Social Sciences, Suicide and Self-Immolation

Using complexity science, we develop a theory to explain why some social movements develop through stages of increasing intensity which we define as an increase in social focusing. We name six such stages of focusing: disintegration, revitalization, religious, organisation, militaristic, and self-immolation. Our theory uses two variables from the social sciences: differentiation and centrality, where differentiation refers to the internal structure of a social system and centrality measures the variety of incoming information. The ratio of the two, differentiation/centrality (the d/c ratio) is a shorthand way of saying that centrality must be matched by a corresponding level of differentiation to maintain basic focusing. If centrality exceeds differentiation, then the result is a lack of focusing—disintegration. On the other hand, the more differentiation exceeds centrality, the more the system moves into the higher stages of social focusing, from revitalization to the final stage of self-immolation. To test the theory we examine historically indigenous social movements, in particular, the Grassy Narrows movement in northern Ontario Canada. We also suggest how the theory might be applied to explain other examples of social movement, especially millenarian movements at the end of the 20th century. We also suggest sociocybernetic ways the rest of society and the social movement itself can change its own social focusing.

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James B. Rule, Theory and Progress in Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, paperback £14.95, xiv+257 pp. (ISBN 0-5212-57494-3).

Sociology ◽

10.1017/s0038038598360137 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 613-637

Author(s):

P. N. SUTTON

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Cambridge University

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Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences

10.1017/cbo9780511801938 ◽

2008 ◽

Cited By ~ 88

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

The Social

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What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽

10.1027/1614-2241/a000161 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 19-30 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Knut Petzold ◽

Tobias Wolbring

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Behavioral Intentions ◽

Actual Behavior ◽

Full Time ◽

Factorial Survey ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Intended Behavior ◽

The Social ◽

Survey Experiments ◽

High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

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