Time, Sociality, Institutions: The Core Capacity Conjecture

Human beings have two outstanding characteristics compared to all other species: the apparently enormous elaboration of our thought through language and symbolism and the elaboration of our forms of social organization. The view taken in Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane is that these are intimately interconnected. To understand this connection, the book compares the structure of the systems of thought that organizations are built upon with the organizational basis of human thinking as such. An experimental method is used, leading to a new science of the structure of human social organizations in two senses. First, it gives rise to a new kind of ethnology that has the combination of empirical solidity and formal analytical rigor associated with the “paradigmatic” sciences. Second, it makes evident that social organizations have distinctive properties and require distinctive explanations of a sort that cannot be reduced to the explanations drawn from, or grounded in, these other sciences. Human social organizations are created by people using systems of ideas with very specific logical properties. This book describes what these idea-systems are with an unbroken chain of analysis that begins with field elicitation, and continues by working out their most fundamental, logico-mathematical generative elements. This enables us to see precisely how these idea systems are used to generate organizations that give pattern to ongoing behavior. The book shows how organizations are objectified by community members through symbolic representations that provide them with shared conceptions of organizations, roles, or relations that they see each other as participating in. The case for this constructive process being pan-Homo sapiens is described, spanning all human communities from the Upper Paleolithic to today, and from the most seemingly primitive Australian tribes to modern-day America and India. While focusing primarily on kinship, Human Thought and Social Organization shows how the analysis applies with equal precision to other social areas ranging from farming to political factionalism.

The fundamental problem of linking human agency and social structure stalks through the history of sociological theory. Basically it concerns how to develop an adequate theoretical account which deals simultaneously with men constituting society and the social formation of human agents. For any theorist, except the holist, social structure is ultimately a human product, but for any theorist, except advocates of psychologism, this product in turn shapes individuals and influences their interaction. However successive theoretical developments have tilted either towards structure or towards action, a slippage which has gathered in momentum over time. Initially this meant that one element became dominant and the other subordinate: human agency had become pale and ghostly in mid-century functionalism, whilst structure betook an evanescent fragility in the re-flowering of phenomenology. Eventually certain schools of thought repressed the second element almost completely. On the one hand structuralist Marxism and normative functionalism virtually snuffed-out agency-the acting subject became increasingly lifeless whilst the structural or cultural components enjoyed a life of their own, self-propelling or self-maintaining. On the other hand interpretative sociology busily banished the structural to the realm of objectification and facticity-human agency became sovereign whilst social structure was reduced to supine plasticity because of its constructed nature. Although proponents of these divergent views were extremely vociferous, they were also extensively criticized and precisely on the grounds that both structure and action were indispensable in sociological explanation.2 Moreover serious efforts to re-address the problem and to re-unite structure and action had already begun from inside 'the two Sociologies',3 when they were characterized in this manichean way. These attempts emerged after the early sixties from 'general' functionalists,4 'humanistic' marxists5 and from interactionists confronting the existence of strongly patterned conduct.6 Furthermore they were joined in the same decade by a bold attempt

Sociality involves a constant trade-off between fitness benefits and costs of living in groups, and this trade-off can be influenced by the social and ecological environment in which individuals live. In this PhD I explored socioecological factors underlying the social and spatial population structure and dynamics of a large tropical herbivore with a highly fission-fusion social system, the giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis). Using a dataset of more than 3,000 uniquely identified individuals collected over a period of 8 years in the coupled human-natural Tarangire Ecosystem of northern Tanzania, I (1) investigated natural and anthropogenic factors as mechanisms of giraffe grouping dynamics, social structure, space use, and vital rates; (2) quantified fitness consequences of social behaviours of adult female giraffes in relation to the influence of their physical environment; and (3) compared social versus spatial dispersal of subadult female and male giraffes. I used capture-mark-recapture techniques to estimate survival rates while accounting for imperfect detection, and social network analysis to derive network- and individual-level social metrics and to delineate discrete communities of socially associated adult female giraffes within a larger contiguous metapopulation. Natural and anthropogenic factors included vegetation types and preferred plant forage species, natural predation, and distance to traditional (bomas) and modern human settlements (towns). I found that grouping patterns of giraffes were influenced by food availability, predation risk, and presence of humans, with particular requirements for mothers with calves (chapter 1). I parsed the metapopulation into 14 distinct, modular yet overlapping communities of socially associated adult female giraffes, with 11 communities large enough to test hypotheses explaining variation in social structure (chapter 2). Adult females in communities closer to bomas had weaker relationship strengths among all members of the community and more exclusive relationships with fewer other females, suggesting that the presence of humans disrupted their social structure. In an examination of social versus ecological drivers of variation in reproduction and survival among 10 of the communities, I showed demographic rates were correlated with vegetation and proximity to humans, as communities with more dense bushlands had lower calf survival while those closer to human settlements had higher reproductive rates (chapter 3). Adult female survival did not differ among communities (chapter 3), but more gregarious females (being in larger groups) and females with higher betweenness (associated with more groups) had higher survival (chapter 4). Survival of adult females is improved by being well-integrated into their larger social community through having weaker bonds with many others rather than by forming stronger and highly stable bonds with just a few individuals. This suggests that the disruption of social structure close to bomas as evidenced in chapter 2 could have demographic consequences, although proximity to bomas did not influence adult female survival as much as their level of sociability (chapter 4). In chapter 5, I investigated patterns of natal dispersal, and found that while most young males dispersed into new social communities far from where they were first detected as calves, many shifted into new communities that were close to their natal areas. In contrast, few young females dispersed, but those that did disperse rarely shifted into a new social community. Instead females moved spatially while remaining within their natal community, further demonstrating the importance of maintaining social ties, from calf to adulthood, across their community of associates. Human presence influenced space use of adults, as adult females living closer to densely populated towns had significantly larger home ranges, but no such relationship was evident with bomas, indicating a difference in anthropogenic impact on movements of giraffes between traditional versus modern human lifestyles (chapter 6). My research indicates that social associations among individuals in addition to ecological conditions are likely to be important for population persistence, and should be considered when developing and implementing conservation measures for giraffes such as land-use plans and translocations.

Clustering structures appearing from small to large scales are ubiquitous in the physical world. Interestingly, clustering structures are omnipresent in human history too, ranging from the mere organization of life in societies (e.g., urbanization) to the development of large-scale infrastructure and policies for meeting organizational needs. Indeed, in its struggle for survival and progress, mankind has perpetually sought the benefits of unions. At the same time, it is acknowledged that as the scale of the projects grows, the cost of the delivered products is reduced while their quantities are maximized. Thus, large-scale infrastructures and policies are considered advantageous and are constantly being pursued at even great scales. This work develops a general method to quantify the temporal evolution of clustering, using a stochastic computational tool called 2D-C, which is applicable for the study of both natural and human social spatial structures. As case studies, the evolution of the structure of the universe, of ecosystems and of human clustering structures such as urbanization, are investigated using novel sources of spatial information. Results suggest the clear existence both of periods of clustering and declustering in the natural world and in the human social structures; yet clustering is the general trend. In view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, societal challenges arising from large-scale clustering structures are discussed.

Political Animals Revisited

People’s understanding of the origins of social structures and their relatedness, or lack thereof, to human actions and divine providence has a bearing on the moral significance they attach to the rules of structures. Within sociology, both structural-conflict theory and micro-interactionist theory has provided theories on the interplay between human actions and structures. Although both strands attempt to ground their ideas in empirical evidence, philosophical-anthropological views on human nature, the human will and human freedom play a major role in constructing the theories. In this article it is argued that the two theories are based on philosophical premises that create moral difficulties. Conflict theory, emphasising structures as the cause of human behaviour, risks cultivating a revolutionary moral attitude towards social structures that may end up in endless cycles of nihilist conduct. In contrast, micro-interactionism’s social constructivist explanation of the relationship between human action and structures could lead to moral relativism and apathy. This article reflects on an alternative approach. At the core of both voluntarist and revolutionary moral attitudes towards structures lies the notion that morality has no grounding in a deeper reality – they are merely social constructions. The article argues that a Reformed-Christian theory that grounds moral responsibility in what Michael Welker calls an ‘anthropology of the spirit’ may provide an alternative that avoids the moral ambiguities created by structural-conflict theory and micro-interactionist theory. This approach resists voluntarism by grounding morality in God who is the origin of being and understanding moral conduct in terms of the encounter between the divine and human spirit. It counters anarchy by promoting a spirit of moral realism and constant social renewal that takes seriously the consistent threat of the desire for power.Contribution: The specific contribution of this article consists in it bringing Reformed theology and sociology into dialogue. It identifies blind spots in conflict and micro-interactionist theories on the relationship between human agency and social structures, especially when it comes to morality. It also indicates how both theories are guided mainly by presuppositions about human nature and the human will. In response, it is attempted to provide an alternative theological outlook on the question of the relationship between human agency and social structures, which grounds morality in an anthropology of the Spirit. Until now, no such attempt has been made.

The recent “social turn” in art, in which art favours using forms from social life above its own, has been extensively discussed. Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, Conversation Pieces and The One and the Many by Grant Kester, essays by Claire Bishop who supplies the term “the Social Turn,” and her recent publication Artificial Hells, are now as important to the field as the art they scrutinise. Ironically, however, when this discussion regards the implications of the “turn”, it habitually addresses the effects of this development from – and for – art’s point of view, overlooking the way in which artists’ inroads into social life may be differently regarded in the social realm. As much as this represents a failure to illuminate a particular area for knowledge, it also signifies a failure to take art’s revalorised commitment to the social to its ethical conclusion: such, from two perspectives, is the “dark side” of art’s social turn. This article seeks to mitigate these oversights. In particular, it looks at art in which an artist undertakes another person’s professional work. Considering the effects of this on those whose practices are appropriated, I propose a consultative approach, involving ethnographic and empathetic modes of address. Consequently, this article does not present an answer to the question it poses, “how do professionals in the social realm see art’s appropriations of their practices?” but rather, a framework for approaching that.

ABSTRACTOur capacity for planning agency is a core capacity that underlies interrelated forms of mind‐shaped practical organization: cross‐temporal organization of individual agency, shared agency, social rules, and rule‐guided organized institutions. A function of our capacity for planning agency is the support of these forms of practical organization. I highlight Peter Godfrey‐Smith's contrast between the ‘Wright function’ of something as ‘the effect it has which explains why it is there’ and ‘Cummins functions’ that ‘are capacities or effects of components of systems, which are salient in the explanation of capacities of the larger system’. Drawing on Paul Grice's strategy of ‘creature construction’, I articulate a sequence of nested constructions: from temporally extended planning agency to shared agency to shared policies to social rules to rule‐guided organized institutions. We see our capacity for planning agency as part of an explanation of how we achieve such practical organization, and as having nested Cummins functions of supporting those forms of organization. This sheds light on related ideas in H.L.A. Hart's theory of law, a challenge from J. David Velleman, the centrality of such forms of organization to the philosophy of action, and the moral and political significance of our capacity for planning agency.

Reviewed by: A Society without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China C. Fred Blake (bio) Hua Cai . A Society without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China. Translated by Asti Hustvedt. New York: Zone Books, 2001. 505 pp. Hardcover $33.00, ISBN 1-890951-12-9. Future studies of human social organization will be obliged to take account of Cai Hua's work on Na kinship. The Na are a cultural minority of thirty-thousand mountain farmers in northern Yunnan. Their mode of organizing sexuality and reproduction without husbands or fathers provides yet another in a long history of challenges to anthropological definitions of marriage and family. One index of this unusual system is the kinship terminology: it is "strictly classificatory" and reckons consanguineous links only through women. The system fits none of the basic types proposed by anthropologist George P. Murdock, who did the last comprehensive study on human social organization fifty years ago. In Cai's estimation, the Na system represents a newly discovered ethnological type. From the indigenous perspective, however, the consequence of challenging a definition has more pertinence if it is due to resisting the moral sensibilities of a ruling power. In this case the ruling power's ideas about sex and family are defined by Han-Chinese norms of marriage, which Na custom rejects. The consequence is that mandarins of the former Qing dynasty and agents of the communist regime have tried to make the Na accept the Han institution of marriage. The attempt in the 1960s to force marriage on the Na was especially heavy-handed and regrettably used information gathered from Na informants by anthropologists. But despite these attempts and despite the effects of other cultural changes, the Na way of reckoning descent and organizing domestic life and sexual practice has showed an amazing resilience. Even those Na who stood to gain materially by the redistribution of land rejected land reform when the communists sought to bypass their localized matrilineal descent groups or matrilignées. Cai grounds his ethnography in the history of Na encounters with the state. He argues that the three-tier system of consumption-based status groups was an accommodation of the matrilineal system to the imperial power of the Qing dynasty. The "aristocratic" tier was formed when the local prefect (zhifu) was obliged to adopt the concept of paternity, the patronymic, and marriage in order to legitimate his heirs in service to the central government. But this was mostly veneer since the prefect's lignée never adopted the paternal transmission of consanguinity. Cai details the design and stratagems of the status system, the social mobility, the ritual rebellions, the consortiums between tiers, and the consequent problems of inheritance. Communist power was more successful in supplanting this local pecking order by recruiting Na leaders into the party-state apparatus than it was in changing Na domestic practices. [End Page 103] The core of Cai's study is the domestic organization of sexual practices in which there are no husbands or fathers. The basic unit of social production and reproduction is the matrilignée, which is formed from several generations domiciled around the solidarity between mothers and daughter and between sisters and brothers. The sibling incest taboo is rigorously observed to the extent that even the slightest evocation of sex among consanguine relatives of the opposite sex is forbidden: the sister must bed a man from another lignée in order to perpetuate her own (and her brother's) lignée. Since the sexual encounter takes place in the domicile of her lignée, it must be furtive to avoid her brothers. What is so unusual, however, is that "the identity of her children's genitors is never important" (p. 296). Conversely, men express no wish to sire children. The basic, customary, and ubiquitous mode of sexual encounter is the furtive visit. This type of visitation has a man creeping into a woman's bed after nightfall and leaving before dawn. (Women do not visit men in their domiciles.) The visit is supposed to be an obligation-free encounter, and there is no involvement of the woman's mother or brothers. When a man arrives at a woman's...

Social investment innovation and the ‘social turn’ of neoliberal finance

Bad parrhesia: the limits of cynicism in the public sphere

Our human lives involve remarkable forms of practical organization: diachronic organization of individual activity, small-scale organization of shared action, and the organization of institutions. A theory of human action should help us understand these multiple forms of human practical organization and their interrelations. This book argues that a key is our capacity for planning agency. Drawing on earlier work on the roles of planning agency in the cross-temporal and small-scale social organization of our agency, this book focuses on the role of our planning agency within our organized institutions. It draws on ideas, inspired by H. L. A. Hart, that our organized institutions are rule-guided, and that to understand this we need a theory of social rules. This book draws on the planning theory of shared intention and the underlying theory of plan rationality to understand social rules. It understands an organized institution as involving authority-according social rules of procedure. It provides a model of organized institutions that makes room for pluralistic divergence. This leads to a model of institutional intention and—drawing on ideas from Harry Frankfurt—institutional intentional agency. The account charts a path between views of, among others, Kirk Ludwig, Philip Pettit, and Scott Shapiro. It sees our capacity for planning agency as a core capacity that underlies not only string quartets and informal social rules but also, thereby, the rule-guided structure of organized institutions and institutional agency. And it supports adjustments in views of mind, intention, and agency that are built into Donald Davidson’s field-shaping work.

This thesis explores the management of social media networks through a specific interpretive lens. It views social media as networks organised for information production and managed through the development of complex data structures and underpinning technological solutions. The development of social media networks – chiefly characterised by the open and distributed participation of many diverse individuals through the intermediation of specific technological solutions – seems to give shape to new organisational forms and data management practices, impacting in many domains. Despite vivid interest in these participatory organisational forms, we do not fully understand how social media technology is leveraged to organise member communities, standardising processes and structuring interaction. In this research I build on the case of PatientsLikeMe, a prominent and innovative social media network constructing medical scientific knowledge through the data-based contributions of its open and distributed member base. By drawing on the findings of an intensive, participatory case research, the thesis makes a contribution on several levels. The thesis demonstrates that the management of social media networks is characterised by the need to achieve steady, reliable and comprehensive production of information and associated data collection by means of complex data architectures and user reporting. I illustrate these conditions by highlighting the challenges that characterise the development of a system able to engage productively with the member base and by describing the mechanisms and techniques through which the organisation seeks to address them. Data and data structures figure prominently throughout the research as organisational devices of critical importance for the management of social media networks. The thesis also indicates and comments on the implications of these innovative modes of organising knowledge production. It finds that social media support considerable innovation in the arrangements by which scientific knowledge can be produced, with a consistent inclusion of once marginalised actors in data management practices, and elaborates on effects on the relationship with research institutions and professions. At the same time, the thesis shows that social media technology, because of the challenges and strategies associated with information production, ambiguously supports the project of a wider inclusion that it seems to afford at first sight. Finally, the thesis claims that developing social media gives rise to specific techniques of construction and governance of the social, and the associated kinds of sociality where socialisation, computation and the production of knowledge objects are inextricably enmeshed.

Background: The AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (AHAS KIRKHS) has initiated a community- synergised academic activities programme at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). This programme integrates an academic course from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (SOCA) with the needs of the Kampung Kerdas community. SOCA academics and students are engaged in an ongoing fertigation community garden project in Kampung Kerdas, Gombak, Selangor Darul Ehsan. While the project aims to incorporate sustainable, eco-friendly practices into the community’s daily routines, address urban poverty, and enhance social well-being, it also benefits SOCA students and academics by providing a practical training platform. Method: The study employs qualitative research methods to explore the community’s involvement in urban gardening as a means of empowerment. Through narrative analysis, the researchers examine stories to identify key themes such as empowerment, leadership, and environmental stewardship. The study also utilises in-depth interviews and participatory observation to gain insights into urban gardening initiatives’ personal experiences, challenges, and benefits. Results: Through community-driven initiatives and educational workshops, the project promotes environmental sustainability, economic empowerment, and social cohesion among community members. Simultaneously, by directly engaging with community members, SOCA students and academics also gain benefits, enabling them to apply their theoretical and empirical understanding from the course Work and Social Organisations in practice. Recommendation: Enhance collaboration between academia and the community by broadening hands-on, sustainable initiatives that empower residents while enriching students’ practical knowledge and sense of social responsibility. Conclusion: The project has created a sustainable model for urban poverty eradication and holistic community development by leveraging academic expertise and community participation among SOCA students and academics at AHAS KIRKHS, IIUM.

Communication is inherent to social relationships. Previous papers addressed the correlation between social and communicative complexity, and the origin of sociality in rodents. In subterranean social species, as the number of animals in the same burrow increases, so do interindividual contact rates. This is because of limitations in actually used tunnel length and diameter, leading to an increasing number of agonistic situations probably resulting in time loss, threatening, and fighting with danger of injuries. To avoid this, social species are expected to have an increase in the number of particular vocalizations. Comparison of the adult vocal repertoire of 12 species (seven genera) through regression and phylogenetically independent contrasts (PIC) suggests three main conclusions: (1) social species increase their repertoire both in number and categories of vocal signals in relation to solitary species, although the coefficient was smaller in the PIC model; (2) the number of agonistic vocalizations was also different between solitary and social species, with the latter displaying higher numbers of these calls; (3) the percentage of agonistic vocalizations in relation to total repertoire was similar between social and solitary species, with no significant relationship between this parameter and the social structure. These results imply that agonistic vocalizations have also increased in number in social species, indicating the importance of these calls in the establishment of new relationships. As repertoire changes are essential to cope with new and frequent kinds of interactions sociality originates, these results suggest that at least for these organisms, communicative changes, especially at the level of agonistic signals, could be a necessary condition to fulfill in the path to the possibility of group living.