres of life, as exemplified in sports competitions, inlabor markets, and in the ranking of universities. Three forms of uncertainty reductionbased on judgment are identified in this article: (1) decision, made by an authority; (2)valuation, by means of which order arises as a result of actors ascribing values; and (3)contest, by which an order is the result of direct struggle.
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| 3. |
- Aspers, Patrik
(författare)
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Knowledge and Valuation in Markets
- 2009
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 39:2, s. 111-131
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 4. |
- Aspers, Patrik, et al.
(författare)
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Market Fashioning
- 2020
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 49, s. 417-438
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How do markets come about? This article offers a first systematic analysis of three different ideal types of market fashioning: mutual adjustment, organization, and fields. Although aspects of these are identifiable in most empirical markets, these three ideal types provide analytic tools for students of real markets and marketplaces. After going through this comprehensive literature, it is argued that mutual adjustment, which refers to non-planned processes, is affinity with markets in which products are differentiated, for example, producer markets. Organization refers to process driven by attempts to decide for others and shows affinity with markets for standardized and homogenous products, for example, stock exchanges. Organization also accounts for the making of marketplaces. The broader notion of fields does not refer to any specific process, but accounts for the context of market fashioning and its respective power struggles.
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| 5. |
- de Moor, Joost, et al.
(författare)
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Narrating political opportunities: explaining strategic adaptation in the climate movement
- 2019
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Ingår i: Theory and Society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 48:3, s. 419-451
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures. © 2019, The Author(s).
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| 6. |
- Fine, Gary Alan
(författare)
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Crafting Authenticity : The Validation of Identity in Self-Taught Art
- 2003
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Ingår i: Theory and Society. - : Springer. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 32:2, s. 153-180
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The desire for authenticity now occupies a central position in contemporary culture. Whether in our search for selfhood, leisure experience, or in our material purchases, we search for the real, the genuine. These terms are not, however, descriptive, but must be situated and defined by audiences. In this analysis, I examine the development of the market for self-taught art, an artistic domain in which the authentic is a central defining feature, conferring value on objects and creators. Self-taught art is a form of identity art in which the characteristics of the artists and their life stories are as important as the formal features of the created objects. The article examines the justifications for this emphasis and the battles over the construction of biography. My examination of self-taught art is grounded in five years of ethnographic observation, interviews, and analyses of texts.
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| 7. |
- Hearn, Jeff, Senior Professor, 1947-, et al.
(författare)
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Violence Regimes: A Useful Concept for Social Politics, Social Analysis, and Social Theory
- 2022
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Ingår i: Theory and Society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 51, s. 565-594
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper critically interrogates the usefulness of the concept of violence regimes for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the first case, violence regimes address and inform politics and policy, that is, social politics, both around various forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, and more widely in terms of social and related policies and practices on violence and anti-violence. In the second case, violence regimes assist social analysis of the interconnections of different forms and aspects of violence, and relative autonomy from welfare regimes and gender regimes. Third, the violence regime concept engages a wider range of issues in social theory, including the exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, most obviously, but not only, when the voices and experiences of those killed are unheard. The concept directs attention to assumptions made in social theory as incorporating or neglecting violence. More specifically, it highlights the significance of: social effects beyond agency; autotelic ontology, that is, violence as a means and end in itself, and an inequality in itself; the relations of violence, sociality and social relations; violence and power, and the contested boundary between them; and materiality-discursivity in violence and what is to count as violence. These are key issues for both violence studies and social theory more generally.
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| 8. |
- Holmqvist, Mikael
(författare)
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Economics as symbolic capital : The consecration of elite business schools
- 2022
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 51:3, s. 435-455
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ever since the first elite business schools were founded in Europe and the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, they have enjoyed an intimate relationship with economics. Despite some notable analyses of economics' importance for the successful institutionalization of business schools, an understanding of the relation between economics and elite business schools requires further development. As such, this paper focuses on 'economics as symbolic capital' for the consecration of business schools as elite settings, with particular emphasis on the symbolic aspects of economics' cultural and social capital. Consecration can be seen as critical to the institutionalization of elite business schools; in contrast to the primary focus of previous studies on the material significance of economics in business schools, my chief concern is the discipline's symbolic power and importance for business schools' status as elite institutions in many countries today. Data from a study on Sweden's elite business school, The Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), were based on both historical and contemporary sources, including archival material, biographies, statistics, participant observations, and interviews with faculty and students. The SSE is one of the world's oldest elite business schools where economics has played a critical role ever since its establishment; the SSE's economics faculty has a unique relation to the ultimate source of capital for contemporary global economics, namely, The Nobel Prize in Economics, which exerts a significant influence on the discipline's general standing and status today.
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| 9. |
- Kallinikos, Jannis, et al.
(författare)
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Governing social practice : technology and institutional change
- 2013
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 42:4, s. 395-421
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we extend the concept of technology beyond the conventional understanding of systems and artifacts as embodiments of particular functionalities that are variously enacted in local settings. Technological artifacts or systems epitomize operational couplings that extend beyond the human-technology interface. Such couplings entail multiple, unobtrusive, back-staged links that evade human interpretation yet are critically involved in the reproduction and control of social relations. Cast in this light, technologies emerge as complex rationalized embodiments for structuring social relationships and, in this quality, complement and occasionally compete with institutional modes of governance. We explore these ideas in the empirical context of cultural memory organizations (e.g., libraries, archives, museums). As the outcome of the technological developments that have marked the field over the last two decades, the operations of memory institutions increasingly mingle with those of information aggregators and search engines. These developments reframe longstanding professional practices of memory organizations and, in this process, challenge their institutional mandate.
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| 10. |
- Mondani, Hernan, et al.
(författare)
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What is a social pattern? Rethinking a central social science term
- 2022
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Ingår i: Theory and society. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0304-2421 .- 1573-7853. ; 51:4, s. 543-564
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The main aim of this article is to start a discussion of social pattern, a term that is commonly used in sociology but not specified or defined. The key question can be phrased as follows: Is it possible to transform the notion of social pattern from its current status in sociology as a proto-concept into a fully worked out concept? And if so, how can this be done? To provide material for the discussion we begin by introducing a few different types of patterns that are currently being used (patterns in nature, cultural patterns, statistical patterns, and computationally generated patterns). This is followed by a suggestion for what a strictly sociological concept of social pattern may look like. A useful and theoretically solid concept of social pattern can in our view be constructed by basing it on Weber’s concept of social action. This means that both the behavior of the actors and the meaning these invest their behavior with must be taken into account. The article ends with a brief discussion of how to use the concept of social patterns in an effective way and what may endanger such a use.
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