(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA
(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA
(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA
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specialization within urban bureaucracies this translation almost always implies the reduction of privatecontingencies into causal models underlying the decision programs of formal organizations . This reductionprocess leads to a highly selective <strong>and</strong> biased representation of everyday life . Everyday life is not justneutrally translated but transformed into administrative categories .In the paper we first analyze the application forms for compiling person-related data which are usedin the local setting of Cologne . The guiding research questions are : How selectively, how fragmentarilyare the characteristics of the clients entered into the records of formal organizations? To what extentare the social environments (e .g . family, household, friends) of the clients represented?Section 2 deals with the analysis of the interorganizational network of information exchange in an urbansetting . We applied network analysis to show how urban bureaucracies exchange information through directcommunication or other forms of interorganizational linkages .In section 3 we analyse whether the selectivity of representation within single offices can be overcomeby interlocking bookkeeping systems . Perceiving administration as a system we identify the holes withinadministrative bookkeeping that are consequences of blocking out certain aspects of everyday life .The last part describes our observation of the interaction between clients <strong>and</strong> bureaucracies . Weconsider the extent to which personal connotations are brought into the process of "skeletonizing" peoples'problems . Thus we attempt to demonstrate the differences between administrative view points implicit intheir problem solving processes, on the one h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> peoples' ways of thinking about their own situation,on the other . Furtheron we asked the clients how they evaluated the information collection process . Towhat extent can people accept the skeletonizing process within administration data collection?BICK, Wolfgang <strong>and</strong> Paul J . MULLER (KoZn) . "Stable Patterns Within a Network of Urban Bureaucracies : Domainsor Positions?" Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco,Sept . 1978 .The paper focusses on the kind of problem-solving possible within a network of urban bureaucracies asprovided for within work related patterns of cooperation <strong>and</strong> integration .Based on the communication between all 64 municipal offices in the city of Nuremberg, the regularizedpattern of work related daily interactions among municipal offices is described as the persistent patternof interorganizational cooperation in a m<strong>and</strong>ated setting . The underlying dimensions of structural differentiation- integration <strong>and</strong> sectoral differentiation - are identified by means of multi-dimensional scaling .Sectoral differentiation however does not explain the existence of zones of dense interaction, i .e . domainsof municipal authorities . The conditions under which sectoral differentiation correspond to a complementarityof functions are analyzed using social network analysis .Finally - in a positional analysis - the interaction between structural differentiation <strong>and</strong> functionalspecialization is investigated . The positional analysis concludes that offices in an administrative domainoccupy unique positions in the overall network which do not interact . Separated <strong>and</strong> self-contained fieldsof problem-solving within the persistent pattern of work related cooperation can therefore be ascertained .Two fields - the "people processing" <strong>and</strong> the "object processing" domains - are comprised out of a numberof interacting agencies, other problems are solved by single offices alone . As these different fields ofproblem-solving do not interact, the administrative system, being confronted with a problem that does notfit into the established framework of problem-solving, must h<strong>and</strong>le this problem either by defining it asa non-problem or by dividing it into parts which are then solved separately : Problems are therefore definedby their solutions .These structural properties of administrative problem-solving are also described in terms of theirinterrelationships in a multilevel community network .BODEMANN, Y .M. (Toronto) Farnilismo y patronazgo como siste as de poder local en Cerdena .de SocioZogia 11 (April <strong>1979</strong>), BarcelonaPapers : RevistaWhat the sociology <strong>and</strong> anthropology of Mediterranean hinterl<strong>and</strong>s often depicts as varieties of patronagesystems of individualised power brokers is viewed here as the local elite . With the establishment of acapitalist state in Italy, a local elite appears in Central Sardinia with these basic characteristics :1. It is a cluster of affinal <strong>and</strong> cognatic kin <strong>and</strong> is tied to the local community by kinship .2 . Some of its members are personally linked to such state institutions as the judiciary or the Church <strong>and</strong>as such personify the state in the community .3 . The local elite monopolises access to all important state institutions .Both the old local elite which arose in the last quarter of the 19th century <strong>and</strong> survived into fascism <strong>and</strong>the new local elite which emerges in the mid-sixties function as important agents of the economic transformationscharacteristic of their historical period . The old elite operates in a system of regionalnotables ; the new elite are petit-bourgeois, "junior members" of the capitalist class .