Ritual Frequency, Emotionality, and Modes of Religiosity

Collective rituals tend to come in two kinds: frequently performed but relatively lowkey; rarely enacted but emotionally intense. According to the theory of modes of religiosity, high-frequency but low-arousal rituals produce large-scale hierarchical groups (the doctrinal mode), while low-frequency but high-arousal rituals produce small-scale highly cohesive groups (the imagistic mode). This chapter describes how that theory was first developed while carrying out fieldwork in the New Guinea rainforest. But then the author realized it could help to explain how groups throughout the world take shape and spread, and it could also help to explain how complex societies evolved.

Some Critical Reflections on the Measurement of Social Sustainability and Well-Being in Complex Societies

The aim of this discussion paper is to raise awareness of the conceptual and practical limits of mainstream practices in social measurement and to suggest possible directions for social indicator construction, in view of effectively supporting policies for social sustainability and well-being promotion. We start with a review of the epistemological issues raised by the measurement of social phenomena, investigate the notion of social complexity, and discuss the critical link between it and measurement. We then suggest that social indicators should be primarily designed to build structural syntheses of the data, unfolding the patterns and stylizing the complexity of social phenomena, rather than computed pursuing numerical precision, through hardly interpretable aggregated measures. This calls for tools and algorithms capable of rendering structural information, preserving the essential traits of complexity and overcoming the limitations of classical aggregation procedures. We provide some examples along this line, using real data pertaining to regional well-being in OECD countries.

Disaster-Related Food Security and Past General Governance Strategies in a Worldwide Sample

Climate change is an increasingly pressing concern because it generates individual and societal vulnerability in many places in the world, and also because it potentially threatens political stability. Aside of sea-level rise, climate change is typically manifested in local temperature and precipitation extremes that generate other hazards. In this study, we investigated whether certain kinds of governance strategies were more common in societies whose food supply had been threatened by such natural hazards—specifically floods, droughts and locust infestations. We coded and analyzed ethnographic data from the Human Relations Area Files on 26 societies regarding dominant political, economic and ideological behaviors of leaders in each society for a specified time period. Leaders in societies experiencing food-destroying disasters used different political economic strategies for maintaining power than did leaders in societies that face fewer disasters or that did not face such disasters. In non-disaster settings, leaders were more likely to have inward-focused cosmological and collectivistic strategies; conversely, when a society had experienced food-destroying disasters, leaders were more likely to have exclusionary tribal/family-based and externally focused strategies. This apparent difficulty in maintaining order and coherence of leadership in disaster settings may apply more to politically complex societies than to polities governed solely at the community level. Alternatively, it could be that exclusionary leaders help set up the conditions for disastrous consequences of hazards for the populace. Exceptions to the pattern of exclusionary political economic strategies in disaster settings indicate that workarounds do exist that allow leaders with corporate governance approaches to stay in power.

Barbarigenesis and the collapse of complex societies: Rome and after

“Barbarism” is perhaps best understood as a recurring syndrome among peripheral societies in response to the threats and opportunities presented by more developed neighbors. This article develops a mathematical model of barbarigenesis—the formation of “barbarian” societies adjacent to more complex societies—and its consequences, and applies the model to the case of Europe in the first millennium CE. A starting point is a game (developed by Hirshleifer) in which two players allocate their resources either to producing wealth or to fighting over wealth. The paradoxical result is that a richer and potentially more powerful player may lose out to a poorer player, because the opportunity cost of fighting is greater for the former. In a more elaborate spatial model with many players, the outcome is a wealth-power mismatch: central regions have comparatively more wealth than power, peripheral regions have comparatively more power than wealth. In a model of historical dynamics, a wealth-power mismatch generates a long-lasting decline in social complexity, sweeping from more to less developed regions, until wealth and power come to be more closely aligned. This article reviews how well this model fits the historical record of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe both quantitatively and qualitatively. The article also considers some of the history left out of the model, and why the model doesn’t apply to the modern world.

Archaeology of the Kerma Culture

Kerma was a Bronze Age culture (c. 2500–1500 bce) located in what is today Sudan and southern Egypt. It is one of the earliest complex societies in Africa and, at its height, rivaled Ancient Egypt. The ancient Kerma culture spans the Pre-Kerma, examining the settlements and cemeteries of this ancient culture during the Pre-Kerma (3500–2500 bce, included here as a precursor to the Kerma civilization), Early Kerma, Middle Kerma, Classic Kerma, and Recent Kerma periods. Much of what is known comes from the capital city and type site, Kerma. However, other urban centers such as Sai, as well as hinterland communities, are also discussed. An archaeological approach is crucial to the examination of Kerma’s past because an indigenous writing system had not yet been developed. Interaction with Egypt is discussed, but only as it relates to Kerma’s historical context. Chronological changes to craft production, religious practices, domestic spaces, and funerary rituals are framed by larger sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues, including inequality, political authority, and economic development.

Building a New Humanism for a Globalised World: The Contribution of Religion

Humanity's challenges have become more acute in recent decades. The international environment has been characterised by rapid change, uncertainty, increased complexity and new trends. Despite the seeming unanimity of the international community in accepting human dignity and human rights as the foundation of a just society, the gap between systems and reality is widening around the world, exacerbated at the same time by globalisation and a liberal, individualistic and consumerist model of democracy. This article seeks to identify a new humanism that can be seen in UNESCO's work in the multifaceted field of culture, with culture as an enabler of sustainable development, peace and economic progress. On the one hand, it examines the confrontation between the politics of recognition and the politics of resentment in dealing with the management of diversity in increasingly complex societies. On the other hand, it analyses the relevance of religion, and particularly the work of the Holy See and successive popes, in culture, public ethics and social cohesion.

Constructing questions for the social professions of today: the case of social pedagogy

The complex societies we now inhabit oblige us to question, reformulate or even rupture the traditional socio-political frameworks in which social pedagogy and the social professions have been developed and in which the theories that explain and justify them have been constructed. These frameworks have institutionalised concepts, practices and methodologies that often no longer fit within the complexity of today’s constantly changing realities. The aim of this article is to propose and analyse some key foundations for understanding the social professions and the actions they carry out. It concerns itself with generating questions that link social pedagogy and the social professions with the complexity of today’s social life. The questions address the current content of what we refer to as ‘the social’ and its relationship with other dimensions such as politics, culture and the environment. Among other issues, the article addresses how the social professions have developed within the political framework of the welfare state. Based on the answers to these questions, we argue in favour of updating the term ‘social’ with renewed connotations, and of defining the ‘good life’ as the reference point that must give it meaning.

For Inclusive and Sustainable Education: The Profile of the Educator and Pedagogist in Italy

The changes that have characterized contemporary complex societies and the need to affirm the values of social inclusion have led the Italian educational policy makers to debate on the professional quality within the educational field, to study its changes and its social impact. This debate has gradually led to a redefinition of the professional profile of the educator and the pedagogist giving rise to a legislative provision aiming at recognizing, regulating and protecting these professionals. According to this law, in particular, the socio-pedagogical educator and the pedagogist are required to have specific competences that could promote inclusive and sustainable educational actions. The present theoretical argumentative paper aims at presenting a synthesis of the long debate that led to the approval of Law 205/17 in Italy, involving policy makers and Italian scholars and academics in the redefinition of the educational professions. Specifically, it aims at highlighting the rational and the characteristics of the context which have supported the long legislative process within a conceptual dimension that considers inclusive education as an unavoidable framework for social sustainability. Keywords: inclusive education, sustainable education, educator and pedagogist, Italy