scholarly journals The science of rumors

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Crescimbene ◽  
Federica La Longa ◽  
Tiziana Lanza
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Mathematical Structure ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Urban Legends ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
Final Question ◽  
Second World

<p>This study takes a soft scientific cut to talks about rumors, hoaxes and urban legends. Social psychology, more elegantly, uses the latin word rumor (rumour in British English), which means sound, voice, or gossip. In social, economical, political, cultural and scientific communication, rumors indicate news that is presumed true, that circulates without being confirmed or made evident. The scientific history of rumors is briefly described starting from the period of ancient Rome, throughout the Second World War and the Internet era, up to today. We will try to answer some questions that can be useful to scientists today. What are rumors? How are they born? How do they spread? By which laws are they regulated? How do we need to fight them? A final question regards the collocation of rumors into modern science. Science today is divided into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science (the latter of which generally lacks a basic mathematical structure); these terms, respectively, indicate the natural sciences, which investigate Nature, and the social/human sciences, which investigate man in all his facets. Maybe rumors can be thought of as a bridge suspended between two banks: those of ‘scientific truth’ and ‘human truth’.</p>

An Unexpected Path to Modernisation: The Case of German Artisans during the Second World War

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Mckitrick
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

On 10 July 1950, at the celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Wiesbaden Chamber of Artisans (Handwerkskammer), its president Karl Schöppler announced: ‘Today industry is in no way the enemy of Handwerk. Handwerk is not the enemy of industry.…’ These words, which accurately reflected the predominant point of view of the post-war chamber membership, and certainly of its politically influential leadership, marked a new era in the social, economic and political history of German artisans and, it is not too much to say, in the history of class relations in (West) Germany in general. Schöppler's immediate frame of reference was the long-standing and extremely consequential antipathy on the part of artisans towards industrial capitalism, an antipathy of which his listeners were well aware.

Neo-Malthusians, Eugenists, and the Declining Birth-Rate in England, 1900-1918

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Allen Soloway
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Behavioral Characteristics ◽  
World War ◽  
Education Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Birth Control Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Recent studies of the social history of birth control in America have noted the importance of eugenics in securing the acceptance of family planning between the two world wars. Similarly in England the endorsement of contraception as a method of “race improvement” by eugenists in the scientific, medical, academic and ecclesiastical communities greatly enhanced the credence and respectability of the birth control movement. In the anti-racist, genetically more sophisticated climate since the Second World War it is often forgotten how pervasive eugenic assumptions about human inheritance were in learned and socially elevated circles in the early twentieth century. Belief in the inheritability of myriad physical, psychological and behavioral characteristics, identifiable, even quantifiable, in particular ethnic groups and social classes was reinforced by expert scientific testimony, and, perhaps equally important, middle and upper class prejudices.Birth control leaders, whose respectability was always in some doubt, were for the most part no exception and readily mingled with the estimable worthies who adorned the ranks of the elitist Eugenics Education Society founded in 1907. Several officers of the old Malthusian League, including its last president, Charles Vickery Drysdale, and his wife, Bessie, were early if troublesome recruits to the Society, while Marie Stopes, the most dynamic promoter of birth control in England in the inter-war years, joined in 1912, and eventually became a Life Fellow who left the organization a financial legacy, her famous clinic and much of her library, upon her death in 1958.

From Freakonomics to Political Economy

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fine ◽  
Dimitris Milonakis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

AbstractIn this response to the symposium on our two books we try to deal as fully as possible in the brief space available with most of the major issues raised by our distinguished commentators. Although at least three of them are in agreement with the main thrust of the arguments put forward in our books, they all raise important issues relating to methodology, the history of economic thought (including omissions), and a number of more specific issues. Our answer is based on the restatement of the chief purpose of our two books, describing the intellectual history of the evolution of economic science emphasising the role of the excision of the social and the historical from economic theorising in the transition from (classical) political economy to (neoclassical) economics, only for the two to be reunited through the vulgar form of economics imperialism following the monolithic dominance of neoclassical economics at the expense of pluralism after the Second World War. The importance of political economy for the future of economic science is vigorously argued for.

Housing in the Latin American City, 1900–1976

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Yee
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Housing has been a central feature of Latin America’s dramatic transformation into the most urbanized region of the world. Between 1940 and 1970, the portion of people who lived in urban areas rose from 33 percent to 64 percent; a seismic shift that caused severe housing deficits, overcrowding, and sprawl in Latin America’s major cities. After the Second World War, these urban slums became a symbol of underdevelopment and a target for state-led modernization projects. At a time when Cold War tensions were escalating throughout the world, the region’s housing problems also became more politicized through a network of foreign aid agencies. These overlapping factors illustrate how the history of local housing programs were bound up with broader hemispheric debates over economic development and the role of the nation-state in social affairs. The history of urban housing in 20th-century Latin America can be divided into three distinct periods. The first encompasses the beginning of the 20th century, when issues of housing in the central-city districts were primarily viewed through the lens of public health. Leading scientists, city planners, psychiatrists, and political figures drew strong connections between the sanitary conditions of private domiciles and the social behavior of their residents in public spaces. After the Second World War, urban housing became a proving ground for popular ideas in the social sciences that stressed industrialization and technological modernization as the way forward for the developing world. In this second period, mass housing was defined by a central tension: the promotion of modernist housing complexes versus self-help housing—a process in which residents build their own homes with limited assistance from the state. By the 1970s, the balance had shifted from modernist projects to self-help housing, a development powerfully demonstrated by the 1976 United Nations (UN) Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I). This seminal UN forum marked a transitional moment when the concepts of self-help community development were formally adopted by emergent, neo-liberal economists and international aid agencies.

Back to the Origins: The Tragic History of the Szekler Sabbatarians

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-585
Author(s):  
Gábor Győrffy ◽  
Zoltán Tibori-Szabó ◽  
Júlia-Réka Vallasek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
Detailed Presentation

Sabbatarians were the only proselyte religious community that had an official institutional form in nineteenth-century Europe. This study aims to present the history and gradual disintegration of the Sabbatarian community and their acceptance of a common fate with Transylvanian Jewry during the Second World War. This is realized by, first, outlining the historical context of the formation of Sabbatarianism; second, by describing the social and political circumstances of Transylvanian Jews in the first half of the twentieth century; and third, by giving a detailed presentation of the 1944 deportations and other related events.

The Study of Organizations and Organizing Since 1945

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. March
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
World War 2 ◽  
The Social ◽  
20Th Century History ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

The history of organization studies is embedded in its times and the ways those times affect different regions differently. In particular, significant features of the field were molded by the moods and prejudices associated with academia after three critical events in 20th-century history: (1) the Second World War, (2) the social and political protest movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, (3) the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the triumph of markets. Speculating about the unfolding of the events of the future that will have similar impacts is discouraged by an awareness that neither their timing nor the severity of their impacts can be specified with any precision. In any event, our task is not to join any particular wave of the future, but to make small pieces of scholarship beautiful.

scholarly journals Re-reading Silko’s Ceremonies and American History

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (I) ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Qasim Shafiq ◽  
Shaheena Ayub Bhatti ◽  
Ghulam Murtaza
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Tribal Community ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Prose ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Second World

This article retrieves the history of Native American ceremonies to highlight the aboriginal ways of being. Using Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony to retrieve the reality of the ceremonies, I argue how the myths inscribed in Native American contemporary writings are the social and cultural embedment of the ceremonies in which they were written and thus the knowledge of prehistoric times. I focus on Silko’s modern techniques to revive the myths of oral tradition to understand and publicize the truths of Native American ceremonial world. She explains the ceremony of 1955 with reference to the ceremonies incorporated in Laguna myths, thereby juxtaposing two different time periods: the pre-Columbian timelessness and the post-second World War fragmented tribal community in Laguna in 1955. To understand the overlapping of poetic-prose stories I explain the function of ceremony in the prosperity of the Pueblo and assimilate the present in the past and the future.

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