Complex Societies Research Articles

Indian South Africans as a middleman minority: Historical and contemporary perspectives

Beginning in the 1940s, a literature on middleman minorities emerged to demystify the intermediary economic niche that Jews had occupied in medieval Europe. They were viewed as ethnic entrepreneurs occupying the economic status gap. In the 1960s, scholars began to apply middleman minority theory to colonial societies and to American society. More recently, Coloureds in South Africa have been identified as a middleman minority of another type: semi-privileged proletarians occupying an economic status gap in labour between whites and Africans. A political status gap between whites and Africans, both seeking alliances to achieve hegemony, is also occupied by Coloureds. Among South African Indians, one finds ethnic entrepreneurs: a small shopkeeping and trading class from South Asia. But there are also Indian semi-privileged proletarians who emerged from the indentured labour population in the early twentieth century. This article employs a historical institutional approach to analyse political tensions among Indians, and examines the cleavage between Indians and other races over political rights vis-a-vis the South African state. It also offers a typology contrasting ethnic entrepreneurs with semi-privileged proletarians in terms of the differing economic status gaps they occupy. Furthermore, it illustrates how Indians occupy a political status gap in a complex settler colonial society like South Africa.

Rethinking violence against women from real to online teen violence

In our (iper)complex society, social relations have been transformed by the new technologies use. In fact, in the pandemic time caused by Covid-19 (especially in the severe moments), individuals had to interrupt their traditional live, included the social relations, and to carry online all the social interactions. The boundary between real and virtual has fallen. Consequently, it has now become a current habit to seek social relations in the virtual world. However, within this framework, these bonds have very often turned into experiences of general violence and especially violence against women. The aim of the article is to examine this social phenomenon in its multidimensionality, investigating it also through the ecosystem model, as well as reporting the most recent data in the international and national context, stressing the impact that social media, social networks and Internet communications have on violent and offensive behavior against women, especially younger women.

Lake level evidence for a mid-Holocene East Asian summer monsoon maximum and the impact of an abrupt late-Holocene drought event on prehistoric cultures in north-central China

Uncertainty regarding the timing of the highest Holocene water level of enclosed Dali Lake in northern China has led to controversy about whether the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) peaked in the early Holocene or the mid-Holocene. Therefore, a record combining a reliable chronology with unambiguous lake level indicators is essential to resolve the issue. In this study, we established a temporal sequence of well-preserved paleolake shorelines at different elevations around Dali Lake using quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Combining the new OSL-based chronological data with the previously published ages of beach ridges, we constructed an integrated lake level record for Dali Lake since the last deglaciation; the record is chronologically well-constrained and provides a clearer representation of lake level changes than previous studies. The main findings are as follows: (1) the level of Dali Lake rose gradually during 14.5–8.0 ka and reached a highest level during 8.0–6.0 ka that was ~61 m higher than today, before gradually declining after ~6.0 ka; (2) although the short-lived highstand of Dali Lake during the early Holocene was caused by both monsoon precipitation and snow/ice meltwater influx, the mid-Holocene lake level maximum was mainly the result of increased monsoon precipitation. These findings indicate that the EASM maximum in the region occurred during the mid-Holocene, which is supported by precipitation-proxy records from the EASM margin; (3) a major decline (~30 m) of the level of Dali Lake occurred at ~4.2 ka, reflecting a regional-scale drought event in northern China. Combined with near-contemporaneous frequent floods in the lower Yellow River, we propose that the pattern of “drought in northern China, flooding in central China” occurred during ~4.2–3.8 ka, triggering the migration of the prehistoric human population of the area to the central Plain of China. This population migration may have destabilized the existing social order and promoted the emergence of more complex societies, leading to the development of early civilization in north-central China.

Tales of middle Mesolithic cultural transformations and marine adaptation:

Submerged archaeological sites from the early Holocene, along the south-western and western Norwegian coastline are important sources of new information about stone-age human populations and coastal adaptation. In this article we present a Mesolithic hatchet made of bone that was found at the harbor floor at Kirkehavn in southern Norway in 1997. While radiocarbon dating proved this hatchet to be the oldest directly dated in Scandinavia (9884–9480 cal BP), aDNA analysis has identified the species from which this hatchet was made as either bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) or northern right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). The deposit of the hatchet must be understood in light of other contemporary ritual deposits along the south coast of Norway like the sub-merged Middle Mesolithic ritual site at Hummervikholmen and the cultural transformations taking place during this time. The result supplements the tale of new introductions in cultural practice and in material culture concurrently indicating the introduction of more complex hunter gatherer societies, while the distinctly marine adaptation continued on this part of the coast.

Editorial to the Inaugural Issue

Dear editors, reviewers, authors, readers, and other members of the whole scientific and professional community, Welcome to this inaugural issue of Information Dynamics and Applications (IDA)! On behalf of the editorial office, I am writing with great pleasure and sincere privilege to present the first issue of the journal IDA. In the last few years, there is a growing necessity for information dynamics, especially with the extensive application of artificial intelligence in virtually all fields of science, economy, and life. It can be observed that many conflicting indicators are involved in the complex nature and society systems. The conflicting aims need to be balanced by developing and applying intelligent management decision models, which represents a significant challenge in uncertain environments, given the limited resources, time, and funds available. In addition, an important task in modern society is the possibility to make adequate decisions in real time through quantitative and qualitative analysis. Such analysis enables decision-makers to make real-time decisions by looking at the real needs of the companies and the market at any moment. This first issue aims to give answers to many important questions related to the scope of the journal. This issue consists of five very interesting high-quality papers, which apply decision models in various fields: in the Integration of Ontology Transformation into Hidden Markov Model, in the Geographic Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network, in the Heterogeneous Sources at Different Levels of Granularity. In addition, digital marketing, quality models, MCDM model, and intelligent models related to information dynamics are discussed in this issue, shedding new lights on various management problems. Information Dynamics and Applications (IDA) (ISSN 2958-1486) is a fully refereed international open access journal, which publishes original research results in all subjects related to the dynamics and applications of information technology. The mission of the journal is to promote interdisciplinary research centered around the key issues of information processing, storage, and transmission. We welcome original submissions in various forms, including reviews, regular research papers, and short communications as well as Special Issues on particular topics. Our special interest lies in new analytical and application techniques of information technology in different fields of science and engineering. We follow principle of international diversity regarding the editorial board, reviewers and authors. Therefore, we invite and welcome submissions from around the world. All information related to IDA journal are available in our website: https://www.acadlore.com/journals/ida.

Costly signaling, cost shifting, and the Maya Classic-Postclassic transition: architecture and portable display media in the context of The Petén Lakes region, Guatemala

Costly signaling theory indicates that highly visible acts of public generosity and display, which exact costs not easily recouped, can provide social benefits to those engaged in such acts. Such signaling is associated with the strength or fitness of the provider. Costly signaling has been implicated by archaeologists in the rise of complex societies. But costly signaling theory, with modifications proposed in the article, might equally apply to theorizing political collapse and the regeneration of complex societies thereafter. This article explores how Maya elites and rural sub-elites engaged in costly signaling and modified their actions by cost shifting and cost masking, which significantly transformed their signaling behavior. The material culture media assessed for signaling are architecture, slipped and fineware ceramics, and obsidian in display contexts. The case study focuses on the Petén Lakes region of Guatemala from the Late Classic to Early Postclassic periods (AD 600-AD 1250).

To Be or Not to Be ‘Rousseauian’. The Rise and Fall of ‘Digital Utopianism’ in the Five Star Movement

A growing dissatisfaction with the political class has emerged in Italy. Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the original strategy adopted by the Five Star Movement (FSM) was to connect citizens and institutions directly, thanks to ICTs. A participation platform called “Rousseau” was created to this end in 2016. However, after the Movement’s great success in the 2018 national elections, digital utopianism was gradually abandoned. In 2021, the statute was reformed, creating new roles and organs making the FSM more akin to a traditional party, and the ‘Rousseau’ platform was replaced by another one with limited functions. This evolution leads to three theses: first, the reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a mainly symbolic value for FSM; second, as recent facts show, this ideal reference weakened with the action of governing and the ‘normalisation’ of the party; third, this evolution confirms that the Rousseauian ideal is difficult to realise in a complex society.

Splendor and Misery of the Anthropological Crisis: A Myth of Contemporary Russian Philosophy

The concept of anthropological crisis is very popular in contemporary Russian humanities: the Russian Scientific Electronic Library, or Elibrary.ru, includes more than ten thousand publications with the keyword anthropological crisis. On the contrary, Google gives links to Russian publications only when one searches for anthropological crisis. This keyword has no reference in the famous online book catalogue Worldcat.org. Nowadays English-speaking scientific communities still explore the crisis in anthropology as a discipline. The difference between the anthropological crisis and the crisis in anthropology seems essential. The crisis of a scientific discipline is not a crisis of the human nature. The modern Russian academicians, including the late Vyacheslav Stepin, find many features of the anthropological crisis in the successes of genetic engineering and modern medicine as well as in the growing psychological pressures. Russian-language scholars find the traits of anthropological crisis in many fields, including studies of memory, bioethics, pedagogics, literature, and economics. The loss of the sense of life is often treated by Russian scholars, like Stepin and Boris Pruzhinin, as a trait of the anthropological crisis. The problems of self-identity are also marked by Russian authors as a mark of that crisis. Sergey Averintsev felt that human beings lack their human nature. Pruzhinin supposes humans cannot predict consequences of genetic engineering for their nature as a species. But all these trends have nothing in common with the anthropological crisis. Genetic engineering helps improving of sick human nature and self-realization. Certainly, all consequences are not open but there is no scientific discovery whose effects would be absolutely evident at once. Cyborgs are an inevitable step towards healthier and smarter humans. Existential problems are universal since the emergence of self-consciousness among the humans. Self-identities are in constant flux since the birth of complex societies, especially since the industrial revolution strengthened alienation. The growth and volume of information flows are not threats to humans as there is no necessity to memorize all the data in the world, and there are multiple network and personal filters which block garbage. The anthropological crisis seems a myth in contemporary Russian-language humanities in general and philosophy in particular.

Ring-eye blue beads in Iron Age central Italy – Preliminary discussion of technology and possible trade connections

The Iron Age was a remarkable period in glass technology development and its spread across the Mediterranean. Communities that populated what is nowadays Central Italy underwent profound changes during this period forming more complex societies, developing proto-urban and urban centres, and incorporating into a wide trade network of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. Glass objects in that small region are frequently found in burial sites dated to the first half of the first millennium BCE, with small blue beads with simple ring eyes being among the most abundant types. Fifty-six objects of this type (both whole beads and fragments) were studied with a non-invasive approach by means of Optical Microscopy, Fibre Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy, and portable X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy. The analyses were conducted at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia and at the Museo delle Civiltà (both in Rome, Italy). Five samples from the main set were also analysed with a Scanning Electron Microscope coupled to an Energy Dispersive Spectrometer. The data gave preliminary information on the raw materials used to prepare the glass, the manufacturing techniques, and offered some hints to (tentatively) locate the region of provenance. In particular, the analyses established that the beads are soda-lime-silica glass and the source of cobalt, used as the blue colorant, could be an ore from Egypt. Within this general frame, a smaller group showed a different compositional pattern. These preliminary results contribute new knowledge for tracing exchange routes within the Mediterranean during the Iron Age.

Verloren normaliteit? Van het verlangen naar autoriteit naar een Beauvoiraanse ethiek der dubbelzinnigheid

The authority of a souverain no longer seems important if one wants to analyse complex modern democratic societies. At the same time, one can observe an increasing desire for authority in social and political life, a longing for orientation and guidance. This paper wants to investigate how authority and gender are intertwined, and how this is expressed in the current crisis of normality. The paper shows why a return to authority cannot solve this crisis. In order to co-create a new normality one needs to accept the ambiguity of existence and the relational character of freedom (see De Beauvoir).

Evidence-Based Anthropological Exploration of Lanka's People

Sri Lanka’s rich palaeoanthropological and archaeological record as well as the present demographic aspects have much to offer in aiding our understanding of the island’s ancient past and recent population structure. Sri Lanka has yielded skeletal evidence for the earliest anatomically modern humans from South Asia indicating very early settlement of the region. Following early hunter-gatherer dispersals over 50,000 years ago, agricultural populations expanded to the region with historic settlements and urbanisation creating complex societies in the last three millennia. Through circum-Indian Ocean trade networks in historic times and colonial expansion in the last 500 years, population diversification has continued with groups of multiple genetic and ethno-linguistic backgrounds arriving and settling in the island. These early and later migrants share a gene pool that connects them to descendants of today, who form Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious society. Using an anthropological perspective, this article investigates how complex societal and biological diversity would have developed over time in island Lanka. An appreciation of deep time, beyond historic records, helps us recognize that human evolution and diversification has been shaped over thousands of years, while an evidence-based, scientific approach is proposed to eliminate flawed ethnocentric interpretations.

Draudze no jauna un citādāk – reliģijas potenciāls pieaugošas kompleksitātes apstākļos

The Christian church in its current composition, structure, and expression is in crisis. However, the crisis of the congregation and the church that has escalated in recent decades can be understood as a spiritual challenge. This means not only making structural changes in the existing forms of congregation and church, adapting to the changing reality in the context of the current lack of resources, but also paying attention to the spiritual perspective of complex processes of change. How is it possible to think about the congregation and the church in a completely different way? What could be the new forms of plural, lively and open congregation and church that are important for the sustainable development of the whole society? The starting point is to rethink what we mean by the concepts of “congregation” and “church” and what could be the practical forms of religion in the near future – in an individualized, differentiated, and complex society. In 2020, the Internal Development Goals initiative emerged, suggesting that there is one blind spot in the efforts to solve complex societal issues and create a sustainable global society – the internal development of a person and the need for internal change in the person himself. The initiative proposes the idea of a new, inner, consciousness-raising revolution, capable of creating a new foundation for the coexistence of humanity. At the end of 2021, the first part of the initial project was completed, formulating 23 different qualities and skills – in relationships with oneself, thinking and cognition, relations with others and the world, cooperation with others, and in action. As the church and Christianity become involved into and a part of the program for achieving the inner goals of a person, aligning their actions with these goals, and creating the structures necessary to achieve these goals, the church would become one of the driving forces of sustainable development, a kind of “folk high school” for the birth of a new consciousness, gaining new relevance on a societal scale. In this global task of learning and building a metastable civilization, the congregation and the church have a decisive potential. The article discusses the latest insights contributed by several theologians (Uta Pohl-Patalong, Tomáš Halík, etc.) regarding models of the congregation and church relevant to the future of Christianity, and analyses the project Erprobungsräumen of the Evangelical Church of Central Germany, aspiring towards new forms of congregations.

Who Has an Art, Has Everywhere a Part: Craft Production, Specialization, and Prestige in Praehistoric Societies

Craft specialization means that certain tasks and/or activities are performed exclusively by certain members of a community, either as their main/basic activity, or parallel to other activities. The emergence of specialization is often associated to complex societies, or more precisely, its presence presupposes social stratification and is negated in non-stratified societies. However, the organization of production of various goods and the development of specialization are much more complex, and cannot be simply characterized in terms of presence/absence, since there are various modes and levels of specialization. Therefore, over the last decades the need is recognized for a new revised theoretical framework. Some authors suggest new definitions of specialization and production organization, specifically emphasizing social and cultural aspects (along with the purely economic ones) that influence the technological choices. Power and prestige status are not solely linked to control over resources and larger amount of material goods, but also to their character – prestige objects are an important factor in the development of crafts, the emergence of craft specialization, and emergence/increase in social inequality. In praehistory, the symbolic importance and value were ascribed to certain technologies and objects, not only on the grounds of exotic raw material or other highly valued qualities (durability of an object, as well as non-utilitarian traits, such as colour), but also due to the effort and skill applied in their production. Such prestige objects secured or reflected the esteem and status to the individuals who made and/or possessed them.

UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN DIVIDUALITY IN POLITICAL METAMODERNISM

The understanding of the dividual nature was presented from the point of view of political metamodernism founded by Hanzi Freinacht. A transpersonal perspective puts in the center the (transin)dividual – a member of more developed and complex societies. The monographic works of the author were analyzed for the use of the concept of dividual, which was developed in postmodernism and further borrowed by metamodern theorists. Therefore, an attempt to understand the versatile nature of dividual and dividuality outside the postmodern discourse was made. Dividuality was conceptualized as subjectivity synthesized at the intersection of collective and individual, considering the influence of postmodern digitalization in combination with the transpersonal view of human sociality in metamodern society. Dividuation is the up-to-date form of subjectivation, which turns the individual into a dividual. The difference in the understanding of dividual and dividuality in political metamodernism and postmodernism was demonstrated. The theory of dividuation, the specific foundations of which could be traced in the works of Hanzi Freinacht, was analyzed. The definition of “dividualism” was suggested. “Dividualism” was viewed as a trajectory of consolidation in “the listening society”, members of which develop together spiritually and psychologically. “Dividualism” includes not only the (in)dividual’s ability to endow life with meaning but also to do so by taking into account the interconnectedness with his fellow citizens. In contrast to the implicitly negative understanding of the dividual put forward by postmodernists, the description of the dividual’s potentially positive features was offered. This positivity might be realized if the dividual could have managed to recognize and organize its/his/her dividuality to express it. Knowing one’s dividuality is considered to be a difficult but favorable task for organizing existing “self-images” or for their expression. Finally, reflections on being trapped in the dead-end integrative practice were presented.

Moralistic supernatural punishment is probably not associated with social complexity

Evolutionary theories of religion frequently assume that the presence of moralizing gods is positively associated with social complexity. An influential source of evidence for this assumption comes from researchers using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample’s moralizing high gods variable as a proxy measure of their outcome of interest (the presence of moralizing gods). In this paper, we critically assess the common assumption that moralizing gods are associated with complex societies. We first discuss the high god variable’s coding criteria, which is defined by whether or not a god is the creator or director of the universe, regardless of power or omniscience. We then show that these criteria, which are not relevant to the question about whether gods are moralistic or punitive, has led researchers to underestimate the presence of moralizing gods by systematically producing false negatives – inferring that truly present moralizing gods are absent because moralizing high gods are absent. We then use datasets that include both moralizing gods and moralizing high gods to show that researchers risk inferring false negatives more frequently among lower levels of social complexity. As we also show, this likely leads to a spurious positive association between social complexity and the presence of moralizing gods. We then briefly discuss the ethnographic data and historical biases that might have strengthened this spurious association. We therefore question the widely assumed positive association between morally punitive gods and social complexity, and conclude that ethnographic evidence supports the prevalence of moralizing gods among small-scale societies.

Engagement Opportunities and Challenges of Transdisciplinary Practice: The 1890 Land-Grant Perspective

Land-grant universities’ philosophy of education assumes the triumvirate of education, research, and service will produce an improved quality of life and wealth-creating synergies disseminated to communities through Cooperative Extension (Gavazzi & Gee, 2019). In a simpler age, this philosophy worked well. In today’s global, technology-mediated, complex society, a transformational overhaul is necessary to amplify and broaden the impact of potential synergies through a robust engagement process. As a path forward, we propose building renaissance transdisciplinary teams, reimagining reward and evaluation systems, and elevating engagement to a position of primacy in strategy and structure. We could elevate Extension to university-wide status and foster engagement as a critical component of teaching (learning) and research (discovery).Using quantitative and qualitative data from the 1890 research directors, Extension administrators, and community stakeholders, we found strong support for greater university engagement with the community, especially for taking a deeper dive into long-term problem-solving by cocreating and codesigning viable solutions. There was also strong support for allocating additional technical and financial resources to build the university’s community engagement portfolio. These data also draw attention to the need to elevate community engagement to the level of teaching and research and to establish the presence of the university in the community.

Social Kropotkinism: The Best ‘New Normal’ for Survival in the Post COVID-19, Climate Emergency World?

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was originally an evolutionary biologist, writing shortly after Charles Darwin, who pointed to collaboration rather than competition as the underlying driver of (human) evolution, development and survival. This paper questions why ‘Social Darwinism’ has entered the language when ‘Social Kropotkinism’ has not. We position Social Kropotkinism – based on mutual support and community cooperation as opposed to Darwinian survival of the fittest – as having value as a new societal organising principle that can help to ensure social justice and equitable distribution of increasingly scarce resources in the post-pandemic, climate emergency world. We chart the re-emergence of Kropotkin’s ideas of mutualism against the current literature on the evolution of human cooperation, showing how the blossoming of community-level mutual aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed and filled many cracks in UK Government provision of welfare and social care, is the inevitable end-result of the empathy and predisposition for cooperation that has underpinned the development of complex societies and civilisation.
 
 Received: 5 August 2022 / Accepted: 13 October 2022 / Published: 5 November 2022

Castroism in Crisis

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Fidel Castro has cast an outsized shadow over all things Cuba, as if the Cuban leader and the communist Caribbean nation were one and the same. Yet, as veteran New York Times correspondent Anthony DePalma contends in his book The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times, this reflex obfuscates the complex society that is increasingly at cross purposes with all things Fidel. The author’s keen profiles of ‘ordinary’ citizens give readers an unvarnished entry into the so often unimaginable, surreal or heart-breaking realities at the core of contemporary Cuban life.

FROM DAZIBAO TO TWITTER: THE POLITICAL FUNCTION OF SHAMING

The paper explores shaming as a central feature of public humiliation rituals across history: in every relatively complex human society, some form of shaming performs a role in social cohesion. One of the most recent iterations of a social shaming ritual is the phenomenon that has been labelled “cancel culture”, characterized by an emphasis in shaming as a means of social and political action. This paper identifies and addresses similarities between the use of big-character posters (dazibao) in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the “cancel culture” of contemporary social media environments. By advancing the understanding of the role of shame and shaming in different cultural and historical contexts – acknowledging that we are a gossip species – it is intended as a contribution for the comprehension of law as a toolbox for the mediation of human relations, as well as of its potentials and limitations.

Cultural Schemas: A Study on the Practice of Funeral and Marriage Rites of the Vietnamese Catholic Community

As a model for processing information about people's perceptions to understand the complex world and society in which they live, the cultural schema serves as a key concept in Cultural Linguistics when directing to the perception and processing of information about people, and social groups, and events. Cultural schema theory is valuable in deciphering culturally structured concepts, covering the entire range of human experience expressed in many fields such as education, belief, religion, etc. Through the practice of sacred rituals, each religious believer can form his system of ideas about entities in his or her belief world. Those experiences and experiences are conceptualized through the language picture. In the process of cultural development and integration, the cultural awareness of the Catholic community also reflects certain changes in Catholicism in the West in harmony with the customs and beliefs of Eastern countries. like Vietnam, expressed through the practice of funeral rites and traditional marriage of the Vietnamese. In this article, by using quantitative and qualitative methods, we have conducted a character analysis of the above cultural schemas based on the corpus of 120 discourses drawn during the implementation perform funeral and marriage rites for Vietnamese Catholics. Research results show that cultural schemas (event diagrams, role schemas, image schemas, propositional schemas, and emotional schemas) reflect the cultural knowledge (beliefs, standards, principles, and expectations) of each Vietnamese Catholic about DEATH and MARRIAGE as a journey or a new transformation in one's life... That is the basis for them to transmit achieve and explain the basic values of these two concepts, helping us to understand more deeply the mind of the Vietnamese Catholic community in Vietnam when performing two important rituals in human life in reality.