Social arrangements. Kinship, descent and affinity in the mortuary architecture of Early Neolithic Britain and Ireland

This article reassesses the social significance of Early Neolithic chambered tombs. It critically evaluates inferences about social organization drawn from tomb architecture and interpretations of kinship based on aDNA analyses of human remains from tombs. Adopting the perspective that kinship is a multifaceted and ongoing field of practice, it argues that the arrangement of tomb chambers was related to the negotiation of Early Neolithic kinship. Drawing together inferences about biological relatedness from aDNA analyses with interpretations of chamber arrangements, it suggests that variation in the architectural arrangements and sequential modification of chambered tombs relates to different ways of negotiating aspects of kinship, particularly descent and affinity. It presents interpretations of how kinship was negotiated at Early Neolithic tombs in different regions of Britain and Ireland and concludes that it is increasingly possible to gauge pattern and diversity in Neolithic negotiations of kinship, descent and affinity by combining different strands of evidence, including architectural arrangement.

Sleepwalking, Class Mobility, and the Search for the Social Origins of Populism in Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly

This paper argues that Brown's sleepwalkers in Edgar Huntly offer us an early figuration for the problems inherent in the phenomenon we now refer to as “populism.” Both populism and sleepwalking function through paradoxical and incongruent forms of expression that appear incoherent. The most prominent explanations that account for this paradoxical form of expression rely on an analysis of the breakdown of discourse. However, this paper argues that the incongruous form of expression is rooted in the reconfiguration of the social arrangements that enable Clithero and Edgar to advance socially but also places them in proximity to social crises. The contradictions of this position of social mobility are the source of the contradictions of the expression of sleepwalking. In depicting a world that makes social identity precarious, Brown offers us an explanation for how such paradoxical modes of expression are rooted in unstable resolutions of post-revolutionary society.

Literature as Speculative Thought

This chapter spells out the conceptual stakes of the reformist literary mode by turning to British state theory’s ‘Hegelian moment’. Hegel’s state theory converges on an understanding of the state as an aspect of social life (Sittlichkeit), making it possible to think about the state’s institutional structures as a moment in the actualization of social life rather than as a Foucauldian assemblage of administrative means external to social life. Britain’s Hegelian moment makes visible a reformist idiom in which the state appears as an aspirational figure that makes it possible to imagine the transition from capitalist society (Hegel’s bürgerliche Gesellschaft) towards a more egalitarian socio-political order. This transformation is imagined through close engagement with existing social forms rather than through a complete revolutionary overhaul of existing social arrangements. The chapter ends by asking why Britain’s Hegelian moment ended around 1914 and what were its more immediate afterlives.

A Practical Perspective on Resilience in Organizations: The Interplay Between Structure and Action

Organizations adopt resilience frameworks to deal with increasingly unstable environments, yet they are not usually applied according to their initial design. Previous research has documented the situatedness of resilience. The process of shaping resilience capabilities fuels both action and structure through social arrangements. However, knowledge remains scarce regarding how these elements relate to each other. This chapter addresses this gap, drawing on Schatzki’s work and approaching resilience as practice. It examines the four components of the structure of resilience practice and investigates their interplay with action. It relies on a qualitative design, focused on two French organizations that designed radically different resilience frameworks. The findings of this chapter outline how both the organizations deviated from their resilience vision and frameworks, no matter the nature of the framework. Despite some synergistic ties between resilience structure and action, contradictions and inconsistencies within the structure emerged, which fostered deviation. Finally, the chapter discusses two other important points inherent to its findings: First, the evolutionary dimension of resilience as practice. Second, the influence of resilience proponents—who proactively promote resilience as a practice—on the interplay between its components.

Last suppers at Sardis

The realia of shared meals provide a key index for social behavior in Late Antiquity. Much attention has been paid to the architecture and ceramics of dining, but usually separately and from unrelated contexts. Three excavated rooms at Sardis present an opportunity to extend this discussion to the furnishings that once stood at the center of domestic hospitality. Nearly complete marble tabletops recovered from their places of intended use show differing approaches to the physical and social arrangements of convivial dining, with implications for interpreting reception areas in Late Roman houses. Circumstances of preservation indicate that all three rooms were leveled, probably by earthquakes, in the early 7th c. CE.

Another economy calls for another perspective

Economics makes sense of the economy. Another economy that may or may not come about in response to the Corona crisis will require another sense making. This article provides a possible alternative perspective, a value-based approach. It includes a model with five spheres that encourages a visualization and conceptualization of the economy beyond the market and governmental spheres that dominate the standard economic perspective. By including social and cultural spheres as well as the sphere of the oikos (home) we are encouraged to think of social arrangements, relationships and other “shared goods,” sense making, culture and other qualities of living. The exploration of another perspective includes two concrete proposals for alternative institutions to deal with problematic debts and creating work for people with limitations.

Does Convergence Liberalism Risk Anarchy?

Public reason liberals argue that coercive social arrangements must be publicly justified in order to be legitimate. According to one model of public reason liberalism, known as convergence liberalism, this means that every moderately idealized member of the public must have sufficient reason, of her own, to accept the arrangement. A corollary of this Principle of Public Justification is that a coercive social arrangement fails to be legitimate so long as even one member of the public fails to have sufficient reason to endorse the arrangement. This high bar for justification has led many critics, most notably David Enoch, to argue that convergence models are incapable of vindicating liberalism. They argue that in a sufficiently diverse society, there will always be someone for whom an arrangement is not justified, and therefore convergence liberalism leads to anarchy – the view that no law or coercive social arrangement is legitimate. Other critics accept that convergence liberalism could vindicate core liberal institutions but nothing more, and thus argue that the view makes libertarians effective “dictators”. In either case, critics hold that this objection is sufficient to reject convergence liberalism, either in favor of alternative public reason views or as a means of rejecting all public reason views. In this paper I argue that convergence liberalism can overcome this anarchy objection. I show that the objection largely rests on misinterpretations of convergence liberalism, and thus clarify aspects of the theory. However, I also show that internal debate over the scope of public justification – what stands in need of justification – must be resolved in favor of a wide scope, encompassing both State-based and non-State-based coercion, in order to overcome the anarchy objection. Therefore, my response to the anarchy objection has implications for how convergence liberalism should be developed going forward.

Feeling Seen: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ Peoples, (In)Visibility, and Social-Media Assemblages

This article explores shifting social arrangements on social media as experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) peoples. These digital social assemblages are situated within a broader context of heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism in Australia and beyond. In digital spaces, multiple marginalised groups encounter dialogic engagements with their friends, followers, networks, and broader publics. The exploration of how digital discourses (in)visibilise Indigenous LGBTIQ+ diversities underline the intimate and pervasive reach of settler colonialism, and highlight distinctly queer Indigenous strategies of resistance. Through the experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ artists, activists, and celebrities, this article demonstrates the shifting unities and disunities that shape how we come to know and understand the complexities of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ identities and experiences.

When Freeing Your Mind Isn’t Enough

In this chapter, Kristie Dotson and Ezgi Sertler probe the transformative potential of framework approaches to social justice. They challenge the idea that framework shifts at different levels equate to changes in the social arrangements they aim to reconceptualize. Ultimately, they claim that framework approaches to social transformation have two limitations that include: (i) failing to lead to the epistemological ingenuity they often promise; and, even where such ingenuity might be achieved, (ii) leaving untouched the actual social arrangements that facilitate the circumstances under analysis. This chapter proceeds in four sections. First, there is an introduction to viewing social justice issues through epistemological approaches. Second, Dotson and Sertler explain what they mean by a framework approach to social transformation. Third, they discuss a framework approach to social justice by looking into framework approaches to understanding “political prisoners” and its potential aims and aspirations. Fourth, they conclude by responding to a potential objection for this framework analysis by assessing the “work” of their own framework analysis.