This book is the result of a collaborative effort by eleven anthropologists and six economists, and questions the motives that underlie the ways that humans interact socially, and whether these are ...the same for all societies, and are part of our nature, or are influenced by our environments. Over the past decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus, with hundreds of experiments that have suggested that people care not only about their own material payoffs but also about such things as fairness, equity, and reciprocity. However, this research has left fundamental questions unanswered: are such social preferences stable components of human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social, and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared with the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. In combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross‐cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non‐selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments that provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small‐scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long‐term ethnographic field work in these societies. The results, which are given in chs. 4 to 14, demonstrated no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self‐interest, and showed that variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of the variation found (which individual‐level economic and demographic variables could not). The results also trace the extent to which experimental play mirrors the patterns of interaction found in everyday life. The book has three introductory chapters that include a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool, and to its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories, and an overview and summary of the results of the fifteen case studies.
Questions about the origins of human cooperation have long puzzled and divided scientists. Social norms that foster fair-minded behavior, altruism and collective action undergird the foundations of ...large-scale human societies, but we know little about how these norms develop or spread, or why the intensity and breadth of human cooperation varies among different populations. What is the connection between social norms that encourage fair dealing and economic growth? How are these social norms related to the emergence of centralized institutions? Informed by a pioneering set of cross-cultural data,Experimenting with Social Normsadvances our understanding of the evolution of human cooperation and the expansion of complex societies.
Editors Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich present evidence from an exciting collaboration between anthropologists and economists. Using experimental economics games, researchers examined levels of fairness, cooperation, and norms for punishing those who violate expectations of equality across a diverse swath of societies, from hunter-gatherers in Tanzania to a small town in rural Missouri. These experiments tested individuals' willingness to conduct mutually beneficial transactions with strangers that reap rewards only at the expense of taking a risk on the cooperation of others. The results show a robust relationship between exposure to market economies and social norms that benefit the group over narrow economic self-interest. Levels of fairness and generosity are generally higher among individuals in communities with more integrated markets. Religion also plays a powerful role. Individuals practicing either Islam or Christianity exhibited a stronger sense of fairness, possibly because religions with high moralizing deities, equipped with ample powers to reward and punish, encourage greater prosociality. The size of the settlement also had an impact. People in larger communities were more willing to punish unfairness compared to those in smaller societies. Taken together, the volume supports the hypothesis that social norms evolved over thousands of years to allow strangers in more complex and large settlements to coexist, trade and prosper.
Innovative and ambitious,Experimenting with Social Normssynthesizes an unprecedented analysis of social behavior from an immense range of human societies. The fifteen case studies analyzed in this volume, which include field experiments in Africa, South America, New Guinea, Siberia and the United States, are available for free download on the Foundation's website:www.russellsage.org.
In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging-striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, ...vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.The contributors toSuccessful Aging
as a Contemporary Obsessionexplore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal-aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.
Within both feminist theory and popular culture, establishing similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural and geo-political contexts (e.g. ‘African’ female genital cutting ...and ‘Western’ cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common as a means of countering cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism and racism.
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice examines how cross cultural comparisons of embodied practices function as a rhetorical device – with particular theoretical, social and political effects - in a range of contemporary feminist texts. It asks: Why and how are cross-cultural links among these practices drawn by feminist theorists and commentators, and what do these analogies do? What knowledges, hierarchies and figurations do these comparisons produce, disrupt and/or reify in feminist theory, and how do such effects resonate within popular culture? Taking a relational web approach that focuses on unravelling the binary threads that link specific embodied practices within a wider representational community, this book highlights how we depend on and affect one another across cultural and geo-political contexts.
This book is valuable reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in Gender Studies, Postcolonial or Race Studies, Cultural and Media Studies, and other related disciplines.
Introduction: Feministm, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison 1. Comparing Cultures: Feminist Theory, Anti-Essentialism and New Humanisms 2. Critical Frameworks: Intersectionality, Relationality and Embodiment 3. Continuums and Analogues: Linking 'African' Female Genital Cutting and 'Western' Body Modifications 4. Constitutive Comparisons: Producing Muslim Veiling, Anorexia and 'Western' Fashion and Beauty Practices 5. Weaving Relational Webs: Theorising Cultural Difference and Embodied Practice
'...Demonstrates both robust theoretical knowledge and clarity of perspective...'
'...A highly complex endeavour and a thoroughly enjoyable read for the complexity of its debates, the clarity of its structure and argument, the scope of its critique and the development of the relational web, which is not just a theoretical model but a credible (collective) project for the future. Pedwell has argued her case convincingly but above all with modesty, in full awareness that her critique is not about discrediting previous efforts to address comparisons but about taking the debates to the next stage. The book is consistently mindful of the ethics relating to how this should be done.' -Angie Voela, University of East London in European Journal of Women's Studies vol 18 no 3
Carolyn Pedwell is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her research interests include feminist and postcolonial theory; gender, cultural difference and ‘the body’; and the transnational politics of emotion and affect. Her work has been published in Feminist Theory , Feminist Review , and Body and Society .
This book presents a wide range of methodological perspectives on researching what teachers think and do in language teaching. It contains chapters by the editors and a leading expert in teacher ...cognition, as well as eight case studies by new researchers, accompanied by commentaries by internationally known researchers.
Co-published with AIEAInternational higher education has evolved, in some respects dramatically, in the decade since publication of the first edition of this handbook. The new issues, trends, ...practices and priorities of research that evolved over this time have in some instances been transformed by one of the most dynamic and tumultuous periods in the history of international higher education, brought on by the pandemic, a re-emergence of nationalism, and the recognition of the power imbalances between the developed economies and the global south, and racial inequities within and across borders. This new edition addresses the myriad changes across all aspects of international education, each chapter addressing to the extent possible the reality of the present in which they were written and offering some insights for the future. While updating a number of chapters from the first edition, it also includes a preponderance of new chapters written by contributors representing wider and more diverse backgrounds. In keeping with the first edition, the overall message is that the internationalization of higher education has a vital role to play in a world that is more interconnected than ever before. Recognizing changing economic, geopolitical, climatic, and public health issues, as well as the importance of international and cross-cultural collaboration to address global problems, this handbook offers a comprehensive range of models, data and ideas to stimulate new directions in the conception and practice of international education.This edition reflects today's concerns around inclusion, diversity and equity, and how international education is being changed by issues such as decolonization, the focus on learning outcomes, the impact of digital tools to enhance access and learning and collaboration such a virtual exchange, competition for resources, risk, new patterns of mobility, and new models such as joint programs and qualifications.As with the first edition, the cha
Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children offers new insights into children's descriptions of their invented or "make-believe" worlds, and the role that the children's experience with media plays ...in creating these worlds. Based on the results of a cross-cultural study conducted in the United States, Germany, Israel, and South Korea, it offers an innovative look at media's role on children's creative lives.
This distinctive volume:
*outlines the central debates and research findings in the area of children, fantasy worlds, and the media;*provides a descriptive account of children's make-believe worlds and their wishes for actions they would like to take in these worlds;
highlights the centrality of media in children's make believe worlds;
emphasizes the multiple creative ways in which children use media as resources in their environment to express their own inner worlds; and
suggests the various ways in which the tension between traditional gender portrayals that continue to dominate media texts and children's wishes to act are presented in their fantasies.
The work also demonstrates the value of research in unveiling the complicated ways in which media are woven into the fabric of children's everyday lives, examining the creative and sophisticated uses they make of their contents, and highlighting the responsibility that producers of media texts for children have in offering young viewers a wide array of role models and narratives to use in their fantasies. The downloadable resources provide full-color images of the artwork produced during the study.This book will appeal to scholars and graduate students in children and media, early childhood education, and developmental psychology. It can be used in graduate level courses in these areas.
This book moves the discussion of affirmative action beyond the United States to other countries that have had similar policies, often for a longer time than Americans have. It also moves the ...discussion beyond the theories, principles, and laws that have been so often debated to the actual empirical consequences of affirmative action in the United States and in India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and other countries. Both common patterns and national differences are examined. Much of what emerges from a factual examination of these policies flatly contradicts much of what was expected and much of what has been claimed.
Suburban Form Case Scheer, Brenda; Stanilov, Kiril
2004, 20030902, 2003, 2003-09-02, 20030101
eBook
This book examines and documents the remarkable development and transformation of suburban form throughout the globe during the twentieth century. The premise that suburban areas are monotonous, ...inert environments is put to a test through investigation of the complexity of those suburban settings and the dynamic physical changes that have taken place since their inception.
