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Ropalidia marginata is a common primitively eusocial wasp in peninsular India. Their colonies contain a single egg-laying queen and several non-egg-laying workers. Queens and workers are morphologically indistinguishable, and individuals can change from one role to the other. Unlike most primitively eusocial species, queens of R. marginata are docile, non-aggressive and non-interactive. Nevertheless, the queens maintain a complete reproductive monopoly mediated by non-volatile pheromones. Upon the death or removal of the queen, one worker becomes temporarily hyper-aggressive and becomes the next queen within about a week; we refer to her as the 'potential queen'. Because only one individual becomes hyper-aggressive and reveals herself as the potential queen, and the other wasps never challenge her, we have been much interested in identifying the potential queen in the presence of the queen. However, we have failed to do so until recently. Here, we recount the four decades of search for the potential queen, ending with the recent resolution that emerged from applying the novel technique of multilayer network analysis. Identifying the potential queen in the presence of the previous queen is now possible by integrating behavioural information from multiple social situations to form a holistic view of the social structure of the wasps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an integrated ontological framework to analyse the interplay between formalised social structures composed of impersonal, codified roles and rules which are commonly described as 'institutions', and the more latent interpersonal relationships that shape and animate these institutions-putting forward the notion of 'extitutions' to describe the latter. The main contribution of this paper is to provide an analytical grid for advancing the formalisation of both institutional and extitutional dynamics and how they affect or influence each other over time, from a multi-faceted and multi-layered network standpoint. This new grid of analysis can be used to characterise the reciprocal interactions between the extitutional and institutional aspects of social groups, explicitly disentangling their respective influences. This makes it possible to prescribe novel configurations of collective action that benefit from a balanced equilibrium between extitutional and institutional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have found that many post-secondary music students suffer from physical and mental health issues. However, researchers have mainly studied these problems at the individual level, with little investigation of how music students' work is shaped by the coordinating effects of policies, texts, and discourses at and beyond their local site. This paper describes a protocol for an international project that will explore the health of music students in the context of their daily work. Using an institutional ethnography approach, we will examine the social organization of music students' work at three universities: two in Canada and one in Australia. This will be the first set of studies that use institutional ethnography specifically for the purpose of understanding how the social organization of music students' work shapes their health. Data will be collected using several methods common to institutional ethnography: interviews, focus groups, observations, and collecting texts. Data analysis will begin during the data collection process and proceed in two fluid stages. The first stage will involve a detailed investigation of the pertinent work activities at each music school. The second will involve linking that work to specific social relations within and beyond the institution. After data analysis has been completed at all three sites, findings will be compared to one another to identify commonalities and differences in how students' work is organized. Findings of the entire project may inform policy-making and lead to positive change at the institutions studied, as well as others where similar social organization may occur. The novel approach described here will provide opportunities to expand current knowledge about music students' work and health beyond what has been learned through approaches that focus on students' individual behaviours and attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial services are significantly impacted by digital transformation, which has been believed as one of the primary trends reshaping society and industry. A comprehensive understanding of digital transformation from an academic and management perspective is required, and it is crucial to close the knowledge gap using bibliometric and qualitative research techniques. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify the extensive research themes in digital transformation in financial services from 2000 to 2021, their significance and interdependencies, to determine which trending topics seem to be the most influential, to trace the evolution of digital transformation in the financial service, and to address new and under-researched field of research that is intriguing for future research. This study used a bibliometric analysis of 288 peer-reviewed research articles published over the last 22 years in digital transformation in financial services. The data were extracted from the Scopus database and used various bibliometric analyses such as conceptual structure analysis, co-citation network analysis, social structure, and keyword analysis using R software. The findings show an overall increasing trend in journal publications, author productivity, collaborative research by institutions, and countries' collaboration from the year 2019, as well as major insights from co-citation analysis. According to Lotka's law, most authors (769, or 95.77%) contributed only one article. In addition, the study assesses multiple research areas, such as the effects of digital transformation in financial services, applied technology and insights, and digitalization processes, comprising the latest trending topics in this research stream that extensively cover up in financial services. One of the limitations of this study is that it used only a single database. The author recommends that the findings of this research be reinforced with more targeted and extensive qualitative literature in this field of study. This study establishes a framework for policymakers, academics, and researchers to investigate the areas where digital technologies influence financial services. This study also highlighted several cutting-edge digital technologies used for different functions of the financial services of an organization. This study illustrates the bibliometric structure of the digital transformation literature in financial services and provides insights into the literature's growth year over year. It provides a comprehensive understanding of this evolving field, guiding future research and facilitating informed decision-making in the financial industry. Plain language summary: Purpose: Financial services are significantly impacted by digital transformation, which has been believed as one of the primary trends reshaping society and industry. A comprehensive understanding of digital transformation from an academic and management perspective is required, and it is crucial to close the knowledge gap using bibliometric and qualitative research techniques. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to identify the extensive research themes in digital transformation in financial services from 2000 to 2021, their significance and interdependencies, to determine which trending topics seem to be the most influential, to trace the evolution of digital transformation in the financial service, and to address new and under-researched field of research that is intriguing for future research. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a bibliometric analysis of 288 peer-reviewed research articles published over the last 22 years in digital transformation in financial services. The data were extracted from the Scopus database and used various bibliometric analyses such as conceptual structure analysis, co-citation network analysis, social structure, and keyword analysis using R software. Findings: The findings show an overall increasing trend in journal publications, author productivity, collaborative research by institutions, and countries' collaboration from the year 2019, as well as major insights from co-citation analysis. According to Lotka s law, most authors (769, or 95.77 %) contributed only one article. In addition, the study assesses multiple research areas, such as the effects of digital transformation in financial services, applied technology and insights, and digitalization processes, comprising the latest trending topics in this research stream that extensively cover up in financial services. Research limitations/implications: One of the limitations of this study is that it used only a single database. The author recommends that the findings of this research be reinforced with more targeted and extensive qualitative literature in this field of study. Practical Implications: This study establishes a framework for policymakers, academics, and researchers to investigate the areas where digital technologies influence financial services. This study also highlighted several cutting-edge digital technologies used for different functions of the financial services of an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some movement parties successfully institutionalize into a functioning party organization while others struggle? This paper argues that not all movement parties institutionalize in the same way. Movement parties that emanate out of a long-term social movement organization face a qualitatively different set of challenges than those that form out of a short-term movement. Routinization—the process of parties developing rules, regulation, and predictable behavior—is a particularly crucial component for short-term movement party institutionalization. When parties emanate out of long-standing social movement organizations, they are advantaged because they already have existing formal rules and regulations. Short-term parties however, are disadvantaged because they lack these organizational structures. Further, short-term movement parties not only need routinization, but must make it a priority; the sequencing of their institutionalization matters. I demonstrate the importance of routinization with the case of Taiwan's New Power Party, a movement party formed out of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. This case shows how struggles to routinize early for short-term movement parties leads to crucial causal mechanisms hindering party institutionalization instead of helping it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a framework for understanding the role of member-based, politically active 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations in U.S. civil society. Tax-exempt social welfare (501(c)(4)) organizations make up the second largest group of nonprofit organizations in the United States. Among them are a mix of membership organizations, social clubs, professional associations, and advocates that are permitted to lobby and engage in partisan political activities. Informed by the literature, case study research, and a dataset of politically active 501(c)(4) organizations, we identify categories of politically active (c)(4) organizations involved in electoral and policy change actions including national advocacy organizations, local and state member organizations, (c)(4) funders, and shell entities. We discuss four analytic considerations that can guide future research on member-based, politically active organizations including (1) engagement activities, (2) organizational characteristics, (3) context, and (4) outcomes. We then provide an example of how we have applied this approach to a subset of organizations that build civic leadership and political capacity in communities that have experienced structural inequality and racism. We explain how these organizations engage members in grassroots organizing and advocacy strategies in order to impact elections and policy change. By explaining how the (c)(4) structure can enable organizations to involve members in political action, we enhance theoretical understanding of politically active (c)(4)s as mediating structures of political engagement. The paper concludes with proposed avenues for further empirical investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated the presence of a core–periphery structure within social network communities. Nevertheless, a formal model and comprehensive analysis to fully understand the structural characteristics of these communities are still lacking. This paper seeks to characterize these properties, focusing on agents' interconnections and their allocation of rates. Employing a game-theoretic approach, our analysis unveils several novel insights. First, we show that periphery agents not only follow core agents but also other periphery agents who share similar primary interests. Second, our results illuminate the emergence of core–periphery communities, revealing the conditions under which they form, and how they form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Swedish National Registry Data, this paper investigates the social structure of exclusion risks in late working life in Sweden by analyzing exit from working life, employment breaks, and late employment trajectories according to gender and education. Individuals born in 1950 (n = 107,830) are followed between the years 2010 and 2018. Results show that women with low education exit working life earlier and have a higher risk of employment breaks due to reduced working ability, while men with low education have a higher risk of employment breaks due to unemployment. Men in general and people with high education have a higher probability of moving to self-employment in late working life. We conclude that research and social policies require an understanding of multifarious late work trajectories to unearth the inequality of exclusion risks in the late phases of working life and the potential for interventions towards equal and inclusive prolongation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine a speculative diagnosis made by Sigmund Freud regarding his patient's mother in his landmark 1905 paper describing a hysterical illness. Freud considered the impact of Dora's mother's mental state on her daughter, wondering whether the mother might suffer from a 'housewife's psychosis'. Here was an emphasis on the social structures of the times and differences between the parents in terms of sexual freedom and societal limitations placed on women. Freud's description drew attention to Dora's anxieties in relation to her parents, in particular the state of their sexual relationship and the apparently sanctioned entry of another couple, Frau and Herr K, into the parental relationship. In particular, the role of syphilis in the aetiology of sexual disturbances was considered, affecting men and their sexual partners, specifically their wives, who faced lifelong risks of morbidity, inadequate treatment and psychic disturbances at this time in 19th century Vienna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to identify the changes in the share of large public interest entities (PIEs) in European Union (EU) Member States providing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting prior to (2017) and after (2019) the implementation of Directive 2014/95/EU and the factors that influence their decisions to provide SDG reporting in 2019. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use the multilevel theory of social change in organizations as the theoretical background. The sample consists of 341 PIEs based in the EU Member States, for which reports published in 2017 and 2019 are available in the global reporting initiative sustainability disclosure database. The authors analyzed the data using the statistical significance test of equal proportions and the logistic regression model. Findings: The study findings allow to identify a significant positive change in the share of companies providing a reference to SDGs in 2019 compared with 2017. The research confirms that companies' engagement in United Nations Global Compact and previous experience in sustainability reporting positively influences the decision to report on SDGs in 2019. Contrary to the expectations, industry, size, SDG implementation score, future orientation of government and corporate governance score do not seem to be relevant factors influencing PIEs' disclosures. Originality/value: The paper adds to the understanding of the differences in SDG reporting within the EU, which is seen as a frontrunner in implementing the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative social science research has an obligation to resist replicating or reinforcing social harms. This paper explores how researchers can adopt strategies to develop inclusive, safe, and reflexive research spaces with queer participants. Reflecting on a research study that explored the impact of queer representation in young adult literature on young readers, the paper explores the concepts of building queer connections and fostering inclusion as methods to support qualitative research design. Through this reflexive process, it has been found that intentionally using strategies to establish queer connections between participants and promoting inclusion through empathetic listening can significantly enhance participant experiences, primarily in terms of safety, support, and openness to vulnerability. These deliberate strategies also play a crucial role in reinforcing participant engagement and retention. Further, these findings indicate that these methods have additional benefits for research that transitions from face-to-face methods to online and digital formats. We argue that qualitative social science researchers who work with the queer community have an obligation to create inclusive and safe spaces for participants - not only to resist replicating stigmatising social structures, but to move beyond a pedagogy of pathologization in queer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the identity of victim-survivors of sexual violence is portrayed in the dystopian TV series Westworld (2016-present) by analyzing the linguistic characterization of the lead female character, Dolores Abernathy. To do so, this paper adopts a mixed methodology which combines corpus stylistics and Appraisal Theory with a feminist critical reading of the results in order to examine the textual cues in Dolores' dialogue which characterize her journey from being a victim to becoming an empowered being. The results of the analysis show that the series features a misappropriation of female empowerment and liberation since Dolores presents a masculinization of her fictional identity which mirrors patriarchal practices and attitudes against women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merton proposed middle range theories, not as ends in themselves, but as bases for a consolidation to explain broader phenomenon. More than a half century has passed since Merton's consolidation proposal and in that time a number of experimentally tested middle range theories have been developed. Certainly, the next step should be a consolidation. Yet, to our knowledge, no one has previously offered a consolidation of experimentally tested theories and applied it for explanation. This paper offers a consolidation of middle range theories formulated to explain the rise of the pristine state. Two theories of this consolidation, Status Characteristics Theory and Elementary Theory, form the core of what Analytic Sociologists have called a toolbox of theories. Our toolbox forms an integrated consolidation in two ways. First, the social structures modeled by the theories form a path-dependent process of increasing benefits gained by the elites of the structures. Second, the end conditions of each step of the process are the initial conditions of the next. Whereas the theories in our toolbox have previously been seen as applying exclusively to microstructures, we have encountered no difficulties in scaling them up to apply to macrostructures. While we hope the consolidation has validity in explaining the occurrence of pristine states, this paper's significance lies in its demonstration that today social theories can be consolidated and applied for explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports marketing is a branch of marketing that focuses on promoting sporting events and teams and advertising other products and services concerning sports. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of sports marketing based on Biblioshiny, a web interface for bibliometric analysis. Through a bibliometric examination of the existing literature in sports marketing, this study analyses the literature by addressing existing and emerging areas and advocating for more attention to the thriving sports sector. Results are interpreted under different sections like dataset, sources, authors, documents, clustering, conceptual structure, intellectual structure, and social structure. It is reported that sports marketing had piqued the interest of various marketing publications since its widespread adoption. The majority of the criteria and collaboration were found to be led by the USA. However, there was seldom any coordination among the several continents. More cooperation between continents is required to take advantage of sports marketing tactics around the world as there are numerous top leagues taking place in sports like football, cricket, and so on. It is suggested that to increase the visibility of sports marketing initiatives, more work is required in niche areas like sponsorship, attitude, image, sports knowledge, and so on. The limitations, implications, and future search areas are also suggested in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction of information and the evolution of network structure are inseparable. In order to construct social network evolution and information propagation models that better fit real-world scenarios, this paper proposes a social network structure evolution model driven by changes in the strength of relationships between individuals through their information interactions with each other. During the evolution process of the network, information interaction between individuals is also influenced by the network structure. Therefore, we improve traditional propagation models and construct an information propagation model with dynamic propagation rates. The proposed model is used to simulate both the spread of information and the evolution of network structures in real social networks. Finally, simulation results are compared to real-world data, demonstrating the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After COVID-19 was characterised as a pandemic in spring 2020, care and care work became very dominant topics in public discourse in Western Europe. Against this backdrop, the paper turns to the underlying social structures and conditions of caring relations and aims to go before and beyond the pandemic. The serious occasion of the COVID-19 pandemic and its unjust social effects will be taken as a starting point to engage with social theory to discuss pre-existing uneven ‘geographies of caring relations’ in capitalist societies, which pandemic-related measures are built on. For this, the paper draws on Joan Tronto’s extended thoughts on critical feminist care ethics, emphasising her notion of caring-with as the possibility to trust in caring relations based on interdependencies and solidarity, and argues for explicitly linking caring relations to questions of social justice. This framework stresses the foundations of social injustice and shifts the perspective from individual caring subjects and places (‘who and where’) to unjust social structures (‘how’). Moreover, it challenges dominant biopolitics and care economies by way of an insourcing of caring relationships. By conceiving care as part of social theory and not only social analyses, care ethics provide a normative framework for geography and beyond to imagine and practise social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a distinctive reading of Popper’s work, suggesting that his Logic of Scientific Discovery (LScD) might be re-interpreted in the light of his Open Society. Indeed, Popper can be interpreted as criticising certain aspects of his first book, and as a result improving upon them, in his second. It suggests translating what Popper says about ‘conventions’ into his later vocabulary of ‘social institutions’. Looking back, I believe that Popper never intended the language of conventions and decisions to be read individualistically. I remain unsure whether Popper was himself quite as clear about this as he could have been. My reading makes Popper a pioneer in the sociology of science. Scientific institutions are arenas of political power; but Popper did not discuss the structure and inter-relations of the social institutions of science, or offer a politics of science in the context of his methodology. What is missing from the skeletal sociology of LScD is the politics. We could put it in Popperian terms this way: scientific institutions are both open and closed. They are closed, firmly, to the inexpert, to the nonmembers; supposedly they are open to the qualified, provided the prerogatives of seniority and leadership are acknowledged. Despite these shortcomings, Popper’s critical and rational approach and his insistence on openness and intellectual honesty are still important today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports marketing is a branch of marketing that focuses on promoting sporting events and teams and advertising other products and services concerning sports. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of sports marketing based on Biblioshiny, a web interface for bibliometric analysis. Through a bibliometric examination of the existing literature in sports marketing, this study analyses the literature by addressing existing and emerging areas and advocating for more attention to the thriving sports sector. Results are interpreted under different sections like dataset, sources, authors, documents, clustering, conceptual structure, intellectual structure, and social structure. It is reported that sports marketing had piqued the interest of various marketing publications since its widespread adoption. The majority of the criteria and collaboration were found to be led by the USA. However, there was seldom any coordination among the several continents. More cooperation between continents is required to take advantage of sports marketing tactics around the world as there are numerous top leagues taking place in sports like football, cricket, and so on. It is suggested that to increase the visibility of sports marketing initiatives, more work is required in niche areas like sponsorship, attitude, image, sports knowledge, and so on. The limitations, implications, and future search areas are also suggested in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the typological attributes, practical characteristics, and policy connotations of Christian social service organizations in present China. This is achieved from the perspectives of religion, public administration, social work, and history. Data collection and analysis are based on the literature research and field research methods. The main points are as follows: (1) Christian social service organizations are simultaneously faith-based organizations, legal-person organizations, and professional organizations. These different types of characteristics put forward different requirements for their service functions and performance standards. It is necessary to understand their corresponding boundaries in theory and coordinate or optimize their corresponding functions in the system; (2) Christian social service organizations present the characteristics of pluralism and transition in the practice process, as well as form complex symbiosis and embedded relationships with non-religious professional service systems. Further, they have begun to reach a consensus on industry codes of practice, service concepts, and clinical models, especially in regard to the culturally sensitive service centered on the clients; and (3) the triple-type attributes of Christian social service organizations require government departments and professional circles to direct more attention to the "matrix" of policy tools—in other words, formulate more discerning and diverse policy measures in line with policy objectives, as well as strengthen the legalization of the policy implementation mechanism and the level of collaborative governance of religious social service organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shape design of the Tubular Linear Synchronous Motor (TLSM) is a critical engineeri ng optimization problem which was handled as single- and multi-objective optimization frameworks. However, the different practical constraints for the TLSM design must be efficiently guaranteed. This paper proposes a developed multi-objective shape design of the TLSM to maximize the operating force and minimize the flux saturation. In this regard, a Multi-objective Grey Wolf Optimizer (MGWO) is developed, including an outside archive with a predetermined size that is integrated for storing and retrieving Pareto optimal solutions. Using this knowledge, the grey wolf social structure would then be established, and, in the multi-objective searching environments, grey wolf hunting behavior would then be replicated. The superiority and effectiveness of the developed MGWO is assessed in comparison to the Multi-objective Flower Pollination Algorithm (MFPA), Multi-objective Lichtenberg Algorithm (MOLA), and Multi-objective Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm (MGOA). The outcomes illustrate that the developed MGWO provides an average improvement of 73.46%, 19.07%, and 15.15% compared to MFPA, MOLA, and MGOA, respectively. The validation of the developed MGWO is extended for a multi-objective form of welded beam design (WBD) by simultaneously minimizing the deflection and the manufacturing costs. Similar findings are obtained with different reference points, the developed MGWO provides an average improvement of 2.8%, 0.7%, and 3.04% compared to MFPA, MOLA, and MGOA, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ongoing research in Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO), little is understood about BIM's interaction with its adoption process. This paper conducts a comprehensive scoping review that utilises secondary data to systematically map the existing literature on the adoption of BIM within AECO organisations. A literature review identified 146 papers on BIM in AECO organisations, categorising them into 46 on pre-adoption, 85 on post-adoption, and 15 on both phases. Findings reveal a tendency towards a 'tunnel vision', isolating a single organisational aspect or adoption phase. However, the study finds that BIM significantly interacts with various organisational elements, such as environment, power dynamics, social structure, and culture, necessitating comprehensive changes and strategies both before and after adoption. Advocating for a holistic approach, the study emphasises integrating change management, continuous learning, and ongoing improvement in BIM implementation. This perspective is a significant contribution to understanding BIM's multifaceted impact in AECO organisations. [Display omitted] • Challenges in fully transitioning to BIM, result in untapped potential. • The organisational environment, power dynamics, social structure, and culture for BIM adoption are currently overlooked. • Reveals the intricate interaction of organisations and BIM throughout the transformative process. • Identifies knowledge gaps, provides a research agenda cube, offers valuable guidance for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the relationship between household income sources and household economic welfare over a medium-term period spanning different political-economic cycles in Argentina. It bases on the convergence between social class studies and welfare regimes analysis. We used a quantitative methodological strategy based on microdata from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH for its acronym in Spanish) of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec for its acronym in Spanish), Argentina. The class scheme known as EGP/Casmin was constructed. The income sources for the different years were harmonised into labour and non-labour sources, differentiating the latter between market income and welfare income. The relationship between social class and income sources was analysed descriptively. A decomposition analysis by income sources and social class of the Gini economic inequality index was applied at the household level. Among the main conclusions of the paper, the strong dependence of households of all social classes on labour income for their social reproduction is highlighted, even in periods of strong dynamism in the field of social policies, such as the governments framed within the "progressive turn" or "pink tide". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative networks are essential features of human society. Evolutionary theory hypothesizes that networks are used differently by men and women, yet the bulk of evidence supporting this hypothesis is based on studies conducted in a limited range of contexts and on few domains of cooperation. In this paper, we compare individual-level cooperative networks from two communities in Southwest China that differ systematically in kinship norms and institutions—one matrilineal and one patrilineal—while sharing an ethnic identity. Specifically, we investigate whether network structures differ based on prevailing kinship norms and type of gendered cooperative activity, one woman-centred (preparation of community meals) and one man-centred (farm equipment lending). Our descriptive results show a mixture of 'feminine' and 'masculine' features in all four networks. The matrilineal meals network stands out in terms of high degree skew. Exponential random graph models reveal a stronger role for geographical proximity in patriliny and a limited role of affinal relatedness across all networks. Our results point to the need to consider domains of cooperative activity alongside gender and cultural context to fully understand variation in how women and men leverage social relationships toward different ends. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative networks are essential features of human society. Evolutionary theory hypothesizes that networks are used differently by men and women, yet the bulk of evidence supporting this hypothesis is based on studies conducted in a limited range of contexts and on few domains of cooperation. In this paper, we compare individual-level cooperative networks from two communities in Southwest China that differ systematically in kinship norms and institutions—one matrilineal and one patrilineal—while sharing an ethnic identity. Specifically, we investigate whether network structures differ based on prevailing kinship norms and type of gendered cooperative activity, one woman-centred (preparation of community meals) and one man-centred (farm equipment lending). Our descriptive results show a mixture of 'feminine' and 'masculine' features in all four networks. The matrilineal meals network stands out in terms of high degree skew. Exponential random graph models reveal a stronger role for geographical proximity in patriliny and a limited role of affinal relatedness across all networks. Our results point to the need to consider domains of cooperative activity alongside gender and cultural context to fully understand variation in how women and men leverage social relationships toward different ends. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the query data of the national social organization standard information platform, the registration of Chinese social organizations on the national social organization standard information platform and the publication of social organization standards in recent six years are counted, and the correlation is compared with the population of provinces and cities in China, the innovation ability index, GDP, and the national invention patents. The experience of social organization standardization management in the United States and Germany is briefly analyzed. This paper discusses the current situation of the development of Chinese social organization standards and the problems existing in the development process and puts forward suggestions on the management of social organization standardization, in order to provide management suggestions for the high-quality development of China's industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising housing prices, associated supply gaps and displacement processes have revived the "housing issue" in Germany. This is particularly true for certain social groups socially marginalized by high competition in the housing market. The participatory action research study "Wohnungsleerstand wandeln!"(WohL) - "Worthy places from un-used spaces" examines the coexistence of housing scarcity and housing abundance in a district of the Munich metropolitan area. The goal is to use a participatory multi-method design, including a two-stage qualitative Delphi Survey, to find tailored solutions for the housing situation in each community. The Delphi method was used to reflect the diversity of perspectives in housing as well as the principles of participatory action research such as participation in research, proximity to the field, and capacity building through mutual learning. In the case of sustainable housing solutions, a group discussion process, in which facts are listed by participants (who remain anonymous) without taking into account local social structures, can lead to conclusions that are not accepted by the community. Hence, this paper explains how a Delphi Survey can be designed as a qualitative element of participatory action research. Therefore, the WohL Study and its qualitative Delphi Survey are presented, followed by a methodological reflection on the findings. It becomes clear that consensus and anonymity have to be balanced with solution sustainability. Criteria like the selection of participants, the process of group discussion as well as data collection and analysis have to be adapted to the specific field to be explored. New, diversity-sensitive and method-based approaches to decision making pave the way for a transformation of housing that must imply "vacancies" are to be (re)used, but also that collective decision-making brings "overlooked" groups "back into play." Ultimately, the essential prerequisite for managing the transformation is the participation of the people of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-prevailing image of a clear delimitation between core city and suburbs has been increasingly questioned in research. New qualitative approaches are necessary to describe the urban-suburban relationship based on a sociocultural heterogenization of suburbs and the spread of suburban lifestyles into inner cities. The concept of inner-city suburbanization is one approach to define spaces as urban or suburban regardless of geographical location. Drawing upon this concept, the present paper explores suburban lifestyles in the inner-city area of Leipzig and their role in the sociospatial urban transformation. For this purpose, we identify and map owner-occupied middle-class family housing estates in central urban locations. Using qualitative individual and focus group interviews with the residents, complemented by site observation, we explore to what extent these single-family houses resemble traditional suburbs in terms of morphology and social structure in four different case studies. All of the cases show how suburban qualities, such as homeownership and socio-economical homogeneity, go hand in hand with the benefits of their urban locations. This hybrid character reflects the dissolution of the classical place-specific distinctions between urban and suburban environments and patterns. Simultaneously, dynamics of upgrading and social exclusion from housing unfold in the residential areas, where middle-class family housing estates emerge. Thus, we raise the question of the interrelation between inner-city suburbanization processes and gentrification trends in Leipzig. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between the social capital and economic resilience of Italian provinces during the Great Recession. It focuses on social economy organizations' internal and external relational dimensions to proxy forms of bonding and bridging social capital. Through an econometric analysis, I find that indicators depicting the diffusion of volunteering and cooperative employment are positively related to a measure of resilience, confirming the hypothesis that social capital can shape local reactions to crises. I also find a negative relationship between the local resilience and social cooperatives' density, highlighting how the latter indicator does not seize virtuous forms of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To benefit from the underutilised potential of urban land resources, the introduction and improvement of land registration and cadastral systems have been advocated. However, evidence from empirical research in a number of developing economies including those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to show mixed or inconclusive outcomes from the implementation and operations of such systems. This paper argues that for introduced formal systems to succeed in providing the relevant outcomes it is essential to examine the socio-political organisational structures that underpin the prevailing customary land tenure practices. The paper focuses on the examination of the changing roles of authority structures and rules regarding control and access to land resources within the context of the customary land sector. Due to the varying influences of colonial and post-colonial policies and laws, a dualistic land tenure regime consisting of formal and customary structures and rules has emerged that mediates the land delivery processes to varying degree across countries in SSA. The findings of the current study highlight the importance of social organisation that gives form, meaning and relevance to a land tenure system. This suggests that there is the need to be cautious when embarking on land rights formalisation activities, since unintended outcomes can occur given the peculiarities of the social context of a jurisdiction. Particularly, any strategy for improving land registration systems for the provision of land information must take into consideration the nature of the land tenure systems, especially the customary structures and rules in a particular jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social recommendation has emerged to leverage social connections among users for predicting users’ unknown preferences, which could alleviate the data sparsity issue in collaborative filtering based recommendation. Early approaches relied on utilizing each user’s first-order social neighbors’ interests for better user modeling, and failed to model the social influence diffusion process from the global social network structure. Recently, we propose a preliminary work of a neural influence Diffusion Network (i.e., DiffNet) for social recommendation L. Wu, P. Sun, Y. Fu, R. Hong, X. Wang, and M. Wang, “A neural influence diffusion model for social recommendation,” in Proc. Int. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Develop. Inf. Retrieval, 2019, pp. 235–244.. DiffNet models the recursive social diffusion process for each user, such that the influence diffusion hidden in the higher-order social network is captured in the user embedding process. Despite the superior performance of DiffNet, we argue that, as users play a central role in both user-user social network and user-item interest network, only modeling the influence diffusion process in the social network would neglect the latent collaborative interests of users hidden in the user-item interest network. To this end, in this paper, we propose DiffNet++, an improved algorithm of DiffNet that models the neural influence diffusion and interest diffusion in a unified framework. By reformulating the social recommendation as a heterogeneous graph with social network and interest network as input, DiffNet++ advances DiffNet by injecting both the higher-order user latent interest reflected in the user-item graph and higher-order user influence reflected in the user-user graph for user embedding learning. This is achieved by iteratively aggregating each user’s embedding from three aspects: the user’s previous embedding, the influence aggregation of social neighbors from the social network, and the interest aggregation of item neighbors from the user-item interest network. Furthermore, we design a multi-level attention network that learns how to attentively aggregate user embeddings from these three aspects. Finally, extensive experimental results on four real-world datasets clearly show the effectiveness of our proposed model. We release the source code at https://github.com/PeiJieSun/diffnet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has realized that it is difficult to establish enough standards to meet the market demand in some innovative fields by relying on government standards alone. The social organization standards developed by non-governmental organizations and social organizations are developing rapidly. This paper analyzes the current development and existing problems of social organization standards in the field of Chinese civil astronautics, takes the data of the national social organization standards information platform as the research object, and conducts mining and key analysis by extracting important data such as standard type, standard publication and implementation time, and standard disclosure, put forward suggestions to strengthen the building of social organization standardization capabilities, improve public recognition, and promote the development of technology in the field of civil astronautics in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of "zadruga" (named by Vuk Karadjić in 1818) was introduced in the scientific research literature, as well as in the social and political discourse, of the then young Balkan countries in the 19th century to mark the multitude of historical forms under which the "complex family organization" was known among the South-Slavic people in the region. The young Bulgarian science adopted this term in ethnographic studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bulgarian scientists, lawyers, and researchers of customary law norms attempted to implement some of the features of this family model in modern Bulgarian legislation. In the period between the two world wars, the nascent cooperative movement in the agrarian sector also used the model of the "partnership" to justify its organization. This paper analyzes similar attempts to use scientific descriptions of the zadruga in the construction of various social and economic associations in Bulgaria during the interwar period. It also analyses the attempts of the new communist leaders to use the traditions of the pre-modern society in terms of communal living in zadruga through the imposition of a cooperative system, and the nationalization of the arable land in the first years under the totalitarian system following the Second World War. Part of the Bulgarian scientific community and Bulgarian ethnography has been involved in these attempts since the early 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet creates multidimensional and complex relationships in terms of the composition, application and mapping of social users. Most of the previous related research has focused on the single-layer topology of physical device networks but ignored the study of service access relationships and the social structure of users on the Internet. Here, we propose a composite framework to understand how the interaction between the physical devices network, business application network, and user role network affects the robustness of the entire Internet. In this paper, a multilayer network consisting of a physical device layer, business application layer and user role layer is constructed by collecting experimental network data. We characterize the disturbance process of the entire multilayer network when a physical entity device fails by designing nodal disturbance to investigate the interactions that exist between the different network layers. Meanwhile, we analyze the characteristics of the Internet-oriented multilayer network structure and propose a heuristic multilayer network topology generation algorithm based on the initial routing topology and networking pattern, which simulates the evolution process of multilayer network topology. To further analyze the robustness of this multilayer network model, we combined a total of six target node ranking indicators including random strategy, degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, clustering coefficient and network constraint coefficient, performed node deletion simulations in the experimental network, and analyzed the impact of component types and interactions on the robustness of the overall multilayer network based on the maximum component change in the network. These results provide new insights into the operational processes of the Internet from a multi-domain data fusion perspective, reflecting that the coupling relationships that exist between the different interaction layers are closely linked to the robustness of multilayer networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing concerns have been raised regarding artificial intelligence (AI) bias, and in response, efforts have been made to pursue AI fairness. In this paper, we argue that the idea of structural injustice serves as a helpful framework for clarifying the ethical concerns surrounding AI bias—including the nature of its moral problem and the responsibility for addressing it—and reconceptualizing the approach to pursuing AI fairness. Using AI in health care as a case study, we argue that AI bias is a form of structural injustice that exists when AI systems interact with other social factors to exacerbate existing social inequalities, making some groups of people more vulnerable to undeserved burdens while conferring unearned benefits to others. The goal of AI fairness, understood this way, is to pursue a more just social structure with the development and use of AI systems when appropriate. We further argue that all participating agents in the unjust social structure associated with AI bias bear a shared responsibility to join collective action with the goal of reforming the social structure, and we provide a list of practical recommendations for agents in various social positions to contribute to this collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Odesa was one of the largest and most important cities in the Russian Empire. Numerous studies have addressed the economic development and social structure of Odesa, but there are some gaps in the knowledge of the social stratification during the nineteenth century. Although most studies of the social and economic histories of Ukraine provide qualitative or highly aggregated quantitative data, micro-data at the level of individuals and households in Ukraine are rare. This paper provides new micro-data from the 1897 census in Odesa. It is the first attempt to code occupations of Odesa workers according to the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO). Of the 2,435 individuals in the 457 sampled households analyzed, 1,443 individuals demonstrate 86 of the unique occupations coded with the international HISCO scheme. The analysis compares these HISCO occupations by the social estates, the gender, and the language of the surveyed individuals. The study confirms several old hypotheses but also unearths new findings regarding the number of urban females involved in service and sales occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During this decade, many countries have experienced natural and accidental disasters, such as typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and nuclear plant accidents, causing catastrophic damage to infrastructures. Since the end of 2019, all countries of the world are struggling with the COVID-19 and pursuing countermeasures, including inoculation of vaccine, and changes in our lifestyle and social structures. All these experiences have made the residents in the affected regions keenly aware of the need for new infrastructures that are resilient and autonomous, so that vital lifelines are secured during calamities. A paradigm shift has been taking place toward reorganizing the energy social service management in many countries, including Japan, by effective use of sustainable energy and new supply schemes. However, such new power sources and supply schemes would affect the power grid through intermittency of power output and the deterioration of power quality and service. Therefore, new social infrastructures and novel management systems to supply energy and social service will be required. In this paper, user-friendly design, operation and control assist tools for resilient microgrids and autonomous communities are proposed and applied to the standard microgrid to verify its effectiveness and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berdychiv, a traditional center of Jewish culture and religion, was subjected to an intense "modernization" drive after the Soviet seizure of power. The Bolsheviks aimed to create a new society by tearing down old social structures and replacing them with secular, socialist alternatives. But in the early years of the Soviet Union, the question of how to realize this project was still a matter of experimentation. This paper discusses the sovietization efforts in Berdychiv during the 1920s and looks at how they transformed the town. It does so by focusing on the Soviet nationalities and religion policies with respect to the Jewish population, Berdychiv's largest ethnic group. It argues that the early Soviet leadership managed to create a Jewish proletarian culture and forced a rift between the generations, thus causing lasting changes in the town's social fabric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring social capital has been a challenging task over the past few decades, and, still, many of its dimensions and manifestations have not been thoroughly or evidently explored. The possible causes may be the ever-changing evolutionary perspectives that take place within the various levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—or within the various settings, where some of its core dimensions—bonding, bridging, and linking—are developed, or even among the contexts where its core determinants and features—trust, norms, connections, ties, etc.—are observed. Having in mind the various streams of research and theoretical discourses on social capital formation, this paper aims to surface the identification of the possible evidence on the formation of social capital among social economy organizations, and particularly among social enterprises. In doing so, it aims to explore the relational and cognitive features that drive social enterprises in their interorganizational cooperation with other social enterprises and third-sector organizations. The findings suggest that the central components of social capital, such as the sharing of common values, trust, reciprocity, and trustworthiness, are among those features that were valued most among the participants in the survey during their cooperation and engagement in common activities with other organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominance behaviours have been collected for many groups of animals since 1922 and serve as a foundation for research on social behaviour and social structure. Despite a wealth of data from the last century of research on dominance hierarchies, these data are only rarely used for comparative insight. Here, we aim to facilitate comparative studies of the structure and function of dominance hierarchies by compiling published dominance interaction datasets from the last 100 years of work. This compiled archive includes 436 datasets from 190 studies of 367 unique groups (mean group size 13.8, s.d. = 13.4) of 135 different species, totalling over 243 000 interactions. These data are presented in an R package alongside relevant metadata and a tool for subsetting the archive based on biological or methodological criteria. In this paper, we explain how to use the archive, discuss potential limitations of the data, and reflect on best practices in publishing dominance data based on our experience in assembling this dataset. This archive will serve as an important resource for future comparative studies and will promote the development of general unifying theories of dominance in behavioural ecology that can be grounded in testing with empirical data. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thorlief Schjelderup-Ebbe’s seminal paper on the ‘pecking’ order of chickens inspired numerous ethologists to research and debate the phenomenon of dominance. The expansion of dominance to the broader concept of power facilitated disentangling aggression, strength, rank and power. Aggression is only one means of coercing other individuals, and can sometimes highlight a lack of power. The fitness advantages of aggression may only outweigh the costs during periods of uncertainty. Effective instruments of power also include incentives and refusals to act. Moreover, the stability of the power relationship might vary with the instruments used if different means of power vary in the number and types of outcomes achieved, as well as the speed of accomplishing those outcomes. In well-established relationships, actions or physiological responses in the subordinate individual may even be the only indicator of a power differential. A focus on strength, aggression and fighting provides an incomplete understanding of the power landscape that individuals actually experience. Multiple methods for constructing hierarchies exist but greater attention to the implications of the types of data used in these constructions is needed. Many shifts in our understanding of power were foreshadowed in Schjelderup-Ebbe’s discussion about deviations from the linear hierarchy in chickens. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about the circular economy have taken place in parallel with, but largely independently of, discussions about degrowth. The present paper brings into dialogue the two fields by contemplating what circularity in business could entail in the context of transformations towards degrowth societies. To this end, the paper relates to a recent, holistic reconceptualisation which views degrowth transformations in terms of both less and more on four planes of social being: material transactions with nature, social interactions between people, social structures and people's inner being. These planes signify depth of social being. The paper looks at business through the lens of this reconceptualisation before zooming in on circularity as an important manifestation of a sustainability practice in business. We argue that, in the context of degrowth, implementation of circularity as a principle and a practice should be deep. Relating circularity to each plane of social being, we focus particularly on the plane of people's inner being, the reason being that our mode of relating with the world would need to be significantly different to what it currently is, if deep circularity practices are to become more widespread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contradictions lie at the heart of revolutionary groups operating in underground conditions: how can the trust and secrecy of the circle be combined with spreading the message to far-flung masses? Can the ideals for the future society be manifested in the way the revolutionaries are themselves organized? This paper examines the disputes on these questions that raged among Russian radicals before 1917, which are important because of their subsequent global influence. It analyzes the dynamical changes in the forms taken by certain major revolutionary circles, and argues that the differentiated social forms, which morphed via crucial decisions from their origin in egalitarian multi-voiced circles, stemmed from the internal debate that was essential to the circle and was to a great extent an outcome of the philosophical and revolutionary ideas espoused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than a decade after the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), it is becoming widely accepted that social and economic factors, including but not limited to education, energy, income, race, ethnicity, and housing, are important drivers of health in populations. Despite this understanding, in most contexts, social determinants are not central to local, national, or global decision-making. Greater clarity in conceptualizing social determinants, and more specificity in measuring them, can move us forward towards better incorporating social determinants in decision-making for health. In this paper, first, we summarize the evolution of the social framing of health. Second, we describe how the social determinants are conceptualized and contextualized differently at the global, national, and local levels. With this, we seek to demonstrate the importance of analyzing and understanding SDoH relative to the contexts in which they are experienced. Third, we problematize the gap in data across contexts on different dimensions of social determinants and describe data that could be curated to better understand the influence of social determinants at the local and national levels. Fourth, we describe the necessity of using data to understand social determinants and inform decision-making to improve health. Our overall goal is to provide a path for our collective understanding of the foundational causes of health, facilitated by advances in data access and quality, and realized through improved decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of qualitative research in terms of supervision in social work organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected by applying an interview guide, to which 22 social workers responded. The results of the research refer to how the measures taken during the pandemic affected social workers. It is also presented to what extent the supervision done within the organizations responded to the needs of social workers in this period of crisis. This research confirms the fact that supervision is an indispensable activity in social work organizations, especially in Romania, where, as a professional activity, it is still in the beginning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social impact can be understood as the real or perceived, intended or unintended, relational and agentic consequences that emerge from organizational decisions or actions for individuals, communities, and societies. Inherent here is the recognition that social impact aligns with consequences, whether it be on individuals, communities, and societies, and that these consequences stem from organizational decisions and behaviors. Drawing on wider social impact scholarship, this paper identifies two approaches—instrumental and consumer—that have provided lenses on how organizations make decisions about social impact and related consequences, and the level of involvement stakeholders have in these decisions. This paper proposes that the understanding of social impact should evolve to reflect the relational worldview advocated in the public relations discipline, which is one that emphasizes the importance of organizations, individuals, and communities contributing to a fully functioning society. A relational lens shows that social impact can be understood as changes—whether they be intended or unintended, anticipated or unanticipated, positive or negative—in the way people live, experience, sustain, and function within their society, resulting from organizational decisions and consequent behaviors as co-determined by organizations and their stakeholders. The relational approach requires the adoption of a relational perspective on identifying, predicting, evaluating, managing, and reporting on social impact, operationalized via the seven-step Relational Framework of Social Impact conceptualized in this paper. While social impact is a relatively new term in the public relations literature, this paper highlights how public relations scholarship is well placed to enrich the social impact discipline due its emphasis on fostering a fully functioning society. • Social impact can be considered from instrumental, consumer, and relational approaches. • This paper advocates for a relational approach, in line with tenets of a fully functioning society. • Relationally, the nature and extent of social impact and responses to it are co-determined by organizations and their stakeholders. • The seven-step Relational Framework of Social Impact guides public relations practitioners to identify, predict, evaluate, and measure an organization's social impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the notion of degrowth has gained traction in recent times, scholarship on degrowth transformations has yet to provide a conceptualisation that captures key attributes of what such transformations entail: (1) the reduction of some items and the expansion of others and (2) profound changes in various dimensions of social being, including in how humans interact with nature, non-humans, and one another, changes in social structures and changes in how we are as human beings. The present paper develops a comprehensive and non-reductionist conceptualisation of degrowth, understanding it to involve deep transformations on four interrelated planes of social being: material transactions with nature, social interactions between persons, social structure, and people's inner being. On each plane, these transformations consist in reducing, and ultimately absenting, some currently existing items while expanding others. The paper considers the implications of the conceptualisation for degrowth practice and theorising, focusing on top-down eco-social policies, bottom-up initiatives and self-transformation. It is found that degrowth would benefit from considering more seriously the effects of policies and initiatives across all four planes and from acknowledging diversity on each plane. Moreover, it is concluded that more attention should be paid to the plane of peoples' inner being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to a circular economy is often presented as a straightforward, neutral and apolitical process, characterised by an implicit techno-optimistic and eco-modernist stance. However, in their recent paper on 'circular futures', Bauwens et al. (2020) illustrate that the circular economy is best understood as an umbrella term that might come to define very contrasting visions of sustainable development. Despite this, there continues to be a lack of discussion about the basic assumptions regarding social and economic structures on which the circular economy should be based, with research predominantly focusing on technical and practical questions. Therefore, in this conceptual paper, we assess the a priori compatibility of different plausible configurations of the circular economy with the principal theories of value found in mainstream and heterodox economics. We argue that these futures are themselves value articulating institutions that implicitly adhere to a theory of value even if this is not recognised. Moreover, given that theories of value go to the heart of how economies and societies function and reproduce themselves, we argue that circular economy research should recognise the importance of value and acknowledge how value theory might enable or contradict the visions of sustainable development articulated. • Circular economy literature lacks grounding in economic theory. • The compatibility of different circular futures and theories of value is examined. • Futures are value articulating institutions implicitly adhering to a theory of value. • Theories of value can help articulate more ambitious CE visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated effects of rehabilitation techniques on Cocoa bean yield in Southern Nigeria. Three hundred cocoa farmers were selected using multistage sampling procedure. Data generated were analyzed with descriptive statistics and inferential statistical tools such as chi- square and t-test were used to determine the relationship between dependent variable and independent variables. The study revealed that 84.7% of the farmers were less than 50 years of age, majority (81.3%) was male, 89.3%, while, 87.3% of the farmers participated in one social organization or the others. The mean yield of cocoa beans reduced from 334.16 kg/ha in 2004 to 303.69 kg/ha in 2006 before cocoa rehabilitation techniques; while, there was an appreciable increase from 411.13 kg/ha in 2014 to 518.95 kg/ha in 2016 after cocoa rehabilitation techniques. The result of t–test table revealed a significant difference in the yield of cocoa beans before and after rehabilitation techniques (t=22.3; p<0.05). The yield of cocoa beans decreased before rehabilitation and an increased was observed after adoption of cocoa rehabilitation techniques. Efforts should be made to encourage youth to view farming as a carrier option through provision of soft loans and transfer of techniques that are easy to implement on their farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the enduring popular view that the rise in the multiracial population heralds our nation's transformation into a post-racial society, Critical Multiracial Theory (MultiCrit) asserts that how multiracial identity status is constructed is inextricably tied to systems and ideologies that maintain the white supremacist status quo in the United States. MultiCrit, like much of the multiracial identity literature, focuses predominantly on the experiences of emerging adults; this means we know little about the experiences of multiracial adolescents, a peak period for identity development. The current paper uses MultiCrit to examine how a diverse sample of multiracial youth (n = 49; Mage = 15.5 years) negotiate racial identity development under white supremacy. Our qualitative interview analysis reveals: (a) the salience of socializing messages from others, (b) that such messages reinforce a (mono)racist societal structure via discrimination, stereotyping, and invalidation, and (c) that multiracial youth frequently resist (mono)racist assertions as they make sense of their own identities. Our results suggest that multiracial youth are attentive to the myriad ways that white supremacy constructs and constrains their identities, and thus underscores the need to bring a critical lens to the study of multiracial identity development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I investigate a connection between a common characterisation of freedom and how uncertainty is managed in a Bayesian hierarchical model. To do this, I consider a distributed factorization of a group's optimization of free energy, in which each agent is attempting to align with the group and with its own model. I show how this can lead to equilibria for groups, defined by the capacity of the model being used, essentially how many different datasets it can handle. In particular, I show that there is a "sweet spot" in the capacity of a normal model in each agent's decentralized optimization, and that this "sweet spot" corresponds to minimal free energy for the group. At the sweet spot, an agent can predict what the group will do and the group is not surprised by the agent. However, there is an asymmetry. A higher capacity model for an agent makes it harder for the individual to learn, as there are more parameters. Simultaneously, a higher capacity model for the group, implemented as a higher capacity model for each member agent, makes it easier for a group to integrate a new member. To optimize for a group of agents then requires one to make a trade-off in capacity, as each individual agent seeks to decrease capacity, but there is pressure from the group to increase capacity of all members. This pressure exists because as individual agent's capacities are reduced, so too are their abilities to model other agents, and thereby to establish pro-social behavioural patterns. I then consider a basic two-level (dual process) Bayesian model of social reasoning and a set of three parameters of capacity that are required to implement such a model. Considering these three capacities as dependent elements in a free energy minimization for a group leads to a "sweet surface" in a three-dimensional space defining the triplet of parameters that each agent must use should they hope to minimize free energy as a group. Finally, I relate these three parameters to three notions of freedom and equality in human social organization, and postulate a correspondence between freedom and model capacity. That is, models with higher capacity, have more freedom as they can interact with more datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]