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Consumers are known to seek out and display conspicuous goods—items that are exclusive and signal wealth and high social standing. Though many factors can drive such conspicuous consumption, the present work looks at an unexplored element: whether consumers find themselves in a dominance versus prestige-based hierarchy. Dominance-based hierarchies encourage consumers to use threatening, assertive, and manipulative behaviors to navigate the hierarchy. In contrast, prestige-based hierarchies encourage consumers to show their talent, skills, and motivation to operate within the hierarchy. The present research reveals how these two main bases of hierarchy shape consumers' consumption of conspicuous goods. Specifically, dominance, relative to prestige hierarchies, is proposed to foster greater social anxiety, which leads people to seek conspicuous goods as a means of psychological security. Consequently, dominance-based hierarchies are more likely to encourage conspicuous consumption relative to prestige-based hierarchies. Multiple experiments, which utilize real employees' behaviors, experimental manipulations of hierarchy, as well as incentivize-compatible decisions, reveal that dominance-based hierarchies, relative to prestige-based hierarchies, increase consumers' preference for conspicuous goods. Moreover, evidence for a psychological mechanism in the form of social anxiety is demonstrated via both mediation and moderation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of wins and lo sses in pairwise contests, such as occur in sports and games, consumer research and paired comparison studies, and human and animal social hierarchies, are commonly analyzed using probabilistic models that allow one to quantify the strength of competitors or predict the outcome of future contests. Here, we generalize this approach to incorporate two additional features: an element of randomness or luck that leads to upset wins, and a "depth of competition" variable that measures the complexity of a game or hierarchy. Fitting the resulting model, we estimate depth and luck in a range of games, sports, and social situations. In general, we find that social competition tends to be "deep," meaning it has a pronounced hierarchy with many distinct levels, but also that there is often a nonzero chance of an upset victory. Competition in sports and games, by contrast, tends to be shallow, and in most cases, there is little evidence of upset wins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hacia 1850, en Buenos Aires, la costura era una actividad que realizaban diferentes personas en sitios diversos. Podía ser parte de un oficio artesanal, una labor femenina, un castigo productivo o una de las tareas que se esperaban del servicio doméstico. Observar esas distinciones y distancias vuelve a la aguja y al hilo un prisma para interrogarnos por las jerarquías sociales –de género, raza y edad– que estructuraron este mercado de trabajo e incidieron en la construcción de nociones de derechos y justicia, así como para identificar el lugar que ocupó este puerto sudamericano en una trama global de procesos de industrialización, nuevas pautas de consumo y movimientos migratorios. A través del análisis de un nutrido corpus documental, este estudio realiza un aporte desde la historia social con perspectiva de género al ofrecer una mirada del período al ras de experiencias sociales de trabajo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we take a look at the influence of 20th-century provenance of caste as a category of academic importance meriting a debate in American sociology and beyond. Two actors participated in the animating discourse of caste and race in the annals of American sociology. Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery capitalist America. Gerald Berreman represented a different camp that found social hierarchies to be co-determinant of relations and division arranged into a caste society. The debate over caste, nevertheless, admitted to the plausibility of castes contrasted with India's caste system. However, caste categorization was found to be an appropriate application to the conditions of social inequalities. Gunnar Myrdal and other scholars of repute contributed to the debate. What remained limited in their theoretical contributions to the discussion was an inadequate focus on the lived reality and politics of the caste formulations in the postcolonial, socialist mode of production. A serious examination of untouchability, sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that regulate the kernel of the caste system as well as the racialized castes in India were not studied or referenced in detail. This article adds to that void a theoretical understanding of the discussion on caste, race and colour in sociological and anthropological disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines datafication of the reproductive body in India through use of femtech mobile phone applications (henceforth, apps). Femtech apps quantify reproductive processes such as periods, conception, pregnancy and hormonal health and promise their users greater 'self-awareness' and 'control' through 'self-management'. Most studies on femtech refer to users in the Global North, while there are few studies on femtech adoption in the developing countries. This article, based on qualitative and quantitative data, and informed by a feminist technoscience framework, illustrates how femtech's promise of empowerment through datafication of reproduction is fraught with contradictions and tensions, and has exclusionary and risky consequences for Indian users. It examines the gendered technological landscape's bearing on concrete practices of design and innovation, and shows how femtech reinforces gendered social hierarchies rather than dismantling them and liberating users. Under datafication, health standards become extremely narrowly defined, marginalising those whose reproductive health trajectories may not conform to normative standards. Femtech's proliferation in India has also failed to recognise the structural inequalities and socio-economic disadvantages that characterise healthcare access. Finally, the legal grey areas and ill-defined data privacy policies in India allow for easy commercialisation of users' bodies and personal data possible. This further undermines the liberational rhetoric of femtech, as data privacy breaches are embodied forms of violence with consequences for users' bodily autonomy and dignity. Femtech's pursuit of maximising commercial gain is thus at odds with the feminist technoscience project of minimising women's exploitation and oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Dar es Salaam, an aesthetic politics of landscape shaped by the coloniality of space is central to middle‐class boundary work that drives the city's middle classes to congregate in the city's northern suburbs. The colonial city was divided into three racially marked zones that became known as uzunguni, uhindini, and uswahilini (the place of the European, Indian, and African, respectively). The coloniality of space remains as the spatial residue of this colonial enframing. It endures in an aesthetic politics of landscape in which ideas about what, and who, makes good urban space in terms of architecture, topography, and planning, and who deserves to live where. The paper examines how middle‐class suburban residents' mobilisation of the coloniality of space naturalises existing social and spatial hierarchies in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social meanings of monetary research incentives and the ramifications of their use in interview research. I argue that monetary incentives produce complex social meanings that significantly and diversly shape the relationship between interview researchers and participants and, as such, impact the types and volume of data that interviews produce. I discuss three distinct social meanings that emerged in my qualitative research interviews with forty-four low-wage freelance refugee interpreters in Canada. First, I show that in research with low-income workers, incentives can be interpreted as symbols of cross-class allyship that place the researcher in trusting and highly cooperative relationships of solidarity with participants. Second, the use of research incentives may also, and somewhat paradoxically, deepen socio-economic hierarchies by placing researchers and participants in relations resembling those between employers and employees. Third, research incentives may also be used by participants to resist social hierarchies and establish relations of benevolent and charitable equivalence in the interview encounter. Thus, the various social meanings of monetary incentives are productive of distinct interpersonal dynamics that shape the process of data collection as well as recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many nation-states adopted militarized measures for rapid containment. China notably implemented extreme and enduring war-like procedures. This study aims to explore the implications of securitizing the pandemic through a feminist lens and suggest ethical and equitable strategies for understanding emergencies and coping with future crises. Employing discourse-based online ethnography, it analyzes social dynamics in China’s “pandemic war,” examining how gender and (in)security are co-constructed and the role of feminist activism within an authoritarian context. This article argues that framing the pandemic as war reinforces a masculinist stance of dominance, prioritizing state stability over human rights and security. State-centric securitization perpetuates state authority, gendered social hierarchies, and structural violence. The exclusionary nature of this approach created new avenues for feminist activism, both online and offline, advocating for marginalized groups, raising social and gender awareness, challenging state narratives, and fostering collective resistance. Drawing lessons from Chinese feminist initiatives during COVID-19, this study calls for alternative crisis responses focused on care, equity, ethics, and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social hierarchies are widely used to predict life‐history patterns and priority of access to resources. Yet, behavioural ecology and social sciences lack a consistent relationship between specific behaviours and social rank across studies. I used published data sets from 42 groups of 25 species representing several taxa to determine whether hierarchies inferred from different behaviours are similar or (in)consistently different at both individual and group levels. Ranks inferred from yielding interactions in the absence of aggression ('ritualized') were often comparable to ranks inferred from decided aggression (unambiguous outcome) but not to ranks inferred from undecided aggression. Accordingly, hierarchies inferred from data sets including only decided interactions were steeper than those inferred from data sets including undecided aggression. These results support the hypothesis that aggression can be context‐dependent and might reflect less stable or mutually recognized relationships than (ritualized) yielding interactions. I discuss the consequences of choosing different behaviours to infer social hierarchies and the difficulty of making generalizations from one species or taxon to another. Finally, I recommend that the use of ritualized yielding and certainly the use of decided over undecided interactions to infer social hierarchies should be preferred, especially in comparative studies which go beyond taxon‐specific idiosyncrasies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the use of crime narratives through book clubs in criminal justice education. While true crime media has gained popularity, it often presents a skewed view of criminal justice realities. In contrast, carefully selected narratives in educational settings can promote significant learning experiences, as outlined in Fink’s taxonomy. These narratives can help humanize justice-involved individuals, challenge stereotypes, and provide a more balanced understanding of the criminal justice system. The growing field of narrative criminology further supports the use of stories to examine social hierarchies and inequalities within the justice system. Book clubs, when integrated effectively into coursework, have shown promise in increasing student engagement and building relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers co‐production as a new methodology for relational approaches to legal consciousness studies that allows for deeper analysis of and engagement with the everyday experience of law. We argue that the inherent relationality of co‐production has the potential to both expose and change legal consciousness. As an approach that equalizes status in the co‐production of knowledge, social structures and hierarchies are reproduced in real time, allowing the relational networks through which legal consciousness is formed to emerge. We demonstrate both the possibility and the value of this approach through a discussion of early findings from a co‐produced project focused on accessible legal information for disabled people with cognitive impairments. Our emerging data show that disabled people's experience as ‘outsiders’ in their communities, and the barriers to justice that they encounter through being not believed or information being given in inaccessible formats, creates uncertainty and distrust of the utility of legal professionals as routes for resolution – even as they express a desire for formal legal process. These data also show that engaging with co‐production work can increase the legal confidence of people from marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the potential khipu-document "match" involving six Inka-style khipus from Peru's Santa Valley that record data similar to a 1670 colonial census of San Pedro de Corongo. Despite its potential as a breakthrough in khipu decipherment, crucial details surrounding these potential "Rosetta khipus" and their associated colonial document have been left out, overlooked, or confused in the literature. This article's objective is to synthesize and evaluate what is known about this khipu-document "match" while also using combinatorics to identify an optimal moiety alignment for the six lineage groups listed in the 1670 census. This novel moiety alignment differs from the one proposed in 2018 by Manuel Medrano and Gary Urton and is supported by additional structures found in the six khipus. This discovery could lead to a broader understanding of the social hierarchy of San Pedro de Corongo in 1670, as well as an expanded reading of the six Santa Valley khipus. Furthermore, this study presents the first-ever identification of recto and verso cord attachment knot orientations being used as a marked and unmarked sign, respectively. This article's findings provide a significant contribution toward the ongoing decipherment of nonnumerical khipu signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a course of correction in the discourse surrounding human-centric AI by elucidating the philosophical underpinning that serves to create a view that AI is divorced from human-centric values. Next, we espouse the need to explicitly designate stakeholder- or community-centric values which are needed to resolve the issue of alignment. To achieve this, we present two frameworks, Ubuntu and maximum feasible participation. Finally, we demonstrate how employing the aforementioned frameworks in AI can benefit society by flattening the current top-down social hierarchies as AI is currently being utilized. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic posed great risks to some disabled students, not necessarily because of health-related conditions, but due to the pre-existing entrenched inequalities that might have led to widened disparities. Hence, our aim was to critically explore the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for disabled students, focusing on equal access to quality education. Data were gathered with semi-structured interviews with seven disabled students and eighteen parents of disabled students from Cyprus. Based on the participants' narratives, it was found that during the school closure non-disabled students who were considered as eligible to learn were usually kept close; in contrast, some disabled students, who were considered as not eligible for equal opportunities in quality education, were eventually kept afar. Thus, the induced fear of the pandemic facilitated the legitimisation of exclusion, by rationalising isolation, on the basis of the 'best interest' of the assumed as impotent and sick children. Hence, in some cases, obligatory distance resulted to the perpetuation of the dominant power relations and the prevailing social hierarchy, in which less qualified disabled people are usually placed at the lowest level, often with limited chance to climb up compared to their non-disabled peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of social hierarchy and its significance in contemporary society. It argues that while there is existing literature on social hierarchies, there is a lack of general theories on their nature and moral significance. The author introduces Niko Kolodny's work, which provides a comprehensive theory of social hierarchy and argues that it is fundamentally objectionable. The article examines Kolodny's analysis of social hierarchy, his arguments regarding its normative implications, and his proposed "tempering factors" that can make a hierarchy less objectionable. The author also critiques Kolodny's theory and suggests that the objection to hierarchy should be based on its lack of appropriate justification. They propose that only hierarchies of consideration are presumptively objectionable, while hierarchies of esteem and authority may not be intrinsically objectionable. The text also questions the interpretation of moral anxieties about subjection to the state as a claim against hierarchy. Overall, the article provides a critical analysis of social hierarchy and its moral implications. [Extracted from the article]

Scholarship has described Deir el-Medina as a sophisticated community composed of highly trained and educated individuals, at least compared to most ancient Egyptian villages that were primarily focused on agrarian labor. The tombs at Deir el-Medina indicate that some community members were well-off financially and may have aspired to reach elite levels in ancient Egypt's social hierarchy. However, this understanding of Deir el-Medina's community lacks the nuance of the hierarchical structure that defines success and status among the workers, artists, and craftspeople living in the community. This paper will investigate how one's status within the community might dictate the allocation of artistic roles in the execution of painted royal tomb scenes. It will explore who within the community would have the privilege of depicting the primary motifs of a tomb and who would be responsible for less noticeable areas of the tomb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hegemonic and toxic traits of masculinity are complex concepts that have affected personal relationships and social hierarchies for centuries. The play The Who & The What by Ayad Akhtar presents these traits through the male character, Afzal, a Pakistani American citizen whose traditional culture and modern American lifestyle, lead him to adopt these forms of masculinity. Therefore, the present study basically aims to examine the impact of Afzal's masculinity in Akhtar's play The Who & The What on his daughters, Zarina and Mahwish, as well as on Zarina's husband, Eli. The Who & The What centers on Zarina, the female protagonist, who challenges her society by writing a novel titled The Who & The What, exploring the personal life of the prophet Muhammad (PBUH). As the play progresses, her father, Afzal, opposes her and anyone who crosses the limits set by their traditional Arab-Muslim culture. However, employing the notions of Hegemonic Masculinity by R. W. Connell and the Toxic Theory of Masculinity as proposed by Terry A. Kupers provides new lenses to analyze the text of the play. Thus, the present study reveals that Afzal's actions reflect certain hegemonic and toxic aspects such as authority, domination, control, superiority, and making decisions for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies / Sodobna Pedagogika is the property of Association of Slovenian Educationalists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies / Sodobna Pedagogika is the property of Association of Slovenian Educationalists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

By highlighting the motivation behind the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital (ITCC), this article extends the notion of the transmission of cultural capital. Utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources, this article produces an analytical framework for the ITCC. Through empirical materials that were gathered based on semi-structured interviews conducted in China with adolescent golfers as well as separately with their mothers, this article reveals the multiple objectives of purposeful ITCC, and the reverse transmission/cultural feedback to mothers is also identified. The findings show that there are three objectives from social and biological sense:1) increasing the possibility of enrolling in a prestigious university; 2) promoting sportsmanship awareness and positioning social hierarchy; and 3) maintaining fitness and correcting vision. Unintentional cultural feedback/reverse transmission emerges as a result of increasingly frequent intergenerational communication between mother and child. Mothers start acquiring and deepening their habitus in golf-related fields with dominant or recessive guidance from youngsters. This article demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for intergenerational transmission analyses in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Cultural Poetics / KulturPoetik: Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft is the property of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper utilizes the concept of the agency of material objects, proposed as a tenet by several historians of science in the late twentieth century. It argues that scientific instruments have agency in the field due to their value and fragility, both of which attributes served to dictate a social hierarchy of activity. Furthermore, the resulting numerical outputs served to discriminate between various groups. The principal focus is the role of instruments used by travellers sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, London, but it also looks at the role of instruments on a larger triangulation; the project to survey the African part of the arc of the 30th meridian east of Greenwich. Seeing the instruments as material objects allows insights into the social arrangements and interactions taking place. It is argued that instruments, and the results of instrument use, entrenched existing power hierarchies, imparting greater prestige to those who were previously endowed with privilege. It is argued the instruments contributed to ‘othering’ both in the field and in the publications resulting from the expeditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper joins the discussion on differentiation and stratification of legal professionals through the lens of Danish law graduates and the evolution of their careers from the 1970s. Using register data, we analyse the job positions and wages of six cohorts 20 years after their graduation. This enables us to sketch an overview of, on the one hand, the professional spaces the law grads occupy at a specific point in time, and on the other, gain insight into the overall trajectories of the different cohorts, as well as the more specific trajectories of different professional groupings. These groupings are then examined in terms of their wages and corporate income to get an understanding of the degree of stratification of each group within each cohort, and thereby the social hierarchy structuring the cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third places—public and community settings like parks and libraries—are theorized to serve as sources of social connection, community, and play. Yet, young people who hold marginalized identities, such as those experiencing homelessness and housing instability, often endure discrimination in third place settings. This study used game‐based inquiry to partner with recently housed young people who have experienced chronic housing instability (N = 21) to understand how they would (re)imagine future third places. We then analyzed transcripts from these game sessions through qualitative thematic analysis. Participants suggested that certain tenets must be present in third places: they must offer opportunities for agency and individualization; they must meet everyday needs; and they must be explicitly inclusive. To actualize these tenets, participants imagined places that meet many needs and do many things; portable and adaptable physical spaces; freedom to choose how to play; attending to and subverting oppressive social hierarchies; providing choice for privacy or connection; knowing people will be around; and free amenities. These findings have implications for theoretical development, practices in present and future third places, and methodological development of games in research. Highlights: Young people who hold marginalized identities often endure discrimination in third place settings.Game‐based inquiry is a novel way to engage young people in reimagining future third places.Reimagined third places promote agency, meet everyday needs, and are explicitly inclusive.These findings challenge prior theoretical work on third places when considering youth.Current and future third places may embrace these tenets to build inclusive third places for youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most fruitful concepts of recent social analysis has been that of intersectionality, the idea that the nature of oppression is multiplicative rather than additive, and that no one identity - race, class, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, and so on - should be considered apart from other identities, but is always materialized in terms of and by means of them. Although itwas developed out of the US experience, intersectional epistemology has been dynamic and mobile, as scholars have not simply used social groupings drawn from the Western past and present but have elaborated social categories taken fromlocal understandings aswell. This article analyses some recent examples of gendered world history that also take other social hierarchies into account, and assesses how these help us better understand global processes that transformed societies. It begins with a place and timewhere global entanglements led quite clearly to the emergence of new social groups, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas, and then more briefly examines this process in other parts of the early modern colonial world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes how femme sociality and world-making provide a counterpoint to a politics that aims for neutrality or innocence, arguing that neutrality or innocence are hallmarks of different forms of patriarchy. Instead, the authors offer embracing complicity as a concept that structures practical ethics centered in abolitionism and nondisposability. Complicity is formulated as a mode of self-understanding that guides action, evading the social hierarchies demanded by a claim to innocence, uprooting (neo)liberal attitudes that look to evade friction by doling out punishment and exclusion. The proposal to embrace complicity is followed by a proposal for solidarity based on openness. Rather than being "right" or "solving problems," a turn to the sensuous provides a form of world-making that can hold difference—without reducing life to the single organizational forms characteristic of liberalism. As a key part of this form of solidarity, the authors show how trans femmeness emphasizes possibilities for social and sensorial transformation. Practices of care and solidarity allow one to entangle with different forms of life. Instead of reforming the structures of oppression, femme practices encourage us to unlearn and uproot institutional forms that reproduce social and material oppressions, and to take agency in (re)constructing and nourishing one's own worlds—to collectively plant the rose garden of struggle for liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across four studies (N = 816 U.S. adults), we uncovered a gender stereotype about dual pathways to social hierarchy: Men were associated with power, and women were associated with status. We detected this pattern both explicitly and implicitly in perceptions of individuals drawn from Forbes magazine's powerful people lists in undergraduate and online samples. We examined social-cognitive implications, including prominent people's degree of recognition by individuals and society, and the formation of men's and women's self-concepts. We found that power (status) ratings predicted greater recognition of men (women) and lesser recognition of women (men). In terms of the self-concept, we found that women internalized the stereotype associating women with status more than power implicitly and explicitly. Although men explicitly reported having less status and more power than women, men implicitly associated the self with status as much as power. No gender differences emerged in the desires for power and status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Masculinities are organised hierarchically, and how a man sees himself is often informed by his positioning within this hierarchy. The context within which men are located determines which factors or markers of masculinity become more salient at different times, and so do the social situations and spaces men are interacting within, and with whom they are interacting. Their socio-cultural, political, and economic positioning inform not only how they construct their gendered identities, but also where they are located within social hierarchies of masculinity. This article examines constructions of masculinities among economically marginalised men who seek work on the side of the road in Cape Town, South Africa. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 10 Black African men and the findings suggest that economic provision remains a central feature in participants' constructions of masculinity. Men's experiences of precarious work not only impact how they see themselves but also their ability to establish and maintain romantic relationships which, as argued in this study, serve an important role in validating and affirming participants' masculinity. This study shows that when some men are not able to provide, their romantic relationships fail, which adversely impacts their self-esteem. In response, some of the participants in this study turned towards alcohol abuse, and neglecting/abandoning their homes and families as a way to avoid the shame and humiliation they experience as 'men who cannot provide'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of humor in obfuscating social hierarchy? This article describes how caste prejudices among male taxi drivers in Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas are enacted through the humor of calling each other "funny" names. Such humor is directed toward Dalit drivers whose proper first names are replaced by "funny" names that caricature their personal attributes as an index of their "lower‐caste" identity without addressing it directly. Given the conditions of social change in the practice of caste across India, calling such names provides the "upper‐caste" drivers grounds for the disavowability of addressing caste. Calling Dalit drivers funny first names at the taxi stand eschews addressing directly the collective lower‐caste identity indexed in their last names even as the humor so enacted becomes the premise for identifying their caste identity. It exceeds and bypasses legalized notions of caste atrocity by distorting personal attributes into humorous name‐calling that is indexically removed from the denigration of collective caste identity that can be disavowed. This article offers an ethnography of humor to understand how humorous sociability becomes the means for addressing lower‐caste identity while simultaneously providing the grounds for its obfuscation and disavowal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberation is typically employed to address difficult issues in society. Since 2021, Thailand has implemented Thailand Talks, an adaptation of the European-initiated My Country Talks platform, to encourage individuals to exchange their different viewpoints on public issues, with the aim of countering polarization in society. This study aims to examine the idea and process utilized in the Thailand Talks 2022. Additionally, it seeks to investigate how Thailand Talks contributes to the development of a deliberative thinking environment across four important aspects: normative, interpretive, affective, and physical. Methodologically, the research conducted in-depth interviews with both platform participants and organizers. The findings indicate that Thailand Talks embodies the idea of listening, connecting with strangers, and conversing with differing opinions. Creating an environment for deliberation in Thailand is difficult since conversation, particularly including differing opinions, is not ingrained in Thai society. However, Thailand Talks has successfully developed aspects of a deliberative thinking environment which enable conversation between individuals, a circumstance that would be unattainable otherwise and in which social hierarchy is disregarded. This study also shows that Thailand Talks can serve as a lesson for other societies on how to promote dialogue and deliberative initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leonora Sansay's Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo (1808), which recounts the culmination of the Haitian revolution against French colonialism (1791–1804), evokes a nostalgia for colonial order even though colonialism would remain in the Caribbean for decades. The epistolary novel's narrator, an American visiting Saint Domingue (colonial Haiti), yearns for the "paradise" that she imagines has been destroyed by the revolution, aligning Sansay with Paul Gilroy's notion of postcolonial melancholia. More insidiously, in Secret History, the longing for the reinstatement of the colonial system in Saint Domingue positions people of African descent outside "frames of recognition," as Judith Butler in Frames of War conceptualizes the way in which biopolitical forces constitute personhood. I argue that for Sansay, the norms that constitute a living being as recognizable as a life are the ideologies of Romantic settler colonialism, as well as American exceptionalism. As such, within Secret History, Sansay reifies a stratified racial and national hierarchy while also actively denying the state violence that sustains it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether people can accurately judge the experienced power, dominance, and prestige of others based on short texts, and what linguistic cues are related to these hierarchy-related variables. Past research suggests that personality is reflected in language, but hierarchy—another important feature in human relationships—has not been fully considered. In two studies with a zero-acquaintance setting, judges (N 1/2 = 105/202) read self-descriptions of speakers (N 1/2 = 200/200) and completed peer ratings of speakers' power, dominance, and prestige. Speakers completed the same scales as self-ratings. We found substantial associations between the hierarchy concepts and several word categories (e.g., sense of power was negatively related to tentative words in self- and peer reports). For power and prestige, judges and speakers used the same linguistic cues for their assessments. Further, judges converged strongly in their assessments and showed high self-other agreement for all variables. We conclude that social hierarchy concepts are enacted in language and can be perceived from minimal verbal information. The findings show the importance of distinguishing between various hierarchy concepts when analyzing language correlates and have implications for testing power theories with linguistic material and the understanding of perceptions regarding hierarchy differences and following downstream consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faunal remains from Ḥorvat Tevet, a site located in the rural hinterlands of the Jezreel Valley, reveal patterns of a complex redistributive apparatus during the Late Iron IIA. This paper assesses a large assemblage of animal bones within inter- and intra-site comparative analyses. Inter-site comparisons to contemporary sites in the northern valleys of Israel demonstrate that the agricultural production of grain and animal by-products at Ḥorvat Tevet is unprecedented and went far beyond the site's local needs. Further, an intra-site comparison reveals a hierarchical distinction in the consumption patterns between elites and the labour force. These results further reinforce the conclusion that the late Iron IIA Ḥorvat Tevet was an administrative centre of a royal Israelite estate in the Jezreel Valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correlational pilot study (N = 143) and an integrative data analysis of two experiments (total N = 377) provide evidence linking anger to the psychology of social hierarchy. The experiments demonstrate that the experience of anger increases the psychological accessibility of implicit cognitions related to social hierarchy: compared to participants in a control condition, participants in an anger-priming condition completed word stems with significantly more hierarchy-related words. We found little support for sex differences in the effect of anger on implicit hierarchy-related cognition; effects were equivalent across male and female participants. Findings fit with functionalist evolutionary views of anger suggesting that anger may motivate the use of dominance to strive for high social rank in group hierarchies. Implications for downstream behaviour, including aggression and negotiation, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous archaeological investigations at Mission La Purísima Concepción unearthed a concentration of glass and ceramic vessels under a floor within a room in adobe barracks where Chumash families resided. Early interpretations suggested a person of European ancestry lived there; however, we argue they were Indigenous to California. We propose that the individuals who lived in the room had achieved a different axis of social distinction, holding prominent positions within the mission's social hierarchy. Drawing on ethnohistoric accounts, the occupants were either the family of a Native alcalde (governor) or another influential couple who figured prominently in mission records listed as a padrino (godfather), madrina (godmother), testigo (witness), intérprete (interpreter), or enfermero (nurse). Moreover, we demonstrate that the glass and ceramic vessels represent a unique caching event during the Mexican period when Native officials lacked the means to reform the missions or have a stake in their survival. These data are crucial to understanding the enormous diversity that formed the fabric of Indigenous communities in California missions and Indigenous autonomy over successive waves of colonialism. Such re-examination of museum collections is essential in a field with a growing curation crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the roundtable discussion titled "Social and Political Hierarchies" that was held online. Topics discussed include the role and justification of social and political hierarchies, exploring their implications in family dynamics, political systems, and international relations. The event featured various notable speakers including Daniel Bell, Wang Pei and Bai Tongdong.

Graffiti relies on social instrumentation for its creation on spatial structures. It is questioned whether different mechanisms exist to transfer social and spatial hierarchies under a new model for better engagement, management, and governance. This research aims to replace physical graffiti using augmented reality (AR) in smartphones. Contact-free AR graffiti starts with the creation of 3D graffiti; this is followed by an AR cloud platform upload, quick response (QR) code access, and site deployment, leading to the secondary reconstruction of a field scene using smartphone screenshots. The working structure was created based on the first 3D reconstruction of graffiti details as AR models and second 3D reconstruction of field graffiti on different backgrounds using a photogrammetry method. The 3D graffiti can be geotagged as a personal map and 3D printed for collections. This culture-engaged AR creates a two-way method of interacting with spatial structures where the result is collected as a self-governed form of social media. The reinterpreted context is represented by a virtual 3D sticker or symbolized name card shared on the cloud. The hidden or social hierarchy was reinterpreted by a sense of ritual without altering any space. The application of digital stickers in AR redefines the spatial order, typology, and governance of graffiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recently genetic determinist claims have reappeared in the explanation of human psychology and to some extent they even made their way into explanations of social phenomena. In this article, I will provide a critical analysis of the genetic determinist discourse from a social constructionist perspective. First, I will examine the meaning of genetic determinism. Then I will shortly introduce the social constructionist perspective generally and it's relevance for analyzing scientific discourses. Next, I will examine the debates about genetic determinism in behavior genetics and sociogenomics and interpret these critically from a social constructionist and deconstructionist perspective. Finally, I will provide an analysis of the main social, ideological, cultural and economic factors that influence the development of genetic determinist ideas: modernity, the legitimation of social hierarchies, neoliberalism and business interests. My conclusion is that the social constructionist perspective is important in the analysis and critique of the genetic determinist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an ethnographic analysis of the online training practices IS sympathisers adopt to recruit, indoctrinate, train, and vet new affiliates. The study highlights the carefully crafted virtual ecosystem established by IS unofficial media operatives, which seeks to identify and select converts with specialised digital skills and unwavering commitment to the group's vision of Islam. Prioritising quality over quantity, the selection process subjects new recruits to rigorous pre-and post-selection trials to ensure their authenticity, devotion, and obedience. Oaths of allegiance are central to membership within this virtual ecosystem, engendering a master-apprentice dynamic that may secure new recruits' adherence to assigned duties within the network. The instructional scaffolding within this ecosystem comprises two main constituents: theological indoctrination and digital training. The former places emphasis on IS's allegedly authentic religious sources in teaching Islamic jurisprudence, while the latter includes training on online security and media campaigns. As sympathisers progress through the ranks within the virtual ecosystem, they are empowered by their newly achieved "veteran" status to take on leadership roles within the digital sphere or engage in combat operations. The meticulously engineered architecture of social hierarchies within the network is designed to foster loyalty and obedience, perpetuate a hierarchical fraternity, thereby enhancing the organisation's resilience and longevity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Racial capitalism depends on the reproduction of an existing racialized economic order. In this article, I argue that the disavowal of past injustice is a central way in which this reproduction is ensured and that market-based forms of knowledge production, such as for-profit predictive practices, play a crucial role in facilitating this disavowal. Recent debates about the fairness of algorithms, data justice, and predictive policing have intensified long-standing controversies, both popular and academic, about the way in which statistical and financial modes of accounting and predicting articulate, represent and produce ascriptive categories of hierarchically ordered social difference, and reproduce unjust social hierarchies and inequalities. These debates have productively problematized the racial lives of seemingly apolitical predictive technologies and demanded the re-politicization of predictive practices. What has been missing from these debates so far, however, is a more explicit engagement with ways in which anti-racist movements and activists themselves have contested the entanglements of prediction and race making. I turn to a recent prominent example, namely the contestation over racial discrepancies in subprime lending to examine how fair lending activists have conceptualized and troubled the reproduction of a racialized economic order through for-profit predictive practices in the decade before the Great Financial Crisis. I situate this particular example in the broader historical and political context of politicizing prediction that first emerged with the ascendancy of a liberal, individualist-proprietary conception of risk, and the political problem space to which this has given rise. My analysis shows that actuarial conceptions of fairness continue to reverberate in anti-racist contestations of for-profit predictive practices, and that they tend to marginalize and undercut more radical strands of critique of the racialization of financial markets. Insofar as these modalities of contestation implicitly reproduce a liberal, proprietary-individualist conception of risk, I argue, they fail to effectively challenge the quasi-alchemical transformation of injustice into personal responsibility, and thus contribute to the disavowal of past injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-ecological models combine ecological systems with human social dynamics in order to better understand human interactions with the environment. To model human behavior, replicator dynamics can be used to model how societal influence and financial costs can change opinions about resource extraction. Previous research on replicator dynamics has shown how evolving opinions on conservation can change how humans interact with their environment and therefore change population dynamics of the harvested species. However, social-ecological models often assume that human societies are homogeneous with no social structure. Building on previous work on social-ecological models, we develop a two-patch socio-ecological model with social hierarchy in order to study the interactions between spatial dynamics and social inequity. We found that fish movement between patches is a major driver of model dynamics, especially when the two patches exhibit different social equality and fishing practices. Further, we found that the societal influence between groups of harvesters was essential to ensuring stable fishery dynamics. Next, we developed a case study of two independently managed fisheries that were connected by fish movement where one human group fishes sustainably while another was over-harvests, resulting in a fishery collapse of both patches. We also found that because in this model, the influence of one human patch on another only communicates the amount of each catch and no fishing strategies were employed, increased social influence decreased the sustainability of the fishery. The findings of this study indicate the importance of including spatial components to socio-ecological models and highlights the importance of understanding species' movements when making conservation decisions. Further, we demonstrate how incorporating fishing methods from outside sources can result in higher stability of the harvested population, demonstrating the need for effective communication across management regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow challenges the conventional belief that the rise of bureaucratic states was directly linked to the agricultural revolution. The authors argue for a more nuanced understanding of political structures, suggesting that human societies had more agency in shaping their governance systems. While the book promotes alternative forms of political organization like anarchism, it does not fully address modern developments such as the industrial revolution and technological advancements. The text emphasizes the importance of enhancing democratic self-government within existing political structures and advocates for interdisciplinary dialogue to explore the implications of their findings. [Extracted from the article]

Gender-sensitive parliaments are an emergent international norm. Research primarily focused on parliaments as gendered workplaces functioning with formal and informal rules and routines that either constrain or promote gender equality. We shift the focus to parliamentary groups and parties in public office as key actors in achieving a gender-sensitive parliament. We argue that they play a crucial role in many parliamentary systems and can actively contribute to gender-sensitive transformations. Building on the gender-sensitive parliament literature, we first explore the potential of parliamentary groups to improve parliamentary functioning across four aspects: representation, policy-making, engagement with societal interests, and groups as gender-sensitive workplaces. Secondly, we delve into the broader parliamentary and party contexts, recognizing how factors such as the diversity of parliamentary systems, organizational structures, parties in central office, and political dynamics shape parliamentary groups' room for manoeuvre. We conclude by calling for further empirical, but especially conceptual, research to develop intersectionality-sensitive parliaments which we suggest are crucial for dismantling existing power hierarchies based on social markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' continuous success in competitive interactions with conspecifics strongly affects their social hierarchy. Medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is the key brain region mediating both social competition and hierarchy. However, the molecular regulatory mechanisms underlying the neural ensemble in the mPFC remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate that in excitatory neurons of prelimbic cortex (PL), lncRNA Sera remodels the utilization of Pkm Exon9 and Exon10, resulting in a decrease in the Pkm1/2 ratio in highly competitive mice. By employing a tet-on/off system, we disrupt or rebuild the normal Pkm1/2 ratio by controlling the expression of Pkm2 in PL excitatory neurons. We find that long-term Pkm2 modulation induces timely competition alteration and hysteretic rank change, through phosphorylating the Ser845 site of GluA1. Together, this study uncovers a crucial role of lncRNA Sera/Pkm2 pathway in the transition of social competition to rank by remodeling neural ensemble in mPFC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social egalitarianism holds that justice requires that people relate to one another as equals. To explain the content of this requirement, social egalitarians often appeal to the moral equality of persons. This leads to two very different interpretations of social egalitarianism. The first involves the specification of a conception of the moral equality of persons that is distinctive of the social egalitarian view. Social (or relational) egalitarianism can then claim that for people to relate as equals is for the relations between them to conform to this conception of their moral equality. I will argue against this type of view. Instead, I will argue that social egalitarianism should propose a distinctive conception of social equality as a purely sociological phenomenon. I will show how this conception allows us to formulate the types of normative claims social egalitarianism should make. On this picture, social egalitarianism, instead of identifying social hierarchy as a distinctive kind of wrong, makes standard normative claims about a distinctive kind of social phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global literature recognizes the interactions between endogenous and exogenous forest resource (FR) management institutions. However, a comprehensive understanding of the sources, mechanisms, and outcomes of institutional change in diverse physiographic regions is lacking. We analyzed mechanisms and outcomes of five decades of institutional change across four physiographic regions of Nepal. Data collection involved 45 key informant interviews, 37 expert interviews, and 22 focus group discussions, complemented by a review of 24 policy documents and 8 community forest (CF) management plans and reports. Through directed content analysis, we found that endogenous institutions are rooted more in customs, traditions, and social hierarchies, and formal exogenous institutions are rooted in national and international policies, which are frequently observed for commercialized forest resources. It further revealed transformational changes in forest management institutions from state-oriented to community-based management across the regions between 1976 and 2010. Critical juncture, priming-framing and puzzling-learning were key mechanisms in the middle and high mountains. In contrast, Terai's recurrent mechanisms were negative/positive feedback and patching-up. After 2010, (de)incremental changes linked to exogenous and endogenous institutions were found to align more with a global agenda (e.g., REDD+). Priming-framing, negative/positive feedback, and transposition were key institutional change mechanisms of exogenous institutions across the study sites. Economic growth and exogenous institutions played an important role in (de)incremental changes linked to endogenous institutions. Additionally, exogenous institutions produced mixed socioeconomic and positive ecological outcomes, showing regional variations. Endogenous institutions led to positive outcomes, highlighting their importance in sustainable forest management. Future research should examine power dynamics, shedding light on how local actors employ institutions and power to produce differential outcomes in CF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This study explored the language ideologies that guide teachers' language beliefs and practices in English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms. It also sought to uncover the ways teachers' beliefs and practices reproduce language ideologies and, thereby, social hierarchies within educational contexts. Design: Drawing on a narrative research design, the study utilized semi-structured interviews and focus groups to examine the language beliefs of content subject teachers from EMI higher education programs in Nepal. The data were analyzed through a thematic approach. Findings: The study's results shed light on the prevailing language ideologies in EMI classrooms, where English holds a dominant position, followed by Nepali and other local/Indigenous languages. This linguistic hierarchy reflects deeply ingrained nationalist and neoliberal beliefs inherent in Nepal's educational landscape. Moreover, the research underscores how these ideologies perpetuate societal hierarchies as educators emphasize the pivotal role of English proficiency for students' upward socioeconomic mobility and access to global opportunities, while concurrently endorsing a deficient perspective on local/Indigenous languages. Consequently, this linguistic hierarchy perpetuates disparities in language treatment, thereby prompting concerns regarding equity and inclusivity in EMI programs. Originality: It sheds light on teachers' complex beliefs and practices regarding the use of different languages in EMI settings. The study also highlights the language hierarchy that emerges within these classrooms, emphasizing the original contribution to understanding the complexities and implications of language ideologies within EMI programs. Significance: The study's findings serve as a valuable resource for fostering meaningful discussions and facilitating evidence-based practices in the field of EMI, ultimately contributing to the improvement of multilingual higher education settings worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]