"In an analysis that promises to be controversial, Man to Man: Desire, Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood surveys the presence of same-sex desire between men in the later Roman ...empire. Most accounts of recent years have either noted that sexual desire between men was forbidden or they have ignored it. This book argues that desire between men was known and that it was a way to express friendship, patronage, solidarity, and other important relationships among elite males in late antiquity. The evocation of this desire and its possible attendant corporeal satisfactions made it a compelling metaphor for friendship. A man's grandeur could also be portrayed metaphorically as sexual attractiveness, and the substantial status differences often seen in late antiquity could be ameliorated by a superior using amatory language to address an inferior. At the same time, however, there was a marked ambivalence about same-sex desire and sexual behavior between men, and indeed same-sex sexual behavior was criminalized as it had never been before. While rejection and condemnation may seem to indicate a decisive distancing between authority and this desire and behavior, authority gained power from maintaining a relation to them. Demonstrating knowledge of the actual mechanics of sex between men suggested to a witness that there was nothing unknown to the authority making the demonstration: authority that knew of scandalous masculine sexual pleasure could project its power pretty much anywhere. This startling dissonance between positive uses of same-sex desire between men and its criminalization in one and the same moment-a dissonance which recent discussions have been unable to address-requires further investigation, and this book supplies it."
Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies Margoni, Francesco; Baillargeon, Renée; Surian, Luca
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
09/2018, Letnik:
115, Številka:
38
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We examined whether 21-month-old infants could distinguish between two broad types of social power: respect-based power exerted by a leader (who might be an authority figure with legitimate power, a ...prestigious individual with merited power, or some combination thereof) and fear-based power exerted by a bully. Infants first saw three protagonists interact with a character who was either a leader (leader condition) or a bully (bully condition). Next, the character gave an order to the protagonists, who initially obeyed; the character then left the scene, and the protagonists either continued to obey (obey event) or no longer did so (disobey event). Infants in the leader condition looked significantly longer at the disobey than at the obey event, suggesting that they expected the protagonists to continue to obey the leader in her absence. In contrast, infants in the bully condition looked equally at the two events, suggesting that they viewed both outcomes as plausible: The protagonists might continue to obey the absent bully to prevent further harm, or they might disobey her because her power over them weakened in her absence. Additional results supported these interpretations: Infants expected obedience when the bully remained in the scene and could harm the protagonists if defied, but they expected disobedience when the order was given by a character with little or no power over the protagonists. Together, these results indicate that by 21 months of age, infants already hold different expectations for subordinates’ responses to individuals with respect-based as opposed to fear-based power.
I examine the effect of the policing capacity of traditional authorities (TAs) on communal conflict. TAs of ethnic groups use distinct customary laws and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Their ...coexistence with national norms and those of other TAs results in parallel legal systems. I argue that this generates uncertainties about norms and vertical and horizontal jurisdictional conflict, which increases the risk of communal conflict. However, this effect can be dampened by state-level rules on norm collisions, which lead to a system of co-production and less violence. To investigate these claims, I use global georeferenced expert survey data on customary policing of TAs and data measuring their constitutional regulation. I show that customary policing can have an adverse effect on communal peace. More subgroups of the larger ethnic group with policing institutions increase the risk of conflict. State-level regulation moderates these relationships. Additional evidence suggests that policing increases communal conflict through vertical jurisdictional conflict but otherwise achieves its intended purpose of providing security.
This article examines perspectives on the creation of the first supranational electoral management body. Initiatives to establish the EU Electoral Authority directly derive from the proposal of ...introducing transnational lists for the European Parliament elections. In the academic literature, there is a tendency to overlook what the proposed electoral reform entails for EU policy in the area of electoral governance. To address this issue, neofunctionalism is applied as a means to provide a systemic interpretation of the process of creating the EU Electoral Authority. Insights into the dynamics and countervailing forces driving the establishment of EU electoral governance considerably deepen our understanding of how electoral regulations develop at the level of the EU.
•Stopping work for safety is challenging at times.•Stopping does not solely hinge on the willingness of individual workers to stop.•Stopping is dependent on contextual factors that influence the stop ...work decision.•Contextual factors involve procedural, social, technical, and non-technical aspects.•An Authority to Stop has to be embedded in and supported by a stop work environment.
Workers have a legal obligation not to perform unsafe work. In many organisations this obligation is supported by an explicit authority to discontinue work or to stop the work of others if the conditions of work are unsafe. The supporting document is often called an ‘Authority to Stop an Unsafe Task.’ However, when conducting work at the sharp operational end of the organisation, stopping work for safety might be challenging at times. A better understanding is required about the stopping of work and the application of an ‘Authority to Stop.’ The aim of this research is to identify some of the factors that support and hinder a workforce to effectively stop work when a task is deemed unsafe. 10 focus groups were conducted with workers of various roles in the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) industry. The findings outline reasons to stop, challenges and supporting factors of stopping, as well as ways of stopping. The results indicate that the stopping of an unsafe task does not solely hinge on the willingness of individual workers to stop, but also depends on contextual factors surrounding the stop work decision.
This paper introduces a theoretical model for distinguishing between mere popularity and personality cults as there currently is an inflated use of the personality cult concept, especially in news ...media, attaching it to significantly different phenomena. The model is based on Weber’s concept of charismatic authority and consists of three parameters, widespread symbolic elevation, resilience and religious parallels, covering a representational and social practice dimension. Both dimensions are needed to constitute a personality cult. Trump, Putin and Ardern are used as examples of the model’s ability to distinguish between cult and non-cult phenomena. The comparison shows that only Trump and Putin have a cult on both dimensions. Mere popular politicians like Ardern are more comparable to celebrities as these do not have the same authority and power over the followers as leaders with a personality cult – despite potentially showing some cultlike tendencies on the representational dimension. Popular politicians are thus especially characterised by lacking the key social practice aspect of personality cults. As they might still exhibit some cultlike characteristics, the different phenomena are best perceived as being on a continuum ranging from mere admiration or popularity to a personality cult.
Despite being denied access to ordained positions of power, and limited to occupying lay positions, women numerically outnumber men in the Catholic Church in Belgium. Furthermore, their involvement ...in the Church mostly takes place in what can be considered gender stereotypical domains, such as education and care-providing services. This article explores how Catholic lay women navigate the Belgian Catholic Church and how they reconcile their religion-based aspirations to be involved in the Church, on one hand, and their lack of ordained authority, on the other. Based on empirical research (including in-depth interviews, (online) observations, and informal conversations), this article foregrounds and analyses the narratives of Catholic lay women who are active in the Church. Drawing on difference feminism scholarship and on Braidotti’s postsecular analysis, the article argues that the narratives under consideration should not be read through a secular-liberal conceptualisation of gender equality, but rather through a lens that allows the subjectivities and everyday realities of religious women to be made visible and to be acknowledged.
By drawing on service encounter data in Japanese, this paper analyzes a previously undocumented request action initiated by a service provider to a client as a necessary step to provide the service. ...The service provider and their client, both exercising respective deontic rights, collaboratively construct a request turn in particular ways. In this case, due to the Japanese SOV word order, the service provider takes advantage of segmenting their request turn to allow the recipient clients to begin compliance, who thereby acquiesce to the service provider’s deontic authority at the earliest point. By bringing the request turn to completion after the client’s compliance while reflexively showing their deontic and beneficiary stances in the turn final component, the service provider displays commitment to balancing out their relative deontic status to the client.
We investigate trade-offs associated with delegating authority over multiple interrelated decisions in a complex task structure. The empirical setting is a business process of a global Fortune 50 ...firm. The firm decentralized its organization and redefined decision authority across organizational hierarchies between 2008 and 2011. We employ regression analysis of microlevel data on the allocation of decision authority between formal and real authority, and further on the organization design of 761 decision tasks within a hierarchy. Our findings show how the specialization of decision-relevant knowledge, the matching of required knowledge and managers’ expertise, and information processing intensity affect (a) the occurrence of delegation and, (b) if delegation occurs, how far down the organizational hierarchy authority is delegated. We discuss how these findings complement existing theories on delegation by providing insights into when and how interrelated decisions are delegated across multiple levels of an organizational hierarchy.
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