SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

The Continuing Mobility of Migrants in Italy: Shifting between Statuses and Places

In this paper, which is based on fieldwork carried out in Italy in 2001–02, I consider migrants as mobile actors, people who make choices about where they go and under what title, but people whose choices are limited by a range of factors including migration regimes, social networks and social and economic capital. The key questions considered relate to ‘status’ mobility—how and why migrants move across categories such as documented/undocumented migrant, labour migrant, family member, asylum-seeker or refugee; and geographic mobility—which factors cause some migrants to move and move again, from one country to another and within countries. Finally, the manner in which these two questions are related and how they affect ongoing processes of migration, settlement and community formation are considered

everybody doing what everybody else is doing

The title is drawn from economist Abjihit V. Bannerjee’s 1992 study ‘A Simple Model of Herd Behaviour’, in which he notes ‘There are innumerable social and economic situations in which we are influenced in our decision making by what others around us are doing. Perhaps the commonest examples are from everyday life: we often decide on what stores and restaurants to patronize or what schools to attend on the basis of how popular they seem to be. … We set up a model in which paying heed to what everyone else is doing is rational because their decisions may reflect information that they have and we do not.’ Such herd behaviour may arise through an information cascade which, as David Easley and Jon Kleinberg note in their book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, ‘has the potential to occur when people make decisions sequentially, with later people watching the actions of earlier people, and from these actions inferring something about what the earlier people know.’ In everyone doing what everyone else is doing, players make selections from a series of actions, judging what to do in response to choices made by others around them. First performed: Plus Minus Ensemble, Material, City University Experimental Music Group, Performance Space, City University, London, 08.04.14

A social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time

This paper presents a social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Our perspective is rooted in the Danish tradition of critical psychology (Dreier, 1997; Mørck & Huniche, 2006; Nissen, 2005), and we use social practice theory to interpret the pathway of one adolescent whom we followed as part of a longitudinal study of interest-related learning. A social practice theory calls out the ways people pursue diverse concerns, become aware of new possibilities for action as they move across settings of practice, and learn as they adjust contributions to the flow of ongoing activity and to fit demands and structures of local institutions. It also highlights the ways that existing institutional structures of practice frame the choices people make about how and where to participate in activities. This perspective on learning is potentially transformative, in that it provides a way to promote equity by surfacing issues associated with linkages among settings of practice, networks of actors who support persons’ movement across settings, and diversities in structures of practices that shape opportunities to learn and become

Differential neural circuitry and self-interest in real vs hypothetical moral decisions

Classic social psychology studies demonstrate that people can behave in ways that contradict their intentions—especially within the moral domain. We measured brain activity while subjects decided between financial self-benefit (earning money) and preventing physical harm (applying an electric shock) to a confederate under both real and hypothetical conditions. We found a shared neural network associated with empathic concern for both types of decisions. However, hypothetical and real moral decisions also recruited distinct neural circuitry: hypothetical moral decisions mapped closely onto the imagination network, while real moral decisions elicited activity in the bilateral amygdala and anterior cingulate—areas essential for social and affective processes. Moreover, during real moral decision-making, distinct regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) determined whether subjects make selfish or pro-social moral choices. Together, these results reveal not only differential neural mechanisms for real and hypothetical moral decisions but also that the nature of real moral decisions can be predicted by dissociable networks within the PFC

Choosing a career in Saudi Arabia: the role of structure and agency in young people's perceptions of technical and vocational education

Although the Saudi education system has provided an opportunity to pursue varying pathways for young people, there is a limited understanding of young people’s post-secondary education and employment trajectories in Saudi Arabia. Challenges to implementing educational strategies and reforms include a large youth population, diverse stakeholders, economic diversification and limited education and employment opportunities. With the launch of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, education and labour policy efforts included an expansion to the vocational education and training (TVET) sector to stimulate economic growth and increase the employment of young Saudi citizens in place of foreign employees. However, the relatively low enrolment in vocational education and training (TVET) and its weak status can provide insight into the way young people make decisions about their education to work transitions and highlights a variety of individual and structural challenges young people continuously negotiate in the rapidly changing country. Quantitative empirical research studies fall short in explaining the motivations behind young people’s choices and the extent to which choice is available. This research addresses this gap, employing a qualitative constructivist methodology. Through 18 focus groups and 16 individual interviews, this thesis shares the sentiments of 152 young men and women in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia who were enrolled in initial TVET as well as secondary students at a transition point where TVET became an option. The findings indicate that ‘choice’ is often illusionary, as youth aspirations are not always in line with opportunities and are influenced by the dominant characteristics of the education pathways and the labour market. Young people are influenced by embedded cultural factors such as social networks, family and gender. In making choices that are socially acceptable, young people minimise potential risks and social sanctions by ‘colouring within the lines’ of social acceptability rather than re-drawing them

(Re)Knowing Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: from Lived Experience to Mediatory Practice

Polycystic ovary syndrome is the most widely experienced hormonal condition in women, with effects and co-morbidities apparent in bodily processes such as reproduction, metabolism and physical appearance. The syndrome is also present in social life in dimensions of perception and self-perception, emotional responses, interactions with other people, and exchanges with medical systems. In this thesis I look at the areas of everyday life, health practices and bodily being that PCOS presents in through women’s subjective accounts of experience. I interviewed a diverse group of women who were in the same stage of life in that they were university students in their twenties. Each woman had different physical PCOS symptoms, varying their bodily experiences. The syndrome was present in an individual habitus for each woman, consisting of different cultural contexts, experiences with different medical systems, and personalized health practices to mediate with the condition. I trace various knowledge networks surrounding PCOS in everyday life at an individual level by using phenomenological understandings of experience. These knowledge networks contextualize how this chronic health condition is perceived and managed by women. The individual habitus of perceiving and managing PCOS is thus produced and lived through a synthesis of different knowledges generated by different modes of experiencing PCOS. The way the threads of different ways of knowing PCOS weave a habitus together are highly subjective, with women using bodily experience, knowledge, and preferences to make health choices in daily life. These health choices in practice revolve around medication, food choices, and adjusting or maintaining physical appearance. I make the case for agency, subjectivity, and individual narratives to be represented in how chronic illness and health management is studied and understood, especially in the case of a condition like PCOS that varies between individuals, is ill-understood, and affects a significant section of the female population

The social determinants of choice quality: evidence from health insurance in the Netherlands

Market provision of impure public goods such as insurance, retirement savings and education is common and growing as policy makers seek to offer more choice and gain efficiencies. This approach induces an important trade-off between improved surplus from matching individuals to products and misallocation due to well documented choice errors in these markets. We study this trade-off in the health insurance market in the Netherlands, with a specific focus on misallocation and inequality. We characterize choice quality as a function of predicted health risk and leverage rich administrative data to study how it depends on individual human capital, socioeconomic status and social and information networks. We find that choice quality is low on average, with many people foregoing options that deliver substantive value. We also find a strong choice quality gradient with respect to key socioeconomic variables. Individuals with higher education levels and more analytic degrees or professions make markedly better decisions. Social influence on choices further increases inequality in decision making. Using panel variation in exposure to peers we find strong within firm, location and family impacts on choice quality. Finally, we use our estimates to model the consumer surplus effects of different counterfactual scenarios. While smart default policies could improve welfare substantially, including the choice of a high-deductible option delivers little welfare gain, especially for low-income individuals who make lower quality choices and are in worse health

Social Networks and Decision Making: Women’s Participation in Household Decisions

Decision making is always been an important in social setting. For understanding the process of decision making it is important to understand as to how people make decisions and the factors influence the decisions. Studies (Srinivasan and Sharan 2005, Pescosolido, 1992) show that decisions are not made in isolation but they are the products of influence and confluence of social correlates. These studies emphasize that the decisions are not made in isolation but in consultation with other members. This raises an important question of how individual’s choices no longer of his or her own but socially constructed. This emphasizes how individuals consult with others while making decisions. From this it clear that the matters relating to health are also decided in consultation with the other members of the community. From this we can understand how decision making is important in a family setting for an individual. Literatures on social network (Srinivasan and Sharan 2005) have suggested the importance of social interaction on health decisions. They also suggest social networks help the individuals to learn to handle problematic situations. In National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3)(2005-06), under “Women’s empowerment and demographic and health outcomes” discussed the importance of wife’s participation in household decision making. According to NFHS-3, it is important to study the above aspect which will help in understanding the status and empowerment of women in society and within their households. It is thus critical to promote change in reproductive behaviour. This reminds the importance of Social Network by Bott(1957).According Bott Social Network is conjugal role relationships. According to her the degree of segregation in the role relationship of husband and wife varies directly with the connectedness of the family’s social network. The more connected the network, the greater the degree of segregation between the roles of husband and wife and vice versa.Health Management, Women, Family, Health seeking behaviour