The Moral Punishment Instinct

Author(s):  
Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Across time and cultures, ranging from ancient hunter-gatherers, to holy scriptures, to contemporary courts of law, it has been common for people to punish offenders. Furthermore, punishment is not restricted to criminal offenders but emerges in all spheres of social life, including corporations, public institutions, traffic, sports matches, schools, and parenting. Why is punishment so ubiquitous? One cannot find a satisfactory explanation for the universality of punishment in the social science literature focusing on human morality in general. Punishment also occurs among nonhuman animals for which one can question their sense of morality, including rodents, fish, and insects. Apparently, there is something specific and unique about punishment that warrants a more focused discussion. This book proposes that people possess a moral punishment instinct, that is, a hard-wired tendency to aggress against those who violate the norms of the group. People evolved this instinct due to its power to control behavior by curbing selfishness and free-riding, thereby providing incentives to stimulate the mutual cooperation that small tribes of ancient hunter-gatherers needed to survive in a challenging natural environment. To examine this idea, the book describes how punishment originates from moral emotions, stimulates cooperation, and shapes the social life of human beings. Guided by many recognizable examples, the book illuminates how the moral punishment instinct manifests itself among nonhuman animals, children, cultures of modern humans, and tribes of hunter-gatherers, while accounting for the role of this instinct in religion, war, racial bias, restorative justice, gossip, torture, and radical terrorism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Dian Marhaeni Widyastuti

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui Kehidupan Sosial Budaya Masyarakat Islam, khususnya sejarah masuknya Islam, kondisi Kehidupan Sosial Budaya dan faktor-faktor penghambat dan pendukung pengembangan Islam di Sape Rasabou Kabupaten Bima. Penelitian ini mengunakan metode Historis yaitu melalui tahap Heuristik, Kritik, Interpretasi dan Histografi. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah Historis analisis, dan metode kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan, Kondisi kehidupan Sosial Budaya Masyarakat Islam berlangsung dalam kehidupan kegotongroyongan, meskipun terdapat perbedaan status Sosial, namun mulai terjadi pergeseran semenjak masuknya ajaran Islam bahwa manusia sama derajatnya kecuali yang membedakan adalah ketakwaannya. Kehidupan Budaya Masyarakat Islam di Sape Rasabou berkembang sebagaimana perkembangan agama Islam di wilayah tersebut. Kebudayaan islam terbentuk seiring dengan berkembangnya agama Islam. This study aims to find out the Social and Cultural Life of Islamic Communities, especially the history of the entry of Islam, the condition of Social and Cultural Life and the factors inhibiting and supporting the development of Islam in Sape Rasabou Kabupaten Bima. This research uses Historical method that is through Heuristic, Criticism, Interpretation and Histography. Data analysis used is Historical analysis, and qualitative method. The result of the research shows that the condition of the social life of the Muslim society takes place in the life of mutual cooperation, although there are differences in social status, but there is a shift since the entry of Islamic teachings that human beings are equal except the difference is their piety. The Cultural Life of the Islamic Society in Sape Rasabou developed as the development of Islam in the region. Islamic culture is formed along with the development of Islam.


Author(s):  
Keith Ray ◽  
Julian Thomas

Human societies are held together by relationships, conventions, traditions, institutions, and tacit understandings. These things are intangible, and while humans themselves are reproduced as corporeal beings, their societies are sustained by practical activities that continually recreate knowledge, customs, and interpersonal bonds. Just as a language would ultimately disappear if it ceased to be used as a means of communication, so the rules and routines of social life are maintained only if they are practised. The corollary of this is that societies are not fixed and bounded entities as much as arrangements that are continually coming into existence, works (if you like) that are never completed. But material things are also in flux, constantly ripening, maturing, being made, being used consecutively in different ways through their ‘lifespans’, eroding and decaying: so that the social and substantial worlds are as one in being in an unending state of becoming. Nonetheless, objects often have the capacity to endure longer than habits, rules, or affiliations. They continue to exist independently of human beings and their actions. As a result, old artefacts and places occupied in the past can serve to give structure to current practices and transactions, providing cues and prompts, or reminding us of past events and appropriate modes of conduct. Hunter-gatherers have generally lived a way of life that involves making continual reference to natural features and landmarks. Certain distinctive cliffs, hills, islands, trees, and lakes have represented places to return to, or at which to arrange meetings or encounter game. As such they will have been places of periodic resort, and were incorporated into collective history and mythology. Meanwhile, other places acquired a meaning simply because specific people camped there, or met there, or died there. During the Mesolithic in Britain, some locations seem to have been persistently returned to over very long periods of time. One example is the site at North Park Farm, Bletchingley in Surrey, which appears to have been visited sporadically over hundreds of years, although the structural evidence for this at the site was sparse, being limited to a group of fireplaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 184-196
Author(s):  
Maja Dorota Wojciechowska

PurposeSocial capital, understood as intangible community values available through a network of connections, is a factor in the development of societies and improving quality of life. It helps to remove economic inequalities and prevent poverty and social exclusion, stimulate social and regional development, civic attitudes and social engagement and build a civic society as well as local and regional identity. Many of these tasks may be implemented by libraries, which, apart from providing access to information, may also offer a number of services associated with social needs. The purpose of this paper is to present the roles and functions that libraries may serve in local communities in terms of assistance, integration and development based on classical social capital theories.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the classical concepts of social capital in the context of libraries. It analyses the findings of Pierre-Félix Bourdieu, James Coleman, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Putnam, Nan Lin, Ronald Stuart Burt, Wayne Baker and Alejandro Portes. Based on their respective concepts, the paper analyses the role of the contemporary library in the social life of local communities. In particular, it focuses on the possible new functions that public libraries may serve.FindingsA critical review of the concept of social capital revealed certain dependencies between libraries and their neighbourhoods. With new services that respond to the actual social needs, libraries may serve as a keystone, namely they may integrate, animate and engage local communities. This, however, requires a certain approach to be adopted by the personnel and governing authorities as well as infrastructure and tangible resources.Originality/valueThe social engagement of libraries is usually described from the practical perspective (reports on the services provided) or in the context of research on the impact of respective projects on specific groups of users (research reports). A broader approach, based on original social theories, is rarely encountered. The paper draws on classical concepts of social capital and is a contribution to the discussion on possible uses of those concepts based on an analysis of the role of libraries in social life and in strengthening the social capital of local communities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Dalsgaard

This article refers to carbon valuation as the practice of ascribing value to, and assessing the value of, actions and objects in terms of carbon emissions. Due to the pervasiveness of carbon emissions in the actions and objects of everyday lives of human beings, the making of carbon offsets and credits offers almost unlimited repertoires of alternatives to be included in contemporary carbon valuation schemes. Consequently, the article unpacks how discussions of carbon valuation are interpreted through different registers of alternatives - as the commensuration and substitution of variants on the one hand, and the confrontational comparison of radical difference on the other. Through the reading of a wide selection of the social science literature on carbon markets and trading, the article argues that the value of carbon emissions itself depends on the construction of alternative, hypothetical scenarios, and that emissions have become both a moral and a virtual measure pitting diverse forms of actualised actions or objects against each other or against corresponding nonactions and non-objects as alternatives.


KWALON ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Müller

Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell’s auto-ethnography as part of ethnography The labeling of auto-ethnography as navel-gazing does not do justice to the variety with which auto-ethnography is applied. A distinction should be made between emotional and analytical auto-ethnography. In the first form the central person of the researcher plays the central role, in the second auto-ethnography is applied to get a better understanding of the social world which is being studied. In this article the author discusses the second approach by using the work of Jeff Ferrell. Ferrell is a well-known cultural criminologist, who focuses critically on the cultural understanding of social life. By looking at how Ferrell applies auto-ethnography, insight is gained into the added value of this method for qualitative studies: (1) the integration of the personal experiences of researchers in texts in order to achieve a richer description of the social worlds they explore, (2) making explicit the role of the researcher in publications, and (3) developing new (more appealing) forms of representation.


Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk

The reception of Thomistic political and legal philosophy is considered with respect to what is called ‘political liberalism’. The appeal to a hypothetical state of nature should be rejected, as it misconstrues the social nature of human beings. Aquinas’ account of the origin of political society starts from an interpretation of human nature. On this basis one can account for human rights, the importance of the right to religious liberty, the family as the basic cell of society, civil society as including subsidiary authorities, the importance of private property, and the nature and role of freedom. A key question for the continued flourishing of a free society is what practically enables persons to govern for the genuine good of others.


Author(s):  
Alan Ryan

This chapter describes a “dramatistic,” “dramatic,” or “dramaturgical” approach to the study of social interaction. It asks whether the dramaturgical model insists on the theatricality of social life merely in the sense of insisting that people fill roles just as persons act parts in a play. This is the question of whether the crucial element in the dramaturgical picture is that cluster of insights that goes under the general heading of “role distance.” The chapter considers the peculiarities of rational explanation and about the role of reconstructions of “the thing to do” other than the role of explaining an action or series of actions by focusing on voting behavior in the terms proposed by Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy. It also examines some recent accounts of the phenomenon of suicide, along with the rationality principle, which Karl Popper calls “false but indispensable” to the social sciences.


Author(s):  
Martin Brückner

The symbolic and social value of maps changed irreversibly at the turn of the nineteenth century when Mathew Carey and John Melish introduced the business model of the manufactured map. During the decades spanning the 1790s and 1810s respectively, Carey and Melish revised the artisanal approach to mapmaking by assuming the role of the full-time map publisher who not only collected data from land surveyors and government officials but managed the labor of engravers, printers, plate suppliers, paper makers, map painters, shopkeepers, and itinerant salesmen. As professional map publishers, they adapted a sophisticated business model familiar in Europe but untested in America. This chapter documents the process of economic centralization and business integration critical to the social life of preindustrial maps and responsible for jump-starting a domestic map industry that catered to a growing and increasingly diverse audience.


Author(s):  
Justin Carville

Justin Carville draws on recent debates in relation to photography and the everyday in order to examine the role of street-photography in the cultural politics of religion as it was played out in the quotidian moments of social relations within Dublin’s urban and suburban spaces during the 1980s and 90s. The essay argues that photography was important in giving visual expression to the social contradictions within the relations between religion and the transformation of Irish social life, not through the dramatic and traumatic experiences that defined the nation’s increased secularism, but in the quiet, humdrum and sometimes monotonous routines of religious ceremonies and everyday social relations.


2016 ◽  
pp. 170-183
Author(s):  
Amir Bagherian ◽  
Yosef Ebrahimi Nasaband ◽  
Hassan Heidari ◽  
Mahmoud Ebrahimi

Data explosion, in the present era, has created a lot of changes in the social, economic and cultural relationships of all developed societies. Modern areas usually do not have the required legitimacy; however it does not mean that the way for all kinds of violation is open. Social life requires that order and security also govern these areas and protect ethics and public interests. Electronic commerce law is one of these areas a debatable area filled with innovations and surprises. In this regard, waves of internet revolution and the explosion of e-commerce collide with the legal system and influence the concepts of traditional law. One of the key achievements of information technology is changes in traditional regime of evidence claim. In the system of evidence claim in the majority of countries, written reasons and documents are of undeniable importance, in a way that they are mostly used as citation or to defend the Lawsuit. In fact, a lawsuit and adducing the evidence in our legal life largely depend on delivering or issuance of a written paper such as ID cards, pay stubs, payment receipts, contracts, declarations, warnings, statements, and or commercial documents.


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