‘From Man to Bacteria’: W.D. Hamilton, the theory of inclusive fitness, and the post-war social order

Author(s):  
Sarah A. Swenson
Author(s):  
Lynn Dumenil

The epilogue explores the aftermath of war in the 1920s. Emphasizing the diversity of American women, the epilogue notes the inability of white women to find common cause with black women activists as well as the growing strength of right wing conservative women who challenged reformers and feminists whom they viewed as Bolshevist sympathizers. The Epilogue also explores the continuing debate over the “new woman” as it emerged in the 1920s by examining women in the context of politics, work, and family. The contested new woman offers a clue to the limits to change as a result of World War I. However much some women staked a claim to political, social, and economic equality, they faced deeply rooted ideas about women’s primary role in the home as a talisman of social order. Both continuity and change, with modern and traditional notions of womanhood co-existing uneasily, mark the post-war decade.


2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH A. SWENSON

AbstractW.D. Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness saw the evolution of altruism from the point of view of the gene. It was at heart a theory of limits, redefining altruistic behaviours as ultimately selfish. This theory inspired two controversial texts published almost in tandem, E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) and Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (1976). When Wilson and Dawkins were attacked for their evolutionary interpretations of human societies, they claimed a distinction between reporting what is and declaring what ought to be. Can the history of sociobiological theories be so easily separated from its sociopolitical context? This paper draws upon unpublished materials from the 1960s and early 1970s and documents some of the ways in which Hamilton saw his research as contributing to contemporary concerns. It pays special attention to the 1969 Man and Beast Smithsonian Institution symposium in order to explore the extent to which Hamilton intended his theory to be merely descriptive versus prescriptive. From this, we may see that Hamilton was deeply concerned about the political chaos he perceived in the world around him, and hoped to arrive at a level of self-understanding through science that could inform a new social order.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 1186-1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albena Azmanova

What is the connection between the surge of populism and the deflation of electoral support to traditional left-leaning ideological positions? How can we explain the downfall of the Left in conditions that should be propelling it to power? In its reaction both to the neo-liberal hegemony and to the rise of populism, I claim that the Left is afflicted by what Nietzsche called ‘a democratic prejudice’ – the reflex of reading history as the advent of democracy and its crisis. As a result, the Left now undertakes to recover democracy by resurrecting the growth-and-redistribution policy set that was a trademark of the ‘golden age’ of social democracy in the three post-war decades. This nostalgic gesture, however, is leading the Left into another predicament, which I call the ‘paradox of emancipation’ – while fighting for equality and inclusion as essential conditions for democratic citizenship, the Left is validating the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought – namely, order shaped by the competitive production of profit which is the root cause of our societies’ plight. The analysis concludes with a proposal for building a counter-hegemony against neo-liberal capitalism by means of enlarging the Left’s focus beyond its traditional concerns with inequality and exclusion, to address also the injustice of growing social and economic insecurity – a harm whose reach surpasses the working poor. Reformulating an agenda of social justice around issues of economic insecurity that cross the ‘class divide’ would allow the Left to mobilize a broad coalition of social forces for radical and lasting change in the direction of socialist democracy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
Denis Bećirović ◽  

The illumination of the state policy of separating „positive“ from „negative“ priests of the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most important issues in the scientific understanding of the position of this religious community during the first decades of existence of AVNOJ Yugoslavia. The post-war government in Bosnia and Herzegovina treated a large number of priests of the Catholic Church as real or potential enemies of the state. In addition to ideological reasons, which were more or less similar in all communist parties, the negative attitude of the CPY towards the Catholic Church was influenced by the fact that some priests supported the Ustasha movement during World War II. The justification for the negative attitude of party structures towards priests was argued most often in the documents of the Commission for Religious Affairs with the following reasons: that most priests supported the occupier and domestic traitors during the war; that they spread hostile propaganda against the national liberation movement; that they actively participated in the fight against the new social order; that they had committed war crimes and persecuted members of other faiths, and that they had been linked to criminal Ustasha emigration abroad. In addition to „negative“ priests, there were „positive“ priests that also acted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as they were reported in the documents of the Commission for Religious Affairs. They did not agree to the policy of confrontation with the state and demanded the establishment of dialogue and co-operation between the Church and the state. Some of the most prominent representatives of this group of priests were: Fr Bono Ostojić, Ph.D. Karlo Karin, Fr Mile Leko, Fr Josip Markušić, Fr Serafin Dodig, Fr Kruno Misilo and others. Holders of „positive tendencies“ among the clergy, according to the Commission for Religious Affairs, understood the importance of establishing communication and contacts with state authorities and the harmfulness of the negative attitude of the Catholic Church towards the state. Their goal was to change the methods of solving problems between the Church and the state, and to build a path that would suit the interests of the priests of the Catholic Church and the interests of the state community, without interfering with the church's dogmatic canonical principles. The „differentiation“ of priests was treated as a positive result of the work of the new government, because, according to their assessments, in the first post-war years, representatives of religious communities had a hostile attitude towards the newly created socialist Yugoslav state. Therefore, the Commission for Religious Affairs (federal and republican) has continuously pointed out the importance of implementing a policy of „stratification and differentiation“ within religious communities. According to the observations of the Federal Commission for Religious Affairs, the post-war „differentiation“ among the priests happened primarily due to their attitudes regarding the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. Some considered it desirable and useful to establish communication with the newly created authorities, while others maintained a negative attitude. In addition to these two groups, there was a third group that was undecided. When considering the biographical data of the priests of the Catholic Church proposed for state decorations, it can be stated that the authorities carefully took into account which priests would be on the list of candidates recommended for awards. A positive attitude towards the new socialist social order, active participation in the establishment of the Association of Catholic Priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, loyalty, patriotism towards socialist Yugoslavia, and contribution to the development of the Association of Catholic Priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are some of the most important reasons for choosing candidates for awards. In the article, based on unpublished archival sources, the author contextualises the political circumstances and the circumstances in which the state policy of differentiation of „positive“ from „reactionary“ priests of the Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina took place, points out the reasons for and bearers of such policy, and analyses its expression and results. Also, the author presents the policy of awarding state recognitions and decorations to individual priests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Author(s):  
Roman Broszkiewicz ◽  
Barbara Krzyskow ◽  
Halina Szejnwald Brown

Since the fall of communism, the occupational health and safety system in Poland, which was extensively developed during the post-war period, has been incrementally adapting to the new social order. The reforms of the 1990s aimed at stimulating active participation by workers and labor unions, increasing the responsibility of employers, reducing the paternalistic role of the state, and strengthening the enforcement branch. The emergent system has many strengths, including a highly branched-out system of regional and local enforcement agencies, competent and self-confident government institutions familiar with the firms under their jurisdiction and adept at balancing competing social objectives; a tradition of cooperation among agencies and employers; and strong advocacy by the government agencies on behalf of workers. The system also exhibits characteristics that may weaken it in the future, such as lack of support from labor unions; low interest among workers; a generally low safety culture; stringent, often unimplementable exposure standards; and lack of “ownership” of the system by social groups other than the state bureaucracy.


1965 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Lyman

The purpose of this paper is to set forth, somewhat arbitrarily, a composite view of the British Labour Party's history between the Wars, to be labelled the orthodox Labour interpretation, and then to set against it a contrasting view which has been expressed by several left-wing writers within the Labour Party. This examination of conflicting opinions can scarcely be dignified with the title historiographical inquiry. In the first place, there are other more or less coherent interpretations of Labour Party history in this period besides the two sketched herein, most notably a Communist view, expressed in such works as Allen Hutt's The Post-War History of the British Working Class. Secondly, as Stephen Graubard has recently said in relation to the Fabian Society, much of the Labour Party history in this period is in fact autobiography. Finally, as will soon become distressingly apparent, the interpretations that most writers have given of Labour between the Wars have been influenced by, connected with, even in some cases identical to the same authors' views on Labour today. History used to be called “past politics”; in this case it cannot entirely escape becoming “present politics.”According to the orthodox view, the Labour Party was emerging from its infancy in the 1920s, having established its claim to be considered a major contestant for power as recently as 1918. As Francis Williams puts it:With the acceptance of the new constitution and the endorsement of the international policy contained in the Memorandum on War Aims and the domestic programme contained in Labour and the New Social Order, the Labour Party finally established itself. The formative years were ended. Now at last it was an adult party certain of its own purpose; aware also at last of what it must do to impress that purpose upon the nation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 84-115
Author(s):  
Anna Toropova

With the return of the thriller genre onto Soviet screens in the late 1930s, cinema took a direct role in cultivating feelings of paranoid hatred for enemies. A body of films staging conspiracy, sabotage, and dark plots deployed the image of a persecutory ‘other’ to draw the defensive contours of Soviet identity. The Stalinist thriller’s mechanisms of paranoid projection and ‘splitting’ manufactured a sense of narcissistic self-mastery by directing outwards the ego-hostile forces internal to the subject. These paranoid defence strategies depended, however, on a risky process of negotiation. To create an image of a unified and harmonious social order, the thriller vividly represented threats to Soviet borders and identity, exposing their precariousness and fragility. Focusing on the genre’s deployment of the figure of duplicitous enemy and the narrative strategy of suspense, this chapter shows how the thriller’s characteristic unsettling of familiar patterns of identification turned the enemy’s ‘otherness’ into an object of fascination as well as repulsion. The thriller’s capacity to collapse boundaries between ‘Soviet’ and ‘unSoviet’ was nowhere more apparent than in the body of ‘dark’ films that emerged during the post-war period. Gesturing towards film noir’s pervasive sense of enclosure, loneliness, and anxiety, post-war thrillers like Secret Mission (dir. Mikhail Romm, 1950) and A Scout’s Exploit (dir. Boris Barnet, 1947) no longer permitted the spectator to identify with a position of narcissistic self-mastery. These ‘dark’ post-war thrillers conjured up a universe in which systems of knowledge proved unstable and identity structures vulnerable to contamination.


2018 ◽  
pp. 106-124
Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin

This chapter unpacks social purists’ commitment to the notion of ‘white slavery’ during the inter- and post-war years. Focusing on the work of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA), the chapter argues that this organisation used white slavery to construct their patrolling and moral surveillance of women as necessary to the maintenance of urban social order. By working with only a vague notion of white slavery, the LVA were able to imprecisely apply this term to their case work. Young women from marginalised communities, particularly Irish and working-class women, were presented by the organisation as being vulnerable to white slavery. Despite their records showing little engagement with women involved in forced prostitution, the LVA’s continual allusions to white slavery enabled their patrollers to further their image as experts in the moral protection of women and the organisation’s references to white slavery were used to try to generate donations from LVA supporters.


2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wetherly

AbstractIn a series of writings in recent years, Anthony Giddens has pursued two broad interconnected themes: reflection on the future of radical politics in a world in which, it is claimed, received political ideologies of Right and Left are exhausted; and, analysis of the character of what Giddens calls ‘second-phase’ modernisation. The connection between the two themes is straightforward: it is because the world has changed in profound ways that radical politics cannot be continued in the old way. Both of these themes are analysed at length in Beyond Left and Right. In this work, Giddens describes a long-run shift in our relationship to social and technological change manifest in the advance of ‘manufactured uncertainty’ or risk. This has been accelerated by a (more recent) shift from ‘simple’ to 'reflexive’ (or ‘second-phase’) modernisation which is a compound of a related series of developments during the post-war period – the ‘social revolutions of our time’ (globalisation and the rise of a posttraditional reflexive social order).


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