Communal Society Research Articles

Sustainable society formed by unselfish agents

AbstractIt has been pointed out that if the social configuration of the three relations (market, communal, and obligatory relations) is not balanced, a market‐based society as a total system fails. Using multiagent simulations, this paper shows that a sustainable society is formed when all three relations are integrated and function appropriately.When agent trades are based on the market mechanism (i.e., agents act in their own interest and thus only market relations exist), weak agents who cannot perform transactions die. If a compulsory tax is imposed to enable all weak agents to survive (i.e., obligatory relations exist), then the fiscal deficit increases.On the other hand, if agents who have excess income undertake the unselfish action of distributing their surplus to the weak agents (i.e., communal relations exist), then the trade volume increases. It is shown that the existence of unselfish agents is necessary for the realization of a sustainable society.The survival of all agents, however, is difficult in a communal society. In an artificial society, for all agents to survive and fiscal balance to be maintained, all three social relations must be fully integrated. These results show that adjusting the balance of the three social relations will lead to the realization of a sustainable society. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 157(1): 38–46, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20368

Neo-liberal and communal civil society in Tajikistan: merging or dividing in the post war period?

As others have written in this edition, civil society is a highly debated term and it is being translated in different ways and forms throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus. Among all the countri...

RECONNECTING SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY: TOWARD OVERCOMING A TABOO

Abstract. We argue that reconnecting science and spirituality yields the best rational understanding of the world. Spirituality is seen as the core of many religions. Distinctions are drawn between science and scientism and between spirituality and religion. A historical analysis provides a partial explanation of scientists' aversion to religion. A thought experiment illustrates that spirituality could not only be a legitimate research topic of science but also inform science by offering certain insights. Specifically, science could and should more freely study spirituality in its beneficial impact on individuals' attempts to attain personal wholeness, overcome substance abuse, achieve a more communal society, and safeguard the environment.

Waiting for Elijah: a History of the Megiddo Mission

Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Megiddo Mission is an apocalyptic religious movement that continues to claim a small but dedicated following. Waiting for Elijah is the first book-length study of this unusual sect, which commands attention both for its powers of survival and for its unique blend of faith and practice. Over the course of the church s history, its adherents have combined patriotism, redefinition of gender roles, perfectionism, and communitarianism with elements of middle-class capitalism. The church originated in the itinerant ministry of a Civil War veteran named L. T. Nichols, whose controversial preaching led to his being shot and wounded. Originally known as the Christian Brethren, Nichols and his followers relocated from Oregon to the Midwest in 1883 and some years later embarked on an evangelistic ministry that entailed traveling up and down the Mississippi River system on a large steamboat. In 1904, the group moved to its present home of Rochester, New York, from which its missionaries traveled throughout the United States and Canada. They took the name Megiddo from a strategically located city in ancient Israel, which to them signified a place where soldiers of God gathered to renew their strength and courage. Drawing on diverse sources including the writings of Nichols and his charismatic successor, Maud Hembree; newspaper accounts; and interviews with present-day Megiddos Gari-Anne Patzwald traces the group s intriguing history and analyzes its core beliefs. As she shows, the sect s roots can be found in the Restorationist movement of the early nineteenth century, which sought to recapture biblical truth and practice. A focal point of Nichols s preaching was the assertion that the Hebrew prophet Elijah would return in bodily form prior to the second coming of Christ and the final culmination of history. Certain Megiddo practices such as conservative dress and celebration of Christmas in springtime have, to some in the American mainstream, marked them as outsiders. And indeed, as Patzwald notes, the group displays many characteristics of an enclosed communal society. Yet the Megiddos have always rejected a community of goods in favor of individual initiative and entrepreneurship, and these attributes, Patzwald argues, have done much to ensure the group s survival well beyond its original generation of followers. The Author: An independent scholar, Gari-Anne Patzwald holds master s degrees from the University of Wisconsin Madison and the Lexington Theological Seminary. She is the associate editor of the Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement.

Sustainable Society Formed by Unselfish Agents

It has been pointed out that if the social configuration of the three relations (market, communal and obligatory relations) is not balanced, a market based society as a total system fails. Using multi-agent simulations, this paper shows that a sustainable society is formed when all three relations are integrated and function respectively.When agent trades are based on the market mechanism (i.e., agents act in their own interest and thus only market relations exist), weak agents who cannot perform transactions die. If a compulsory tax is imposed to enable all weak agents to survive (i.e., obligatory relations exist), then the fiscal deficit increases.On the other hand, if agents who have excess income undertake the unselfish action of distributing their surplus to the weak agents (i.e., communal relations exist), then trade volume increases. It is shown that the existence of unselfish agents is necessary for the realization of a sustainable society.However, the survival of all agents is difficult in a communal society. In an artificial society, for all agents survive and fiscal balance to be maintained, all three social relations need to be fully integrated. These results show that adjusting the balance of the three social relations well lead to the realization of a sustainable society.

Research Summary: Factors of dental anxiety

Objective To evaluate factors affecting modulation of dental anxiety among adults. Methods A total of 183 adult members of a closed communal society (Kibbutz), who have been treated since childhood only by the dentists employed in their community, were investigated concerning their past and present dental anxiety, evaluation of their past and present dentists, psychopathologic symptoms and individual pattern of attachment. Results The best predictor of subjects' evaluation of their present dental anxiety was the scale of anxiety as recorded by the SCL-90R questionnaire. The best predictors of the decrease in subjects' dental anxiety over time were the evaluation of their past and present dentists and the secure and avoidant patterns of attachment. Patterns of attachment (avoidant and ambivalent) were the best predictors of subjects' evaluation of their present dentist. Conclusions While psychopathologic traits are involved in subjects' present dental anxiety, pattern of attachment may have a dominant effect as to whether anxiety persists throughout life or can be modulated through a corrective emotional experience.

Modulation of dental anxiety--the role of past experiences, psychopathologic traits and individual attachment patterns.

To evaluate factors affecting modulation of dental anxiety among adults. A total of 183 adult members of a closed communal society (Kibbutz), who have been treated since childhood only by the dentists employed in their community, were investigated concerning their past and present dental anxiety, evaluation of their past and present dentists, psychopathologic symptoms and individual pattern of attachment. The best predictor of subjects' evaluation of their present dental anxiety was the scale of anxiety as recorded by the SCL-90R questionnaire. The best predictors of the decrease in subjects' dental anxiety over time were the evaluation of their past and present dentists and the secure and avoidant patterns of attachment. Patterns of attachment (avoidant and ambivalent) were the best predictors of subjects' evaluation of their present dentist. While psychopathologic traits are involved in subjects' present dental anxiety, pattern of attachment may have a dominant affect as to whether anxiety persists throughout life or can be modulated through a corrective emotional experience.

Seizure of power, indigenous rights and crafting democratic governance in Fiji

The overthrow of the duly elected government of Fiji in May 2000 illustrates some of the problems of establishing democratic institutions in deeply divided states. In part, while the Fiji case suggests the need for consensus political systems of powersharing requiring special kinds of institutional arrangements which deviate from standard Western zero‐sum adversarial parliamentary models, it points to its limitations in an inflamed communal society. The 1997 constitution incorporated several consensus mechanisms and institutions that attempted to contain the centripetal forces of division and restore stability. However, it was erected on a society that was still deeply at odds with itself. The promise of the 1997 Constitution was located on a minefield of unresolved underlying problems.

Du heder aux écoles actuelles : l'éducation juive, reflet d'un destin collectif

The author endeavours to show how, starting from the modern era to our days, the Jewish education has always depended on the successive identity types to which the Jewish minority in France chose to belong. Following the heder of the Jewish nations of the « ancien regime », the consistorial school comes after the emancipation with its difficult challenge : promoting Jewish individuals into the communal society and at the same time the acknowledgement by each one of his religious specificity. Primarily a favourite means of regenerating for the poor and the immigrant Jewish people, this means of improvement reaches the end of the thirties, unhappily weakening because of the success of the assimilation and the social secularisation of general society. Between the two World Wars and mainly on the eve of the second one, the first weaknesses begin to appear in French Judaism as a whole, and yearnings for a more religious aspect of the identity and a more favourable interest for zionism, although many still remain convinced « Israelites ». These yearnings are manifest in the newly born youth movements, mostly the French Israelite boy-scouts, and the creation of the Maimonide college in Paris, and, during the period of the occupation, will meet favourable conditions for their growth and the birth of new structures. However this renewal is transient. Not until the sixties and more effectively the seventies, the outburst of Jewish educational opportunities will be offered, and then the collapsing of the French Israelite model is the fundamental reason for this outburst.

All East on the Western Frontier: John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946)

Robert Sickels | Special In-Depth Section All East on the Western Frontier: John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) Robert Sickels In John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), long considered a classic Western, the town ofTombstone, Arizona is right on the cusp of the coming of civilization; it's a visual representation of what Frederick Jackson Turner called "the meeting point between savagery and civilization " (Milner 4). What gives Clementine allegorical resonance is, as Jim Kitses writes, "its historical setting; its being placed at exactly the Wyatt and Clementine preparing to dance momentwhen options are Tombstone." still open, the dream of a primitivistic individualism, the ambivalence of at once beneficent and threatening horizons, still tenable " (176-77). However, by setting Clementine in theAmerican West at "exactly the moment when options are still open," John Ford ran the risk ofhaving his film categorized by critics as standardWestern fare. RobertLyons, for example, observes that"My Darling Clementine is ultimately a film ofreconciliation in which Ford uses the historical legend of Wyatt Earp to create an affirmation , perhaps his most confident affirmation, ofAmerican moral values and social purpose" (Lyons "History and Romance" 17). Similarly, Corey Creekmur considers My Darling Clementine to be like most Westerns "of the classical Hollywood cinema" in that it simply "attempts a reconciliation between the apparently incompatible values represented by . . . structural oppositions" (169). Creekmur is right that Clementine is rife with "apparently incompatible values represented by . . . structural oppositions;" however, in Clementine attempts at reconciliation, unlike those in most of classical Hollywood cinema, ultimately fail. Likewise , Lyons is right in labeling Clementine Ford's most optimistic film ofthe period. For example, the cinematic representation ofwhat makes a viable community is very different in Clementine than it is in either Stagecoach (1939) or Grapes ofWrath (1940). Also, unlike the fates of the Ringo Ed and Tom Joad, in the context of Clementine the Wyatt Earps of the world are not totally at odds with the larger society in which they live; there is some inkling that perhaps all is not hopeless. Nevertheless, contrary to the claims of Creekmur, Lyons and others, in the end there is still no true reconciliation between structural oppositions; interestingly, although set in the 188Os, Clementine's lack of rapprochement mirrors the social direction of America in the Cold War era, in which there was a conscious effort to establish a kind of majority rules cultural homogeneity in which those who didn't "fit" were silenced, purged or both. Since in Clementine there is no reconciliation and yet the overall tone is optiat the dedication of "the First Church of mistic, the question that immediately comes to mind is this: What is Mv Darling Clementine optimistic about? The optimism seems centered not on the idea of reconciliation, but on victory. The forces ofnature and civilization are in competition , and there can be no peaceful coexistence. As a result, Clementine is a very different film from Ford's predecessors. It is definitely celebratory and optimistic in tone, but what's being celebrated is colorless homogeneity in the guise of a better community . In Stagecoach and Grapes the individuals and outcasts are the heroes, while in Clementine they are the villains as they oppose the larger communal social order. Likewise, in the earlier two films the dominant culture's community is "a harbinger of corruption in the form ofEastern values which threaten frontier ways," while in Clementine the "community . . . can be seen as a positive force, a movement of refinement, order and local democracy into the wilds" (Kitses 175). Clementine's celebration of a uniform communal society serves as a precursor to the bland Eisenhower/Ozz/e andHarriet years that followed the conclusion of World War II. Instead of a reconciliation, one set of values—Eastern, which in Ford's films are associated with civilization , acquisitiveness, incorporation, urbanization, cities, formal education, repression, and social hierarchies—wins out over another—Western, which in Ford's oeuvre typically invokes agrarianism, independence, freedom, pastoralism, self-reliance, and the frontier. What's particularly interesting in Clementine are Ford's representations of opposites. Throughout the film we see marvelous juxtaposing of physical and human landscapes, from the Vol. 31.1 (2001) 1 13...

Conflict, Post-Conflict and Religion: Andean Responses to New Religious Movements

In this article I analyse the relationships between society and religion during and after violent political conflict. The case of Peru is illustrative in this respect. By using the concepts of adaptation and resistance I explore the ways in which Andean peasant communities reacted during and after the political conflict in this country. I focus on the reactions of a communal society and deal first with the actors involved in the conflict (the Peruvian state and the guerrilla movement, Shining Path), and second with the complex interplay between Andean peasant communities and the Evangelical Churches. My main argument is that the adaptation and resistance of these communities should be understood in terms of their background, and especially in terms of their access to symbolic, economic and political resources.

“A Troubled Godless Place”: Catholic Practice and Local Politics in the Communes of the Central Vaucluse, 1830–1905

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, men and women in the French communes of the central Vaucluse began to defer or neglect vital Catholic rites of passage. Against a backdrop of turbulent regional politics and economic upheaval, formal adherence to church doctrine declined sharply, never again to regain its previous levels. This article assesses the religious gestures of individuals and communities through the analysis of their sacramental participation, the only recorded response of Catholics to the church’s presence in their lives. The implementation of the lay republic in the community by means of both local and national secularizing policy from 1878 to 1905 was the primary precipitant of general, dramatic decreases in formal Catholic practice. It was only upon the official secularization of communal society and politics that significant numbers of central Vauclusiens began to relinquish their attachment to Catholic rites of passage surrounding birth, marriage, and death.

Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments During the Reformation

The oldest and largest communal society in North America, the Hutterites - Anabaptists of German origin, like the Amish - have long been the subject of scholarly study and popular curiosity. This work tells the story of the Hutterite beginnings in their original homelands, particularly in Tyrol and Moravia. By examining these origins, it reveals relationships among early Anabaptist sects. The book contains a biography of group founder Jacob Hutter, describing his struggle for group leadership, his efforts to save his followers from King Ferdinand's bounty hunters, and his ultimate capture and death by public execution in 1536. It also provides anecdotes about a number of figures, including Jacob Hutter's wife. It tells of arrest, of imprisonment and of torture, as well as of efforts to care for the orphans left behind by those put to death for their faith. And it describes the defensive measures taken by the victims of official terror, their underground organizations, their secret practices and religious beliefs. The book shows how three early Anabaptist orders relate to each other, then lays bare the developing hermeneutic on which they were based, offering an insight into worship practices of the earliest Anabaptists.

Zion City, Illinois: Twentieth-Century Utopia

This is a treatment of Zion City, an Illinois Christian communal society, and its founder, John Alexander Dowie, on the eve of its centennial.

Battling Worldliness in the New Zion: Mercantilism versus Homespun in Nineteenth-Century Utah

Mormon pioneers fled to Utah with a prophetic vision of a self-contained cooperative and communal society. This vision had a place for agriculture and manufacturing but held merchandising to be at least vaguely immoral. In the ensuing battle between the original vision and mercantilism, the utopian view ultimately lost. This article examines the nature of the battle and factors that led to this outcome.

The Moral Imagination and Public Life: Raising the Ethical Question

Public policy and the ethical question public policy and political life limitation of this approach the problem stated the quest for a public ethic ethics as the critical analysis of morality the ethical self posing the ethical question public ethics the moral imagination value and community moral community and pluralistic society knowledge and responsibility earth day symbol and reality community, society and ethics medieval community and the rise of modernity the science to come the economic revolution morality and the marketplace modern society and social theory the loss of community in utilitarianism the problem of order in utilitarianism the pioneers of sociology community as a form of social thought communal society? the ethical dialectic of community and society the search for a social ethic justice the common good the public realm the idea of the public from revolution to constitution the fathers of liberal theory the pluralist concept of politics the ethical limitations of pluralism the problematic notion of community individualism as a form of social thought individualism in America the debate over community lifeworld and system world public discourse and public philosophy public ethics as the creation of the public the perversion of public speech public speech versus bureaucratic language standing by our words lifeworld and public policy the public interest and the public choosing who we are core values in the American liberal tradition religion and property the American Indian liberty and equality liberty, equality and slavery conflict of values root metaphors of the self-atomistic individualism the metaphor a model the self as person-in-community interests and values colectivity of individuals or commonwealth? who are we? religion and property - a vision of economic justice liberty and equality - a city chooses what it will be starting from here - the information society the television culture the citizen as spectator the citizen as consumer who am I? recovering the self what is my personal relation to what I don't know? the aim of policy - a flourishing life an emerging perspective on public policy the community approach to public policy the religious factor churches as public interest groups getting involved moral imagination and hope.

Neighbors: Harmony and Conflict on the Indiana Frontier

During the early nineteenth century, the small settlement of New Harmony, Indiana, was the home of two very different communal societies. The first was the Harmony Society, a group of German millenialists who, under the charismatic leadership of George Rapp, shared labor and property as part of their preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. The Harmonists originally left Germany to escape religious persecution. They first settled near Pittsburgh, founding the village of Harmonie in 1805. In 1814, they moved to Posey County, Indiana, where they founded New Harmony on the banks of the Wabash River. The Harmonists sold their Indiana property in 1824 and returned to Pennsylvania, where they began a third settlement, named Economy. Economy continued as a communal society for many decades. Robert Owen, a wealthy Welsh-born British merchant, purchased the Harmonists' land in Indiana. Owen also planned to create a communal society, but his was to be secular. Common goods and common labor were to be the basis of a paradise in this world rather than a preparation for the next. Owen's communal experiment lasted for only two years, however, before it disintegrated, torn by dissension.1 In terms of longevity, George Rapp was far more successful in establishing a communal society than was Robert Owen. Although there were some dissatisfied Harmonists, membership generally

“Collective Means of Consumntion-Triad” and Communal Society

This paper is a monograph which treats of sociological reality lies around the Social Collective Means of Consumption nowdays. At least the followings can be said from the social research I got into the investigation area k-district in Kobe-city.(1) Only that Collective Means are there in a certain community never links to the formation of residents' several subjective abilities which contribute the slow but steady construction toward the newly communal society.(2) Those realy important are the relations which residents have with the Collective Means in there, daily their activities through which the relations could come into existence or by which and residents' subjective abilities through and by which those relations and activities mentioned above could be reproduced.(3) These three each now analyzed is composed of another each themselves as the factor for others' being and reproduction. In this paper, I generalized the concrete realities concerned with those threes' mutuality into a expression “Collective Means of Consumption-Triad”.(4) In very this “Triad”, we can find real grounds based on fact which objectively guarantee the probability or potentiality of formation of residents' subjective abilities toward the newly communal society.(5) The content and direction toward the construction of newly communal society would be grasped from the viewpoint of clarify the each realities nowdays around the “Triad” itself under each communities we try to locate as the objects for our social research concerned above.

Law and the Kibbutz in Process: Adapting Liability Rules to Communal Society

More than twenty years ago, a study of the legal status of the kibbutz pointed out the shortcomings of the existing legal framework and its failure to deal with distinctive features of kibbutz society. The study cited a 1960 District Court decision in a tort case which expressed surprise and dismay that, “in the twelfth year of Israel's independence … it is still necessary to decide matters concerning the unique way of life of the kibbutz and the norms governing it – as well as the legal consequences of a conflict between the kibbutz world and the ‘outside’ world – according to law that did not take into account the possibility of the existence of an entity like the kibbutz and pursuant to criteria that are not at all appropriate”. In 1984, Justice Barak quoted that passage to the same effect and we can do the same today.

The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem: From Communal Mission to Family Economy

The Moravians who settled Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1742 were committed to a society centered around missionary work. To free their missionaries from the need to earn a living, they formed a communal economic organization in which all workers gave their labor to the community in exchange for food, shelter, and clothing. To encourage each individual's religious development, family ties were deemphasized and members of the same sex, marital status, and age slept, worked, and worshipped together. After 20 years, the worldwide Moravian Church, facing a financial crisis, ordered Bethlehem to reorganize into a traditional community of nuclear families. It was hoped that, under this more conventional arrangement, Bethlehem could be expected to help pay the huge debts of the parent church. In The Transformation of Moravian Bethlehem, Beverly Prior Smaby traces the effects of this change on Bethlehem's Moravians, demonstrating how it altered even the most intimate aspects of their lives. She analyzes the unusually accurate marriage, birth, death, migration, and census records to assess the demographic response to institutional change. She traces change in cultural norms through unique technical analyses of biographies which were read at a variety of Moravian gatherings. Within 100 years, Smaby asserts, Bethlehem grew from an egalitarian communal society of symbolic Brothers and Sisters into a privatized community of socially stratified families whose cultural ideal was no longer religious service but usefulness to family and society. Scholars of American history and folk life will find this book a valuable addition to literature on community history, social change, and historical methods. Church historians will benefit from its in-depth study of secularization on a personal level, and it will be of keen interest to members of the Moravian Church.