Social Forces Research Articles

Back to the Future: Placing the Florida Decision in Historical Context

In January 2024, Florida’s Board of Education eliminated the sociology course, ‘Principles of Sociology’ as one of its core requirements for obtaining a general social science education in its college and university system. Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz, led the charge, claiming that sociology has been ‘hijacked by left wing activists’ and is a purveyor of ‘woke ideology’. Some within the profession would agree with Diaz, and certainly, many university administrators would as well. Of course, there are varying representations of sociology, and what Diaz and others are targeting is critical sociology and its commitment to the interrogation of power. However, these political dynamics are not new. The history of critical sociology has reflected a similar pattern that it is being played out currently. The ebbs and flows of critical sociology’s place within the discipline, the state and profession’s suppression of it, its resurgence linked to external social and political forces, and its precarious existence within the university have been true of critical sociology since its origins. This paper offers a historical context for better understanding the current attack on the field of sociology and raises the question, what should critical sociologists do about it?

Affective Turn, or Return?

The ‘affective turn’ suggests that we pay attention to how affects create subjectivities, build communities, and shape new forms of politics in the making. It invites us to move beyond established humanities and social science paradigms and toward richer forms of contextual analysis by studying how bodies – human and otherwise – ‘act and are acted upon’ (Gregg and Seigworth 2010, 1). The ‘affective turn’ requires sensitive attention to a host of cognate terms and concepts – sentiment, emotion, reverberation, resonance, atmosphere, and far beyond, including the more specific trans-category of ‘affective politics’ as well as affective reinterpretations of the social. Music has long been recognized as a site where affective politics play out. However, existing scholarship often view Baruch Spinoza, Silvan Tomkins, Gilles Deleuze, and Brian Massumi as the founding fathers of affective thinking at the expense of related work in the broader tradition of music philosophy. We address this lacuna by discussing the relationship between music, affect, and politics in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Qian Sima, Johannes Tinctoris, René Descartes, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Theodor Adorno, Antoine Hennion, and Tia DeNora, as we aim to broaden, nuance, sharpen, and situate contemporary understandings of affective politics in music studies. In doing so, we discuss whether the affective turn is, perhaps, better understood as a ‘return’ to cross-disciplinary music research that situates the understandings of affective politics, relational agency, and political emotions within a longer history of music philosophy that, taken together, provide a more robust theoretical argument for the social and political force of musical sounds.

The Media and the Administration of Elections in Cameroon

One of the critical ways to determine the degree of democracy in a country is to see how free its press is. However, it is not only about seeing how the press is free but also how well it is participating in the political process, including the administration of elections. This paper argues that in Cameroon, the political liberalism of the early 1990s was associated with the emergence and proliferation of press freedoms. This 'new' media has been involved in the administration of elections in two fundamental ways: political communication and political socialization. The mass media in Cameroon has contributed to providing Cameroonians with political facts, raising public awareness and, to some extent, keeping the government responsive to demands for electoral reforms. The print newspaper, TV, and radio combined have emerged as prominent political communication and political socialization forces in the political landscape. However, they have not really operated without partisan tendencies. They continue to grapple with some challenges, which are mostly connected with door-to-door, face-to-face, limited/disproportionate outreach and coverage, government control of media and social media.

‘Moving, moving, moving’: the social forces that perpetuate housing instability for women experiencing intimate partner violence

Housing scholars have demonstrated that intimate partner violence (IPV) is a key driver of housing instability. Contributing to existing housing literature that foregrounds the importance of material and psychological housing instability, our empirical research focuses on a novel programme providing supportive housing for women, the majority of whom are allocated housing to protect them from IPV. Our data includes in-depth interviews with the supportive housing tenants and practitioners, as well as administrative data. Our findings illuminate the close interrelation between material and psychological housing instability, and demonstrate how problems inherent in the private rental market interact with issues caused by perpetrators’ ongoing use of violence in ways that make it impossible for women to achieve either form of stability. The implication for housing scholars is to understand that although affordable housing is a protective measure, supportive housing models that rely on the private rental market, face profound limitations in achieving material and psychological housing stability for women who experience IPV.

Time Use, Health, and Well-Being across the Life Cycle: A Gender Analysis

Although time use is one of people’s most important resources, there are social forces and inequalities that shape how time is used. The aim of this research is to examine gender differences in time use from adolescence to old age and to analyze the association of such use with sociodemographic characteristics and with women’s and men’s health and well-being. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 5700 women (54.2%) and men (45.8%) from the Spanish general population, aged 14 to 85 years. Participants were assessed using five self-reported measures of time use, health, mental symptoms, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, social support, and masculine/instrumental and feminine/expressive traits. The results showed that although there were important differences in life cycle stage and occupation, women spent more time than men on housework, childcare, and caring for sick relatives, while men spent more time than women on enjoying activities and exercise. More time spent on housework was associated with worse health and well-being for women and more exercise with better health and well-being for both genders. It is concluded that gender is relevant to time use and the impact of different uses of time on health and well-being.

Adaptive movement behavior for real-time crowd simulation

Adaptive movement behavior for real-time crowd simulation

THE LIVING CITY: CULTURE, TRANSFORMATION, AND THE URBAN ENVI- RONMENT IN N. K. JEMISIN’S THE CITY WE BECAME

The paper examines the process of urban transformation in N. K. Jemisin’s novel, The City We Became. Through a close reading of the novel, the paper analyzes Jemisin’s portrayal of New York as a dynamic and constantly evolving entity that undergoes profound transformations throughout the narrative. Jemisin’s work offers a powerful and imaginative vision for how cities can be understood and represented in literature and beyond. The complex social, economic, and political forces actively shape cities are emphasized by presenting the city as a living and breathing character. The city will be viewed through Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, Edward Soja’s notion of postmetropolis, and Sharon Zukin’s conceptualization of the life and death of cities. Jemisin’s use of magical realism, intertextuality, and metaphorical language contribute to her vision of the city as a vibrant and multifaceted character that challenges and subverts dominant narratives surrounding race, gender, power, and urban inequality. By explor- ing the interplay between culture, urban theory, and literature, this paper offers a comprehen- sive and innovative perspective on the city and its ongoing transformation in the contemporary world.

Longtime nemeses or cordial allies? How individuals mentally relate science and religion.

Science and religion are influential social forces, and their interplay has been subject to many public and scholarly debates. The present article addresses how people mentally conceptualize the relationship between science and religion and how these conceptualizations can be systematized. To that end, we provide a comprehensive, integrative review of the pertinent literature. Moreover, we discuss how cognitive (in particular, epistemic beliefs) and motivational factors (in particular, epistemic needs, identity, and moral beliefs), as well as personality and contextual factors (e.g., rearing practices and cross-cultural exposure), are related to these mental conceptualizations. And finally, we provide a flowchart detailing the psychological processes leading to these mental conceptualizations. A comprehensive understanding of how individuals perceive the science-religion relationship is interesting in and of itself and practically relevant for managing societal challenges, such as science denial. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Robot navigation on inclined terrain using social force model

<p><span lang="EN-US">This research introduces an innovative approach to address the limitations of the commonly used social force model-based robot navigation method on flat terrain when applied to sloped terrain. The incline of the terrain becomes a crucial factor in calculating the robot’s steering output when navigating from the initial position to the target position while avoiding obstacles. Therefore, we propose a social forced model-based robot navigation system that can adapt to inclined terrain using inertial measurement unit sensor assistance. The system can detect the surface incline in real time and dynamically adjust friction and gravitational forces, ensuring the robot’s speed and heading direction are maintained. Simulation results conducted using CoppeliaSim show a significant improvement in speed adjustment efficiency. With this new navigation system, the robot can reach its destination in 59.935089 seconds, compared to the conventional social forced model which takes 63.506442 seconds, the robot is also able to reduce slip to reduce wasted movement. This method shows the potential of implementing a faster and more efficient navigation system in the context of inclined terrain.</span></p>

CSS for CVR: A Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle-Based Crowd Simulation System for Non-Playable Character Movement of Campus Virtual Reality

Along with the development of multimedia technology, an overview of the campus environment for prospective new visitors can be visualized through a 3D virtual environment based on virtual reality. A crowd simulation system is needed to provide an overview of the crowds in campus virtual reality (CVR). The simulation helps make it easier for individuals to predict crowds in certain areas virtually. In this study, we propose using the Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle (RVO) method to support the simulation of Non-Playable Character (NPC) crowds in a visualized virtual environment. RVO implements multi-agent navigation by estimating the possibility of moving without communication between agents and being able to perform collision avoidance. The use of RVO in this study aims to contribute to the collision detection development process for each NPC. The application of RVO is carried out in the development of virtual reality by using Unity3D and Blender asset support tools. The results of this study indicate that the RVO method can be applied in multi-agent navigation. These results were confirmed by the success of the NPC as a simulation agent in selecting routes and independently navigating to avoid collisions between agents without the need for communication. In every simulation, collisions will occur within a set of agents due to high density, which causes complex computations. The development of CSS can help every CVR user experience a virtual environment. In addition, each user can experience a more natural experience with the presence of 3D objects and virtual reality with RVO-based CSS. Furthermore, this research material is expected to be developed from various perspectives and themes related to crowd simulation for games and other simulation media.

Dungeons and Dragons: Gender, Race, and Power in the Fantasy and Storytelling Space

Fantasy allows for the intermingling of the imagination and the physical. It creates collective spaces that can reify, reiterate, or challenge socio-economic structures and power dynamics that create inequalities in our everyday lives. Fantasy spaces create the possibility of the impossible, the unbelievable, and the extraordinary, while simultaneously being bound to the real world from which these ideas stem. The creators manufacturing characters, stories, and worlds are conditioned by the social and political context in which they exist, with their own positionality drastically changing the way that they create and interact with stories and storytelling structures, as Garcia’s 2017 work “Privilege, power, and Dungeons & Dragons: How systems shape racial and gender identities in tabletop role-playing games” details. We explore the history of race, gender, and other social forces in the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 5e text, a gaming system that creates a framework of races, classes, and backgrounds for character creation in a roleplaying game. We grapple with our own experiences of how the game can (re)create biases that often go overlooked, creating both feelings of (un)safety for players. In this article, by documenting our experiences playing the game, we explore the ways that Dungeons and Dragons both harmfully recreates the dynamics of the White cis heteropatriarchy, as well as offers space to challenge these same forces, bringing the tumultuous clashing of social forces into the semi-private space of gameplay.

Height and cognitive assessments in a cohort of US schoolchildren, kindergarten through fifth grade

ABSTRACT An oft-repeated finding in child development research is that height and cognitive ability are positively related. Much of this work is limited in its ability to track height and cognitive development over time, with key constraints being the availability of longitudinal data and measures of ability that are comparable over time. This study evaluates the associations between height and assessments of reading, math, and science in a representative sample of US schoolchildren followed from kindergarten through fifth grade. Associations between height and assessment scores at each grade level, and height-growth and changes in scores over grade levels, are examined. The results suggest modest associations between concurrent height and assessment scores at each grade level that are robust to socioeconomic and school controls. There is limited association between height-growth and assessment outcomes, which is shown only for females. There is also little indication that height or height-growth is associated with improvements in scores. The findings suggest a modest association between height and cognitive ability in contemporary US schoolchildren, being attributed mostly to growth before kindergarten. The findings are consistent with the view that social and biological forces in early-life facilitate both physical and cognitive development.

Workshop summary: National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2022 scientific workshop on gender and health

In this manuscript, we summarize the goals, content, and impact of the Gender and Health: Impacts of Structural Sexism, Gender Norms, Relational Power Dynamics, and Gender Inequities workshop held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH) in collaboration with 10 NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. Specifically, we outline the key points emerging from the workshop presentations, which are the focus of the collection of articles in this supplement. The overarching goals of the workshop were to convene NIH staff, the external scientific community, and the public to discuss methods, measurement, modifiable factors, interventions, and best practices in health research on gender as a social and cultural variable and to identify opportunities to advance research and foster collaborations on these key topics. Themes emerging from the workshop include the need for intersectional measures in research on gender and health, the role of multilevel interventions and analyses, and the importance of considering gender as a social and structural determinant of health. Careful, nuanced, and rigorous integration of gender in health research can contribute to knowledge about and interventions to change the social and structural forces that lead to disparate health outcomes and perpetuate inequities.

Investigation of longitudinal dynamics of vehicles in disordered traffic

Vehicles in developing countries have wide variations in their static and dynamic characteristics, and drivers tend to not follow lane discipline. Models for driving behavior under such disordered traffic conditions need to include the vehicle dynamics and their interactions with the surrounding environment. Calibration of those models is necessary to evaluate their predictive power and suitability for analyzing traffic flow under disordered traffic. The present study aims to calibrate a longitudinal dynamics model, the High-Speed Social-Force Model (HSFM) using a vehicle trajectory dataset collected from Chennai city. The HSFM was calibrated by minimizing the deviations between the simulated and observed longitudinal coordinates of vehicles using a genetic algorithm. The observed and simulated vehicle trajectories were compared using a goodness of fit function of the positions. The convergence of the objective function has been illustrated with the help of fitness landscapes. The calibration errors were found to be within the acceptable range and the optimal parameter values were found to be consistent. The outcomes of the study indicate that the model can capture the influence of non-overlapping leaders under disordered traffic conditions.

Mapping out the interpersonal boundary stones in contemporary China: Guanxi network structure and its association with traditional culture endorsement.

Guanxi research would benefit from an empirical description of holistic guanxi network structures and consideration of sociologically meaningful antecedents such as one's cultural value endorsement. This study, inspired by the relational sociology and drawing on the reported trustworthiness of a rich array of referees in one's guanxi network collected from the Traditional Culture and Cognitive Pattern Survey, identifies two types of guanxi network structures in contemporary China: one is featured by the binary distinction between family and non-family referees, and the other displays a fourfold classification scheme, respectively concerning parents, nuclear family members (children and spouse), other relatives and close friends, and acquaintances. Furthermore, traditional culture endorsement is positively correlated with the likelihood of being subject to the binary classification scheme, while some counter social forces, such as the establishment of quasi-kinship relationships, encourage one to lean toward the more fine-grained fourfold guanxi network partitioning.

Research on the Intervention of Social Organizations in the Governance of Service Poverty for Rural Empty-nest Elderly: A Case Study of County S in Jiangxi Province

There are multiple dimensions of deficiencies in elderly care services for rural empty-nest elderly in China, necessitating the intervention of social organizations. Social organizations possess various advantages in participating in rural elderly care services, reflecting their importance and necessity in the governance of service poverty from the perspectives of governance concepts, governance subjects, and governance mechanisms. Combining the theory of collaborative governance and based on service cases of a social work agency in County S, Jiangxi Province, this study explores the collaborative mechanisms and governance effectiveness of the government, social organizations, villages, and social forces in the governance of service poverty for empty-nest elderly. It summarizes shortcomings, proposes countermeasures, and improves the multi-subject collaborative governance model for rural empty-nest elderly care services, which consists of government leadership, social organizations as operating entities, villages, volunteers, and other forces, aiming to promote the experience of the case to other underdeveloped areas.

Considering context: Current relationship satisfaction in a second-generation model of men's physical intimate partner violence.

Despite a half-century of scholarship devoted to explicating and disrupting the intergenerational transmission of family violence, it remains a prominent and destructive social force in the United States. Theoretical models have posited a variety of historical and concurrent risk and protective factors implicated in the trajectory from childhood violence exposure to adult perpetration. Using a second-generation model of intimate partner violence (IPV), we integrated social learning and attachment conceptualizations to examine pathways from family-of-origin violence to IPV perpetration among adult men. A sample of mixed-sex couples (N = 233) completed self-report measures related to social learning and attachment-based factors (e.g., violence in past relationships, child exposure, IPV attitudes, adult attachment) and participated in a 10-min conversation about a desired area for change in their relationship. Following, each partner participated in a video-mediated-recall procedure assessing their anger volatility and eliciting attributions of their partners' behavior. We tested mediation pathways (consistent with social learning and attachment theories) between violence in men's families of origin and their adult IPV perpetration as a function of relationship satisfaction. The proposed model fit the data well (CFI = 0.95) but had notable modifications from the hypothesized model. Generally, social-learning pathways were more consistent with the data. Relationship satisfaction interacted with some parameters. Results support theoretical advances in understanding IPV. Although exposure to violence in men's family of origin confers risk for later IPV, and a social learning developmental pathway is consistent with results, some of these effects are altered by relationship context.

Explaining adverse cholesterol levels and distinct gender patterns in an Indonesian population compared with the U.S.

Cardiovascular disease is among the most common causes of death around the world. As rising incomes in low and middle-income countries are accompanied by increased obesity, the burden of disease shifts towards non-communicable diseases, and lower-income settings make up a growing share of cardiovascular disease deaths. Comparative investigation of the roles of body composition, behavioral and socioeconomic factors across countries can shed light on both the biological and social drivers of cardiovascular disease more broadly. Comparing rigorously-validated measures of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol among adults in the United States and in Aceh, Indonesia, we show that Indonesians present with adverse cholesterol biomarkers relative to Americans, despite being younger and having lower body mass index. Adjusting for age, the gaps increase. Body composition, behaviors, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics that affect cholesterol do not explain between-country HDL differences, but do explain non-HDL differences, after accounting for medication use. On average, gender differences are inconsistent across the two countries and persist after controlling observed characteristics. Leveraging the richness of the Indonesian data to draw comparisons of males and females within the same household, the gender gaps among Indonesians are not explained for HDL cholesterol but attenuated substantially for non-HDL cholesterol. This finding suggests that unmeasured household resources play an important role in determining non-HDL cholesterol. More generally, they appear to be affected by social and biological forces in complex ways that differ across countries and potentially operate differently for HDL and non-HDL biomarkers. These results point to the value of rigorous comparative studies to advance understanding of cardiovascular risks across the globe.

Understanding Tsunami Evacuation via a Social Force Model While Considering Stress Levels Using Agent-Based Modelling

Given massive events, such as demonstrations in coastal cities exposed to tsunamigenic earthquakes, it is essential to explore pedestrian motion methods to help at-risk coastal communities and stakeholders understand the current issues they face to enhance disaster preparedness. This research targets SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. It strengthens resilience in coastal areas by implementing a social force model using a microscopic agent-based model to assess the impact of human behaviour on evacuation performance by introducing evacuation stress levels due to a tsunami triggered in central Chile. Two scenarios with two environments and three crowd sizes are implemented in NetLogo. In Scenario 1, pedestrians walk at a relaxed velocity. In Scenario 2, tsunami evacuation stress is incorporated, resulting in pedestrians walking at a running velocity, taking, on average, four times less time to evacuate. We explored more realistic settings by considering the internal susceptibility of each agent to spread tsunami evacuation stress among other evacuees. Results from Scenario 2 show that internal susceptibility effects almost double the mean evacuation time for 200 agents. Findings suggest a trade-off between realism and the minimization of evacuation time. This research is considered a first step toward including stress in tsunami evacuations for sustainable evacuation planning.

Digital Anthropology Manifesto

The manifesto format was not chosen by chance. As a rule, manifestations are not acceptable in the scientific community and are practiced to proclaim a new order of things. Historically, social groups have declared their intentions in manifestos of various kinds. This circumstance is also true for contemporary cases such as manifestos of cyborgs, hackers, “Evolution 2045”, etc. Digital anthropology as a subject of manifestation looks anomalous, since it is not related to the interests of a specific social group or force. The intentions of the authors of this manifesto are to proclaim an alternative to the scientific research mainstream. The subject area and thesaurus of digital anthropology historically began to take shape in the Western countries. Due to qualitative and quantitative empirical research, the network has become a kind of analogue of a “field” for the study of behavioral practices, the specifics of thinking, and mythology that makes its way into virtual communication and Internet content. In an attempt to maintain ideological continuity with ethnographic and field research, digital anthropology ignored the conceptual and generalizing statement about a person. The latter was formed in the discourse of philosophical anthropology, not only a historical philosophical movement, but also a current field of knowledge that produces reflexive generalized knowledge about human beings. In the manifesto, the subject of digital anthropology is significantly clarified, and its definition is also given as a result of the reassembly of the subject.