scholarly journals Learning about social category-based obligations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Chalik ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Group Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Learning

Two studies tested how children (N = 196) use a framework theory of the social world to (a) shape their expectations of and (b) guide new learning about social behaviors. In Study 1, when introduced to two novel social groups, children predicted that an agent would preferentially harm members of the other group, be friends with members of their own group, and save members of their own group from harm. In Study 2, 4-year-old children who had been shown evidence of prior inter-group and intra-group interactions predicted that future behaviors would match the evidence they were shown only if the interactions they observed were consistent with their expectations of how members of groups should relate to one another. Thus, children use their framework theory to predict social behaviors and guide new learning about the social world.

Interactional means of teaming up: enacting the features of contemporary working life in a theater performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Nissi ◽  
Melisa Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Working Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Workplace Organization ◽  
The One

Abstract The article examines how the aspects of the social world are enacted in a theater play. The data come from a videotaped performance of a professional theater, portraying a story about a workplace organization going through a personnel training program. The aim of the study is to show how the core theme of the play – the teaming up of the personnel – is constructed in the live performance through a range of interactional means. By focusing on four core episodes of the play, the study on the one hand points out to the multiple changes taking place both within and between the different episodes of the play. On the other hand, the episodes of collective action involving the semiotic resources of singing and dancing are shown to represent the ideals of teamwork in distinct ways. The study contributes to the understanding of socially and politically oriented theater as a distinct, pre-rehearsed social setting and the means and practices that it deploys when enacting the aspects of the contemporary societal issues.

scholarly journals Content and stylistic peculiarities of non-canonical Orthodox Internet Sermon in modern Russia

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Konstantin S. Sharov
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Goals And Objectives ◽  
Technical Professions

The paper is concerned with a study of the changing content and style of non-canonical Christian religious preaching in the digital age. Special attention is paid to the analysis of modern rhetoric Christian preachers practice in their Internet channels, forums and blogs. It is shown that the content of the Internet sermon is largely determined by the Internet users themselves and the topics of their appeals. The fundamental characteristics of the content of the Internet sermon are: 1) focus on the individual, their private goals and objectives, not just on theological problems; 2) rethinking the phenomenon of the neighbour; 3) a shift from the Hesychast tradition of preaching the importance of inner spiritual concentration to the preaching of religious interactivity. The observed stylistic features of the digital preaching can be summarised as follows: 1) moving away from simple answers to the rhetoric of new questions addressed to the audience; 2) empathy, co-participation with a person in his/her life conflicts and experiences; 3) desire to share religious information, not to impose it; 4) resorting to various rhetorical techniques to reach different audiences; 5) a tendency to use slang, sometimes even irrespective of the audience’s language preferences and expectations. It should be pointed out that the Orthodox Internet sermon in the Russian Internet space has a dual and contradictory nature. On the one hand, this phenomenon can be regarded as positive for the Orthodox preaching in general, since it is a means of spreading Christian ideas in the social groups that do not constitute a core of parishioners of Orthodox churches, for example, schoolchildren, students, representatives of technical professions, etc. On the other hand, the effectiveness of such preaching is still unclear. Lack of reliable statistics as well as the results of the survey related to the Orthodox Internet preaching gives us no opportunity to judge about effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the phenomenon at this stage of its development.

scholarly journals How origin stories shape children's social reasoning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Foster-Hanson ◽  
Marjorie Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Social Reasoning ◽  
Common Mechanism ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Explicit Information ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Embedded Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many

How do we explain the behavior of the many people we meet throughout our lives? Children and adults sometimes consider other people in terms of their social category memberships (e.g., assuming that a girl likes pink because she is a girl), but people view some categories as more informative than others, and which people think of as informative varies across cultural contexts. One type of culturally-embedded knowledge that appears to shape whether people view particular categories as providing explanations for behavior are beliefs about how the category came to be. In the current studies with 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 206), we ask how learning about quasi-scientific or supernatural causal origins of a category shapes young children’s use of categories to predict and explain what category members are like. In Study 1, children more often used a category to explain behavior when they heard the category described as intentionally created by a powerful being than when they heard no explicit information about its origins. In Studies 2 and 3, learning about both quasi-scientific and supernatural causal origins shaped children’s social category beliefs via a common mechanism: by signaling that the category marked a non-arbitrary way of dividing up the social world.

Positive regard for difference without identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contact Theory ◽  
Contact Hypothesis ◽  
Trans People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Cis And Trans

The contact hypothesis has been the go-to social psychology concept for promoting better relations between unequal social groups since its inception in the context of ‘racial’ de-segregation in the USA. The idea that contact between groups reduces prejudice has been applied to a range of dominant / subordinate social groups such as ethnic groups, homo/heterosexuals, cis and trans people. This chapter will question whether the aims and premises of contact theory are still useful in the context of increasingly subtle and systemic biases and inequalities, and whether and how it might be usefully extended to relations between more complex identities than simple pre-defined oppositional ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups.  To do so, it considers some examples of intergroup othering using case studies pertaining to backlashes against gender, sexual and ethnic diversity in the contemporary Australian context. This chapter proposes the fruitful combination of queer ethics, post-tolerance political theory and the social psychology concept of ‘allophilia’ (love for the other) to move towards fostering ‘positive regard’ as an alternative way to tackle prejudice. It suggests that queer ethics can lend a convincing strategy here, which I call ‘reading queerly’, that is, being able to approach an other with an openness that neither homogenises nor subordinates difference.

The Credulity of Conspiracy Theorists

2018 ◽  
pp. 422-431
Author(s):  
Brian L. Keeley
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Inquiry

Where does entertaining (or promoting) conspiracy theories stand with respect to rational inquiry? According to one view, conspiracy theorists are open-minded skeptics, being careful not to accept uncritically common wisdom, exploring alternative explanations of events no matter how unlikely they might seem at first glance. Seen this way, they are akin to scientists attempting to explain the social world. On the other hand, they are also sometimes seen as overly credulous, believing everything they read on the Internet, say. In addition to conspiracy theorists and scientists, another significant form of explanation of the events of the world can be found in religious contexts, such as when a disaster is explained as being an “act of God.” By comparing conspiratorial thinking with scientific and religious forms of explanation, features of all three are brought into clearer focus. For example, anomalies and a commitment to naturalist explanation are seen as important elements of scientific explanation, although the details are less clear. This paper uses conspiracy theories as a lens through which to investigate rational or scientific inquiry. In addition, a better understanding of the scientific method as it might be applied in the study of events of interest to conspiracy theorists can help understand their epistemic virtues and vices.

Who is my stranger?

2018 ◽  
pp. 176-201
Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Gain ◽  
The Future ◽  
Traditional Societies

This chapter explores the social and economic aspects of gift-exchange as a universal phenomenon. Examples drawn from both complex and traditional societies indicate that the personal gift and counter-gift, in which givers and receivers are known to each other and personally communicate with each other, is characterised by a great variety of sentiments and purposes. At one end of the spectrum, economic purposes may be dominant as in some forms of first-gifts which aim to achieve a material gain or to enhance prestige or to bring about material gain in the future. At the other end are those gifts whose purposes are predominantly social and moral in that as ‘total social facts’ they aim to serve friendly relationships, affection, and harmony between known individuals and social groups. Meanwhile, social gifts and actions carrying no explicit or implicit individual right to a return gift or action are forms of ‘creative altruism’.

Peasant Resistance in Ethiopia: the Case of Weyane

1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gebru Tareke
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pastoral Communities ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peasant Resistance

Weyane was a spontaneous, localized peasant uprising with limited objectives. It occurred in 1943 because several disaffected social groups in the eastern part of Tigrai believed that they could defeat or at least extract substantial concessions from a weak transitional government. The multiplicity of objectives roughly correspond to the divergent interests of the participants: the sectarian nobility wanted a greater share in the regional reallocation of power, the semi-pastoral communities of the lowlands were interested in pre-empting feudal incorporation, and the highland cultivators wanted to terminate the excessive demands of officialdom and militia. The convergence of these forces made Weyane possible; the disorganization of the ruling strata and the subsequent defection of a segment of the territorial nobility enormously enhanced the peasants' capacity for collective action. But this very heterogeneity comprised the peasants' objectives. The revolt lacked a coherent set of goals, nor did it have a specific program for social action. The rebels attacked neither the legitimacy of the monarchy nor the ideological basis of the Ethiopian aristocracy. In the end, Weyane buttressed the feudal order, and was probably instrumental in strengthening Ethiopia's neo-colonial link with the West. In the aftermath of rebellion, the Tigrai nobility did get its rights and prerogatives recognized, to the same extent that the nobility in the other northern provinces did. The government undercut the nobility's political autonomy, but paid the price of reinforcing their social position. On the other hand, in reaction to Weyane, the state destroyed the social basis of clan authority and autonomy, and reduced the Raya and Azebo to landless peasants. Weyane marked the end of conflict between centrifugal and centralizing forces, but did not eliminate the social roots of popular protest.

scholarly journals Outside Caste? The Enclosure of Caste and Claims to Castelessness in India and the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mosse
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Caste Discrimination ◽  
The Social ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scholarly Discourse

AbstractCaste has always generated political and scholarly controversy, but the forms that this takes today newly combine anti-caste activism with counter-claims that caste is irrelevant or non-existent, or claims to castelessness. Claims to castelessness are, in turn, viewed by some as a new disguise for caste power and privilege, while castlessness is also an aspiration for people subject to caste-based discrimination. This article looks at elite claims to “enclose” caste within religion, specifically Hinduism, and the Indian nation so as to restrict the field of social policy that caste applies to, to exempt caste-based discrimination from the law, and to limit the social politics of caste. It does so through a comparative analysis of two cases. The first is the exclusion of Christian and Muslim Dalits—members of castes subordinated as “untouchable”—from provisions and protections as Scheduled Castes in India. The other case is that of responses to the introduction of caste into anti-discrimination law in the UK. While Hindu organizations in the UK reject “caste” as a colonial and racist term and deploy postcolonial scholarship to deny caste discrimination, Dalit organizations, representing its potential victims, turn to scholarly discourse on caste, race, or human rights to support their cause. These are epistemological disputes about categories of description and how “the social” is made available for public debate, and especially for law. Such disputes engage with anthropology, whose analytical terms animate and change the social world that is their subject.

CONCEPTUAL BLENDING IN METAPHORS IN THE 2016 PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 281-285
Author(s):  
Alzira Akhsianovna Minikeeva ◽  
Aida Gumerovna Sadykova ◽  
Edward Lazzerini
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
The Social ◽  
Teachers And Students

Purpose: The article examines metaphor as transferring features of the social world onto the other elements of reality, the 2016 pre-election campaign in particular; the theory of conceptual integration of J. Fauconnier and M. Turner is used to analyzing the metaphor. Methodology: As a material of the research, there were examined transcripts of the 2016 pre-election campaign debates for the presidential position of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. Result: The analysis reveals convergent and divergent features of metaphor in the pre-election campaign of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. Metaphor in D. Trump’s texts tends to focus on conceptual models ‘we’ and ‘they’ which is deduced with the help of quantitative analysis whereas in H. Clinton’s texts ‘divided nation’ model is mostly described through metaphor. Applications: This research can be used for universities, teachers, and students. Novelty/Originality: In this research, the model of Conceptual Blending in Metaphors in the 2016 Pre-Election Campaign is presented in a comprehensive and complete manner.

Rules, Know-How, and the Future of Moral Cognition

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 291-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Churchland
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Professor Clark's splendid essay represents a step forward from which there should be no retreat. Our de facto moral cognition involves a complex and evolving interplay between, on the one hand, the non discursive cognitive mechanisms of the biological brain, and, on the other, the often highly discursive extra-personal “scaffolding” that structures the social world in which our brains are normally situated, a world that has been, to a large extent, created by our own moral and political activity. That interplay extends the reach and elevates the quality of the original nondiscursive cognition, and thus any adequate account of moral cognition must address both of these contributing dimensions. An account that focuses only on brain mechanisms will be missing something vital.

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