Social Boundaries Research Articles

Social Boundary Work in International Organizations: Taxonomy and Resistance

Abstract This article – based on the case studies of the WHO and the FAO – shows that the expansion of cooperation between international organizations (IOs) and non-state actors (NSAs) leads to a significant rearrangement of IOs organizational boundaries. IOs develop bureaucratic procedures (e. g. due diligence, risk management) that lead IO employees to be in charge of “taxonomy work”, i. e. the classification and hierarchization of NSAs. This work re draws the boundaries of IOs and generates resistance and contestation, both inside and out side IOs.

Pembentukan Akhlak Siswa melalui Perspektif Keagamaan, Adat atau Pembiasaan Siswa di MTsN 4 Lima Puluh Kota

The formation of student morals describes how to direct and improve the behavior, character and attitudes of students from bad to good and become a habit for students in everyday life. At present there is a lot of moral decline among teenagers, especially students or students, such as the low manners of students talking to teachers, lack of mutual respect among friends (bullying), low awareness of carrying out congregational prayers at the prayer room, lack of social boundaries between female and male students. Therefore it is necessary to form or redirect the morals of students. The method that the author uses in discussing this research is a qualitative research method with a descriptive approach, the research location is at MTsN 4 Fifty Kota. In this study the researchers found that there was a decline in morals in students, to overcome the decline in student morals, it is necessary to redirect the attitudes and behavior of these students, one of which is through instilling religious values how to get along in Islam, explaining how customs in the association of adolescents in society and habituation in carrying out commendable morals in everyday life.

The wonder of darshan: Going beyond the local and the national

Darshan is a classical theme in studies on Hinduism. Recent studies have called for a retheorization, pointing to diverse forms of darshan or similar practices in other religions. However, such critiques do not adequately explore darshan in transnational guru-led movements where both gurus and devotees cross religious, social and cultural boundaries to inhabit and create new devotional lineages in unfamiliar lands. Based on fieldwork among a transnational spiritual community in India, this article shows how darshan in the community is shaped by the intersections of interpretations of neo-Vedantic and western esoteric thought. Thus, it is argued that darshan needs to be understood as historically and discursively shaped. The article also considers the wonder-ful nature of the experiences and politics of darshan. The inner transformation of devotees, it is argued, is paralleled by the exterior transformation of the abstract imaginary of ‘spiritual India’ into the concrete place of achieving spiritual communion with the guru and realizing oneself. The wonder of darshan in this context lies in the traversing of the multiple axes of interiority and exteriority.

Optimizing safe and just operating spaces at sub-watershed scales to guide local environmental management

The safe and just operating space (SJOS) concept provides a promising framework tool to help guide social-ecosystem management and sustainable global development goals (SDGs). Due to spatial differences in geographic background and economic development, proportioning these elements according to global, regional and local scales is a necessity for sustainability governance. Achieving SDG targets requires guidance according to SJOS environmental and social boundaries. Here, integrating planetary boundaries (PBs) with the SJOS framework is explored and focused towards the sub-watershed scale in the Chaohu watershed, China. Assessment of environmental and socio-economic dimension changes in this watershed incorporates data taken from long-term monitoring, surveys and anthropogenic impact records in lake sediment sequences. These are used to explore spatial and temporal differences in key environmental change processes and social well-being measures in the watershed. The interrelationships with identified prioritized PB limitation indicators within the sub-watersheds were evaluated numerically. Results indicate four PB biogeophysical dimensions, water quality, chemical pollution, air pollution and ozone depletion all operate in the Chaohu watershed and exceed safe boundary limits. However, large differences exist between the four main sub-watersheds. Environmental pressures in the two western sub-watersheds are considerably greater than those in eastern regions. Most social indicators selected for the whole watershed conform well to PB limits considered necessary for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially food (SDG 2), health (SDG 3), sanitation services (SDG 6c) and consumption (SDG 12). Based on quantifiable environmental change trends in each sub-watershed and social development in the last decades, we identify, water quality, chemical pollution, and soil stability PB dimensions as exceeding safe operation limits. These dimensions are prioritized for environmental management and harmonization with SDG targets. Water utilization intensity (SDG 6a) and forest cover (SDG 15) are social development priorities across the whole Chaohu watershed. Redundancy analysis identified GDP per capita as well as changes in forest and vegetation cover as key drivers of environmental degradation throughout the watershed. While not all 17 SDGs are considered, initial results of this study provide a rational base for informing systems management and policy, guiding the attainment of SDG targets, and communicating the importance of revealing environmental change trends. Requirements for sustainable development of human society locally and regionally are, within limits of the data available, identified by matching SJOS boundaries with SDG targets. Strengthening time-track data for the key drivers of change and combining with emerging socio-economic factors is needed to better define specific SDG progress in terms of achieving calibrated environmental boundaries.

Ambiguous but Crucial Boundaries - Professionals Differentiating Sibling Abuse from Sibling Quarrels

ABSTRACT The subject of sibling violence is a blind spot in both social research and popular culture in Sweden, where we have conducted our empirical study. There is a normalizing discourse around sibling quarreling, with the act generally being seen as a natural part of children’s development. On the other hand, there is a problematizing discourse in an international context; violence perpetrated by and against a sibling has been highlighted as one of the most common forms of violence perpetrated against children. However, the difference between sibling quarrel (or rivalry) and sibling violence (or abuse) often does not come out clearly in existing studies. To put sibling violence on the map of existing societal problems, we need to both critically review definitions and examine how the phenomenon of sibling violence differs from related phenomena, such as sibling quarrels, in the experience of professionals who (potentially) meet victims in their work. The emphasis in the article is on social boundary work, analyzing interviews with social workers and psychotherapists regarding this phenomenon. The analysis shows that it is possible to define sibling violence, though complex, when it comes to how the boundaries are shaped and interpreted in concrete social and psychological work, as well as different situations and contexts.

Global Cultural Conflict and Digital Identity: Transforming Museums

This paper looks at key elements of global culture that are driving a new paradigm shift in museums causing them to question their raison d’être, their design and physical space, recognizing the need to accommodate visitor interaction and participation, and to reprioritize institutional outcomes and goals reexamining their priorities. As heritage sharing in online spaces reaches across national, political, and social boundaries on platforms and networks, this has been driven by museum engagement with Internet life during the pandemic. Museum relationships and interactions with communities both local and global continue to challenge core values and precepts, leading to radical changes in how museums define their roles and responsibilities. In this new cultural landscape, museums are responding to human digital identity in a tidal wave of human interactions on the Internet, from social media to online sharing of images and videos. This is revealing shared perspectives on cultural conflict as being tied to freedom of expression of one’s heritage embedded in digital identity.

Mapping Communities of Mothering: Where Race, Class, Gender, and Space Intersect

ABSTRACT This manuscript explores the unique construction of community that young, low-income, women create, based on the embodied internal and external spaces they occupy as lone mothers. Issues related to diverse women’s representation, voice, and power, within these socially constructed communities are examined. Attention is paid to how young low-income mothers experience and actively create their own supportive community within both geographic and social boundaries, in active resistance to dominant and oppressive assumptions. To explore these concepts in-depth, results are presented from an ethnographic study that examined the community participation of eleven young, low-income, racially diverse single mothers living in a small U.S. Midwestern city. Findings focus on the multiple ways that women’s lives embodied the idea of community through the prism of motherhood, race, class, and geographic/physical space. The use of qualitative participatory mapping techniques is also emphasized to examine these physically and socially constructed boundaries. Implications are discussed for ways that social workers can best advocate for social justice by using an intersectional lens to locate and partner with the organic communities of mothering that these women created.

How justice shapes transition governance – a discourse analysis of Swedish policy debates

In both policy-making and academia, the realisation is growing that transitions striving for sustainability have to be just to be socially accepted. This insight has given rise to institutionalised approaches to a “just transition” – but also beyond these, justice is a key challenge in the governance of sustainability transitions. In this paper, we examine how justice arguments are being used in national-level discourses of transition governance in Sweden. Analysing 121 policy-related documents from 2019 to 2021, we found that justice was discursively treated in a way that essentially stifled change. Political actors attempted to trump each other’s justice claims rather than to genuinely engage with them. Justice concerns that would not serve re-election, such as solidarity across social boundaries, were almost absent from the material. Based on these findings, we critically explore how justice arguments contribute to politicizing transition governance in particular ways, rendering some policy options impossible.

Systems and Control Engineering at IIT Bombay [Institutes in Control

The city of Mumbai charms every visitor. In particular, its warmth and ethos have remained unchanged over the years. The crowds in the suburban trains and the average person on the street continue to exude this warmth, cutting across social boundaries. Tucked away in the northeast corner of this sprawling metropolis is a still sylvan paradise, where birds chirp, cows moo, monkeys chatter, and the leopard pays periodic visits. And this sylvan paradise hosts an institute of global repute: the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. In this institute is a group, unique in many ways, with faculty members from across the spectrum of science and engineeringÑelectrical, chemical, mechanical, and aerospace engineering as well as applied mathematicsÑwho have established a much-envied academic entity to be reckoned with: Systems and Control. In this issue of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Control Systems</i> , we speak with Debasish Chatterjee (Convener, Systems and Control, IIT Bombay) and a few others in their group.

Virtue and Progressive Ideology: Destabilizing Social Class in Richardson’s Pamela and Fielding’s Joseph Andrews

This essay investigates Richardson and Fielding’s projection of social mobility and the intrinsic conditionality of virtue and honor that is essential for social transformation. Maintaining a virtuous status among morally corrupt people destabilizes the established stereotypical view of social hierarchy and incites some aristocratic people’s passion for their servants, violating the consolidation of social class boundaries. Pursuant to the principles of the progressive ideology, some members of the upper class authoritatively thwart endeavors for upward mobility, except for social progression coupled with moral standing and good reputation that is propitiously received with communal acceptance and approbation. Therefore, the novels entail that values of good ethics, chastity, and piety become fundamental requirements for maintaining and enhancing social standing regardless of any prospective deterioration in the material situation. Both novels resist the ideology that honor as virtue is an inherited value that is vested in a certain class by ancestry and heredity. Contrary to this supposition, both contexts associate moral corruption with social degradation and document it historically to reform sinful practices and immodesty. Finally, the authors aspire for ideal societies where the holders of virtue and honor should be rewarded for resisting moral corruption, the allure of materialism, and the greed of capitalism.

Building Walls, Social Groups and Empires: A Study of Political Power and Compliance in the Neo-Assyrian Period

This contribution aims to use social history and social theory to investigate political power and compliance with authority in ancient Western Asia, through the case study of Neo-Assyrian imperial building projects. Our first aim is to discuss the realities of construction work in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, focusing on the building process both through literary sources and archaeological data. Our second goal is to understand the role played by these building sites in the strengthening of local and supra-local political orders, in the consolidation of social group boundaries, and in the construction of political subjectivities of the ancient social actors involved. Our reflection sheds light on the new interpretative possibilities – and challenges – that integrating social theories, archaeological work, and language technology may create.

Digital Ethnic Enclaves: Mate Preferences and Platform Choices Among Chinese Immigrant Online Daters in Vancouver

In light of the growing racialized immigrant population in Canada and advances in dating technologies, this study examines Chinese immigrants' partner preferences and mate selection processes through the lens of online dating. We draw on in-depth interviews with 31 Chinese immigrants who have used online dating services in Metro Vancouver to search for different-sex partners. Chinese immigrant online daters show strong preferences for dating Chinese. They emphasize permanent residency status and similarity in age at arrival when evaluating potential partners. Given their preferences, Chinese immigrants strategically choose the dating platforms they primarily use. Men exhibit higher selectivity in their preferences and choices of platforms. Notably, platforms catering to Chinese users create "digital ethnic enclaves" where Chinese immigrant daters congregate. The findings illuminate the intersection of race, gender, immigrant status, and age at arrival in shaping divergent experiences of mate selection and immigrant assimilation in the digital era.

Policing Christianity in Cameroon, Nigeria, and Angola: Spiritual Incorporation as Therapy and Threat in Africa

Abstract This article investigates the work of Christian churches in Cameroon, Nigeria, and Angola among refugee, migrant, and displaced persons communities and their support of two principal undertakings that allow these groups to reconceptualize belonging and reconstitute communal identities: (1) transnational family building and (2) therapeutic forms of emotional expression and communion. This article also demonstrates how the governments of Cameroon, Nigeria, and Angola perceive such noncitizen groups’ innovative communal practices as inherently destabilizing to fragile national identities, and how state security forces work to dismantle ties of affinity and restrain or apprehend religious authorities in order to preserve social and political boundaries among increasingly diverse and composite societies.

Social boundaries: The lexicographic evolution of Spanish household spirits in discourse

This paper constructs a diachronic analysis of the lexicography of the term denoting the Spanish household spirit, the duende, focusing on the period between approx. 1490 and 1791. I aim to analyse the linguistic path of the household deity in discourse, in order to see how its depiction has changed. The evolution of the being reflects upon the social perception of the spirit, but also upon societal changes. Cultural associations readily available to the authors of the dictionaries under analysis reveal themselves in the alternation between “low-brow”, folkloric beliefs, and the “high-brow”, learned representations of these beliefs. The many facets of the lexicographic entry help create the discourse surrounding the duende, which is essential for the making of a folkloric being. Particularly, the duende is a “small god,” as coined by Michael Ostling, denoting pagan deities that survived the transition towards Christianity through novel interpretations, mostly demonic or classical.

Crime in Philadelphia: Bayesian Clustering with Particle Optimization

Accurate estimation of the change in crime over time is a critical first step toward better understanding of public safety in large urban environments. Bayesian hierarchical modeling is a natural way to study spatial variation in urban crime dynamics at the neighborhood level, since it facilitates principled “sharing of information” between spatially adjacent neighborhoods. Typically, however, cities contain many physical and social boundaries that may manifest as spatial discontinuities in crime patterns. In this situation, standard prior choices often yield overly smooth parameter estimates, which can ultimately produce mis-calibrated forecasts. To prevent potential over-smoothing, we introduce a prior that partitions the set of neighborhoods into several clusters and encourages spatial smoothness within each cluster. In terms of model implementation, conventional stochastic search techniques are computationally prohibitive, as they must traverse a combinatorially vast space of partitions. We introduce an ensemble optimization procedure that simultaneously identifies several high probability partitions by solving one optimization problem using a new local search strategy. We then use the identified partitions to estimate crime trends in Philadelphia between 2006 and 2017. On simulated and real data, our proposed method demonstrates good estimation and partition selection performance. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Teaching as a pedagogical responsibility: an introduction

ABSTRACT In this special issue, the research interest is focused on classroom activities. To adequately understand and examine the classroom situation, the wholeness and complexity of the teaching situation should be maintained and paid attention as much as possible throughout the research process. In dialogues and comparisons between the German concept of Didaktik and the American concepts of curriculum theory and pedagogy, the differences between a European, continental, and Anglo-Saxon conceptualization of education often have been emphasized. Inspired by both the German tradition of Bildung and the American philosophy of pragmatism, we here understand classroom activity as communication on selected parts of collective knowledge and social culture, shaping the conditions for both the continuity and renewal of society. Furthermore, the concept of didactics is viewed as the conceptualization of empirically based pedagogical problems in classrooms. Even if both the traditions of Bildung and pragmatism embrace a reflective approach, Dewey’s pragmatism places more emphasis on freedom and openness in terms of communication across social boundaries and on a mutual dependency between education and democracy. In terms of democracy, a Deweyan view of pragmatism could thus contribute to the German didactic tradition and the meanings of the concepts of didactics and pedagogical responsibility.

Regionalism, social boundaries and cultural interaction in the Levantine Early Bronze Age

Regionalism, social boundaries and cultural interaction in the Levantine Early Bronze Age

Thirteenth and fourteenth century ceramic decoration and social groups in the central great Plains

This paper considers possible social groups and interactions on the thirteenth through fifteenth century central Plains by examining patterns of ceramic rim face and upper body decoration. My analysis tabulates design motifs by site and/or locality, identifying a basic dichotomy between the northern / western area of the central Plains and the southern / eastern area, along with a third distinct pattern in the set of anomalously large sites on Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska. In the north and west, potters often used a diverse set of motifs on the faces of paneled rims and sometimes put Oneota designs on vessel upper bodies. In the south and east, they rarely decorated the face of any form of rim and sometimes put a pattern of alternating triangles filled with opposed diagonal lines on vessel upper bodies. This dichotomy maps onto a distinction between ossuary and cemetery burials and likely defines a social boundary between groups with long-standing interaction with different regions to the east of the Plains. The Ponca Creek data show a mixture of central Plains and Oneota styles along with hints of other regional patterns that may suggest the existence of a multi-ethnic community.

The “Long History” of Nidūy – from Tannaitic Literature to Late Antiquity

ABSTRACT The nidūy is the primary method of excommunication used by the early rabbis in the first two centuries CE. This article suggests some new readings in the earliest texts discussing this practice and their reception in Talmudic writing from Late Antiquity. By understanding excommunication as an attempt to set social boundaries and noticing the differences between the early texts, one can try to see the texts about nidūy as evidence of the social structures of the texts’ creators, or at least their views about the proper social order. I shall argue that earlier rabbinic literature reflects unorganised and non-institutional rabbinic circles that were, like other groups in the broader Jewish society, in process of formation. In contrast, the Talmudic, later texts reflect an effort to form a more organised one with clearer hierarchies and social roles.

Undoing Matricide as Maternal Radical Care

AbstractThe concept of matricide theorizes the marginal position of the mother within a phallocentric and patriarchal society from a psychoanalytic perspective. This article seeks to contribute to the understanding of transformative nonmatricidal processes by analyzing the relations between the psychic and political aspects of these processes. We argue that nonmatricidal spaces can be created through the mobilization of a maternal affect as a care practice that transgresses social and normative boundaries. By reading the biblical story of Moses's birth and childhood, we depict the emergence of a nonmatricidal space and the ways in which this space defies and disturbs social boundaries forced by a heteronormative, phallocentric, and patriarchal law. We draw on Luce Irigaray's and Kelly Oliver's concept of a “loving look” to theorize how maternal affect is mobilized as an ethical and a political commitment, which affirms alternative positions of subjectivity and agency. We conclude by arguing that an integrated account of nonmatricidal relational spaces and maternal radical care practices might offer a wider understanding of the political effects of maternal politics as radical care practices.