Wrocław is a very interesting case of functioning of a collective memory and references to histor... more Wrocław is a very interesting case of functioning of a collective memory and references to history. Due to its complicated history resulting from multi-cultural character, a collective memory cannot be attributed to one specific social community that lives in a given city at a particular time. Wrocław as a significant space and a crucial element of the cultural memory can become and indeed it is a point of reference for the collective identity (and for history too) of various nations. Apart from the Poles – residents of Wrocław – also Czechs, Austrians, Germans and Jews lived in Wrocław and co-created the image, history, politics and significance of the city in the past (not to mention ethnic and national minorities living in the city now). Multidimensionality of the cultural and collective memory is complemented by a sociological assumption of the researchers – the works of which we shall refer to – that the collective memory of the present residents of Wrocław does not have and ca...
Background Short-term forecasts of infectious disease burden can contribute to situational awaren... more Background Short-term forecasts of infectious disease burden can contribute to situational awareness and aid capacity planning. Based on best practice in other fields and recent insights in infectious disease epidemiology, one can maximise the predictive performance of such forecasts if multiple models are combined into an ensemble. Here we report on the performance of ensembles in predicting COVID-19 cases and deaths across Europe between 08 March 2021 and 07 March 2022. Methods We used open-source tools to develop a public European COVID-19 Forecast Hub. We invited groups globally to contribute weekly forecasts for COVID-19 cases and deaths reported from a standardised source over the next one to four weeks. Teams submitted forecasts from March 2021 using standardised quantiles of the predictive distribution. Each week we created an ensemble forecast, where each predictive quantile was calculated as the equally-weighted average (initially the mean and then from 26th July the media...
Reconsidering frailty from a human and social sciences standpoint: towards an interdisciplinary approach to vulnerability
Age and Ageing
Although frailty is an important, well-characterized concept in the provision of medical care to ... more Although frailty is an important, well-characterized concept in the provision of medical care to older adults, it has not been linked to the concept of vulnerability developed in the humanities and social sciences. Here, we distinguish between the two main dimensions of vulnerability: a fundamental, anthropological dimension in which people are exposed to a risk of injury, and a relational dimension in which people depend on each other and on their environment. The relational notion of vulnerability might provide healthcare professionals with a better understanding of frailty (and its potential interaction with precarity). Precarity situates people in their relationship with a social environment that might threaten their living conditions. Frailty corresponds to individual-level changes in adaptation to a living environment and the loss of ability to evolve or react in that environment. Therefore, we suggest that by considering the geriatric notion of frailty as a particular form of...
EPH206 Strategies to Address Vaccine Hesitancy in Adults: A Systematic Review
Value in Health, Dec 1, 2022
City, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Wrocław after 1945
Social relations and their influence on various phenomena are one of the key issues not only in s... more Social relations and their influence on various phenomena are one of the key issues not only in sociology. The crucial problem, however, is how to measure the social relations and their implications in society. We try to adapt a physical perspective to the ``typical'' sociological analysis and to measure the qualitative nature of human community adapting the category of social distance. This category is used to explore the properties of social relations in the structure and the communication system of prison community. The issues that are discussed: the specific properties of social relations as the constitutive factors for different type of group structure and type of communication. How the elementary social networks (short-range group structures) form the dynamics of prison community? What is the role of the numerical force of the group for prison community? Is there the interplay between the microstructures and macrostructures? The work is based on our research carried ou...
Formy pamięci historycznej miasta : przestrzeń urbanistyczna jako dziedzictwo kulturowe miasta w świadomości młodzieży
Pamięć zbiorowa, pamięć historyczna, a za nimi tożsamość zbiorowa, ma wielowymiarowy i wielopozio... more Pamięć zbiorowa, pamięć historyczna, a za nimi tożsamość zbiorowa, ma wielowymiarowy i wielopoziomowy charakter. Może być atrybutem grupy i jednostki. Będąc atrybutem jednostki, może odnosić się czy też być konstruowana przez grupy czy zbiorowości różnego rodzaju jednocześnie (zbiorowość narodowa, regionalna, lokalna, rodzinna, stowarzyszeniowa). Każda z nich może wyposażać jednostkę także w różne zakresy pamięci. Co więcej, przychylając się do tradycji francuskiego socjologa M. Halbwascha, pamięć będzie miała charakter zmienny, konstruowany w zależności od interesów i społecznej sytuacji danej zbiorowości. Przeszłość tworzona jest wtedy, gdy staje się przedmiotem odniesień. Zakres pamięci historycznej danej zbiorowości zatem wyznacza aktualnie uznawaną historię. W studiach nad pamięcią historyczną niezmiennie ciekawym problemem jest badanie uwarunkowań powstawania konkretnej formy i treści wiedzy historycznej, pamięci i nie-pamięci określonych wydarzeń, osób, sposobów percepcji fak...
Does gender make a difference? (Fragm.)
Does gender make a difference? The case study of inmates social conduct Abstract Gender is one of... more Does gender make a difference? The case study of inmates social conduct Abstract Gender is one of the most universal variables differentiating biological, cultural and social behaviours. The way gender determines people's behaviour is the subject of ideological and scientific discussions, in which there is a dispute about the extent of the influence of nature and culture on human beings. In this chapter I address the question of how gender differentiates prisoners' situation, their behavioural strategies and social relations in prison. How does gender function as a set of social and cultural traits in the criminal environment? Do the social determinants of gender act according to the same rules in the criminal world as in the ' normal' world, or differently? Based on empirical data, I argue that the social mechanisms that shape gender functioning are similar both inside and outside prison. Gender differences can be explained as a result of divergent optimisation strategies, which are conditioned by unequal access to social resources in society, and by the impact of different gender identity patterns.
Abstract. The complex social system consists of variety of social elements and processes. One of ... more Abstract. The complex social system consists of variety of social elements and processes. One of the crucial problems which social researchers try to understand and explain is how social order and collective phenomena emerges from individual behaviours, and what specific features of particular type of social aggregate are. Another important problem is the application of the appropriate research methods that allow explication of the distinctiveness of social reality. Recently there has been increased interest in the use of agent-based modelling, social network analysis, and socio-physics. These novel approaches often treat social phenomena as any other physical phenomena. We believe that these methods should take into account peculiarities of social realm in greater extent. We would like to discuss some of these novel approaches with placing special attention on some methodological problems that result from usage of models for investigation of complex social behaviours. In this paper...
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 2005
The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the... more The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the great sociological theories treat society as a complex system explicitly or implicitly. Because social system is always multidimensional it is easier to build such a theory than to apply it to practice. Therefore, it is still not fully explored issue, especially when theory meets empirical data. The aim of this article is to examine the complexity of a social system on the example of prison. The main issues discussed here are: the interplay of elements of the system and its consequences, dynamics of social process, influence of social change and interdependence of microsystem and macrosystem. The article presents the sociological perspective on social system.
Based on Polish surveillance COVID 19 data-set of 13309 patients we provide upper and lower age d... more Based on Polish surveillance COVID 19 data-set of 13309 patients we provide upper and lower age dependent bounds for the rate of severe progression. To account for observational bias toward severe cases our estimations are based on secondary household infections. We use those unbiased bounds to estimate upper and lower bounds on the true number of cases in Poland as of 1. of July. The method can be applied universally in all countries with records on severe cases in households and provides an efficient way to account for the undiagnosed COVID 19 infections. Furthermore we give a lower bound on the household attack rate and discuss the close relation between household attack rate, rate of severe progression and undiagnosed fraction estimations.
Przekonania ontologiczno-epistemologiczne naukowców a społeczne uwarunkowania nauki Wiedza ludzi ... more Przekonania ontologiczno-epistemologiczne naukowców a społeczne uwarunkowania nauki Wiedza ludzi ma pewną strukturę i zakładam, że jest to kulturowo ukształtowany sposób uporządkowania wiedzy czy też współwystępowania pewnych przekonań. Europejczycy poszukują tych fundamentów w fi lozofi i (epistemologii) greckiej, która -jak się dość powszechnie uważa -ukształtowała styl myślowy w naszym kręgu cywilizacyjno-kulturowym. Jednym z fundamentalnych wymiarów wiedzy społecznej jest system założeń epistemologicznych, które zwykle są uważane za podstawę wszelkiej wiedzy i poznania. Między innymi kategoria prawdy i kryteria obiektywności wiedzy stanowią fundament poznania w naszym kręgu kulturowym, a w szczególności wiedzy naukowej. Jednocześnie pojęcia te stały się obiektem debaty w kręgu socjologii nauki i wiedzy naukowej, a szerzejw humanistyce toczy się spór między racjonalistami i relatywistami nie tyle o defi nicję prawdy, ile przede wszystkim o model i wartość wiedzy naukowej opartej na konwencjonalnej vs realistycznej koncepcji poznania. W sporze tym socjologia nauki zajmuje różne stanowiska. W tej pracy odwołuję się do takiego rozumienia społecznych uwarunkowań nauki, które nie oznacza skrajnego relatywizmu. Przyjmuję, że nauka jest kulturowo-społecznie uwarunkowana we wszystkich aspektach w takim sensie, że zawsze jest uznawana przez społecznie i kulturowo zakorzenione podmioty poznające, a więc relatywne; obiektywizm nauki jest więc uznawany jako absolutny (bądź nie) w określonej społecznej perspektywie. Społeczne uwarunkowanie oznacza podmiotowe zapośredniczenie stosowania kryteriów oceny i respektowania wiedzy naukowej, a podmioty poznające funkcjonują zawsze w kontekście społeczno-kulturowym. I zależnie od stosowanych kryteriów wiedza może być mniej lub bardziej prawdziwa i obiektywna wedle reguł niezależnych od podmiotu i jego woli. Innymi słowy nie oznacza to równoważności jakości każdej wiedzy. Kryteria empirycznej weryfi kowalności i technicznej skuteczności, jakkolwiek są optymalnym testem rzetelności wiedzy, nie Zostawiłam miejsce na źródła pod tabelami -MN
Social relations and their influence on various phenomena are one of the key issues not only in s... more Social relations and their influence on various phenomena are one of the key issues not only in sociology. The crucial problem, however, is how to measure the social relations and their implications in society. We try to adapt a physical perspective to the "typical" sociological analysis and to measure the qualitative nature of human community adapting the category of social distance. This category is used to explore the properties of social relations in the structure and the communication system of prison community. The issues that are discussed: the specific properties of social relations as the constitutive factors for different type of group structure and type of communication. How the elementary social networks (short-range group structures) form the dynamics of prison community? What is the role of the numerical force of the group for prison community? Is there the interplay between the microstructures and macrostructures? The work is based on our research carried out in 17 prisons in
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2007
We present a model of a prison with two types of inmates. One (recidivists) is a better organized... more We present a model of a prison with two types of inmates. One (recidivists) is a better organized and has more influence on the formation of opinions, whereas the second one is more susceptible to the influence of internal and external pressure. We study, via computer simulations, the interplay between well-organized minority and the rest and how the final decision, like e.g. starting a riot, depends on such factors as: fraction of recidivists, their initial support of the riot and possibility of contacts among cells. We find that, as expected, the riot is more likely to start if there is more recidivists favoring it at the beginning. The influence of external factors (media) turned out to have a larger impact on the second group of prisoners. Contrary to a common practice, we show that in order to prevent riots it might be better not to block the inter-cell contacts.
The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the... more The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the great sociological theories treat society as a complex system explicitly or implicitly. Because social system is always multidimensional it is easier to build such a theory than to apply it to practice. Therefore, it is still not fully explored issue, especially when theory meets empirical data. The aim of this article is to examine the complexity of a social system on the example of prison. The main issues discussed here are: the interplay of elements of the system and its consequences, dynamics of social process, influence of social change and interdependence of microsystem and macrosystem. The article presents the sociological perspective on social system.
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 2005
The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the... more The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the great sociological theories treat society as a complex system explicitly or implicitly. Because social system is always multidimensional it is easier to build such a theory than to apply it to practice. Therefore, it is still not fully explored issue, especially when theory meets empirical data. The aim of this article is to examine the complexity of a social system on the example of prison. The main issues discussed here are: the interplay of elements of the system and its consequences, dynamics of social process, influence of social change and interdependence of microsystem and macrosystem. The article presents the sociological perspective on social system.
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 2005
The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the... more The assumption that society is a complex system is a common and trivial in sociology. Most of the great sociological theories treat society as a complex system explicitly or implicitly. Because social system is always multidimensional it is easier to build such a theory than to apply it to practice. Therefore, it is still not fully explored issue, especially when theory meets empirical data. The aim of this article is to examine the complexity of a social system on the example of prison. The main issues discussed here are: the interplay of elements of the system and its consequences, dynamics of social process, influence of social change and interdependence of microsystem and macrosystem. The article presents the sociological perspective on social system.
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2008
A simple model describing the dynamics of opinion forming in a two-party society is presented. Us... more A simple model describing the dynamics of opinion forming in a two-party society is presented. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we show what is the role played by the mobility of the electorate and the size of the groups within which opinions are exchanged. Each individual is characterized by its opinion and its susceptibility to the influence of others. We show what is the effect for a party to have a small percentage of supporters who will never change their mind. We determine when a party having at the beginning a smaller number of supporters, could nevertheless win democratic elections. The influence of an external random field (media) is also discussed.
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Papers by Barbara Pabjan