scholarly journals Neuronal Superhubs: Elite Networks that Rule Synchrony

2021 ◽  
pp. 153575972110521
Author(s):  
Shilpa D. Kadam
Keyword(s):  
Elite Networks

The Mindful Elite

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Kucinskas
Keyword(s):  
Fortune 500 ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Fortune 500 Companies ◽  
Elite Networks ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The People ◽  
Fortune 100 ◽  
Public Consciousness

From the halls of the Ivy League to the C-suite at Fortune 500 companies, this book reveals the people behind the mindfulness movement, and the engine they built to propel mindfulness into public consciousness. Based on over a hundred interviews with meditating scientists, religious leaders, educators, businesspeople, and investors, this book shows how this highly accomplished, affluent group has popularized meditation as a tool for health, happiness, and social reform over the past forty years. Rather than working through temples or using social movement tactics like protest to improve society, they mobilized by building elite networks advocating the benefits of meditation across professions. They built momentum by drawing in successful, affluent people and their prestigious institutions, including Ivy League and flagship research universities, and Fortune 100 companies like Google and General Mills. To broaden meditation’s appeal, they made manifold adaptations along the way. In the end, does mindfulness really make our society better? Or has mindfulness lost its authenticity? This book reveals how elite movements can spread, and how powerful spiritual and self-help movements can transform individuals in their wake. Yet, spreading the dharma came with unintended consequences. With their focus on individual transformation, the mindful elite have fallen short of the movement’s lofty ambitions to bring about broader structural and institutional change. Ultimately, this idealistic myopia unintentionally came to reinforce some of the problems it originally aspired to solve.

The Cultural Roots of Estonia's Successful Transition: How Historical Legacies Shaped the 1990s

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Bennich-Björkman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Democratic Government ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Elite Networks ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Legacies ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article investigates the cultural roots of Estonia's surprisingly successful transitions in the 1990s. Taking the point of departure in historical institutionalism, two layers of political cultural legacies are identified as particularly crucial in preparing Estonia for the democratic government installed after independence. First, the article argues that even in a Baltic context, Estonia stood out as a hotbed for social initiatives and elite networks during Communist times. Second, to understand why such liberalisation within the authoritarian Communist regime started earlier in Estonia than elsewhere in the Soviet Union, there is a need to acknowledge the importance that the historical experiences of the inter-war republic played. Estonia then developed a civic culture that partly survived even during the Päts regime from 1934 to 1939. These experiences surfaced once the yolk of Stalinism was lifted in the 1950s and shaped Estonia under Communism into a society of “collective mobilization” where democratically inclined counter-elites could form.

scholarly journals The affective extension of ‘family’ in the context of changing elite business networks

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872672092407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zografia Bika ◽  
Michael L Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Family Business ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Emotional Bonds ◽  
Elite Networks ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Drawing on 49 oral-history interviews with Scottish family business owner-managers, six key-informant interviews, and secondary sources, this interdisciplinary study analyses the decline of kinship-based connections and the emergence of new kinds of elite networks around the 1980s. As the socioeconomic context changed rapidly during this time, cooperation built primarily around literal family ties could not survive unaltered. Instead of finding unity through bio-legal family connections, elite networks now came to redefine their ‘family businesses’ in terms of affectively loaded ‘family values’ such as loyalty, care, commitment, and even ‘love’. Consciously nurturing ‘as-if-family’ emotional and ethical connections arose as a psychologically effective way to bring together network members who did not necessarily share pre-existing connections of bio-legal kinship. The social-psychological processes involved in this extension of the ‘family’ can be understood using theories of the moral sentiments first developed in the Scottish Enlightenment. These theories suggest that, when the context is amenable, family-like emotional bonds can be extended via sympathy to those to whom one is not literally related. As a result of this ‘progress of sentiments’, one now earns his/her place in a Scottish family business, not by inheriting or marrying into it, but by performing family-like behaviours motivated by shared ethics and affects.

Transnational Advocacy and NGOs in the Digital Era: New Forms of Networked Power

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Hall ◽  
Hans Peter Schmitz ◽  
J Michael Dedmon
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
Digital Activism ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Elite Networks

AbstractInternational relations (IR) scholars have recognized the importance of technology in enabling nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to build transnational networks and enhance their influence. However, IR scholars have typically focused on elite networks across NGOs, states, and international organizations. This article considers how digital technologies generate new types of networked power between NGOs and their members. Digital tools allow for fast feedback from supporters, rapid surges in mobilization, and more decentralized campaigns. Importantly, in the digital era, NGOs must decide not only which digital platforms to use, but also whether to devolve decision-making to their supporters. Two questions arise: First, do NGO staff or supporters primarily define and produce advocacy content? Second, is the goal of digital activism to broaden or intensify participation? Answers to these questions generate four digital strategies: proselytizing, testing, conversing, and facilitating. These strategies change advocacy practices, but only facilitating strategies open up new forms of networked power based on supporter-to-supporter connections. Digital strategies have profound ramifications for individual organizations, the nature of the advocacy sector, and its power in relation to states, corporations, and other nonstate actors. Digital adoption patterns shape how NGOs choose campaigns, how they legitimate their claims, and what strategies they rely on.

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