Individualistic Actions Research Articles

Action co-representation under threat: A Social Simon study

Several studies have shown that individuals automatically integrate the actions of other individuals into their own action plans, thus facilitating action coordination. What happens to this mechanism in situations of danger? This capacity could either be reduced, in order to allocate more cognitive resources for individualistic actions, or be maintained or enhanced to enable cooperation under threat. In order to determine the impact of the perception of danger on this capacity, two groups of participants carried out, in pairs, the Social Simon task, which provides a measure of co-representation. The task was performed during so-called ‘threat blocks’ (during which participants could be exposed at any time to an aversive stimulus) and so-called ‘safety blocks’ (during which no aversive stimulation could occur). In a first group of participants, both individuals were exposed at the same time to threat blocks. In a second group, only one of the two participants was exposed to them at a time. Our results indicate that co-representation, an important cognitive mechanism for cooperation, (i) is preserved in situations of danger; and (ii) may even be increased in participants who are confronted alone to threat but in the presence of a safe partner. Contrarily to popular belief, danger does not shut down our capacities for social interaction.

Народная игра Свинка : генезис, семантика, адаптация правил игры

The main purpose of the article is to study the folk game Swinka and fine tune its rules in order to incorporate the game into tourism initiatives, recreation and social practices (such as weddings), as well as lay foundations for further study of the game with reference to pedagogy, psychology and sociology. The article examines games recorded in the 19th – 20th centuries on the territories of Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Research methods from the field of folklore, linguistics and sociology are aimed at analyzing the plots of the game, the rules, the unstructured verbal material, associated with the designation of game loci, attributes and actions of the players, and the leading player, as well as at formulating proposals for the rules adjustments, suggested by the adult players. Invectives and punishments in the game of Swinka are originating in symbolism, the pragmatics of the rite of initiation into the craft of shepherds. Those could preserve, to a certain extent, a part of their “purely” invective and insulting connotations when the game transferred into the children's environment. The transition character of the invective function was studied: from the “purely” invective function (the vocabulary of adult shepherds) to the expressive one in the game. Both functions create an inferior image of the leading player by attributing to him negative characteristics. The game can also be interpreted as a tool in setting turns among the shepherds or out of turn assignments to livestock or pigs grazing. The uniqueness of the game lies in the need to constantly switching from the team actions to the purely individualistic and selfish actions and back. Proposals are made for rules adjustments to minimize injuries to participants and accelerate the pace of the game. The knowledge of the folklore, the historical context of the game’s emergence and the formation of negative nicknames for the leading player, as well as the connotations of the names of the game allows us to consider the game to be one of the brightest cultural manifestations. The game has good prospects for popularization among both the young and the adults in the Republic of Belarus and the Republic of Poland.

De los enamorados, son los menos los casados. La expresión de la voluntad personal de los jóvenes en las relaciones prenupciales de Antiguo Régimen

El presente trabajo tiene por objeto el estudio de los jóvenes como protagonistas de la emergencia de la voluntad personal y acciones individualistas en prácticas en torno al noviazgo y acceso al matrimonio en el siglo XVIII. A través de tratados de familia, manuales de confesores, legislación de la época y pleitos eclesiásticos, analizamos el conflicto social y moral que deviene de la expresión de la voluntad personal de los jóvenes hijos de familia y la actuación de los poderes político y religioso contra esas pulsaciones individualistas. Sin embargo, la cada vez mayor importancia del consentimiento personal en lo religioso y lo legal amparará la generalización de acciones individualistas, transformando los modos de vida sobre los que se expandirá la armadura ideológica, institucional y costumbres del liberalismo.

La ovinocultura de lana en el extremo sur gaúcho : desafíos para la construcción de una cadena de valor


 Este artículo analiza las actividades productivas relacionadas con la producción de lana ovina, bajo la óptica de dos organizaciones localizadas en Jaguarão, extremo sur de Brasil. El objetivo fue identificar los principales desafíos enfrentados por los actores sociales desde el punto de vista organizativo, así como las estrategias de comercialización y de agregación de valor. La investigación fue efectuada a través de entrevistas con guion semiestructurado. Los desafíos que se imponen son los de cualificar a los productores para atender los mercados más exigentes y construir un espíritu de cooperación que supere la actuación individualista dominante en la región. 

Correction to: Inter-agency Collaboration for Graduate Employment Opportunities in Uganda: a Case for Investigating the Structure, Social Capital, and Agency of Organizations

Africa’s population has grown from 477 million in 1980 to 1.25 billion people by 2017. Whereas this is expected to double to 2.4 billion people by 2050, there is uncertainty over the continent’s preparedness to provide opportunities for its youthful population (Hilson and McQuilken, The Extractive Industries and Society 1:104–118, 2014). Efforts by different stakeholders to create employment opportunities have been largely unsuccessful. Rae (Journal of General Management, 40:79–95, 2014) attributes this failure to the autonomous and individualistic actions of different agencies in executing their mandates. In doing this, they compete and conflict against each other which discourages efforts towards job creation. Taking cognizance of this anomaly, this paper urges research into the structure, social capital, and agency of organizations with the view to suggest ways of promoting the kind and level of collaboration that is desired among the organizations. The paper starts with an introduction, the context of graduate unemployment in Uganda, discusses the efforts of different agencies, a bit of literature review, the theoretical underpinnings, knowledge gap, a case study and what Uganda’s organizations learn from the Urban Partnership Program, and finally the conclusion.

Panel-based exhibit using participatory design elements may motivate behavior change

Meaningful science engagement beyond one-way outreach is needed to encourage science-based decision making. This pilot study aimed to instigate dialogue and deliberation concerning climate change and public health. Feedback from science café participants was used to design a panel-based museum exhibit that asked visitors to make action plans concerning such issues. Using intercept interviews and visitor comment card data, we found that visitors developed general or highly individualistic action plans to address these issues. Results suggest that employing participatory design methods when developing controversial socio-scientific exhibits can aid engagement. We conclude by recommending participatory strategies for implementing two-way science communication.

A Sociological Consideration of Prayer and Agency

Prayer may be seen as one of the most individual forms of action. Yet, like suicide, another supposedly individualistic action performed by a solitary individual, prayer is a dynamic, reflexive, intersubjective social action, and the sociality of prayer may transform the agency of the actor who is committed to this action over time.

Exploring the overlap between individualistic and collective crime prevention

Crime prevention behaviors range from private-minded or individualistic actions citizens take to protect themselves from crime, to public-minded or collective behaviors aimed at protecting entire neighborhoods. Although these behaviors may be overlapping, few studies have examined the extent to which citizens engage in individualistic and collective crime prevention simultaneously. This study examines the co-occurrence and predictors of crime prevention behaviors with data from Canada’s General Social Survey. Results indicate that citizens who engage in individualistic crime prevention behaviors are somewhat likely to engage in collective ones. But when looking at the etiology of these behaviors, individualistic behaviors are largely influenced by concerns about victimization, while collective behaviors are driven more by concerns with neighborhood conditions.

Біографія Сократа в контексті розвитку античної драми

Biography of Socrates is regarded as a kind of artistic text, deliberately turned philosopher to all citizens of the Athenian Polis, built in ethical and aesthetic coordinates that are relevant in the development plan of the ancient drama, its two leading genres of tragedy and Comedy. The fate of Socrates interpreted as requiring reflection in the plane of intersection of the tragic and the comic, the interrelated experiences of tragic and comic catharsis. Fear and compassion of catharsis tragic, laughter and pleasure of catharsis comedy cover the fullness of the emotional spectrum, characterizing the relationship between the individual and the human community in their movement from the past through present to future. Comic unity of people takes place in space history, the background of the established, time-tested values. Tragic overcoming fragmentation one and many – to-background values are desirable or antivalues unwanted catastrophic future, the road to which pave risky individualistic actions of the tragic hero, artistically meaningful in the tragedy, under control of the human community. The discrepancy between the tragic fate of Socrates and his image in the Comedy of Aristophanes “Clouds” shows the essence of the relationship of individual and shares in the process of artistic creation and reception. Socratic dialogue, as well as ancient tragedy and Comedy are characterized from the point of view of their role in the formation of individual literary and artistic creativity. Ahead of the author of the literary works of his contemporaries associated with the process of artistic creativity, facing in the future. This is ahead of the curve generates the contradiction between the past and the future in the space of literary works, which may be resolved by the reception and interpretation.

Romani individuality? Ethnographic examples of distinctive social action within a local Czech Romani population

This paper explores how members of a Romani population in a small Czech town perform individualistic actions that distinguish them from other persons in their families and social circles. After an overview of how these informants achieve cultural compromises in their daily lives that serve to reinforce their agency as mothers in the private sphere, I will present different narrative portions from their life histories that highlight possible examples of individuality — social actions that lead to personal rather than categorical distinctiveness. This paper considers if the experience of individuality is compatible with one’s identification as a Rom and what kind of local contextual factors and macro-level discourses inhibit or favor individualistic action and expression. These questions are examined in conjunction with writings and debates that pertain to Czech(oslovak) Romani sociality and culture. This essay also draws on discussions of individuality from the fields of anthropology, sociology, social psychology and the political sciences.

Multi Agent Collaborative Search based on Tchebycheff decomposition

This paper presents a novel formulation of Multi Agent Collaborative Search, for multi-objective optimization, based on Tchebycheff decomposition. A population of agents combines heuristics that aim at exploring the search space both globally (social moves) and in a neighborhood of each agent (individualistic moves). In this novel formulation the selection process is based on a combination of Tchebycheff scalarization and Pareto dominance. Furthermore, while in the previous implementation, social actions were applied to the whole population of agents and individualistic actions only to an elite subpopulation, in this novel formulation this mechanism is inverted. The novel agent-based algorithm is tested at first on a standard benchmark of difficult problems and then on two specific problems in space trajectory design. Its performance is compared against a number of state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization algorithms. The results demonstrate that this novel agent-based search has better performance with respect to its predecessor in a number of cases and converges better than the other state-of-the-art algorithms with a better spreading of the solutions.

Environmental Kuznets curve: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

A well-known hypothesis providing support for a policy that emphasizes economic growth at the expense of environmental protection is the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. Although this relation has been mainly explored at the macro-economic level, there are few researches examining micro-economic level. This study looks for empirical evidence between air pollution and income using social data from the British Household Panel Survey during the period 1991–2009. The first approach refers to a fixed effects model, the second to dynamic panel data and Arellano–Bond GMM, while the third approach concerns a binary Logit model with fixed effects. The current study's fixed effects results show that there is no evidence of EKC hypothesis for the air pollutants examined. On the contrary, there is a strong evidence of EKC hypothesis for the air pollutants examined based on Arellano–Bond GMM and logit model's results with fixed effects and all the types of household income indicating that EKC hypothesis holds. Furthermore, regarding personal income, using the Arellano–Bond GMM methodology, the EKC hypothesis does not hold. This indicates that air pollution and income might be based on communitarian arrangements instead of on individualistic actions.

Teamwork, pleasure and bargaining in animal social behaviour

Intimate behaviour between animals is hypothesized to enable teamwork. The pleasure experienced in grooming, preening, dancing, mating and singing in synchrony is hypothesized to motivate participants to coordinate actions directed towards a shared goal that enhances each individual's fitness. This cooperative behaviour evolves as a mutual direct benefit, not as altruism. Teamwork leads to an equilibrium set of returns to the participants that may be modelled as a Nash bargaining solution instead of as the more familiar Nash equilibrium. The dynamics leading to that equilibrium may be modelled based on joint action instead of the more familiar individualistic action. Confusions by Binmore (J. Evol. Biol. 2010; 23: 1351) about this hypothesis are corrected.

O Processo de (Des)Construção da Multiprofissionalidade na Atenção Básica: Limites e Desafios a Efetivação do Trabalho em Equipe na Estratégia Saúde da Família em João Pessoa-PB

Multiprofessionalism has been reported in the literature on health care models as a tool of paramount importance to the construction of more integrative and interdisciplinary practices compatible with the expanded concept of health, and new forms of collective work in health with emphasis to the multiprofessional work team. The family health team has been considered a privileged locus for performance of that practice. This study aimed to analyze the perceptions of primary health care professionals on the process of building multiprofessionalism in the Family Health Teams of the III Sanitary district of the city of Joao Pessoa. The research had exploratory nature, through a qualitative and quantitative approach. Were applied 15 semi-structured questionnaires to health team’s professionals with complete degree (Nurse, Doctor, and Dentist) and to matrix supporters, contemplating 04 FHT of that district. The collected information was organized, categorized and examined in order to recombine the evidence, given the initial propositions of the study. Results: With regard to the profile observed, there was female predominance with 60% representation. Among the occupational categories, it was found that most professionals were dentists with 33% representation, followed by nurses (27%), physicians (20%), pharmacists (13%) and only 7% were physiotherapists. As regards employment contract, it was verified that 80% of professionals interviewed were service providers. About 66% of them consider the HCA as the professional category that most facilitates team work. From the analysis, it is concluded that, despite the initiative to restructure health care model and the FHT is guided by the principle of multiprofessional work, there is a movement for deconstruction of multiprofessional work, evidenced by fragmented, disjointed, and individualistic actions. DESCRIPTORS: Family health. Comprehensive Health Care. Public health.

Language speaks more than it says: some reflections on the work of Basil Bernstein

Language speaks more than it says: some reflections on the work of Basil Bernstein

Genealogy of the United States Therapeutic Recreation Certification Framework

Building upon Foucault’s (1977, 1998) research methodology of genealogy, the purpose of this paper is to highlight how educational disciplinary techniques utilized by the United States National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification (NCTRC) unknowingly normalizes people toward the dominant discourse of white Euro‐North American individualistic notions. In particular, the NCTRC uses three types of individualistic technologies of educational discipline: the art of distribution, the examination and the confessional, to create individualistic actions as ‘common sense’ practice in therapeutic recreation. As the NCTRC attempts to gain a greater international and cross‐cultural audience (e.g. Australia, Canada, China, United Kingdom), it may unintentionally assimilate people from different cultures and national backgrounds into a standardized framework of white Euro‐North American individualism, which can result in damaging psychological consequences for clients from diverse cultures. The paper concludes by outlining an interdisciplinary therapeutic recreation certification model that is attentive to cross‐cultural issues, entitled the Mosaic Certification Framework.

Initiating Change in Highland Ethiopia: Causes and Consequences of Cultural Transformation

Initiating Change in Highland Ethiopia: Causes and Consequences of Cultural Transformation. By Dena Freeman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 180; 3 maps, 6 figures, 10 b/w photographs. $55.00. In this rich historical/ethnographic account of life in the Gamo Highlands of Southern Ethiopia-an area on which little anthropological work has been done-Dena Freeman poses the following ethnographic puzzle: In a society that practices both sacrificial and initiatory rituals, the former have remained relatively stable over the last hundred years, while the latter have undergone radical transformation (p. 1). The author seeks to explain why the two systems have evolved in such different ways. In so doing, she considers how the effect of political and economic integration of people in the newer parts of the Ethiopian state has sparked systemic and individualistic actions that have worked together to generate variation and change in politico-ritual forms. Gamo make animal and other food sacrifices to spirits who are believed to protect and guarantee the of the earth and its inhabitants. Failure to feed spirits can result in crop failure, sickness and conflicts (p. 66). Sacrifices are made by senior members of the community on behalf of their juniors. Thus, senior members are seen to be caretakers of the entire community, for it is only through their actions that the wellbeing of the community is ensured. Seniors accede to their roles through primogeniture as they assume the roles of household, segment, lineage, or clan head. In the initiatory system, individuals become halak'as for a given period of time, and in that role are said to herd the entire community (p. 84). Unlike the sacrificial system, men originally obtained their position as halak'as by sponsoring huge feasts for the community. Whereas in the nineteenth century (before the area was incorporated into the Ethiopian state), halak'as had more political power and actually passed laws, dealt with litigation, and made decisions about whether or not to go to war (p. 86), in more recent times their functions have shifted so that they are less involved in direct political leadership. However, their role in protecting the welfare of the community is maintained by observing prohibitions on their personal behavior; these prohibitions vary one community to another, but are generally associated with distancing the individual (and thus the community) from death and weakness and to associate him with success and fertility (p. 85). During the Derg regime (1974-1991), initiation of halak'as was prohibited as a potential threat to government control. However, Freeman finds that while one of her study sites, Doko Gembela, obeyed the edict and virtually stopped initiating halak'as, another site, Doko Masho continued its initiation practices. Freeman explains the different fate of initiation in the two communities by tracing the political and economic developments over the last two hundred years that have resulted in the splitting of what was a single Doko community into two separate communities with different dynamics. As they integrated with the Ethiopian state and with market forces, more men became traders and weavers in both communities, although at different rates. …

Responding to Membership of a Low-Status Group: The Effects of Stability, Permeability and Individual Ability

This study tested predictions based on social identity theory and the five-stage model concerning membership of a disadvantaged group. Participants (187 male teenagers) believed that they belonged to a low-status group and were offered a choice between five behavioral alternatives. These alternatives symbolized acceptance and combinations of individual/collective and normative/nonnormative action. The stability of the intergroup stratification (stable/unstable), the openness of the high-status group (open/minimally open/closed), and the individual ability of the subordinate group members (high/low) were manipulated. The results showed that the manipulated factors were indeed important determinants of participants' behavioral preferences. However, no support was found for the individualistic action tendency assumed by both theories. On the other hand, the data yield further evidence for the `tokenism' effect.

Disadvantaged Group Response to Perceived Inequality: From Passive Acceptance to Collective Action

Abstract Two experiments using the same paradigm were conducted to examine when members of a disadvantaged group will accept their situation, take individual action, or engage in collective action. In both experiments, Canadian undergraduate subjects received feedback that they had been unsuccessful in their attempt to gain entrance into a high status group. Experiment 1 involved a justice manipulation in which the main hypothesis was that collective action would be associated with procedural injustice, whereas distributive injustice would lead to individualistic action. The main hypothesis of Experiment 2 was that collective action would be instigated by those who are extremely close to gaining entry to the high status group. Although only partial support was obtained for the hypotheses, it was possible to specify conditions that discriminate between individual and collective action.

Jack London: Selected Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories by Dick Weiderman

50 Western American Literature Jack London: Selected Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. Annotated byl Dick Weiderman. Illustrated by Philip Craig Russell. (Lakemont, Georgia:.~ Fictioneer Books, 1978. 121 pages, $8.50.) . Jack London wrote so many varied essays, stories, and novels that{ nearly any anthologist will find more than enough to fill his collection frorn : the works of London. One could expect a gathering of London's socialist' writings, his Klondike works, or his South Seas fiction. But this book, as the ..... editor notes, is the first anthology of London's science fiction and fantasy', writings. This volume contains five of the fifteen or so stories London wrote in this vein. The compiler, Richard Weiderman, has chosen the stories to represent a cross section of London's science fiction - typical of themes~ he employed and illustrative of the varying quality of his works. The first story, "The Strength of the Strong," provides London's answer.. to Rudyard Kipling's assertion that the act of individuals joining together to avert a war might cause the men to lose their separate identities. In this story, Old Long Bear, the narrator, tells his three grandsons how his con. temporaries learned from the failures of their individualistic actions and realized that brotherhood is necessary in establishing a commonwealth.; "A Relic of the Pliocene" is a mediocre yarn about a man who claims to have seen a giant mammoth in the Northland. While an interesting example of London's use of the framework technique of a story within a story, the· piece implies little and deserves scant attention. Even less skillfully done is "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone," a story about the restoration of earlier years to an elderly man and woman. This story, one of London's earliest tales, is wordy, lumbering, and ends abruptly. The next selection, "When the World Was Young," illustrates.' London's interest in atavism. Based on one of the plots London purchased from Sinclair Lewis, this story deals with a man who lives a normal life; until after dark when wild urges cause him to roam the countryside chasing; coyotes. After sleeping off the weariness of his nocturnal wanderings each.\ morning, he returns to his desk. Then one evening he is forced to fightll;'; huge grizzly, and the near-fatal struggle shakes the call of the wild from him;.;l and he becomes a thoroughly middle-class m a n . . If the first four stories are not among London's best, the last one is.;;. In "The Red One," a "civilized" explorer finds himself among head-hunting') cannibals. Sickened and maimed by his bouts with jungle parasites and~ natives, the white man grows weaker and realizes before long his head';~ will "season" among the collection of his captives. More and more he is:; puzzled by the eerie sound that first drew him to this jungle spot. Finally,. one of the natives takes him to the source of the sound: a huge red spher~ that fell from outer space into the jungle and that has become a talisman to'; the nearby inhabitants. The explorer ponders the meaning of the Red One,:. As he nears death, he is taken again to the mysterious totem, and just as IW,g Reviews 51 bares his neck to his decapitator he seems, in a groggy moment of epiphany, to perceive Truth. The nature of that truth is not clear, but the revelation seems to unite the rational musings of the explorer and the primitive insights of the headhunters. "The Red One" deserves reprinting because it is one of London's finest tales of fantasy. The dust jacket of this collection speaks of this book as a "brilliant first-edition anthology"; it is hardly that. If one were compiling a book of London's best fifty stories, only "The Red One" of these five should be included., Nor are the illustrations of as high quality as the publisher indicates . The introduction by Weiderman is serviceable, but one wishes it were longer and more probing. Even for hard-bitten London buffs, this book will likely be a bit disappointing. In nearly every respect - layout, illustrations, and editing - more could have been done to raise the quality of...