Doctrinal Ritual, Identification, and Social Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
Harvey Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
World History ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Way

The doctrinal mode appears to have first emerged in world history with the advent of farming, helping to establish the first truly large-scale societies, in which identification with group categories became increasingly important, paving the way for new forms of political association. Many of the first states dominated by new doctrinal religions appear to have fostered extreme forms of inequality, epitomized by the deification of rulers and cruel practices, such as human sacrifice. But once societies exceeded a certain threshold in scale and complexity, the empires that seemed best able to flourish were those that adopted more ethical forms of doctrinal religion, mobilizing strong norms enforced as much by peer-to-peer policing as by top-down coercion.

scholarly journals Big Gods did not drive the rise of big societies throughout world history

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey Whitehouse ◽  
Pieter François ◽  
Daniel Hoyer ◽  
Kevin Chekov Feeney ◽  
Enrico Cioni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
World History ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Global History ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analyze Data ◽  
Supernatural Punishment

The origins of religion and of complex societies represent evolutionary puzzles. The ‘Big Gods Hypothesis’ offers a solution to both puzzles by proposing that beliefs in moralizing supernatural punishment culturally evolved to facilitate cooperation among strangers in large-scale societies. Although previous research has suggested an association between the presence of Big Gods and big societies, the relationship between the two is disputed, and attempts to establish causality have been hampered by limitations in the availability of detailed global longitudinal data. To address these issues, we analyze data in the Seshat Global History Databank that coded 309 past societies for variables capturing beliefs in moralizing supernatural punisment and social complexity. The longitudinal (time-resolved) nature of Seshat data enables us to test evolutionary hypotheses about processes generating social change and distinguish between competing causal scenarios. We find that beliefs in moralizing supernatural punishment only appear after the largest increases in social complexity and that a formal analysis designed to test for causal relationships failed to detect a statistically significant effect of moralizing supernatural punishment on social complexity.

scholarly journals Explaining the Rise of Moralizing Religions: A test of competing hypotheses using the Seshat Databank

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Turchin ◽  
Harvey Whitehouse ◽  
Pieter François ◽  
Daniel Hoyer ◽  
Selin Nugent ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
World History ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Global History ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Intense Debate

The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address all these problems, we utilize Seshat: Global History Databank, a vast storehouse of information designed to test theories concerning the drivers of social complexity in world history. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we consider the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and affluence in the rise of moralizing religions. Using a broad range of nuanced measures of moralizing religion, we find strong support for previous research showing that institutions endorsing beliefs in supernatural enforcement arise after, not before, the sharpest rises in social complexity in world history. In addition, our analyses suggest that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played a significant role in driving the rise of both social complexity and moralizing religions. The data, methods, and results presented in this paper have been made publicly available online for others to inspect and critique, allowing additional analyses to be run and alternative assumptions to be tested, in parallel with peer review and prior to publication.

The Mistaken Identification of “The West” with “Modernity”

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
John Obert Voll
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Important Impact ◽  
Mistaken Identification ◽  
Nature Ofthe ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

The relationships between Islam and the West are complex. Even theperceptions of those relations have an important impact on the nature ofthe interactions. If the basic images that are used in discussing “Islam andthe West” are themselves ill-defiied or viewed in inconsistent ways, therelationships themselves are affected in sometimes dangerous ways.Inconsistent and contradictory terms of analysis can lead to misunderstandingand conflict.One of the most frequent conceptual mistakes made in discussingIslam and the West in the modem era is the identification of “the West”with “modemity.” This mistake has a significant impact on the way peeple view the processes of modernization in the Islamic world as well as onthe way people interpret the relationships between Islam and the West inthe contemporary era.The basic generalizations resulting from the following analysis can bestated simply: 1) “modernity“ is not uniquely “western”; 2) “the West” isnot simply “modernity”; and 3) the identifixation of “the West” with“modemity” has important negative consequences for understanding therelationships between Islam and the West. Modernity and the West aretwo different concepts and historic entities. To use the terms interchangeablyis to invite unnecessary confusion and create possible conflict’andinconsistency. This article will address the problem of definition and theapplication of the defined terms to interpreting actual experiences andrelationships.Understanding the difficulties raised by the identification of theWest with modernity involves a broader analysis within the frameworkof world history and global historical perspectives. In such an analysis, ...

Explanation and Understanding in Animal Narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Herman
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Human Behaviors ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Strategic Oscillation ◽  
Experimental Narrative ◽  
The Way

With chapter 6 having described the way norms for mental-state ascriptions operate in a top-down manner in discourse domains, chapter 7 explores how individual narratives can in turn have a bottom-up impact on the ascriptive norms circulating within particular domains. To this end, the chapter discusses how Thalia Field’s 2010 experimental narrative Bird Lovers, Backyard employs a strategic oscillation between two nomenclatures that can be used to profile nonhuman as well as human behaviors: (1) the register of action, which characterizes behavior in terms of motivations, goals, and projects; and (2) the register of events, which characterizes behavior in terms of caused movements that have duration in time and direction in space. In braiding together these two registers, Field’s text suggests not only how discourse practices can be repatterned, but also how such repatterning enables broader paradigm shifts—in this case shifts in ways of understanding cross-species encounters and entanglements.

scholarly journals Social Media in and Around a Temporary Large-Scale Refugee Shelter in the Netherlands

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110249
Author(s):  
Peer Smets ◽  
Younes Younes ◽  
Marinka Dohmen ◽  
Kees Boersma ◽  
Lenie Brouwer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Top Down ◽  
And Migration

During the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, temporary refugee shelters arose in the Netherlands to shelter the large influx of asylum seekers. The largest shelter was located in the eastern part of the country. This shelter, where tents housed nearly 3,000 asylum seekers, was managed with a firm top-down approach. However, many residents of the shelter—mainly Syrians and Eritreans—developed horizontal relations with the local receiving society, using social media to establish contact and exchange services and goods. This case study shows how various types of crisis communication played a role and how the different worlds came together. Connectivity is discussed in relation to inclusion, based on resilient (non-)humanitarian approaches that link society with social media. Moreover, we argue that the refugee crisis can be better understood by looking through the lens of connectivity, practices, and migration infrastructure instead of focusing only on state policies.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

Attention Biases Visual Activity in Visual Short-term Memory

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1377-1389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo-Cheng Kuo ◽  
Mark G. Stokes ◽  
Alexandra M. Murray ◽  
Anna Christina Nobre
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Visual Activity ◽  
Visual Short Term Memory ◽  
Large Scale Network ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
Scale Network

In the current study, we tested whether representations in visual STM (VSTM) can be biased via top–down attentional modulation of visual activity in retinotopically specific locations. We manipulated attention using retrospective cues presented during the retention interval of a VSTM task. Retrospective cues triggered activity in a large-scale network implicated in attentional control and led to retinotopically specific modulation of activity in early visual areas V1–V4. Importantly, shifts of attention during VSTM maintenance were associated with changes in functional connectivity between pFC and retinotopic regions within V4. Our findings provide new insights into top–down control mechanisms that modulate VSTM representations for flexible and goal-directed maintenance of the most relevant memoranda.

scholarly journals A DHT-Based Discovery Service for the Internet of Things

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Paganelli ◽  
David Parlanti
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Future Internet ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Dangerous Goods ◽  
Discovery Service ◽  
Single Attribute ◽  
Smart Things ◽  
The Internet Of Things

Current trends towards the Future Internet are envisaging the conception of novel services endowed with context-aware and autonomic capabilities to improve end users’ quality of life. The Internet of Things paradigm is expected to contribute towards this ambitious vision by proposing models and mechanisms enabling the creation of networks of “smart things” on a large scale. It is widely recognized that efficient mechanisms for discovering available resources and capabilities are required to realize such vision. The contribution of this work consists in a novel discovery service for the Internet of Things. The proposed solution adopts a peer-to-peer approach for guaranteeing scalability, robustness, and easy maintenance of the overall system. While most existing peer-to-peer discovery services proposed for the IoT support solely exact match queries on a single attribute (i.e., the object identifier), our solution can handle multiattribute and range queries. We defined a layered approach by distinguishing three main aspects: multiattribute indexing, range query support, peer-to-peer routing. We chose to adopt an over-DHT indexing scheme to guarantee ease of design and implementation principles. We report on the implementation of a Proof of Concept in a dangerous goods monitoring scenario, and, finally, we discuss test results for structural properties and query performance evaluation.

God’s Marketeer

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Martijn Abrahamse
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
The Way ◽  
Newspaper Articles

Summary This article deals with the reception of Billy Graham and modern evangelicalism in the fragmented society of the Netherlands in 1954. It takes its departure from the stream of newspaper articles published between February and June in response to the Greater London Crusade and Graham’s first large scale rally in Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium. The analysis of the reports in different newspapers, which represent the different social groups (catholic, protestant, socialist and liberal) in Dutch society, reveals a significant shift in the way Billy Graham was perceived: from initial scepticism to mild appreciation. This change in press coverage, it is concluded, is mainly due to the different way in which Billy Graham presented himself compared with the large-scale publicity which surrounded his campaign.

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