As stated in ((25]) and ((12]) the eld of multiagent systems (MAS) (or distributed artiicial intelligence (DAI)) needs ideas from sociology in order to overcome some of the problems researchers are encountering. These problems are most of the time related to the limited (self)reeexivity the actors (agents) are equiped with and the limitations of the architecture of the individual agents. On the...

This article discusses and exemplifies a more visual and expressive way of constructing and presenting sociological insight. It seeks to articulate the specific demands, traits and potentials of the 'visual essay' as a societal and sociological practice and format. In particular it provides some observations, propositions and arguments that may further help to clarify what the visual sociologic...

1 I Background Sociological legacies Long before there was a conception of sustainable development, sociologists (as well as other social scientists) were conducting research on development issues (such as modernization, socioeconomic development, distorted development, unequal development, etc.) as well as sustainability issues (pollution, environmental degradation, resource depletion, key res...

The article describes the behavioral strategies of educational communities in context transfer their human capital Russian education system. concrete object research is student body universities. One approaches to structuring as an community considered. It shown that a significant criterion for this success / failure students. Based on materials specific sociological study, features are highlig...

Urban poverty has been the subject of sociological and political debate for more than a century. In this article I examine theories of urban poverty and their place in American housing policy. I first discuss theories that have arisen out of the sociological and policy discourse on urban poverty and the research that supports and challenges these theories. I then review current public housing i...

Although small group research has been somewhat marginalized within sociology during the past decades, the authors argue that a focus on interaction arenas can contribute to a more complete analysis of social life. Specifically the authors examine three central domains of sociological analysis—culture, organizations, and the economy—to demonstrate how a focus on the mesolevel of analysis allows...

The article provides an overview of the state of the art of sociological research on price formation. The dominant trait of the sociological approach to prices is to understand price formation not as the outcome of individual preferences but as the result of the social and political forces operating within the market field. The article proceeds from the concept of market fields and is organized...

The reader will find in this volume essentially two points of view presented, one largely sociological and the other psychological in orientation. The sociological point of view presented by Eisenstadt and his colleagues sees the problem of immigrant absorption largely in terms of group attitudes and the degree of readiness of the group to change in face of the diverse and changing cultural man...

1. a sociological understanding of contemporary social problems and accurate information about them; 2. awareness of their social origins, collective definition, and how they might be effectively treated; 3. discernment on the importance of sociological theory, methods, and multilevel analyses; 4. a social ethics approach to public policy addressing social problems; 5. social activism—a commitm...

Most of the definitions of roles in network analysis have their origin mainly in sociological and psychological research, where social roles are treated as “cultural objects that are recognized, accepted and used to accomplish pragmatic interaction goals in a community” [Gleave 2009]. Sociological research emphasizes the importance of relations to others and expectations for systematic behavior...