Some Social Relations Restated

Competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation have been proposed as "the four great types of interaction" or "processes of interaction." (1) This category should contain not four, but more than half a score of items. Thirteen are suggested. (2) Assimilation may be omitted from the list. It is the name for a result, but the production of that result must be further analyzed. (3) Accommodation is to be distinguished from inducement and deterrence and from the effects of nonsocial (material) causes. (4) Competition and conflict have been incorrectly defined. (5) The thirteen items in the list are not "processes" but relations between the activities of associates. (6) Social processes are activities impossible to individuals in isolation and conditioned by social relations, and changes in such activities. (7) Scientific explanation is in terms of causal relations, that is, relations between resultant facts (for sociology, social activities) and conditioning facts. The conditioning facts that explain social activities are, primarily, other social activities to which those to be explained stand in relation, and, secondarily, biological facts and material environment

Accommodation · Assimilation (phonology) · Competition (biology) · Isolation (microbiology) · Linguistics · Relation (database) · Social relation · Sociology · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Ecology · Psychology · Social Psychology

• A proximate perspective on reciprocal altruism

  Open Access•Sarah F Brosnan, Frans Β Μ De Waal et al.•Human Nature•2002

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