Evolution Of Norms Research Articles

Neighborhood effects and social behavior: The case of irrigated and rainfed farmers in Bohol, the Philippines

Artifactual field experiments, spatial econometrics, and household surveys are combined in a single study to investigate the neighborhood effects of social behaviors. The dictator and public goods games are conducted among rice farmers in irrigated and non-irrigated areas in the Philippines. We find the neighborhood effects but the magnitude and statistical significance of endogenous social effects vary with the irrigation availability, type of social behavior, and type of neighborhood. Altruistic and cooperative behaviors are significantly influenced by the behaviors of neighbors only in the irrigated area, where social ties are strengthened through collective irrigation management. Through this effect, irrigated farmers’ social behaviors become similar to those of one another. Neighborhood effects for cooperative behavior are stronger among farm plot neighbors than among residential neighbors, which may reflect their interactions in irrigation management. Although non-dynamic, these findings are consistent with the theory of social norm evolution through common pool resource management.

Die Form übersetzen: Zur (De)konstruktion des literarischen Sinnes

Abstract This contribution highlights the conditions of translating literature by way of exemplary samples from German and Japanese literature and theory. The problem of the (in)translatability of literature is discussed from three angles, with an emphasis on the aspect of language. The first part is concerned with the construction of meaning in literature. It considers the meaning of a literary text to be a composite construct built from different semantic forms. This interpretation of meaning as a construction integrating divergent semantic relations enables a systematic exploration of the problems encountered in the translation of literature in the dimension of language. The second and third part of the paper concern themselves with extralinguistic perspectives on the (in)translatability of literature. Literary meaning is in part also conditioned by the historical evolution of aesthetic norms, and by the norms of reception of literary works, both of which are culturally determined.

On Becoming a Norms Maker: Chinese Foreign Policy, Norms Evolution and the Challenges of Security in Africa

AbstractThis article explores China's engagement with the development of norms on security in Africa, with particular attention to its changing post-conflict engagement. Applying the gradualism characteristic of its approach to policy formulation and implementation, the Chinese policymaking community is playing a key role in seeking to redefine the contemporary international approach to managing African security dilemmas. By reinterpreting concepts such as liberal peacebuilding, Chinese policymakers have begun a process of reframing established norms on security and development that are more in line with its principles and core interests. This agenda in the making has enabled the Chinese government to move beyond the constraints of a rhetoric rooted in non-interference in domestic affairs that prohibited involvement in African security issues to a set of practices that allows China to play a more substantive role in security on the continent.

The rise of engaged citizenship: The evolution of citizenship norms among adolescents in 21 countries between 1999 and 2009

Various authors claim that citizenship norms are changing rapidly in advanced democracies, leading to a stronger emphasis on self-expressive engagement and a decline of notions of civic duty. In this article, we compare results from two comparative surveys of adolescents: the 1999 Civic Education Study and the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS). By using latent class analysis, we identify duty-based and engaged citizenship norms, both in 1999 and in 2009. As expected, the group supporting duty-based citizenship norms is clearly smaller in 2009 than in 1999, while the opposite is true for the group supporting engaged citizenship norms. In contrast to expectations, the empirical evidence also distinguishes additional normative concepts and shows that the distribution among countries is not according to the dynamics on value change as suggested in the literature, including a decline in engaged norms in Scandinavia and Western Europe.

The evolution of phenotypic plasticity: Genealogy of a debate in genetics

The paper describes the context and the origin of a particular debate that concerns the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. In 1965, British biologist A. D. Bradshaw proposed a widely cited model intended to explain the evolution of norms of reaction, based on his studies of plant populations. Bradshaw's model went beyond the notion of the “adaptive norm of reaction” discussed before him by Dobzhansky and Schmalhausen by suggesting that “plasticity”—the ability of a phenotype to be modified by the environment—should be genetically determined. To prove Bradshaw's hypothesis, it became necessary for some authors to identify the pressures exerted by natural selection on phenotypic plasticity in particular traits, and thus to model its evolution. In this paper, I contrast two different views, based on quantitative genetic models, proposed in the mid-1980s: Russell Lande and Sara Via's conception of phenotypic plasticity, which assumes that the evolution of plasticity is linked to the evolution of the plastic trait itself, and Samuel Scheiner and Richard Lyman's view, which assumes that the evolution of plasticity is independent from the evolution of the trait. I show how the origin of this specific debate, and different assumptions about the evolution of phenotypic plasticity, depended on Bradshaw's definition of plasticity and the context of quantitative genetics.

Social norms, costly punishment and the evolution of cooperation

Within a co-evolutionary framework of reputations, strategies and social norms, we study the role of punishment in the promotion of cooperation. Norms differ according to whether they allow or do not allow the punishment action to be a part of the strategies, and, in the case of the former, they further differ in terms of whether they encourage or do not encourage the punishment action. In such a framework, depending on the applied social norm, players are first given different reputations based on their employed strategies. Players then update their strategies accordingly after they observe the payoff differences among different strategies. Finally, over a longer horizon, the evolution of the social norms may be driven by the average payoffs of all members of the society. The strategy dynamics are articulated under different social norms. It is found that costly punishment does contribute to the evolution toward cooperation. Not only does the attraction basin of the cooperative evolutionary stable state become larger, but the speed of convergence to the CESS also becomes faster. These two properties are further enhanced if the punishment action is encouraged by the social norm.

Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Practice: Changes in Family Treatment Court Norms Over Time

Family treatment court (FTC) is an example of an increasing number of problem‐centered courts currently operating in the United States. Problem‐centered courts such as FTC encompass the ideas of therapeutic jurisprudence but operate within the broader court system. Presented are the results of an FTC case study that seeks to understand the evolution of courtroom norms and practice over time. Observations of courtroom interactions and interviews with courtroom personnel show that initial observations are consistent with the ideals of therapeutic jurisprudence. However, over time, daily demands and pressures on the courtroom undermine the therapeutic approach.

Plasticity as a developing trait: exploring the implications.

Individual differences in plasticity have been classically framed as genotype-by-environment interactions, with different genotypes showing different reaction norms in response to environmental conditions. However, research has shown that early experience can be a critical factor in shaping an individual's plasticity to later environmental factors. In other words, plasticity itself can be investigated as a developing trait that reflects the combined action of an individual's genes and previous interactions with the environment. In this paper I explore some implications of the idea that the early environment modulates long-term plasticity, with an emphasis on plasticity in behavioral traits. I begin by focusing on the mechanisms that mediate plasticity at the proximate level, and discussing the possibility that some traits may work as generalized mediators of plasticity by affecting the sensitivity of multiple phenol types across developmental contexts. I then tackle the complex problem of the evolution of reaction norms for plasticity. Next, I consider a number of potential implications for research on parental effects and phenotypic matching, and conclude by discussing how plasticity may become a target of evolutionary conflict between parents and offspring. In total, I aim to show how the idea of plasticity as a developing trait offers a rich source of questions and insights that may inform future research in this area.

Book Review: Juichi Inada, The International Aid Regime: The Dynamics of Evolution of Institutions and Norms (in Japanese)

Book Review: Juichi Inada, <i>The International Aid Regime: The Dynamics of Evolution of Institutions and Norms</i> (in Japanese)

Bibliography on Culture at the Turn of the Century: Evolution of Its Social Role

Addresses the issues of the actual state of bibliographic activities in the field of culture and the arts. The author analyses the ongoing evolution of attitudes and norms concerned with scientific information, research activities in general, and higher education in the humanities. The history of publishing current bibliographies on culture and the arts at the Russian State Library is shortly traced and it is argued that the access to information and knowledge is provided not only by online services and digital technologies in general but also by the systemised representation of information flows and content­related search supported by the current bibliography.

History, Expectations, and Leadership in the Evolution of Social Norms

We study the evolution of a social norm of “cooperation” in a dynamic environment. Each agent lives for two periods and interacts with agents from the previous and next generations via a coordination game. Social norms emerge as patterns of behaviour that are stable in part due to agents' interpretations of private information about the past, influenced by occasional commonly observed past behaviours. For sufficiently backward-looking societies, history completely drives equilibrium play, leading to a social norm of high or low cooperation. In more forward-looking societies, there is a pattern of “reversion” whereby play starting with high (low) cooperation reverts towards lower (higher) cooperation. The impact of history can be countered by occasional “prominent” agents, whose actions are visible by all future agents and who can leverage their greater visibility to influence expectations of future agents and overturn social norms of low cooperation

Accessing pension resources: the right to equality inside and out of the labour market

AbstractPensions constitute an important link, in many welfare regimes, between processes of social categorisation and labour market segmentation over the life-course. Pensions also reveal how socio-economic rights are defined in relation to normative and ideological categories (such as gender, class and race), how (and for whom) the state prioritises their distribution, and what these processes reveal about notions of equality and their political and legal institutionalisation. In this paper, I argue that pensions, especially but not only occupational pensions, therefore fall within the ambit of a broad conception of labour law; they should be of interest to feminist legal scholars not solely because of their linkages to paid employment, however, but because of their relationship with the organisation of both production and social reproduction – and the evolution of norms of equality across these domains.

From Mr. and Mrs. Outlier To Central Tendencies

This study examines the impact of computational journalism on the creation and dissemination of crime news. Computational journalism refers to forms of algorithmic, social scientific, and mathematical processes and systems for the production of news. It is one of a series of technological developments that have shaped journalistic work and builds on techniques of computer-assisted reporting and the use of social science tools in journalism. This paper uses the Los Angeles Times’ Homicide Report and its Data Desk as a case study to explore how technological adaptation occurred in this newsroom in the early twenty-first century. Our findings suggest that computational thinking and techniques emerged in a (dis)continuous evolution of organizational norms, practices, content, identities, and technologies that interdependently led to new products. Computational journalism emerges from an earlier and still ongoing turn to digital within broader organizational, technological, and social contexts. We place this finding in the local, situated context of the Homicide Report, one of the first crime news blogs to adopt computational journalism in North America.

The Race to Fill the Blanks: On (Animal) Testing in Science Fiction

Abstract In systems of meaning that run on a regular setting, allegory is about filling in the blanks that disclose the “other story.” In the modern setting that Walter Benjamin tracked (back to the seventeenth century), allegory must turn significance out of the blank itself, working the blank as a turning point for drawing the reading onward. The “psy-fi” genre is the hub where bona fide science fictions, documentations of psychosis (memoirs and psychiatric and psychoanalytic studies), and tracts on mass psychology or psychological warfare, meet and cross over toward the evolution of new norms. Is it possible to construe a series of references in works of the “psy-fi” genre to Zeno's paradox of a con-test involving human and animal subjects as allegory of the test situation in which blanks secure the last or new step, which ultimately is taken toward mourning, the final frontier? Yes.

Solar Eclipse: Investment Treaty Arbitration and Spain's Photovoltaic Troubles

Abstract Purpose This chapter seeks to explain the effects of actions in investment treaty tribunals against states in the European Periphery. The chapter examines the case of Spain and the multiple actions brought against it due to changes in support structures for the production of solar electricity. The aim of this analysis is to test whether investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) can further the cause of environmental sustainability. Methodology/approach In its opening part the chapter employs a ‘socio-legal’ methodology, showing the links between legal frameworks and the evolution of social and political norms. The chapter then adopts a ‘law and economics’ approach in presenting recent developments seeking to tease out the dynamic between legal changes, economic effects, policy reactions and dispute resolution. Findings While there is significant uncertainty over the strength of the legal arguments of claimants, it seems possible that they will be successful in claiming compensation from the Spanish government. Nonetheless, a win for the investors is unlikely to reverse the Spanish policy of ending support for renewables due to fiscal constraints. The conclusion is that such actions have a negative impact in terms of promoting the spread of renewables and they inhibit recovery in crisis hit nations. Practical implications The chapter offers context on the use of ISDS against the background of the European crisis. This analysis has wider connotations for policy design as it feeds directly into concerns about multilateral agreements under negotiation, such as TTIP. Originality/value This is the first comprehensive academic study of the changes in Spanish regulatory frameworks regarding clean energy incentives. It is also the first comprehensive presentation of the actions brought against Spain as a result of these changes.

Collective action and the evolution of social norms

With the publication of The Logic of Collective Action in 1965, Mancur Olson challenged a cherished foundation of modern democratic thought that groups would tend to form and take collective action...

The evolution of elite and societal norms pertaining to the emergence of federal-tribal co-management of natural resources

The evolution of elite and societal norms pertaining to the emergence of federal-tribal co-management of natural resources

Violence and the Evolution of Social Norms

To what extent can social norms recover from periods of intense inter-group violence? One school of thought posits long-term detrimental effects of violence in the form of entrenched parochialism, but other research shows how inter-group norms may quickly rebound and recover, even after extreme exposure to brutal war. Based on longitudinal survey and experimental evidence from post-war Bosnia, we find that while inter-group norms do recover from violence, there is also a persistent parochial divide between how in-groups are perceived and treated relative to out-groups. Our research suggests a mechanism at the individual-level for explaining hybrid pathways between rapid growth and recovery on one hand and a return to violence on the other.

The evolution of social norms in conflict resolution

In her classic essay ‘Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms’, Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom (2000) made a major contribution to our understanding of human institutions. She developed t...

Who Are the Norm Makers? The Asian-African Conference in Bandung and the Evolution of Norms

It is increasingly recognized that the literature on norms, like that of international relations more generally, neglects or obscures the voices and role of non-Western actors. Part of the reason has to do with its relatively narrow conceptualization of agency: who are the norm makers and how do they create and diffuse norms? This article, drawing on the author's previous work on the subject, calls for a broader understanding of what norm making means and who should be considered as norm entrepreneurs. It then examines the debates and outcomes of the Asian-African Conference in Bandung in 1955 to illustrate some if not all of the key points about the normative agency of the developing countries in the construction of the postwar security order.