scholarly journals The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1780) ◽  
pp. 20190007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhán M. Mattison ◽  
Mary K. Shenk ◽  
Melissa Emery Thompson ◽  
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder ◽  
Laura Fortunato
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Evolutionary Significance ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Numerous Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Evolutionarily Stable

Female-biased kinship (FBK) arises in numerous species and in diverse human cultures, suggesting deep evolutionary roots to female-oriented social structures. The significance of FBK has been debated for centuries in human studies, where it has often been described as difficult to explain. At the same time, studies of FBK in non-human animals point to its apparent benefits for longevity, social complexity and reproduction. Are female-biased social systems evolutionarily stable and under what circumstances? What are the causes and consequences of FBK? The purpose of this theme issue is to consolidate efforts towards understanding the evolutionary significance and stability of FBK in humans and other mammals. The issue includes broad theoretical and empirical reviews as well as specific case studies addressing the social and ecological correlates of FBK across taxa, time and space. It leverages a comparative approach to test existing hypotheses and presents novel arguments that aim to expand our understanding of how males and females negotiate kinship across diverse contexts in ways that lead to the expression of female biases in kinship behaviour and social structure. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals’.

scholarly journals Genetic relatedness delineates the social structure of southern Australian bottlenose dolphins

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 948-959 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Diaz-Aguirre ◽  
Guido J Parra ◽  
Cecilia Passadore ◽  
Luciana Möller
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Genetic Relatedness ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Bottlenose Dolphins ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Intrinsic Factors ◽  
Photo Identification ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modularity Analysis ◽  
Network Metrics

AbstractSocial relationships represent an adaptive behavioral strategy that can provide fitness benefits to individuals. Within mammalian societies, delphinids are known to form diverse grouping patterns and show a variety of social systems. However, how ecological and intrinsic factors have shaped the evolution of such diverse societies is still not well understood. In this study, we used photo-identification data and biopsy samples collected between March 2013 and October 2015 in Coffin Bay, a heterogeneous environment in South Australia, to investigate the social structure of southern Australian bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops cf. australis). Based on the data from 657 groups of dolphins, we used generalized affiliation indices, and applied social network and modularity methods to study affiliation patterns among individuals and investigate the potential presence of social communities within the population. In addition, we investigated genetic relatedness and kinship relationships within and between the communities identified. Modularity analysis revealed that the Coffin Bay population is structured into 2 similar sized, mixed-sex communities which differed in ranging patterns, affiliation levels and network metrics. Lagged association rates also indicated that nonrandom affiliations persisted over the study period. The genetic analyses suggested that there was higher relatedness, and a higher proportion of inferred full-sibs and half-sibs, within than between communities. We propose that differences in environmental conditions between the bays and kinship relationships are important factors contributing to the delineation and maintenance of this social structure.

Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha Muennich
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Rent Extraction ◽  
Free Competition ◽  
The Social

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely.

Feminist Challenges to the Social Structure and Sex Roles

1979 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen R. Kearney
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Sex Roles ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Feminine Identity ◽  
Voluntary Childlessness ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Complex Relationships

A social-psychological and historical context for understanding contemporary sex roles, fertility, parenting, and the family is provided by reviewing origins and objectives of the Women's Movement. Feminist efforts to change social structures affecting women's choice of roles and fertility require continued attention. Increased voluntary childlessness seriously challenges the concept of motherhood as central to adult feminine identity and legitimization of choice in whether or not to become a parent provides a new context for studying women, sex roles, fertility, and their complex relationships to the social structure. Continued challenges to premises, methodologies, and conclusions of such research are urged.

On the Social Origins of Agrarian Fascism in Italy

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank M. Snowden
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Po River ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
The North ◽  
Commercial Farming ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Societies

Before turning directly to fascism, we should recall certain facts that form the background to all that follows. In 1919, Italy, a country of about 35 million people, should be characterized neither as industrialized nor as underdeveloped, but as slowly and very unevenly industrializing. Still predominantly agricultural, the Italian peninsula can be divided into three distinct areas with markedly different social structures, each undergoing in very contrasting ways the twin transformations of the rise of industry and of intensive commercialized farming. The North was the most developed of the three areas, with the peninsula's most modern industrial enterprises heavily concentrated in the Milan-Genoa-Turin triangle, while commercial farming was centered in the fertile valley of the Po River. It is important to note, however, that even the North was still in a state of transition and that in the northern countryside more traditional systems of land tenure and cultivation still existed alongside some of the most mechanized farms in Europe. The other two areas of Italy—Center and South—were alike in being traditional societies less affected by modernization, though the Center of the peninsula and the South were very different social systems (1).

COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY AND COMPLETION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES

1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Mower White
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Balance Principle ◽  
The Social

Seventy-two Ss, of whom half were cognitively complex and half cognitively simple, made predictions about unknown relations in four-person social structures. Structures differed in the number of relations given. For those with two or three relations given, predictions of cognitively complex and cognitively simple Ss did not differ, all Ss making balanced predictions. For those with four or five relations given, cognitively complex Ss, to a greater extent than cognitively simple Ss, made balanced predictions. Cognitively simple Ss tended to make predictions based on consideration of fewer relations in the social structure. It is suggested that this result supports the contention that cognitively simple Ss become “overloaded” by smaller amounts of information than do cognitively complex Ss, and that such an explanation has relevance to the interpretation of the balance principle as a conceptual rule.

“Taking the Gravel Road”: Educational Aspirations of Working Class Malay Youths

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadzli Bin Baharom Adzahar
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Close Correspondence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gravel Road

Abstract Applying Bourdieu’s theoretical framework on the correspondence between mental structures and social structures, this paper examines the persistence of educational underachievement among working class Malay youths in Singapore. Accordingly, my first objective is to document the social structure, namely a largely working class neighbourhood where these Malay youths have grown up. My second aim is to analyse how everyday cultural practices and interactions among peers in the neighbourhood significantly reinforced these youths’ levelled aspirations. I maintain that by believing in ‘taking the gravel road’, which is symbolically rough, uneven and uncertain, these youths justified the irrelevance of doing well in school. Succinctly, this essay demonstrates the close correspondence between the perceptions of the odds of success and the educational underperformance of the Malay youths. Hence, this paper would be of interest to scholars in the Malay Peninsula, as well as experts concerned with the intertwining of education with class and ethnicity.

The power of social structure: how we became an intelligent lineage

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Resendes de Sousa António ◽  
Dirk Schulze-Makuch
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
New World ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Male Competition ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Social

AbstractNew findings pertinent to the human lineage origin (Ardipithecus ramidus) prompt a new analysis of the extrapolation of the social behavior of our closest relatives, the great apes, into human ‘natural social behavior’. With the new findings it becomes clear that human ancestors had very divergent social arrangements from the ones we observe today in our closest genetic relatives.The social structure of chimpanzees and gorillas is characterized by male competition. Aggression and the instigation of fear are common place. The morphology of A. ramidus points in the direction of a social system characterized by female-choice instead of male–male competition. This system tends to be characterized by reduced aggression levels, leading to more stable arrangements. It is postulated here that the social stability with accompanying group cohesion propitiated by this setting is favorable to the investment in more complex behaviors, the development of innovative approaches to solve familiar problems, an increase in exploratory behavior, and eventually higher intelligence and the use of sophisticated tools and technology.The concentration of research efforts into the study of social animals with similar social systems (e.g., New World social monkeys (Callitrichidae), social canids (Canidae) and social rodents (Rodentia)) are likely to provide new insights into the understanding of what factors determined our evolution into an intelligent species capable of advanced technology.

Logics of History as a Framework for an Integrated Social Science

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Event History ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Social Science ◽  
The Relationship

This essay surveys the contributions of William H. Sewell Jr.'sLogics of History and concludes that the book sketches a compelling agenda for an integrated historical social science. The author first summarizes Sewell's ontological and epistemological claims concerning social structure and event, history and temporality, and sociohistorical causality. The author then discusses five main areas in which ambiguities in Sewell's approach might be clarified or his arguments pushed farther. These concern (1) the relationship between historical event and traumatic event; (2) the idea of the unprecedented event or “antistructure”; (3) the theory of semiosis underlying Sewell's notion of a multiplicity of structures; and (4) the compatibilities and differences between the concepts of structure and mechanism (here the author argues that social structures are the distinctive “mechanisms” of the human or social sciences). Finally, (5) Sewell's call for “a more robust sense of the social” in historical writing locates the “social” mainly at the level of the metafield of power, or what regulation theory calls the mode of regulation; the author suggests a possible integration of this society-level concept with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of semiautonomous fields.

Sociology of social structures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ирина Подойницына ◽  
Irina Podoynicyna
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Regional Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rich People ◽  
The Republic ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Scientific Truth

The study of social structure, social stratification of society is the main topic of sociology. Knowledge of the social structure helps sociologists to perform a creative function to transform society. In the textbook I. I. Podoinitsyna examines the evolution of the views of foreign and domestic scientists on the processes of class formation and stratogenesis, comprehensively discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches to differentiation and analysis of class groups and factors of class formation. The textbook analyzes in detail the post-perestroika socio-structural processes in the Russian Federation, new approaches to the study of social differentiation of society, which began to develop in Russia due to transparency, restructuring, openness to ideological teachings penetrating from Abroad. The profile of social stratification of modern Russia appears to us in a new perspective, as if "bifurcated": we see Russia marginalized and Russia entrepreneurs, Russia, immersed in even greater poverty than we have seen in Soviet times, and Russia new managers, rich people, entrepreneurs and innovators. Exclusive are the chapters of the textbook devoted to the analysis of the regional social structure — in this case, the Yakut society, or the society of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The transformation of the social structure of Yakutia is considered in retrospect, since the XVIII century. The author analyzes the socio-professional, socio-cultural "lattice" of the social structure of the Republic, the ways and lifestyles of the population, the "breakthrough" of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the information society. The author of the textbook focuses on the methods by which you can study the social structure of society, including the technology of mathematical and statistical analysis. The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) acts in this textbook as a kind of model of local, regional society, which should be studied by special methods. The tutorial has tests, control questions for each Chapter. Each Chapter is also provided with a detailed summary of the findings of the material presented. The scientific book discusses the prospects for the development of sociology of social structures in postmodern conditions, the emergence of a new approach to scientific truth. A large number of empirical, factual material — the results of studies in Russia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) - is not just illustrative material that enriches the text of the textbook, but also helps to establish a bridge between theoretical and applied methods of analysis, on the example of these studies, the author demonstrates how to interpret the primary sociological data.

scholarly journals Pathways of information transmission among wild songbirds follow experimentally imposed changes in social foraging structure

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 20160144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh A. Firth ◽  
Ben C. Sheldon ◽  
Damien R. Farine
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Social Learning Strategies

Animals regularly use information from others to shape their decisions. Yet, determining how changes in social structure affect information flow and social learning strategies has remained challenging. We manipulated the social structure of a large community of wild songbirds by controlling which individuals could feed together at automated feeding stations (selective feeders). We then provided novel ephemeral food patches freely accessible to all birds and recorded the spread of this new information. We demonstrate that the discovery of new food patches followed the experimentally imposed social structure and that birds disproportionately learnt from those whom they could forage with at the selective feeders. The selective feeders reduced the number of conspecific information sources available and birds subsequently increased their use of information provided by heterospecifics. Our study demonstrates that changes to social systems carry over into pathways of information transfer and that individuals learn from tutors that provide relevant information in other contexts.

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