social ecology
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2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakura Arai ◽  
John Tooby ◽  
Leda Cosmides

Evolutionary models of dyadic cooperation demonstrate that selection favors different strategies for reciprocity depending on opportunities to choose alternative partners. We propose that selection has favored mechanisms that estimate the extent to which others can switch partners and calibrate motivations to reciprocate and punish accordingly. These estimates should reflect default assumptions about relational mobility: the probability that individuals in one’s social world will have the opportunity to form relationships with new partners. This prior probability can be updated by cues present in the immediate situation one is facing. The resulting estimate of a partner’s outside options should serve as input to motivational systems regulating reciprocity: Higher estimates should down-regulate the use of sanctions to prevent defection by a current partner, and up-regulate efforts to attract better cooperative partners by curating one’s own reputation and monitoring that of others. We tested this hypothesis using a Trust Game with Punishment (TGP), which provides continuous measures of reciprocity, defection, and punishment in response to defection. We measured each participant’s perception of relational mobility in their real-world social ecology and experimentally varied a cue to partner switching. Moreover, the study was conducted in the US (n = 519) and Japan (n = 520): societies that are high versus low in relational mobility. Across conditions and societies, higher perceptions of relational mobility were associated with increased reciprocity and decreased punishment: i.e., those who thought that others have many opportunities to find new partners reciprocated more and punished less. The situational cue to partner switching was detected, but relational mobility in one’s real social world regulated motivations to reciprocate and punish, even in the experimental setting. The current research provides evidence that motivational systems are designed to estimate varying degrees of partner choice in one’s social ecology and regulate reciprocal behaviors accordingly.


2022 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cihad Hammy ◽  
Thomas Jeffrey Miley

This essay addresses two related questions raised by the editors of the research topic for “Beyond the Frontiers of Political Science: Is Good Governance Possible in Cataclysmic Times?” In particular, it explores: 1) how we can identify new tools and perspectives from which to address the multiple and mutually reinforcing problems accumulating around climate change; and 2) what institutional alternatives to the nation-state need to be created and empowered to tackle such complex problems. It does so through an in-depth treatment of the paradigm of “social ecology” and the associated political project of “democratic confederalism.” It begins with an overview of the argument, first advanced by Murray Bookchin and subsequently adopted and adapted by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, that building an ecological society requires an assault on hierarchy in all its forms, and the construction of alternative, direct-democratic institutions capable of transcending the system of the capitalist nation-state. It sketches the institutional architecture of popular assemblies central to this project, both emphasizing their potential to contest capitalist social-property relations and hierarchies intrinsic to the nation-state and pointing out some sources of resilience of the existing system. It hones in on the experience of the revolutionary forces in control of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), who have been directly inspired by Öcalan’s ideas. It highlights both the AANES’s achievements as well as the significant obstacles it has encountered in the attempt to bring into being a radically-egalitarian, ecological society. It concludes by drawing lessons from these difficulties.


2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Adam Brooks ◽  
Melissa Meinhart ◽  
Luma Samawi ◽  
Trena Mukherjee ◽  
Ruba Jaber ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The mental health of refugee women is often affected by multiple risk factors in their social ecology. Assessing these risk factors is foundational in determining potential areas for intervention. We used the social ecological model to examine risk factors associated with self-reported mental health symptoms among clinic-attending Syrian refugee women in Jordan. We hypothesize that individual (older age, unmarried, have more children under 18, difficulty reading/writing with ease), interpersonal (intimate partner violence [IPV]), community and societal level risk factors (greater number of postmigration stressors), will be associated with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Methods We surveyed 507 women using a cross-sectional clinic-based systematic sampling approach between April and November 2018. We used multivariable regressions to examine associations between different risk factors in the social ecology on depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Additional multivariable regressions explored associations between specific postmigration stressors and mental health conditions. Results We found rates of depression among our sample to be 62.92%; anxiety 57.46%; and PTSD 66.21%. Our hypothesis was partially supported. At the individual level, age was directly associated with anxiety (aOR 1.04, 95% CI [1.02, 1.06]) and PTSD (aOR 1.03, 95% CI [1.01, 1.06]), while marriage decreased odds for depression (aOR 0.41, 95% CI [0.19, 0.92]) and PTSD (aOR 0.36, 95% CI [0.15, 0.87]). IPV was associated with depression (aOR 2.78, 95% CI [1.72, 4.47]); anxiety (aOR 3.30, 95% CI [2.06, 5.27]); and PTSD (aOR 5.49, 95% CI [3.09, 9.76]). Each additional community and societal risk factor (postmigration stressor) increased the odds for depression (aOR 1.32, 95% CI [1.22, 1.42]), anxiety (aOR 1.28, 95% CI [1.19, 1.39]), and PTSD (aOR 1.46, 95% CI [1.33, 1.60]). Conclusion Understanding social ecological risk factors associated with mental health conditions of Syrian refugee women is vital to addressing their mental health needs. IPV and postmigration stressors are consistently impactful with all mental health conditions. IPV resulted in the largest odds increase for all mental health conditions. Multilevel interventions are needed to address mental health risk factors at multiple levels of the social ecology.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Christophe Heintz ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips

Abstract Human expression is open-ended, versatile and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use but novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society and culture.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Edwin Vegas-Gallo ◽  
Wilfredo Vegas-López ◽  
Alex Pacheco-Pumaleque

This research tries to understand the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) from the perspective of social ecology and environmental law, away from the Darwinian theory of man dominating nature and more focused on rethinking the SDGs from the nature-society co-evaluation in the adaptive sense of society to the new reality of its physical-natural support and to the new legal system of human rights. Development with victims from biologically rich countries like Peru with paradoxical poverty is analyzed, and likewise, the collapse of society in the face of imminent climate change due to human action is analyzed, which requires climate justice for environmentally displaced people in the face of the violation of their human rights, especially of children at risk. Finally, a Latin American academic contribution is presented to rethink the SDGs, generating contributions to the later times of the social confinement of COVID-19, in the so-called new normal.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Grant Purzycki ◽  
Theiss Bendixen ◽  
Aaron Lightner ◽  
Richard Sosis

The social sciences have long recognized a relationship between religion and social ecology. Upon closer inspection, religious systems not only correspond to important features of a society’s social ecology, but also appear to directly address these features. In this article, we examine the prospect that these salient features may be framed as game theoretical dilemmas and argue that contemporary approaches that emphasize cognition and/or social learning at the expense of social ecology are inadequate in accounting for cross-cultural variation in religious expression. Using ethnographic examples, we show that religions alleviate the costs of such dilemmas in a variety of ways by: 1) fostering beliefs that motivate and sustain beneficial practices; 2) incentivizing cooperative ventures; 3) encouraging ritual performances that minimize costly conflicts and bolster territorial conventions; 4) providing institutional forums to coordinate resource distributions; and 5) maintaining important resource and species diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. e006978
Author(s):  
Beatrice R Egid ◽  
María Roura ◽  
Bachera Aktar ◽  
Jessica Amegee Quach ◽  
Ivy Chumo ◽  
...  

IntroductionPower relations permeate research partnerships and compromise the ability of participatory research approaches to bring about transformational and sustainable change. This study aimed to explore how participatory health researchers engaged in co-production research perceive and experience ‘power’, and how it is discussed and addressed within the context of research partnerships.MethodsFive online workshops were carried out with participatory health researchers working in different global contexts. Transcripts of the workshops were analysed thematically against the ‘Social Ecology of Power’ framework and mapped at the micro (individual), meso (interpersonal) or macro (structural) level.ResultsA total of 59 participants, with participatory experience in 24 different countries, attended the workshops. At the micro level, key findings included the rarity of explicit discussions on the meaning and impact of power, the use of reflexivity for examining assumptions and power differentials, and the perceived importance of strengthening co-researcher capacity to shift power. At the meso level, participants emphasised the need to manage co-researcher expectations, create spaces for trusted dialogue, and consider the potential risks faced by empowered community partners. Participants were divided over whether gatekeeper engagement aided the research process or acted to exclude marginalised groups from participating. At the macro level, colonial and ‘traditional’ research legacies were acknowledged to have generated and maintained power inequities within research partnerships.ConclusionsThe ‘Social Ecology of Power’ framework is a useful tool for engaging with power inequities that cut across the social ecology, highlighting how they can operate at the micro, meso and macro level. This study reiterates that power is pervasive, and that while many researchers are intentional about engaging with power, actions and available tools must be used more systematically to identify and address power imbalances in participatory research partnerships, in order to contribute to improved equity and social justice outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (57) ◽  
pp. 513-531
Author(s):  
Eliane Cortelete da Costa ◽  
Isabele Santos Eleotério

Resumo: Este trabalho é o resultado de uma pesquisa de Iniciação Científica, realizado por uma aluna da primeira turma de Psicologia do Centro Universitário do Espírito Santo (UNESC). Refere-se ao projeto Abacateiro: Iniciação Científica em Psicologia Social Comunitária por meio de levantamento de teses defendidas na Região Sudeste do Brasil. Tem por objetivo, apresentar as produções desenvolvidas no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicossociologia de Comunidades e Ecologia Social (EICOS), da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Apresenta também, um relato histórico sobre a EICOS, a Psicologia Social Comunitária, a Ecologia Social, a importância da pesquisa e os desafios no desenvolvimento da IC em meio a pandemia da Covid-19. Fundamenta-se na análise de103 teses defendidas, no período entre 2003 e 2020. Os resultados obtidos foram apresentados por meio de quadros expositivos e discutidos em doze categorias. Palavras-chave: Psicologia Comunitária. Comunidade. Iniciação Científica. Abstract: This work is the result of a Scientific Initiation research, carried out by a student of the first Psychology class at the University Center of Espírito Santo (UNESC). It refers to the Abacateiro project: Scientific Initiation in Community Social Psychology through a survey of theses defended in the Southeast region of Brazil. Its objective is to present the productions developed in the Postgraduate Program in Psychosociology of Communities and Social Ecology (EICOS), at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. It also presents a historical report on EICOS, Community Social Psychology, Social Ecology, the importance of research and the challenges in the development of CI in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is based on the analysis of 103 theses defended, in the period between 2003 and 2020. The results obtained were presented through expository tables and discussed in twelve categories. Keywords: Community Psychology. Community. Scientific research.


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