46,525 research outputs found
Schools, communities and social capital: building blocks in the 'Big Society' (Research associate full report)
"This study looked at how effective schools engage with their communities. Its aim was to identify key
mechanisms that promoted community engagement. It also sought to determine the impact this had on the
amount and nature of social capital available to pupils, parents and the wider community. Effective schools
were found to generate significant amounts of social capital within their institutions as demonstrated by the
degree of trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and social cohesion. Pupil voice was a powerful mechanism in
developing a sense of control and self-efficacy. Recently created posts such as family workers, therapists and
social work placements extended much of this impact into the family.
Schools that went further to promote social capital in the neighbourhood were those with a more
aspirational vision that went beyond simply engaging the community to aid school improvement. They
viewed community empowerment as key to the success of their pupils and families within the wider social
context. They encouraged community leadership and decision-making, often through informal learning
approaches, and truly became âhubs of the communityâ, facilitating community development and promoting
community cohesion. The findings suggest that a more reciprocal view is needed of the relationship between
school and community and that schools could play a central role in creating the âBig Societyâ.
Optimal distribution of incentives for public cooperation in heterogeneous interaction environments
In the framework of evolutionary games with institutional reciprocity,
limited incentives are at disposal for rewarding cooperators and punishing
defectors. In the simplest case, it can be assumed that, depending on their
strategies, all players receive equal incentives from the common pool. The
question arises, however, what is the optimal distribution of institutional
incentives? How should we best reward and punish individuals for cooperation to
thrive? We study this problem for the public goods game on a scale-free
network. We show that if the synergetic effects of group interactions are weak,
the level of cooperation in the population can be maximized simply by adopting
the simplest "equal distribution" scheme. If synergetic effects are strong,
however, it is best to reward high-degree nodes more than low-degree nodes.
These distribution schemes for institutional rewards are independent of payoff
normalization. For institutional punishment, however, the same optimization
problem is more complex, and its solution depends on whether absolute or
degree-normalized payoffs are used. We find that degree-normalized payoffs
require high-degree nodes be punished more lenient than low-degree nodes.
Conversely, if absolute payoffs count, then high-degree nodes should be
punished stronger than low-degree nodes.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Frontiers in
Behavioral Neuroscienc
Social capital: a road map of theoretical frameworks and empirical limitations
The general idea of social capital is that relationships matter. In this sense, trust, cooperation and reciprocity involved in these relationships can have a positive impact on the wealth of the society by reducing transaction costs, facilitating collective actions and lowering opportunistic behaviour. This work sheds light on the different theoretical and empirical problems that a scholar is likely to face in dealing with social capital research and analysis. We propose a critical road map of the social capital theories and applications for a general audience, non-users included, with particular attention to the works of political and social economists. We provide a critical debate on the different definitions and measures produced, the theoretical frameworks developed and the empirical techniques adopted so far in the analysis of the impact of social capital on socio-economic outcomes. We stress on the limitations of these techniques and we suggest some basic strategies to reduce the magnitude of these limitations
The Transformation of Trust in Chinaâs Alternative Food Networks: Disruption, Reconstruction, and Development
Food safety issues in China have received much scholarly attention, yet few studies systematically examined this matter through the lens of trust. More importantly, little is known about the transformation of different types of trust in the dynamic process of food production, provision, and consumption. We consider trust as an evolving interdependent relationship between different actors. We used the Beijing County Fair, a prominent ecological farmersâ market in China, as an example to examine the transformation of trust in Chinaâs alternative food networks. We argue that although there has been a disruption of institutional trust among the general public since 2008 when the melamine-tainted milk scandal broke out, reconstruction of individual trust and development of organizational trust have been observed, along with the emergence and increasing popularity of alternative food networks. Based on more than six months of fieldwork on the emerging ecological agriculture sector in 13 provinces across China as well as monitoring of online discussions and posts, we analyze how various social factorsâincluding but not limited to direct and indirect reciprocity, information, endogenous institutions, and altruismâhave simultaneously contributed to the transformation of trust in Chinaâs alternative food networks. The findings not only complement current social theories of trust, but also highlight an important yet understudied phenomenon whereby informal social mechanisms have been partially substituting for formal institutions and gradually have been building trust against the backdrop of the food safety crisis in China
Desistance, reflexivity and relationality : a case study
This paper presents the analysis of a single life-story drawn from a larger study examining theindividual, relational and structural contributions to the desistance process. The emphasis here is on the contributions of key social relations in âEvanâsâ narrative of change. How people relate to one another, and what these relationships mean to them both as individuals and together, are critical aspects of understanding the role of social relations in desistance. This paper concludes by considering how penal practices might generate and sustain the kinds of social capital and reflexive, relational networks relevant to desistance
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