Human Structure Research Articles

Emotional intelligence in a neoclassical framework and the nature of capitalism

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce the factor of emotional intelligence (EI) into the calculus of neoclassical analysis under precautionary saving aiming at stabilizing consumption in the case of an exogenous output shock.Design/methodology/approachThe introduction of EI differentiates individual firms in handling production uncertainty and individual consumers in coping with consumption uncertainty, but the source of uncertainty is exogenous and affects all the same; there are no idiosyncratic risks and uncertainties. This in conjunction with the median-voter-theory like approach to agent heterogeneity prompted by EI, replicates the result that aggregates quantitative predictions are almost indistinguishable from their representative agent counterpart in life cycle models of precautionary saving.FindingsEI corroborates stabilization greatly but only the introduction of a monetary authority would fully stabilize the system by injecting or withdrawing money depending on the state of the economy. Money becomes centrally issued and it would be destabilizing if it was accompanied by central and/or commercial bank seigniorage. Median EI is found to coincide with homo economicus' rationality. These results point to the importance of preserving the institutional character of capitalism as a free enterprise but also a competitive system under a government in the service of the private sector.Originality/valueMethodologically, this paper acknowledges the mutual interdependence between human action and social structure in the liberal setting in which free enterprise is a socioeconomic process that identifies value through exchange under the sociopolitical process of democracy.

Novelty Production and Evolvability in Digital Genomic Agents: Logical Foundations and Policy Design Implications of Complex Adaptive Systems

Novelty, innovation and surprises are ubiquitous in evolution and human social systems, with the adaptive immune system (AIS) and capitalism being respective exemplars. While novelty production embodies the hallmark of complex adaptive systems (CAS), as yet there is no consensus on what produces the ‘smarts’ that allows for innovative behaviours. Markose (2017) has shown how the Godel-Turing-Post (G-T-P) digital machinery necessary to encode the Godel sentence, is instrumental in genomic novelty and human proteanism. With evidence that genomic evolution acquired the mirror systems with the AIS and also in cognitive mirror neurons, the necessary G-T-P conditions for Self-Ref (self-reference) and Self-Rep (self-representation) were in place to encode the Liar qua hacker in the Godel sentence. The latter allows a digital entity to self-report it is under attack and it becomes the trigger for the elimination of the Liar/hacker. Failing that, the Nash equilibrium entails a co-evolutionary arms race of innovations from which unilateral withdrawal spells failure. This represents undecidable structure changing dynamics wherein predictable formal rules may suffer demise. The idea that predictability can lead to system failure and policy ineffectiveness has a long provenance in Kantian principles based end-neutral coercive laws, and in the more recent intuitively held positions of the Lucas Critique on the need for surprises and also Goodhart's Law. The serial collapse of currency pegs and the massive system failure in the 2007 Great Financial Crisis were the consequence of a paradigmatic blind spot: pre-commitment to formal rules by authorities effectively eliminated 'surprises' on their own part by withdrawing from the co-evolutionary arms race and gave rule breakers (the Liar) free reign to game the system.

"Ruling Machine" or Legalization of Technology

The paper is devoted to complex and multifaceted relations arising in the field of public administration, the symbolic embodiment of which is the “ruling machine”. There is a long tradition based on the analogy between the machine mechanism and human social structures. Since the era of the absolutist states and the industrial revolution, these analogies have been transferred to a special social and organizational structure, which is “bureaucracy”. A special place is occupied by the technique of management, technology of domination and organizational and technical standards, which gives the bureaucracy an image of a technical structure rather than a human team. At the same time, the strict regulation of this structure, based on a system of norms, regulations and codifications, makes the bureaucratic structure permeable to the mechanisms of legal regulation. Historically, the “ruling machine” has demonstrated its adaptability to a variety of political, economic and legal contexts, demonstrating its technical “neutrality”.

Inclusive rural development: a scientific discourse

The article considers the essential features of rural development as a multi-vector process, which not only involves economic growth in rural areas, but also requires its adaptation to human behavior, social and political structure of rural communities and their involvement in development processes. It also reflects systemic positive changes in rural areas, which are initiated "from bottom" and supported "from top". In this concept of rural development, inclusiveness is inherent. The authors show that the development of the concept of "inclusive rural development" took place in the process of enrichment and specification of the theoretical concepts of sustainable development, inclusive growth and inclusive development in relation to the rural sector of society. This concept denotes a development whose result consists in the creation of proper conditions for the rural population for such purposes as: the use of land and other local resources in the economic activities; adequate distribution of the results of economic growth in the agriculture and other sectors of the rural economy; and participation in social and public life for the consolidation of communities and observance of human rights. Such development leads to the reduction of poverty, overcoming the economic, social and political exclusion of people residing in rural areas. It is pointed out that ensuring the inclusive development is a function of the state regulation of national economy. To implement it in Ukraine, it is necessary to ensure, first of all, the implementation, in the regulatory and legal framework, of the global goals of sustainable development and the objectives for their achievement. That could be realized by adopting the Law on the Strategy for Sustainable Development until 2030, and, in the part of inclusive rural development, also the Law on the Basic Principles of the State Agrarian Policy and State Policy of Rural Development.

CHAPTER 8: DWIGHT READ: TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM: FOLLOWED BY A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND DWIGHT READ

Here I report on Dwight Read’s theory for a paradigm change in kinship anthropology which entails kinship terminologies being interpreted as symbolic computational systems based on kin-term products. I also report on how Read argues that different conceptualizations of sibling, either sibling resulting by descent from parent, or sibling viewed in terms of shared parentage, two cultural conceptions that are rendered – here exemplifying the masculine side – by the kin-term products, S o F = B [son of father = brother] or F o B = F [father of brother = father), lead to respectively building up a descriptive or a classificatory terminology. The chapter also deals with how Dwight Read accounts for the relationship between genealogical tracing and the working out of kin terms using kin-term products and how the logic of kin-term products is consistent with the extension of kin terms to kin-type categories beyond the primary ones.The paper also reports on a discussion between Dwight Read and the author, initiated by questions and observations from the latter, regarding different aspects of Read’s reasoning. Not exhaustively, to be mentioned here is the way kin relationships are concretely worked out using kin-term products, the model of the family space and the nuclear family, group marriage, how the conceptualization of sibling in terms of shared parentage expressed through the kin-term product F o B = F [father o brother = father] relates to ethnographic data, the nature of the logic of kinship terminologies, the status of the structural equation S o F = B [son o father = brother] when used within the context of a classificatory terminology, the axiomatic nature of a number of kin-term products pertaining to specific kin terminologies, the equations pertaining to classificatory kinship terminologies that are likely to algebraically reduce chains of kin-terms products, mapped from corresponding kin type strings, like “son of son of father of father of father” (S o S o F o F o F) is mapped from the collateral genealogical relations, father’s father’s father’s son’s son (fffss or fffbss) to an irreducible kin term, here father, which is the one native speakers use for the said genealogical connection.The discussion also addresses, taking the example of ancient Chinese dialects, the question of what should be the structural prerequisites for a transition from classificatory (Dravidian) terminologies into bifurcate collateral and descriptive terminologies, a transition that is often posited by a number of linguists and anthropologists. Finally, the discussion deals with the question as to whether the kinship terminologies of the world all ultimately derive from a pre-dispersal African Proto-Sapiens kinship terminology. Throughout these lines of discussion, the central question is raised as to why different cultural choices on how siblings are conceptualized were made that led to different human kinship terminologies and social structures.

From Rice to Apple-Pear Style: An Ecocritical Approach to China's Korean Ethnic Minority Literature

Abstract In Northeast China, China's Korean ethnic group has made the ecological combination of sustainable development with nature by planting rice and apple-pear. This process has been described richly in the literature of Korean ethnic group and the stories about Korean ethnic group. Though the stories used to be considered as manifestation of Korean ethnic immigrant history and the history of their fighting against Japanese in the Anti-Japanese War, they can be designed as the discourse of the process of ecological positive and negative feedback, self-organization, stability domains, and the adaptation in human social systems and ecosystems from ecocritical perspective.

Explanation as prediction: the raison d’être of formal models in Political Science

Formal models constitute an essential part of contemporary Political Science. Their recent history is tightly tied to the developments of rational choice theory (RCT), which is considered to be the only deductive theory in the social sciences. This unique character, especially its manifestation through mathematical symbolisms, has caused profound schisms and criticisms in the discipline. Formal models have constantly been accused of being built on unrealistic assumptions of human behaviour and social structure, rendering as a result either trivial predictions or no empirical prediction at all. Nevertheless much of these charges are based on a misunderstanding about model design and the essence of explanation. Therefore, in this paper I address the philosophical and theoretical debates on rational choice modelling, drawing attention to how formal models are designed and what kind of explanations their offer. In my understanding, models produce predictions about general phenomena, and hence should not be judged on the basis of cherry-picked cases. Local triumphs by the opponents of modelling and RCT do not suffice to render models useless or false. Rather, their explanatory capacity should be judged on the terms of their general predictions and explanations.

SCALING THE SIZE, STRUCTURE, AND DYNAMICS OF RESIDENTIALLY MOBILE HUNTER-GATHERER CAMPS

Short-term hunter-gatherer residential camps have been a central feature of human settlement patterns and social structure for most of human evolutionary history. Recent analyses of ethnohistoric hunter-gatherer data show that across different environments, the average size of hunter-gatherer bands is remarkably constant and that bands are commonly formed by a small number of coresident families. Using ethnoarchaeological data, we examine the relationship between the physical infrastructure of camps and their social organization. We compiled a dataset of 263 ethnoarchaeologically observed hunter-gatherer camps from 13 studies in the literature. We focus on both the scale of camps, or their average size, structure, and composition, and the dynamics that governed their variation. Using a combination of inferential statistics and linear models, we show that the physical infrastructure of camps, measured by the number of household features, reflects the internal social organization of hunter-gatherer bands. Using scaling analyses, we then show that the variation among individual camps is related to a predictable set of dynamics between camp area, infrastructure, the number of occupants, and residence time. Moreover, the scale and dynamics that set the statistical variance in camp sizes are similar across different environments and have important implications for reconstructing prehistoric hunter-gatherer social organization and behavior from the archaeological record.

Convergence of socio-ecological dynamics in disparate ecological systems under strong coupling to human social systems

It is widely recognized that coupled socio-ecological dynamics can be qualitatively different from the dynamics of social or ecological systems in isolation from one another. The influence of the type of ecological dynamics on the dynamics of the larger socio-ecological system is less well studied, however. Here, we carry out such a comparison using a mathematical model of a common pool resource problem. A population must make decisions about harvesting a renewable resource. Individuals may either be cooperators, who harvest at a sustainable level, or defectors, who overharvest. Cooperators punish defectors through social ostracism. Individuals can switch strategies according to the costs and benefits of harvesting and the strength of social ostracism. These mechanisms are represented by a differential equation for social dynamics, which is coupled to three different types of resource dynamics: logistic growth, constant inflow, and threshold growth. We find that when human influence is sufficiently weak, the form of resource dynamics leaves a strong imprint on the socio-ecological dynamics, and human social dynamics are qualitatively very different from resource dynamics. However, stronger human influence introduces a broad intermediate parameter regime where dynamical patterns converge to a common type: the three types of ecological systems exhibit similar dynamics, but also, social and ecological dynamics mirror one another. This regime of strong human influence includes generation of stable limit cycles at high rates of social learning. Such oscillations are a consequence of stronger coupling and are reminiscent of synchrony in other fields, such as the classic problem of coupled oscillators. Socio-ecological convergence has implications for how we understand and manage complex socio-ecological systems. In an era of growing human influence on ecological systems, further empirical and theoretical work is required to determine whether socio-ecological convergence is present in real systems.

Social Structure Facilitated the Evolution of Care-giving as a Strategy for Disease Control in the Human Lineage

Humans are the only species to have evolved cooperative care-giving as a strategy for disease control. A synthesis of evidence from the fossil record, paleogenomics, human ecology, and disease transmission models, suggests that care-giving for the diseased evolved as part of the unique suite of cognitive and socio-cultural specializations that are attributed to the genus Homo. Here we demonstrate that the evolution of hominin social structure enabled the evolution of care-giving for the diseased. Using agent-based modeling, we simulate the evolution of care-giving in hominin networks derived from a basal primate social system and the three leading hypotheses of ancestral human social organization, each of which would have had to deal with the elevated disease spread associated with care-giving. We show that (1) care-giving is an evolutionarily stable strategy in kin-based cooperatively breeding groups, (2) care-giving can become established in small, low density groups, similar to communities that existed before the increases in community size and density that are associated with the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic, and (3) once established, care-giving became a successful method of disease control across social systems, even as community sizes and densities increased. We conclude that care-giving enabled hominins to suppress disease spread as social complexity, and thus socially-transmitted disease risk, increased.

Evolution of cooperation on independent networks: The influence of asymmetric information sharing updating mechanism

In realistic social systems, there exists multiple networks which are influenced by each other with different level of impacts. Inspired by this, we thus study the evolution of public cooperation on two interdependent networks that are connected by means of an asymmetric information sharing updating function, which can construct the interdependent networks in two different classes in order to simulate asymmetric influence of multiple networks which exist in from bacteria to animals as well as human societies. Interestingly, we find that interdependence by means of asymmetric information sharing function can dramatically promote the evolution of cooperation by restraining negative feed-back effect to provide a better environment for cooperators to mushroom. The result shows that the stronger the level of asymmetry, the higher the level of cooperation. And we further inquiry why this asymmetric information sharing updating mechanism can strikingly promote the cooperation in the upper network and find that the value of combined Fermi–Dirac Function of defector in the upper network is relatively larger than the original Fermi–Dirac Function, which can eventually lead to the fraction of cooperation to one in the upper network. Our work can reveal some essential principles in asymmetric interdependent networks that ubiquitously exists in biological and human social systems.

Partners as Possession: A Qualitative Exploration of Intimate Partner Sexual Violence in Freetown, Sierra Leone

ABSTRACTThe ‘gender acts’ passed in 2007 and 2012, regarding intimate partner (sexual) violence though extremely progressive on paper, are starkly disconnected from the changing social landscapes, lived experiences and social codes, which govern marriages and cohabitation in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Using practice theory (e.g. Karp 1986, Ortner 2006) to analyze and challenge the social, cultural and historical contexts of intimate partner sexual violence, and to examine notions about and access to justice, this article explores the intersection between human agency, social, legal and institutional structures, and forms of power (Karp, 1986, p.132, 134). Qualitative methodology is used to investigate how sexual assault is conceived in heterosexual relationships in Sierra Leone and to analyze why married or cohabitating women only seldom report the assault they suffer to the police and why cases predominantly end with a dismissal or an out of court solution, euphemistically referred to as ‘friendly settlements.’ The article argues for an intersectional approach towards intimate partner sexual violence. It conceives of women’s responses to such violence within the nexus between individual, community and state regulations, paying attention to the specific socially embedded agency they enable. The article contends that the pressures on women that cause them to prioritize social and economic security over justice need to be accounted for.

Using differential structure-from-motion photogrammetry to quantify erosion at the Engare Sero footprint site, Tanzania

Hominin footprint sites are excellent sources of data that provide insights into early human physiology, anatomy, and social structures. They are also potential tourist attractions that are often situated in relatively under-developed parts of the world. Unfortunately, many footprint sites are also located in high energy environments and/or are pressed into poorly indurated sediments, which make them highly susceptible to erosion. This paper proposes a non-invasive and low-cost method employing Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry to quantify erosion rates in the absence of permanent ground control points. Using point cloud comparison algorithms between data collected at different times, it is possible to quantitatively analyze the locations, volumes, and rates of material loss. We applied this technique to several footprints within the Engare Sero footprint site in northern Tanzania to assess erosional change between 2010 and 2017. Our comparisons show that prints are vertically eroding at average rates ranging from 0.10 to 0.17 mm/yr with some localized areas experiencing much higher rates over shorter durations. We identify three primary modes of erosion: 1) flaking, 2) abrasion, and 3) boring of holes. Erosion appears to have occurred episodically with major events, such as flooding, separated by periods of relative stability. The methods presented here are valuable for paleoanthropologists to better understand how footprint erosion might adversely affect inferences regarding print-makers, and they are valuable for decision-makers, who can create conservation plans to better protect and maximize the utility of known hominin footprint sites.

Elementos-chave de uma teoria da sociedade mundial

Resumo Esse artigo oferece uma visão geral dos insights necessários para se construir uma teoria da sociedade mundial. A seção 1 define o conceito de sociedade e busca identificar tipos diferentes de sociedade que podem ser observados na história dos sistemas sociais humanos; 2 conecta o argumento sobre a sequência de tipos de sociedade com uma reconstrução dos padrões de povoamento da Terra por grupos de humanos; e 3 apresenta um conceito geral de evolução sociocultural como o processo básico de formação das sociedades. O artigo então muda seu foco para a formação da sociedade mundial moderna como a forma contemporânea da sociedade (séculos XVIII ao XXI) e 4 define os principais aspectos da complexidade do sistema mundial e o nexo com a diferenciação funcional; 5 identifica as revoluções inclusivas que ocorrem desde o século XVIII como pontos de partida dos sistemas de função global como a economia, a educação, a ciência e as instituições políticas, e 6 explica a inter-relação dos sistemas de função a outras autoestruturas (Eigenstructures) emergentes da sociedade mundial (as redes globais, organizações globais, comunidades epistêmicas e sistemas de interação global); finalmente, 7 debruça-se sobre mecanismos básicos da globalização - a saber, comunicação, migração, observação e conhecimento.

Local Wisdom in a New Paradigm: Applying System Theory to the Study of Local Culture in Indonesia

Human sociality can be understood as an organism. Almost all aspects of life can be understood in a phenomenological sense as part of a life system. An appropriate perspective for considering life and interpreting social reality is extremely important in determining direction and orientation for mankind. The aim of this paper is to describe a new methodological point of view discover the natureof social reality in the study culture in Indonesia. In taking a perspective from philosophy, this research endeavors to provide a new perspective in the study of local wisdom in Indonesia. This paper presents a philosophical view on approaching the study of local wisdom (kearifanlokal): first, human social systems are systems of self-reference; second, human sociality is actualized in social systems that are contingent. Local wisdom can be viewed as a social and communicative system that produces a kind of self-organization (autopoesis) within a culture.

Using Machine Learning to Support Qualitative Coding in Social Science

Machine learning (ML) has become increasingly influential to human society, yet the primary advancements and applications of ML are driven by research in only a few computational disciplines. Even applications that affect or analyze human behaviors and social structures are often developed with limited input from experts outside of computational fields. Social scientists—experts trained to examine and explain the complexity of human behavior and interactions in the world—have considerable expertise to contribute to the development of ML applications for human-generated data, and their analytic practices could benefit from more human-centered ML methods. Although a few researchers have highlighted some gaps between ML and social sciences [51, 57, 70], most discussions only focus on quantitative methods. Yet many social science disciplines rely heavily on qualitative methods to distill patterns that are challenging to discover through quantitative data. One common analysis method for qualitative data is qualitative coding . In this article, we highlight three challenges of applying ML to qualitative coding. Additionally, we utilize our experience of designing a visual analytics tool for collaborative qualitative coding to demonstrate the potential in using ML to support qualitative coding by shifting the focus to identifying ambiguity. We illustrate dimensions of ambiguity and discuss the relationship between disagreement and ambiguity. Finally, we propose three research directions to ground ML applications for social science as part of the progression toward human-centered machine learning.

Phytoliths as an indicator of early modern humans plant gathering strategies, fire fuel and site occupation intensity during the Middle Stone Age at Pinnacle Point 5-6 (south coast, South Africa).

The study of plant remains in archaeological sites, along with a better understanding of the use of plants by prehistoric populations, can help us shed light on changes in survival strategies of hunter-gatherers and consequent impacts on modern human cognition, social organization, and technology. The archaeological locality of Pinnacle Point (Mossel Bay, South Africa) includes a series of coastal caves, rock-shelters, and open-air sites with human occupations spanning the Acheulian through Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA). These sites have provided some of the earliest evidence for complex human behaviour and technology during the MSA. We used phytoliths—amorphous silica particles that are deposited in cells of plants—as a proxy for the reconstruction of past human plant foraging strategies on the south coast of South Africa during the Middle and Late Pleistocene, emphasizing the use and control of fire as well as other possible plant uses. We analysed sediment samples from the different occupation periods at the rock shelter Pinnacle Point 5–6 North (PP5-6N). We also present an overview of the taphonomic processes affecting phytolith preservation in this site that will be critical to conduct a more reliable interpretation of the original plant use in the rock shelter. Our study reports the first evidence of the intentional gathering and introduction into living areas of plants from the Restionaceae family by MSA hunter-gatherers inhabiting the south coast of South Africa. We suggest that humans inhabiting Pinnacle Point during short-term occupation events during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 built fast fires using mainly grasses with some wood from trees and/or shrubs for specific purposes, perhaps for shellfish cooking. With the onset of MIS 4 we observed a change in the plant gathering strategies towards the intentional and intensive exploitation of dry wood to improve, we hypothesise, combustion for heating silcrete. This human behaviour is associated with changes in stone tool technology, site occupation intensity and climate change.

Religion, politics and the dilemma of modernising Ethiopia

Ethiopia is an old society often confronted with new ideas and foreign values. As a result, social changes and modernisation were important contentious points especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some wanted change and progress at the expense of indigenous values, specifically cultural and political independence, while others opted for a more cautious approach. Inasmuch as Ethiopia’s context was one in which the church and the state were accustomed to seeing themselves as two sides of the same coin, the discourse of modernisation had both a political and religious flavour to it. This article therefore aims to examine the volatile dynamics between religion (especially the Protestant churches of the ‘southern peripheries’) and the Marxist regime in modernising Ethiopia. Specifically, the article intends to explore how state-church relations transformed social thinking in Ethiopia. I begin by sketching the historical background and proceed to unravel the dilemma of modernisation. In the final part, I discuss how Protestantism contributed to modernising three aspects of social structure: the understanding of the human person, state-church relations and social organisation.

Paradigm Shift in Game Theory: Sociological Re-Conceptualization of Human Agency, Social Structure, and Agents’ Cognitive-Normative Frameworks and Action Determination Modalities

This article aims to present some of the initial work of developing a social science grounded game theory—as a clear alternative to classical game theory. Two distinct independent initiatives in Sociology are presented: One, a systems approach, social systems game theory (SGT), and the other, Erving Goffman’s interactionist approach (IGT). These approaches are presented and contrasted with classical theory. They focus on the social rules, norms, roles, role relationships, and institutional arrangements, which structure and regulate human behavior. While strategic judgment and instrumental rationality play an important part in the sociological approaches, they are not a universal or dominant modality of social action determination. Rule following is considered, generally speaking, more characteristic and more general. Sociological approaches, such as those outlined in this article provide a language and conceptual tools to more adequately and effectively than the classical theory describe, model, and analyze the diversity and complexity of human interaction conditions and processes: (1) complex cognitive rule based models of the interaction situation with which actors understand and analyze their situations; (2) value complex(es) with which actors operate, often with multiple values and norms applying in interaction situations; (3) action repertoires (rule complexes) with simple and complex action alternatives—plans, programs, established (sometimes highly elaborated) algorithms, and rituals; (4) a rule complex of action determination modalities for actors to generate and/or select actions in game situations; three action modalities are considered here; each modality consists of one or more procedures or algorithms for action determination: (I) following or implementing a rule or rule complex, norm, role, ritual, or social relation; (II) selecting or choosing among given or institutionalized alternatives according to a rule or principle; and (III) constructing or adopting one or more alternatives according to a value, guideline, or set of criteria. Such determinations are often carried out collectively. The paper identifies and illustrates in a concluding table several of the key differences between classical theory and the sociological approaches on a number of dimensions relating to human agency; social structure, norms, institutions, and cultural forms; patterns of game interaction and outcomes, the conditions of cooperation and conflict, game restructuring and transformation, and empirical relevance. Sociologically based game theory, such as the contributions outlined in this article suggest a language and conceptual tools to more adequately and effectively than the classical theory describe, model, and analyze the diversity, complexity, and dynamics of human interaction conditions and processes and, therefore, promises greater empirical relevance and scientific power. An Appendix provides an elaboration of SGT, concluding that one of SGT’s major contributions is the rule based conceptualization of games as socially embedded with agents in social roles and role relationships and subject to cognitive-normative and agential regulation. SGT rules and rule complexes are based on contemporary developments relating to granular computing and Artificial Intelligence in general.

Social group dynamics predict stress variability among children in a New Zealand classroom

Previous research proposes stress as a mechanism for linking social environments and biological bodies. In particular, non-human primate studies investigate relationships between cortisol as a measure of stress response and social hierarchies. Because human social structures often include hierarchies of dominance and social status, humans may exhibit similar patterns. Studies of non-human primates, however, have not reached consistent conclusions with respect to relationships between social position and levels of cortisol. While human studies report associations between cortisol and various aspects of social environments, studies that consider social status as a predictor of stress response also report mixed results. Others have argued that perceptions of social status may have different implications for stress response depending upon social context.We propose here that characteristics of children’s social networks may be a better predictor of central tendencies and variability of stress response than their perceptions of social status.This is evaluated among 24 children from 9.4 to 11.3 years of age in one upper middle-class New Zealand primary school classroom, assessed through observation within the classroom, self-reports during semi-structured interviews and 221 serial saliva samples provided daily over 10 consecutive school days. A synthetic assessment of the children’s networks and peer-relationships was developed prior to saliva-cortisol analysis. We found that greater stability of peer-relationships within groups significantly predicts lower within-group variation in mid-morning cortisol over the two-week period, but not overall within-group differences in mean cortisol.