Erika Apfelbaum

On Conflicts and Bargaining

Publisher Summary This chapter develops a systematic conceptual framework for the analysis of conflicts in terms of interdependence, and to describe the social interactions that have been ruled out by a great number of investigators. Thus, it deals with the dynamics of social conflicts as well as with their basic determinants. Empirical evidence supports the fact that the development of conflict is intimately related to the perceived potential and possible interrelations with another partner. The analysis has shown that the individual takes the information he or she gets about his or her partner into account, and has indicated how this information is used to implement his or her behavior and strategy. In particular, the initial beliefs held by a subject about his or her partners responsiveness determine the future of the relationship. The chapter describes how interpersonal reactivity determines both the actual course of the interactions and the constitution of the interpersonal perceptions, and, furthermore, how perceptions of reactivity increase the likelihood of mutually satisfying exchanges and the development of an equilibrium. Understanding the partners responsiveness gives the subject some control over the development of the relation because of the influence he or she exerts on his or her partner. The chapter examines under what conditions powerless individuals seek for equity and by what means they achieve this goal.

Histoire de psychologies sociales perdues. Le cas de Gabriel Tarde

Ian Lubek : Geschichte der verlorenen Sozialpsychologien : der Fall Gabriel Tarde. Mit der Untersuchung der verlorenen Sozialpsychologien von Gabriel Tarde werden eine Betrachtungsweise und Hypothesen den Historikem, Soziologen, und Soziopsychologen der Wissenschaften vorgeschlagen, die Tarde oder andere Psychosoziologen studieren wollen, oder ganz allgemein jeden Zweig einer Disziplin der in ihrer Geschichte verschwunden ist. Nach einem kurzen Ueberblick tiber das Werk von Tarde, und die Entwicklungsweise seiner Thesen, werden vier spezifische Versuche zur Definition einer Sozialpsychologie Tardes untersucht. Die tiefgrundigste These, die Interpsychologie, fand ein nur schwaches Echo in Frankreich und in Nord-Amerika. Zu Erklarung dieses Misserfolges werden 5 Hypothesen aufgestellt, die historische und institutionelle Faktoren berucksichtigen : 1) der Streit Tarde/Durkheim als Konflikt der beispiel naften Paradigmen, 2) das Nichtvorhandensein von einem Paradigma/Gemeinschaft um Tarde, das die Promotion und die institutionelle Verwurzelung seiner Ideen gefordert hatte, 3) die Nichtvereinbarkeit zwischen dem soziopolitischen Klima und der Perspektive Tardes, 4) die sprachliche und kulturelle Sperre, die die Verbreitung in Amerika erschwerte, 5) der ungenaue Charakter des epistemologischen Status der interaktionistischen Theorien innerhalb der positivistischen Sozialwissenschaften.

Norwegian and French Women in high Leadership Positions The Importance of Cultural Contexts Upon Gendered Relations

This analysis of 50 French and Norwegian women in high positions of leadership stresses how gendered relations structuring private and professional lives will vary in different cultures according to their socio-historical contexts. The specific contexts of two Western European democracies, France and Norway, reveal a number of differences impacting on the careers and the construction of the personal and social identities of women leaders. Interviews were held with French women who (a) assumed pioneering leadership positions in the 1970s (n = 10) and (b) who followed in the 1980s (n = 20) and with Norwegian women leaders (n = 20). Sixty percent of the total sample had held posts as cabinet or subcabinet ministers. Illustrations from their narratives, collected through semistructured interviews about their personal and professional itineraries, are used to discuss a number of questions from a comparative cultural perspective: the sense of double marginality, extraneity, lack of entitlement and vulnerability; role-model legitimation; feminism and the womens movement; political parity/mixity; gender consciousness and solidarity; and family and female—male interactions.

Models of Suggestive Influence and the Disqualification of the Social Crowd

In his case (the member of the crowd), as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. (Le Bon, 1895/1960, p. 31) The first suggestion formulated which arises implants itself immediately by a process of contagion in the brains of all assembled, & the identical bent of the crowd is immediately an accomplished fact. (Le Bon, 1895/1960, pp. 39–40)

Origines de la psychologie sociale en France. Développements souterrains et discipline méconnue

Erika Apfelbaum : Ursprunge der Sozialpsychologie in Frankreich. « Unterirdische » Entwicklungen und verkannte Disziplin. Die Sozialpsychologie war lange Zeit eine verkannte doch tatsachlich bestehende Disziplin, wie aus den verschiedenen, zumeist von einander getrennten und unabhangigen Versuchen ersichtlich ist, direkt und spezifisch die Beziehungen Mensch/Gesellschaft zu untersuchen. Das Ende des XIX. Jahrhunderts ist fur das Verstandnis von der Sozialpsychologie lange Zeit eingenommenen Randstellung eine kritische Periode. Hierbei spielen sich unter anderem die Autonomie und die Emanzipation der Psychologie und der Soziologie ab, innerhalb der Universitat, sowie ihre Professionalisierung hauptsachlich durch die Entstehung spezialisierter Zeitschriften. Die Untersuchung des Falles Binet, in seiner Eigenschaft als Direktor einer Zeitschrift und als einfacher Forscher, dient ausserdem zur Verdeutlichung, wie die sozialen Fragen langsam in die Psychologie eingedrungen sind und die Tur fur die Sozialpsychologie geoffnet haben.

Resolution Versus Revolution

Scientists often engage in interdisciplinary research on important problems facing society. In the 1950s, social psychologists worked on the problem of conflict; in the 1970s, other scientists tackled “environmental pollution.” Although the present chapter covers only the area of conflict research, this prologue will digress briefly to examine a fictional pollution problem—the analogy, if any, to the discussion of conflicts that follow must be left for the reader to draw.

Against the Tide: Making Waves and Breaking Silences

In the introduction to her book of biographies (Vies politiques [Men in Dark Times], 1974), Hannah Arendt points out that as we question certain men and women about the fashion in which each has lived their life and evolved on the world’s stage, we take the measure of a whole epoch and we illuminate what is common for everyone. The following narrative is directly in line with Arendt’s observation, since my life has unfolded and been closely connected with a significant period in the development of social psychology. Accordingly, my story may provide some insights into the socio-cultural and historical changes in the discipline during the period in which I have been both its witness and an active participant/contributor.

Twenty Years Later

I must confess that at first I had mixed feelings about the idea of reprinting this chapter (Apfelbaum, 1979). When my long -time feminist friend Liliane Kandel (see this issue) ‘innocently’ asked me :‘But would you still write the same article today?’ my immediate response was to say:‘Of course not!’ If power/domination analyses are now readily used, there should be no real need to repeat my earlier framework – hence my initial negative response to Liliane’s question. But, on further reflection, considering the broader mainstream community of the social sciences and their gatekeepers, there are still persistent sticking points, resist ances, and, at times, outright derailing of feminist analyses of power and domi nation, and therefore the ideas developed in that chapter may still have, for some, a current, topical value. Finally, if I now add this postscript, it is because Liliane’s seemingly ‘inno cent’ interrogation also has a bothersome, but generative, edge to it; she, and the other issue contributors, have forced me to face the broader underlying question: ‘Where has my own thinking taken me during these past 20 years and what are the underlying links, if any, between my current interests and this 1979 chapter?’