Social scientists appeal to various “structures” in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of ...these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that social structure can be explanatory in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique characteristics. A novel causal framework is provided for understanding these explanations–this framework addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it the main explanatory (and causally responsible) factor for various outcomes.
Social grouping is omnipresent in the animal kingdom. Considerable research has focused on understanding how animal groups form and function, including how collective behaviour emerges via ...self-organising mechanisms and how phenotypic variation drives the behaviour and functioning of animal groups. However, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of the role of phenotypic variation in collective animal behaviour. Here we present a common framework to quantify individual heterogeneity and synthesise the literature to systematically explain and predict its role in collective behaviour across species, contexts, and traits. We show that individual heterogeneity provides a key intermediary mechanism with broad consequences for sociality (e.g., group structure, functioning), ecology (e.g., response to environmental change), and evolution. We also outline a roadmap for future research.
Phenotypic variation is selectively maintained in populations and pervades animal social systems.Considerable evidence shows that phenotypic differences among grouping animals drive the behaviour, structure, and functioning of animal groups.This individual heterogeneity may thus be a key intermediary mechanism that regulates collective behaviour.We lack a unified understanding to explain and predict the role of individual heterogeneity across different species, contexts, and traits.An objective quantification of individual heterogeneity in physiological, cognitive, and behavioural components provides a common framework for understanding individual heterogeneity and its social, ecological, and evolutionary consequences.
Incubators often play an important role in facilitating networks for entrepreneurs. However, nascent entrepreneurs typically face high uncertainty and goal ambiguity, and which ties could provide the ...resources needed for achieving the respective goal is often unknown in advance. How do incubators facilitate entrepreneurs’ network embeddedness in the context of such uncertainty? Using an explorative case-study approach, we studied an incubator in Kenya, an extreme setting from an uncertainty perspective. Our findings show how in high-uncertainty contexts, a social structure that allows for flexibility can provide the conditions under which unexpected discoveries are enabled, facilitating opportunity-inducing networks.
The increasingly prominent role of the Internet in the lives of Americans has resulted in more people coming into contact with various types of online content, including online hate material. One of ...the most common forms of online hate targets immigrants, seeking to position immigrants as threats to personal, national, economic, and cultural security. Given the recent rise in online hate targeting immigrants, this study examines factors that bring individuals into virtual contact with such material. Utilizing recently collected online survey data of American youth and young adults, we draw on insights from Routine Activity Theory and Social Structure-Social Learning Theory to understand exposure to anti-immigrant online hate material. Specifically, we consider how online routines, location in social structure, and social identity are associated with exposure. Results indicate that engaging in behaviors that can increase proximity to motivated offenders increases the likelihood of being exposed to anti-immigrant hate, as does engaging in online behaviors that bolster one's target suitability. Additionally, individuals who view Americanism as fundamental to their social identity are more apt to encounter anti-immigrant hate material on the Internet, as are those who are more dissatisfied with the current direction of the country.
•Online habits partially pattern exposure to anti-immigrant online hate.•Identifying closely with an American identity correlates with encountering anti-immigrant online hate.•Dissatisfaction with America correlates with encountering anti-immigrant online hate.•Facebook users are especially likely to encounter anti-immigrant online hate.•Antagonistic online behavior increases the likelihood of encountering anti-immigrant online hate.
Structural balance theory attends to a group’s network of sentiments and posits that this network alters over time toward particular structural forms. Current work on the theory is focused on ...understanding the mechanisms that alter sentiments as a function of the configuration of sentiments in which they are embedded. Although the theory assumes tension reduction mechanisms, there has been no effort to directly measure and model the temporal changes of individuals’ relational tensions that are predicted by the theory. This article elaborates and tests balance theory with an empirical analysis of its posited interpersonal tensions and their reductions via a sentiment conversion process. In addition, the authors open a newline of inquiry on the theory’s scope conditions and point to a community commitment condition that is involved in the realization of structural balance. Their analysis draws on a unique suite of multiwave measures obtained from the Urban Communes Data Set.
The Social Life of Bitcoin Dodd, Nigel
Theory, culture & society,
05/2018, Letnik:
35, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is ‘trust-free’ money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper's heart is the ...paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a ‘thing’ that must be abstracted from social life in order for it to be protected from manipulation by bank intermediaries and political authorities. The image is of a fully mechanized currency that operates over and above social life. In practice, however, the currency has generated a thriving community around its political ideals, relies on a high degree of social organization in order to be produced, has a discernible social structure, and is characterized by asymmetries of wealth and power that are not dissimilar from the mainstream financial system. Unwittingly, then, Bitcoin serves as a powerful demonstration of the relational character of money.
Coming from a family of musicians, the descendant of a dynasty that traces its roots back to the 19th century, had Lia Oxinoit as a teacher at the pre-university cycle and Ludmila Vaverco at the ...Gavriil Musicescu State Conservatory from Chisinau. The artistic career of the pianist Aurelia Simion is impressive, ascending, marked by important professional successes realized in concerts and solo recitals or in collaboration with soloists, teachers, students and pupils, with participation in the Musical Olympics, in national and international competitions as an accompanist, member or president of the juries. It is particularly important to highlight the fact that Aurelia Simion, in her artistic ascent, performed on concert stages in the Romania and abroad (Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland, Austria, Russia etc). Inquisitive spirit, always concerned with learning something new, she also played the harpsichord, celesta, marimbaphone and vibraphone, learned to play the portable organ with pedals, and in the moments when she had to complete the timbral color of the scores as part of the Percussion Ensemble Alternances, led by Constantin Stavrat, played claves, guiro, maracas and other small percussion instruments. Her compositional creation materialized in scores for solo piano, solo instruments with piano accompaniment, arrangements for percussion ensemble. For her academic and artistic achievements, she was awarded numerous awards, medals and diplomas of merit, honor and excellence awarded by various cultural and educational institutions.
The establishment and maintenance of dominance hierarchies Tibbetts, Elizabeth A; Pardo-Sanchez, Juanita; Weise, Chloe
Philosophical transactions - Royal Society. Biological sciences,
02/2022, Letnik:
377, Številka:
1845
Journal Article
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Animal groups are often organized hierarchically, with dominant individuals gaining priority access to resources and reproduction over subordinate individuals. Initial dominance hierarchy formation ...may be influenced by multiple interacting factors, including an animal's individual attributes, conventions and self-organizing social dynamics. After establishment, hierarchies are typically maintained over the long-term because individuals save time, energy and reduce the risk of injury by recognizing and abiding by established dominance relationships. A separate set of behaviours are used to maintain dominance relationships within groups, including behaviours that stabilize ranks (punishment, threats, behavioural asymmetry), as well as signals that provide information about dominance rank (individual identity signals, signals of dominance). In this review, we describe the behaviours used to establish and maintain dominance hierarchies across different taxa and types of societies. We also review opportunities for future research including: testing how self-organizing behavioural dynamics interact with other factors to mediate dominance hierarchy formation, measuring the long-term stability of social hierarchies and the factors that disrupt hierarchy stability, incorporating phenotypic plasticity into our understanding of the behavioural dynamics of hierarchies and considering how cognition coevolves with the behaviours used to establish and maintain hierarchies. This article is part of the theme issue 'The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies'.
Why are children of poor parents more likely to be poor as adults than other children? Early-childhood adversities resulting from social structures and relationships impact children's bodily systems ...and brain development through recurrent stress. These socially patterned biological processes influence social reproduction. Social support and interventions can prevent or compensate for the early biological effects of toxic social environments. This article integrates sociological, neuroscience, epigenetic, and psychological evidence to build a model of early-childhood developmental mechanisms contributing to intergenerational poverty. This model captures ways in which social structures interact with biological characteristics and systems to shape life trajectories.
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