9 research outputs found
Another analytic view about quantifying social forces
Montroll had considered a Verhulst evolution approach for introducing a
notion he called "social force", to describe a jump in some economic output
when a new technology or product outcompetes a previous one. In fact,
Montroll's adaptation of Verhulst equation is more like an economic field
description than a "social force". The empirical Verhulst logistic function and
the Gompertz double exponential law are used here in order to present an
alternative view, within a similar mechanistic physics framework. As an
example, a "social force" modifying the rate in the number of temples
constructed by a religious movement, the Antoinist community, between 1910 and
1940 in Belgium is found and quantified. Practically, two temple inauguration
regimes are seen to exist over different time spans, separated by a gap
attributed to a specific "constraint", a taxation system, but allowing for a
different, smooth, evolution rather than a jump. The impulse force duration is
also emphasized as being better taken into account within the Gompertz
framework. Moreover, a "social force" can be as here, attributed to a change in
the limited need/capacity of some population, coupled to some external field,
in either Verhulst or Gompertz equation, rather than resulting from already
existing but competing goods as imagined by Montroll.Comment: 4 figures, 29 refs., 15 pages; prepared for Advances in Complex
System
Rethinking conversion : beyond the religious and the secular
This article seeks to pinpoint some of the consequences of the secularization process – conceived as the dissociation of religion from both state politics and culture – with the aim of broadening the conceptualization of conversion. Conversion is therefore considered to be a social fact beyond the religious and the secular, for which the concept of 'trans-formation' is employed in order to grasp this phenomenon. The concept of trans-formation posits processes of conversion as shifts from intimate convictions to public values. From this perspective, based on a pragmatic sociology of values, religious conversions are put forth as one possible way to qualify trajectories that the concept of trans-formation aims to comprehend. The article ends by considering the status of religious convictions in comparison with convictions otherwise qualified