Volume 33, Issue 1

The persistent decline of fertility in Kenya has been attributed to increasing modernization and urbanization as well as to the increased use of modern family planning methods. The growing acceptance of modern contraceptives in Kenya is the result of a diffusion process. Informal communication networks are a key factor in this process because as part of day-to-day interaction and communication participants, who already use modern contraception influence others to use these methods. This influence depends - among other things - on the extent to which users of modern contraceptives and potential users of these methods are connected by strong ties. In particular, such ties are relevant for social influence because they create structures of normative expectations and constitute sources of reliable information. This paper is based on data from 740 women participating in the Kenyan Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, and our analyses support the role of strong ties for women’s decisions to employ modern contraceptives. In particular, the empirical results show significant associations between a woman’s probability of using modern contraception and strong ties to users and non-users in her social network. Moreover, our analyses also reveal the particular relevance of the social relationships associated with strong ties. For instance, strong ties to friends or members of the parental family exert a greater influence on contraceptive decisions than strong ties to persons in the immediate household.

Decisions for or against medical procedures that are associated with a high risk or can have major life-changing consequences can be highly stressful for medical teams, particularly when it comes to assuming and delegating responsibility. This articles presents a study which investigated the modus operandi of such decision-making processes with a view to establishing how they are created and which members of medical teams assume which tasks. Two selected case studies conducted in different types of hospital ward (surgery and internal medicine) are presented. The data were analysed using Bohnsack’s documentary method, with the three stages “formulating interpretation”, “reflecting interpretation,” and “comparative analysis”, complemented by some elements of Goffman’s Frame Analysis. The results reveal that decision-making in critical medical situations is a complex social process which can only be understood against the backdrop of the systems dynamics of medical organizations, and in particular the reciprocal sounding out of other team members’ expectations, the delegation and shifting of responsibilities, and the need for legitimation.

The meaning of the concept of unintended consequences is controversial. A working group at the German Sociology Congress of 1980 discussed Popper’s claim that tracing unintended consequences is the principal task of sociology. The group came to the conclusion that this concept is, in fact, an inessential one. This article re-examines and refutes the group’s conclusion, provides some clarification of the concept itself, and discusses its importance for sociology.

Peer review research is the sphere of science studies dealing with the central mechanism of the self-evaluation of scholarly practice. This article offers a critical review of this research. It seems that peer review research is deeply involved in the selfsame evaluative process which it should be observing with professional distance. The reason is a lack of sociological conceptualization of this activity. The article pleads for a theoretical reorientation from persons to social processes, from measures of reliability to acknowledgement of dissent, from cognition to speech and writing practices, and from publication counts to research in communication. Peer review is not a scientific measurement of the quality of publications, but a social institution for the calibration of reading time within a discipline.