Social Darwinism Research Articles

Attitude of Romanian Medical Students and Doctors toward Business Ethics: Analyzing the Influence of Sex, Age, and Ethics Education.

This study investigated the attitude of Romanian medical students and doctors toward business ethics by measuring the preference for a particular ethical philosophy, namely, the preference for Machiavellianism, moral objectivism, social Darwinism, ethical relativism, and legalism. At the same time, this study aimed to explore the influence of sex, age, and ethics education on the attitude toward business ethics. The data collection was performed using a voluntary self-administered online survey including the Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) instrument. Our findings show that the values based on which Romanian medical students and doctors make business decisions belong predominantly to the moral objectivism philosophy, which is grounded on rational actions based on a set of objective moral standards.

Household-Related Factors Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya

Education is a basic need to every citizen. However, dropout has been at the top barring all countries the world over in ensuring a hundred percent literacy rates. The Kenyan government has since independence come up with various policies in a bid to increase access and retention rate: Free primary Education (2003), Free Day Secondary Education (2008) and a 100% transition rate policy (2018) from primary school to secondary. This study sought to investigate Household – related factors leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya for the period between the year 2020 and 2023. This study tried to determine the reasons as to why students drop out of school and suggested recommendations on what can be done about it. The study was based on The Classical Theory of Equal Opportunities and Social Darwinism that is predicated on a philosophy that everyone has fair and equal access to a good quality education regardless of social background, race, gender, or religion, and where people achieve success in education according to their efforts and ability, free from any form of discrimination. Descriptive Research Design was used. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data from the sampled respondents in sampled Mixed Day Secondary schools. Piloting was carried out. Percentages and Frequencies were used to analyze the data with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was found out that the following household-related factors lead to student’s dropout; female genital mutilation, early marriages, child labour and cultural beliefs. The study suggests five recommendations to curb school dropouts. The findings are hoped to add new knowledge and benefit the teachers, school principals and other school stakeholders to put necessary measures in place to curb the dropout problem.

Antiutopianism, Social Darwinism, and Self-Preservation: Some Reflections

ABSTRACT This essay responds to Darko Suvin by focusing on his observations on selfhood and personality. Antiutopias are defined as narrative texts framed by fear and anxiety regarding the self-preservation of individuality and by subscription to the principle of relentless struggle for survival amid resource scarcity. The ambiguities that insinuate themselves within this framework include: first, the conflation of “self-preservation” with domination over others; second, the oscillation of self-preservation between a “biopolitical” pole and a “cultural” one. Turning to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, the article explicates why, in their view, “self-preservation” destroys “the very thing that is to be preserved.” The conclusion involves examining a few literary texts both as instances of the “pleasures of misery” imposed by the antiutopian obsession with “self-preservation,” and—contrastively—as ways of exploring the high cost and risk involved in a utopian transformation of selfhood beyond the dictates of “self-preservation.”

On Antiutopianism in Pragmatics and Narrative

ABSTRACT This article refurbishes the view of antiutopianism as the ruling orthodoxy of late-capitalist common sense (pragmatics) and writings plus media (narrative). After a half-century descent into a contemporary neofeudalism (Fascism 2.0), the operation of totalized antiutopianism on utopian narrative genres is powerfully evident in the TV series Game of Thrones, a rigidly Social Darwinist fantasy world, reveling in mass slaughters and presupposing neofeudalism: a black fable for lesioned personalities.

‘Life built herself a myriad forms’: epics of gestation and co-operation in late nineteenth-century women’s poetry

ABSTRACT This article argues for a specifically female appropriation and reshaping of the epic tradition in the wake of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Based on an analysis of Mathilde Blind’s The Ascent of Man and Louisa Sarah Bevington’s ‘Unto this Present’, it will show how this ‘female evolutionary epic’ responds to and counteracts Social Darwinist narratives of competition and struggle by emphasizing forces of (maternal) gestation, co-operation and sympathy in the development of life on earth. In doing so, these poems anticipate Peter Kropotkin’s notion of ‘mutual aid’ as the primary factor in evolution.

Culture and Leadership in the Collective and Sustainable Growth of an Organization

Fine art, classical music, and gourmet cuisine made "culture" aristocratic. City life became "culture" "civilization" (from lat. oivitas, city). Folktales helped Romantics see themselves as a "culture." "Low culture," the culture of social misfits, and "high culture" usually contrast. European culture developed in reaction to social inequalities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Europeans like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes associated "culture" with "anarchy" and "nature." Native Americans, governed by Europeans since the 16th century, symbolised this contrast. Culture-advanced people and groups are hypothesised. Lewis's distinction may have affected Henry Morgan's cultural evolution theory and Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism. The split between high and low cultures has been attributed to the struggle between European colonial powers and European elites and non-elites. Leadership is visible and teachable, research shows. It's simple. Experience, constructive criticism, and chances may benefit potential leaders. Leaders grow via self-reflection, academics, experience, formal education, and training. You must recognise, grasp, and act on certain traits, concepts, and behaviours to encourage greater collaboration. Easy-to-learn skills are more useful. Leaders always improve. This paper will summarize the organizational culture and leader qualities and form a link in between.

Thinning the Herd: COVID-19 and the Rhetoric of Trumpian Catastrophe

ABSTRACT As COVID-19 infections spread in early 2020, the term herd immunity drew the Trump administration’s attention as a remedy for redressing the pandemic. However, scientific experts warned the Trump administration against adopting herd immunity as a pandemic response. The Trump administration was unmoved. I argue that understanding the Trump administration’s incongruous pandemic response is impossible without theorizing the deeper catastrophic formations uniting herd immunity and the political Right. Drawing evidence from the Trump administration and its allies, I analyze herd immunity as a reflection of a catastrophic form of social Darwinism emerging from the Trump administration’s coronavirus messaging. By exploring the Trump administration’s general enthusiasm for catastrophe, I offer a fresh scholarly contribution at the intersection of rhetorical studies, public address, and health, political, and scientific communication, ultimately illuminating larger theoretical and political lessons for the discipline and beyond.

Student Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya

Kenya’s education sector has faced many bottlenecks one being school dropouts. In 2018, the Kenyan government came up with 100% transition rate from primary school to secondary school to increase access to secondary school education which was hoped to result in increased completion rates. This study aimed at investigating Student’s Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya for the period between the year 2019 and 2022. This study investigated individual student’s reasons as to why students drop out of school and suggested recommendations on what can be done about it. This study was guided by the objective: to investigate the student’s-related factors leading to school dropout. The researcher based the study on The Classical Theory of Equal Opportunities and Social Darwinism which reiterates that each person is born with some ability that cannot be altered but can be nurtured and is unique to that particular individual. To collect data from Principals, teachers and students of the sampled Mixed Day Secondary schools, the researcher employed Descriptive Survey. Before embarking on actual research, Piloting was carried out. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data while Percentages and Frequencies were used to analyze the data. Analysis was done by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study revealed that the following student’s characteristics lead to students’ dropout; financial problems, peer influence, pregnancy, drug abuse, operating motorcycle business, over age, community/ family, family child labour, negative attitude to schooling, migration and health issues. The study suggests six recommendations to curb school dropouts. The researcher hopes that the findings will benefit the teachers, school principals and other school managers and the Ministry of Education to put necessary measures in place to deal with the dropout problem. The findings will add .......

Amir Teicher. Social Mendelism: Genetics and the Politics of Race in Germany, 1900–1948.

In Social Mendelism: Genetics and the Politics of Race in Germany, 1900-1948, Amir Teicher explores how Gregor Mendel influenced the rise of eugenic thought in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Teicher makes the case that Mendel’s theory of heredity had an extensive impact on how Germans—especially in the fields of anthropology, psychiatry, and genealogy—and how Nazis “thought about society, purity, national renewal, and medical dangers” (5). The application of Mendel’s theory to the human domain (what Teicher terms Social Mendelism) deserves to be taken more seriously in the formation and radicalization of eugenic thoughts in Germany—something for which Social Darwinism is often given sole credit. Teicher’s extensive use of school notebooks and exams, letters, scientific publications, governmental correspondence, films and plays, and court records compellingly demonstrate how Mendelian thinking was central to individuals—namely, scientists and bureaucrats—as well as institutions like schools and heredity health courts in the Nazi era.

'More evolved than you': Evolutionary spirituality as a cultural frame for psychedelic experiences.

One of the dominant cultural frames for psychedelics in western culture over last 130 years has been evolutionary spirituality. This tradition suggests human evolution is not finished and can be guided towards the creation of higher beings through such techniques as psychedelics and eugenics or genetic modification. But is everyone evolving into a new species, or just an elite? This essay defines the tradition of evolutionary spirituality and points to five of the ethical limitations of the tradition - its tendency to spiritual narcissism, contempt for the less-evolved masses, Social Darwinism and Malthusianism, spiritual eugenics, and illiberal utopian politics-before suggesting responses to these limitations.

Survival of the fittest in the pandemic age: Introducing disease-related social Darwinism.

COVID-19 was a harsh reminder that diseases are an aspect of human existence and mortality. It was also a live experiment in the formation and alteration of disease-related attitudes. Not only are these attitudes relevant to an individual's self-protective behavior, but they also seem to be associated with social and political attitudes more broadly. One of these attitudes is Social Darwinism, which holds that a pandemic benefits society by enabling nature "to weed out the weak". In two countries (N = 300, N = 533), we introduce and provide evidence for the reliability, validity, and usefulness of the Disease-Related Social Darwinism (DRSD) Short Scale measuring this concept. Results indicate that DRSD is meaningful related to other central political attitudes like Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism and neoliberalism. Importantly, the scale significantly predicted people's protective behavior during the Pandemic over and above general social Darwinism. Moreover, it significantly predicted conservative attitudes, even after controlling for Social Dominance Orientation.

Natasha Szuhan, The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain

This is an important and solid study of often under-appreciated aspects of the work from 1930 to 1974 of the major birth control organisation in the UK, the National Birth Control Association, which became the Family Planning Association in 1939. It lacks the dramas we associate with the nineteenth-century pioneers, or Marie Stopes. What it does do is set out the more nuanced and humble history of the association and its members as leaders in medical contraceptive provision, scientific research, application and advocacy, the creation and delivery of education, advice and therapy, and networking and lobbying for the acceptance and oversight of contraception by officials, both medical and governmental. This book adds substantially to our understanding of the work of the NBCA/FPA, the progress of contraception research, the running of clinics and the contribution of various players both internal and external. However, it is rather oddly framed. Szuhan opens by describing three social and scientific theories intersecting at the opening of the twentieth century: ‘Social Darwinism‚ Malthusianism and Eugenics’ and claims that ‘Each supported scientific birth control to address decreasing health and living standards and population concerns’. The founding of the NBCA is said to have been in response to these needs.

Controlling the “Wilderness” Through a Rationalised Reindeer Husbandry: The Establishment of the Sámi Nomad School in Sweden, 1906–1917

This article discusses the Swedish nomad school system (nomadskola, 1913–1962), targeting the children of the reindeer herding Sámi, in an environmental history perspective. Earlier research has highlighted demographics (especially social Darwinism), national economy, and reform pedagogy as the ideological foundation of the nomad school system. This article shows that the fixing of a frontier between society and wilderness was at the confluence of all of these ideas. Reindeer as a vehicle for domesticating Arctic “wilderness,” furthering economic goals in peripheries, and modernising indigenous livelihoods has been noted in the North American and Russian/Soviet contexts, as well as in Scandinavia for the second half of the 20th century. This connection has not been explicitly made in the research concerning the early years of the nomad school system. The article concludes that the Swedish government did not have the expertise to control and economically exploit the “wilderness” of the high Scandes, but the reindeer-herding Sámi did. Swedish educational authorities launched the nomad school system in order to harness this expertise and make the reindeer herding livelihood more suitable to the needs of the Swedish economy.

Human populations are not biologically and genetically discrete.

Human populations are not biologically and genetically discrete.

An Investigation of School Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya

The Education Sector in Kenya has faced many challenges particularly school dropouts, which is an indicator of low internal efficiency during the past two decades. The Kenyan government came up with 100% transition rate from primary school to secondary school in 2018 to increase access to secondary school education which will in turn result in increased completion rates. This study sought to investigatee School Characteristics Leading to Students’ Dropout from Mixed-Day Secondary Schools in Bomet East Sub-County, Kenya for the period between the year 2019 and 2022. This study examined why students drop out of school and suggested recommendations on what can be done about it. This study was guided by the objective: to investigate the school-related factors leading to school dropout. The study was based on The Classical Theory of Equal Opportunities and Social Darwinism which assert that each person is born with a given amount of capacity, which, to a large extent, is inherited and cannot be substantially changed. Descriptive Survey Research Design was used to collect data from Principals, teachers and students of the sampled Mixed Day Secondary schools. Piloting was carried out. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data. Percentages and Frequencies were used to analyze the data. Analysis was done by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was found out that the following school characteristics lead to students dropout; poor performance, expulsion, school dislike, long distance to school, gender violence, inadequate learning resources, harsh punishment and hatred towards a teacher. The study suggests three recommendations to curb school dropouts. The findings are hoped to benefit the teachers, school principals and other school managers as well as the Ministry of Education to put necessary measures in place to curb the dropout problem. The findings will also add new knowledge to the existing one.

Geopolitics, Migration, and Transcultural Processes

Geopolitics, Migration, and Transcultural Processes Regenia Gagnier (bio) My 2018 book, Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century, begins, "To study literatures in which global processes criss-cross distinct environments requires (1) translators and transculturalists who know diverse literary histories and history of genres, and (2) the disciplines relating to environments of nature (natural sciences), culture (the humanities), and technology (social sciences, engineering, and medicine)".1 Literature can give us precise, authentic accounts of life as felt or experienced in each specific niche of nature, culture, and technology at a particular moment. The study of global literatures therefore requires collaborators who know their own respective literary histories, genres, and styles within their specific environments. Since 2004 I have been cultivating such collaborations.2 This seems to point to a method adequate to a period of such extreme technological and geopolitical change as that covered by Cusp's remit c.1880–1920. Distinct cultures have their own temporalities, yet this period was transformative across many cultures. Before we return to methodology, it may be worth recapping a few of the features of the world at that time. Technical innovations gave rise to what is commonly called the second industrial revolution. Britain and the US saw the rise of Taylorism, Fordism, the first monopolies and corporate consolidation, trade unionism and strikes, the rise of consumer culture and women shopping rather than farming/gardening/cooking, eugenics, and social Darwinism (as noteworthy in China and Australia as in Britain). Metal detection, machine gun, AC motor, aeroplane, tractor, [End Page 96] sonar, electric ignition for automobiles, pop-up toaster, lightbulb, cash register, motion picture camera, electric trolley, and radio transformed private as well as public life; and even the spheres themselves, private and public, were transformed as more women worked outside the home up to and during the First World War. Multiple innovations enhanced railway safety, thus leading to more mobility, global time standardization, and a reification of "the working day." Britain saw the effects of massive immigration following on Russian pogroms, education became compulsory for children under ten, electric lights were introduced into homes, women won the franchise, the Boer wars, the National Insurance Act covered sickness and unemployment, the Easter Rising in Ireland, the "Spanish flu" epidemic, and the First World War. If Anglophone history reveals an interconnected world, interconnectedness is equally manifest elsewhere. From 1898, modern western thought entered China in force. The Hundred Days' Reform, the Boxer Rebellion, and anti-foreign unrest led to the fall of the Qing dynasty and the founding of the Republic in 1912. The New Youth magazine, and the New Culture and May Fourth Movements sought to liberalize Confucian culture, as did publication of Lu Xun's monumentally critical "Ah Q," amounting to the greatest rejection of a three-thousandyear-old tradition in world history. The Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded, with perhaps the greatest influence on China being the Russian October Revolution under Lenin in 1917. It is noteworthy that henceforth every major Chinese modernist was a professional translator: Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Lao She, and Bing Xin. Meanwhile, in the US, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant restriction of free immigration in US history. In South Asia, other ancient cultures now subalterned to a British rule initiated by a trading company saw the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885; Nehru, Bose, and Ambedkar were born 1889–91; in 1905 Bengal was partitioned; in 1906 the Muslim League formed in Dhaka; in 1911 the capital was moved by the British from Calcutta to Delhi; in 1915 Gandhi returned from South Africa; the Bengal Renaissance flourished in the arts, literature, and spiritual guidance. [End Page 97] From 1881 to 1914, Africa and the Middle East suffered the New Imperialism under the so-called Scramble for Africa by seven western European powers, with 90 percent of their populations coming under European control, entailing a massive destruction of the continent's cultures. The Kingdom of Benin was plundered for the artworks that inspired Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Derain, and Klee. Central Africa, usurped by the Congo Free State, was plundered for ivory...

Sacred Socialism

Sacred Socialism

Can Squid Game Series Be Watched Through Social Darwinism? A Semiotic Review

Social events are reflected as a string of signs in the language of the productions in question by forming the subjects of cinema and TV productions. The language of expression in television creates a dream world, and the message is tried to be placed in the audience’s mind in the form of images. This study discusses whether the South Korean production Squid Game, which has recently reached a significant audience, can be watched through Social Darwinism. In the research, the exploitation of the efforts and hopes of the weak by the strong was analyzed within the framework of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is adapting Darwin’s theory of Evolution, which is valid in all species, to the social field. This theory asserts that the fittest for the environment can survive in competition between individual organisms. Social Darwinism postulates that competition between individuals, groups, or nations causes the social Evolution of human societies. The competition, which started as a group in the TV series Squid Game, continues with individual competition and is represented by the survival of the one who finally overcomes all these challenging competitive conditions. The semiotic method was used in the research due to its suitability for the subject’s purpose, context, and basic research question. The sample of the study was determined according to the purposive sampling technique. The research data consists of scenes and player expressions reflecting the Social Darwinism perspective of the visual and verbal expressions in the series. Research findings show that the evolutionary laws among living things continue in social life in the form of Social Darwinism.

“Survival of the Fittest” and George Eliot’s Critique of Capitalism in The Mill on the Floss

Abstract In The Mill on the Floss, the ruthless rules of social Darwinism play out even before the term “survival of the fittest” was coined, and the fiction translates the “survival of the fittest” that Darwin identified in nature to a human community in the early stages of industrial capitalism. This article aims to demonstrate how George Eliot evaluates laissez-faire capitalism through her use of the Darwinian struggle for existence among the Tullivers and the Dodsons, and how George Eliot’s criticism of materialism and Mammonism of the early industrial capitalism in The Mill on the Floss works as a warning for her Victorian contemporaries who are devoted to “economic survival of the fittest.”

The "Hilfsverein für Geisteskranke" in the Kingdom of Saxony, a Philantropic Organisation for the Mentally Ill

This article provides an overwiew of the history of the "Hilfsverein für Geisteskranke" in the Kingdom of Saxony (later Free State of Saxony) from its foundation in 1898 until its probable dissolution during World War II. The "Hilfsverein" was a philantropic organization that aimed to provide support for the mentally ill and their relatives through financial aid and education. It relied on a network of representatives spanning all of Saxony´s regions. Its work continued during the Weimar Republic after World War I, though by then it had lost influence due to economic loss and other structures of public welfare being established. In the context of the rise in eugenic and social darwinist tendencies during the 1920s, the implications of "racial hygiene" and hereditability came to be discussed among its members. After the takeover of the National Socialist Party in 1933, the "Hilfsverein" was forcibly assimilated into the Nazi welfare system and used to propagate racial ideology.