Liturgical Time in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Liturgies are communal in nature, and in the context of the medieval Christian economy of time they are developed and utilised to quantify, consecrate, control, utilise and unify time for the comprehensive end of the welfare of the society, both in the Here and in the Here-after. The liturgy was a social institution, and functioned for anniversaries, holy days, holidays and rituals that were the means of medieval social integrity. In the economy of socio-political and ethical life, the medieval Church linked the sacred to the secular by means of the liturgy. They were used for meditation, as well as a measurement of time, and arguably they were manipulated to parody or satirise the strictly hierarchal estates of the medieval society. Though one of the least liturgical books of his time, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is framed by the liturgical institution of the pilgrimage. Actually a pilgrim travelogue, it depicts the secularisation of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, and paradoxically, a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.

The social specificities of hostility toward vaccination against Covid-19 in France

Equal Access to the COVID-19 vaccine for all remains a major public health issue. The current study compared the prevalence of vaccination reluctance in general and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and social and health factors associated with intentions to receive the vaccine. A random socio-epidemiological population-based survey was conducted in France in November 2020, in which 85,855 adults participants were included in this study. We used logistic regressions to study being "not at all in favor" to vaccination in general, and being "certainly not" willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Our analysis highlighted a gendered reluctance toward vaccination in general but even more so regarding vaccination against COVID-19 (OR = 1.88 (95% CI: 1.79–1.97)). We also found that people at the bottom of the social hierarchy, in terms of level of education, financial resources, were more likely to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine (from OR = 1.22 (95% CI:1.10–1.35) for respondents without diploma to OR = 0.52 (95% CI:0.47–0.57) for High school +5 or more years level). People from the French overseas departments, immigrants and descendants of immigrants, were all more reluctant to the Covid-19 vaccine (first-generation Africa/Asia immigrants OR = 1.16 (95% CI:1.04–1.30)) versus OR = 2.19 (95% CI:1.96–2.43) for the majority population). Finally, our analysis showed that those who reported not trusting the government were more likely to be Covid-19 vaccine-reluctant (OR = 3.29 (95% CI: 3.13–3.45)). Specific campaigns should be thought beforehand to reach women and people at the bottom of the social hierarchy to avoid furthering social inequalities in terms of morbidity and mortality.

Social Capital and Entrepreneurship

This chapter presents a social capital point of view of entrepreneurship and how the assets and value embedded in entrepreneur social relations could support the success of the enterprise, especially small ones. Social connections are unique in nature, are personal and stable in the long run. These features make them very unique and difficult to imitate. Therefore, if used properly, based on the position of the entrepreneur in the social hierarchy, it can generate or at least behave as a very unique and inimitable source of competitive advantage. Capitalizing on such resources could be of help to entrepreneurs especially in times of high competitive rivalry.

From Aboriginal Equality to Limited and Unstable Inequality

During the first 97 percent of the approximately 200,000-year history of Homo sapiens, when humans existed as hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists, they lived with little political and economic inequality, due to the ready availability of stone weapons and ability of the weaker ones to form defensive coalitions blocking bullies’ attempts to amass political power. Their egalitarian incentive structure rewarded them for sharing food, child care, and practically everything else. The slow adoption of agriculture beginning about 10,000 years ago created the material condition on which a limited degree of social hierarchy could develop. About 9,000 years ago, chiefs arose by ideologically claiming special access to celestial powers to better assure the welfare of the community. They thereby gained greater access to material goods and mates. However, their legitimacy was fragile, readily upset by poor harvests or other catastrophes that delegitimated their ideology and returned their societies to economic and political equality.

The State, Civilization, and Extreme Inequality

Agriculture set the preconditions for metallurgy and sophisticated military organization, facilitating the rise of the state and civilization about 5,500 years ago. Whereas earlier stone weapons, available to all, served to preclude the formation of elites and inequality, expensive metal weapons, superior organizational skills, and ideology enabled elites to subjugate all others and extract their surplus, leaving the latter with bare subsistence. This elite formed the state, that social agency with a comparative advantage in violence. Social hierarchy became hereditary and increasingly rigid, and inequality became extreme. Elites gained highly disproportionate sexual access to women, often enclosed in harems. Understandably, rulers would strive to appease potential internal usurpers by protecting their property rights and ability to extract surplus from their subordinates. Until the rise of capitalism and a bourgeoisie in Western Europe, this appeasement of potential usurpers and elites generally precluded robust and sustainable economic dynamism.

The Making of Business Nobility. The Social Rise of Austrian Businessmen after 1848

In the 19th century, the society of the Habsburg monarchy underwent a fundamental transformation. The changes associated with the year 1848 and the demise of the estate society also significantly affected the social position of businessmen. Their position before this date was not legally defined and prestige did not depend on their property, but on their place in the traditional ranking of the social hierarchy associated with the possession of burgher rights or the noble title. Their prestige began to grow after this date, mainly due to the ever closer cooperation with the state and growing political influence. In the new era, the noble title was not a prerequisite for belonging to the elite, but for many people it was still a symbol of prestige and many businessmen sought it. They saw in it a demonstration of their achievements and a fulcrum for the historical memory of their entire family.

Collective Autonomy: Why Groups Fight for Power and Status

People experience “collective autonomy restriction” when they believe other groups want to restrict their own group from freely expressing its social identity and determining its behavior. We review emerging research on the negative consequences of collective autonomy restriction for well-being, as well as its implications for group members’ motivation to fight for their place within social hierarchies. We propose that group members desire two resources tied to having a favorable position within the social hierarchy – structural power (i.e., the ability to influence and resist influence from other groups) and status (being positively valued and perceived as moral by others) – because they believe that having power and status are necessary to secure their group’s collective autonomy. We hypothesize that group members anticipate that other groups might restrict their group if they lack the structural power to resist outside influences, or if they are perceived as negative or immoral and worthy of restriction. We apply this power and status perspective of collective autonomy restriction to predict (1) when disempowered groups are most likely to fight against (vs. tolerate) their disadvantaged position and (2) when powerful groups are most likely to relinquish power and acknowledge their transgressions (versus defensively maintain their privileged position).

Honorification in Dzongkha

This chapter demonstrates that honorific vocabulary and constructions in Dzongkha function in multiple ways as points of integration between language and society. One function is overt, and is used as a linguistic expression of the importance of maintaining the cultural traditions of Bhutanese society. This function indexes the social hierarchy of clausal referents and encodes speaker politeness. Two verb types, honorific and humilific, are among the honorification strategies that are used to profile social hierarchy: honorific verbs focus on the elevated status of the referent whereas humilific verbs are inherently relative, and function to show the comparative social gap between clausal referents. The chapter demonstrates that another function of honorifics appears in natural conversation among social equals, and this is to mitigate the speaker’s perception of imposing on the interlocutor, rather than to profile distance in a social hierarchy. The chapter also shows that unlike many classification systems which are based on perceived physical characteristics of the referent, honorific nouns have a classificatory function that is based on body part or human utility.

Perceptions and explanations of status in the United Arab Emirates: The role of ascribed and achieved characteristics

Ascribed and achieved characteristics influence individuals’ positions in a social hierarchy. I explore how status characteristics and status ideologies influence expectations about economic opportunities in the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy, highly diverse, and internationally stratified society where beliefs in meritocracy are nationally supported. In Studies 1 and 2, participants reported the extent to which they perceived various characteristics to influence an individual’s salary. Participants whose nationality placed them higher in the economic hierarchy expected achieved markers of status to play a larger role than ascribed markers in determining pay. Across groups, the more participants believed in meritocracy, the more they expected achieved markers to play a role. In Study 3, participants predicted the economic success of individuals who varied in ascribed and achieved characteristics. Across participant groups, both ascribed and achieved characteristics were expected to influence an individual’s economic success. Taken together, results suggested that both ascribed and achieved characteristics are expected to influence an individual’s position in the socioeconomic hierarchy, but only differences rooted in achieved characteristics are legitimized. Group differences and implications for system stability are discussed.