Social Stratification Research Articles

Personality heterophily and friendship as drivers for successful cooperation.

Cooperation is widespread and arguably a pivotal evolutionary force in maintaining animal societies. Yet, proximately, what underlying motivators drive individuals to cooperate remains relatively unclear. Since 'free-riders' can exploit the benefits by cheating, selecting the right partner is paramount. Such decision rules need not be based on complex calculations and can be driven by cognitively less-demanding mechanisms, like social relationships (e.g. kinship, non-kin friendships, dyadic tolerance), social status (e.g. dominance hierarchies) and personalities (social and non-social traits); however, holistic evidence related to those mechanisms is scarce. Using the classical 'loose-string paradigm', we tested cooperative tendencies of a hierarchical primate, the long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis). We studied three groups (n = 21) in their social settings, allowing partner choice. We supplemented cooperation with observational and experimental data on social relationships, dominance hierarchies and personality. Friendship and dissimilarities in non-social 'exploration' and 'activity-sociability' personality traits predicted the likelihood of cooperative dyad formation. Furthermore, the magnitude of cooperative success was positively associated with friendship, low rank-distance and dissimilarity in the activity-sociability trait. Kinship did not affect cooperation. While some findings align with prior studies, the evidence of (non-social) personality heterophily promoting cooperation may deepen our understanding of the proximate mechanisms and, broadly, the evolution of cooperation.

Analysis of Politeness Strategies from the Perspective of the Interpersonal Function of Language in Systemic Functional Grammar

Politeness strategies play a crucial role in maintaining social harmony and establishing interpersonal relationships. The interpersonal function of language in Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) provides a framework to analyze how language is used to interact with others. Our research aims to analyze the interpersonal functions of politeness strategies in conversation from the perspective of mood, modality, and person in SFG, with a focus on politeness theory, face theory, and politeness strategies. It shows how language is used to manage social relationships and establish social hierarchies in communication, and how understanding politeness strategies can help communicate more effectively and respectfully in different contexts.

AS RELAÇÕES DE PODER E A LIBERDADE DE MANIFESTAÇÃO FRENTE À CRISE DE LEGITIMIDADE DO ESTADO-NAÇÃO

The objective of the study is to analyze the relations of power and authority from the perspective of the phenomenon of legitimation, in the search for obtaining consensus and producing voluntary obedience in Society. The perspective of the use of force is also addressed, given its direct correlation with the very notion of State and as an attribute of power aimed at maintaining sovereignty, although its recurrent use may represent a kind of systemic anomaly. The premises point to an exhaustion of the model of symbiosis between legitimacy and legality as a sufficient factor to support current state structures in the face of the perplexity of those in power in the face of a complex, unequal and digital society. In another aspect, the structures of social domination are analyzed based on the interaction between economy and power, given their essentially patrimonial content and a determining historical factor in establishing the social position of individuals in the process of social stratification. Finally, the exercise of freedom of expression is addressed in the face of the multiplicity of contemporary social demands in the face of questioning the authority and legitimacy of state institutions.

Reconstructing the life histories of a noble couple from the Joseon period, Korea, based on skeletal evidence and historical records

AbstractThis study is an osteobiography of a noble couple who were members of the “ruling elite” in the 18th‐century Joseon period, Korea. The archaeological context and historical records indicate that the couple lived and died during a period marked by strict observance of social hierarchy. The husband's skeleton exhibits clear evidence of craniosynostosis and spinal scoliosis. In particular, congenital craniosynostosis of the skull likely caused deformities in his craniofacial morphology during his lifetime. The physical deformities and discomforts revealed by his craniofacial and vertebral skeleton shed light on the documented passivity and frequent disruptions to his government positions. Meanwhile, his wife's age at death, 93 years, is exceptionally long. The osteological investigation suggests that she seems to have lived without severe stressors. Her skeletal remains show no evidence of occupational stress or chronic disease. Until now, our understanding of the Joseon period nobility has predominantly relied on artifacts and summaries of the deceased's life discovered in tombs, as well as written documents such as diaries, evaluation records, and letters. This study reconstructs the lives of this couple through osteological evidence, historical records, and social context. This holistic approach will provide a novel perspective for a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of nobility and intellectuals of the period.

THE REVERSE IMPACT OF THE «SOCIALIST REALISM» METHOD IN CREATING A HERO'S PERSONALITY AND MODERN KAZAKH NOVEL

The era of the Soviet Union proved that real national literature cannot be created under colonialism. The "socialist realism" method created by the authorities had a reverse impact on the nature of the artistic image. The characters in the work are politicized. Special attention was paid to the class division (rich and poor), and the images were depicted one-sidedly. The collapse of the USSR allowed the development of a new type of literature in the post-Soviet countries. In the research paper, we made comparisons, and the damage caused by the method of "socialist realism" to fiction is mentioned. However, these years were also successful. Kazakh literature has developed in terms of genres. The genre of the novel has been mastered. Talented writers have mastered describing the reality of life with clues. Literary tradition and skill practices were used in the literature of the period of Independence. The fate and history of the nation were shown in innovative novels. Modern realities and changed human psychology were depicted together with the world space. A stream of postmodern, realistic novels came to literature. The release of the novel from political restrictions allowed genre change (historical, biographical, satirical, fantasy, etc.). The storytelling style has been renewed. There was new artistic and stylistic research in creating a hero’s personality.

Can online banking replace personal banking? A survey of Hungarian banking habits

AbstractOne of the important issues of banking today is the role bank branches and online banking solutions play in serving consumers. With the help of a representative Survey of 1,000 adults in Hungary conducted in 2022, we examine how well online and mobile banking solutions can provide a suitable alternative to bank branches. Based on our results, online banking solutions cannot fully replace personal banking in Hungary due to the customers' attitudes, as we can see that their use does not significantly affect the frequency of visits to the bank branch, and their usage rate does not increase with the distance from the bank branch. We also point out that for the Hungarian population the trend of bank branch closures may entail the risk of being left out of the formal financial system mostly for the older, digitally less receptive social strata living in small settlements and in a relatively worse financial situation.

Shifting Cohort Patterns in the Use of Drugs with Elevated Overdose Risk in the United States

Abstract Rising drug overdose rates are a major social problem, but understanding of trends in the use of high-risk drugs is limited. The increasingly addictive potential of high-risk drugs, broader social changes, and the importance of peers and social contexts in shaping use may create conditions in which some cohorts have elevated use further into adulthood than others. We use an age-period-cohort model that defines cohort effects as the differential influences of social events for individuals of different ages. We analyze data from the 1979–2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health to study past-year (mis)use of prescription analgesics, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Pre-1990 cohorts had either consistently lower than average odds or decreasing odds of use as they aged. The 1990s cohorts had higher than average odds of use, which increased as they aged. Early-2000s cohorts had increasing odds of use with age, despite low odds in adolescence. High-risk drug use appears to be an important cohort differentiating mechanism, with implications for policy and theories of deviance and stratification. The typical focus on period trends obscures the elevated odds of high-risk drug use in certain cohorts, whose members are entering the ages when overdose is most likely and consequences become most pronounced.

Using latent class analysis to investigate enduring effects of intersectional social disadvantage on long-term vocational and financial outcomes in the 20-year prospective Chicago Longitudinal Study.

Class and social disadvantage have long been identified as significant factors in the etiology and epidemiology of psychosis. Few studies have explicitly examined the impact of intersecting social disadvantage on long-term employment and financial independence. We applied latent class analysis (LCA) to 20-year longitudinal data from participants with affective and non-affective psychosis (n = 256) within the Chicago Longitudinal Research. LCA groups were modeled using multiple indicators of pre-morbid disadvantage (parental social class, educational attainment, race, gender, and work and social functioning prior to psychosis onset). The comparative longitudinal work and financial functioning of LCA groups were then examined. We identified three distinct latent classes: one comprised entirely of White participants, with the highest parental class and highest levels of educational attainment; a second predominantly working-class group, with equal numbers of Black and White participants; and a third with the lowest parental social class, lowest levels of education and a mix of Black and White participants. The latter, our highest social disadvantage group experienced significantly poorer employment and financial outcomes at all time-points, controlling for diagnosis, symptoms, and hospitalizations prior to baseline. Contrary to our hypotheses, on most measures, the two less disadvantaged groups did not significantly differ from each other. Our analyses add to a growing literature on the impact of multiple forms of social disadvantage on long-term functional trajectories, underscoring the importance of proactive attention to sociostructural disadvantage early in treatment, and the development and evaluation of interventions designed to mitigate ongoing social stratification.

Языковые основы субэтнической, этнической и этнополитической идентичности

The purpose of the research is to determine the relationship between the concepts of “ethnos” and “language” in the peripheral zone of ethnic self-determination where some part of the society considers itself a separate ethnic group, but this belief is not supported by its linguistic separateness. The material is the data on the ethnic situation in a number of countries around the world which is obtained either from social surveys or based on ethnographic descriptions of the relationship between linguistic and ethnic self-identification in different countries. The study applies the method of correlation analysis to establish the relationship between linguistic and ethnic self-determination. The work also uses the method of sociolinguistic interpretation and the method of sociolinguistic reinterpretation which is based on the analysis of secondary material, that has already entered in scientific circulation, for sociolinguistic purposes. The basis for identification processes is the linguistic identification of an ethnic nation, on the basis of which ethnographic, ethnic and ethnopolitical national unity is formed. As a result the study highlighted four situations which are based on the correction of ethnic identification according to language identity. Firstly, a situation of ethnic transition, when a person, who defines himself as belonging to a nation “by blood”, according to his linguistic identity moves to another national group. Secondly, a situation of subethnic transition, when an ethnic subgroup designates itself as part of a nation, that uses the regional dialect or dialect of a given nation. Thirdly, the situation of ethno-political identity, when the nationality is determined by the political factor such as citizenship while preserving the language of the ethnic nation living in another, base state. Finally, multiethnic political identification, which is a type of ethnopolitical identity, when several ethnic nations, which are speakers of different languages, are united into one political nation. This interpretation of the “ethnos – language” relationship allows us to adjust the parameters of sociolinguistic and social stratification of society.

Alienation and authoritarian appropriation – the spatiotemporality of political subjectivation under East German urban neoliberalism

This paper contributes to a growing field of spatial analyses of authoritarianism by asking how urban neoliberalization impacts authoritarian subjectivation. It analyses why working class long-term tenants in a gentrifying working class district of the East German city of Leipzig are susceptible to authoritarianism. It traces how their political subjectivation operates through space and time. The theoretical contribution is a spatio-temporally sensitive theorization of subjectivation between alienation and appropriation. Tenants’ experiences of alienation and their attempts of appropriation depend on processes of political economic restructuring in a row of scales from their flat to the reunited nation, and their classed position within these. The tenants in focus develop a nostalgic temporality of belonging, reminiscent of a lost past and devoid of present engagement or an imaginable future. This fosters ideological, authoritarian forms of appropriation, reproducing social hierarchies and scapegoating instead of encouraging practical engagement with present conditions.

Sociocultural barriers to outsourcing housework: Unraveling the non‐use of domestic services

AbstractThe outsourcing of housework is broadly recognized as providing an impetus for increasing women's participation in the labor market and relieving the burdens of households with children and dual earners. Despite an objective need, demand for paid domestic services is low, even for households with sufficient financial resources. By drawing on a German survey of cohabiting couples aged between 30 and 60, we analyze households that have, to date, not used domestic services (N = 1479). Based on items about attitudes toward domestic services, we identify five distinct attitude profiles defined by diverse combinations and levels of sociocultural barriers to outsourcing housework, including gendered expectations, privacy concerns, aversion toward a servant culture, and trust and control issues. Our results establish that half of the sample exhibits scarcely any sociocultural aversion to the employment of domestic help. While some of these households report preferring to do housework within the family, households of higher social strata, in particular, express a need for external support, but are hindered by an insufficient supply of and access to appropriate paid domestic services. In contrast, the other half of the sample consists of subgroups of rejectors, revealing different levels of disapproval and normative‐moral profiles concerning outsourcing. Interestingly, complete rejectors are often found in low‐income households, indicating a strong connection between socioeconomic and sociocultural characteristics. The results highlight the potential for future developments within the domestic service sector to meet customers' normative and moral concerns.

Revolution as a transition from empire to nation-state(s): Comparing the Soviet and Chinese paths

How did revolutions facilitate empires’ transition to nation-states? This article compares the Bolshevik and the Chinese Communist Revolutions. It conceptualizes this Soviet–Sino comparison through three dimensions of nation-building: separating from a universal community, building a national cultural core and overcoming internal ethnopolitics. Both socialist regimes accommodated the nation-state model by fusing centralized control with limited autonomy for ethnic minorities. Yet, whereas the Soviet Union claimed to be a universal union of nation-states, which was supposed to keep accepting new members until it covered the entire globe, the People’s Republic of China resembled a typical nation-state that preserved multiethnicity and enclosed borders under the title of the ‘Chinese Nation’. In analyzing the influence of revolutions, this article probes three relations: inter-revolution, revolution–society and revolution–counterrevolution. Arising after the Bolsheviks as a follower-revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was confined to a national component of the USSR’s global communism project. This shaped the CCP’s enclosed geographical activity space, Han-dominated ethnic composition and the consciousness of national liberation. The CCP’s mobilization covered far wider social strata than the Bolsheviks’ had, which engendered stronger manpower and motivation to transform the traditional culture into a national culture. Being weak at its borderlands, the CCP was cautious about the doctrine of ‘national self-determination’, not daring to make it a geopolitical weapon for revolution export as the Bolsheviks had done in founding the Soviet Union. Owing to each of these differences in revolutionary trajectories, the CCP was more receptive to ‘China’ than the Bolsheviks were to ‘Russia’, and this led to two distinctive ways of reorganizing empires into nation-states.

Wage Theft, Secrecy, and Derealization of ‘Ideal Workers’ in the Bangladesh Garment Industry

This study addresses how violence is mobilized through wage theft in feminized workplaces thriving within the global value chain. Guided by Judith Butler’s concept of derealization, this longitudinal case study on the Bangladesh garment industry advances the current debate on violence in organization studies. First, it re-conceptualizes the notion of an ‘ideal worker’. Empirical evidence reveals that, unlike in Western societies, young and childless women in the Global South and their vulnerabilities woven into poverty, inequality, climate change, patriarchy, social stratification, and limited employment opportunities make them ‘ideal workers’. This status remains valid as long as they remain vulnerable and demonstrate no agency in resisting the discourse on dehumanization, dispossession, and displacement. Second, this study illuminates the practice of wage theft, which has emerged as a dominant form of violence in feminized workplaces. Organizations also deploy secrecy to continue theft, thereby inflicting further physical and psychological violence. This study highlights the fact that socioeconomic vulnerabilities and unresisted violence oppress a docile workforce to become ‘ideal workers’. It is a neoliberal myth that helps powerful actors shore up their power and privileges through derealization.

Indonesian sociography: analysis of themes and the implications for strengthening high school sociology learning in Indonesia

This qualitative study aimed to assess the extent to which the 2013 Curriculum high school sociology coursebooks are informed by the results produced by the field of Indonesian sociography. In particular, the research is focused on which sociographic themes appear in coursebooks, their percentages and how they are presented. The data were drawn from 21 coursebooks, from seven publishers. Based on the results of content analysis, four main themes were found: social structure (S=395); social changes (S=58); social stratification (S=47); and social processes (S=44). In addition, 36 ethnic groups were identified, across seven major islands. This research also found that the study of Indonesian sociography presented in high school sociology coursebooks actually seeks to raise students’ ethnic awareness, given that Indonesia is a pluralistic and multicultural country; although in some cases it still requires strengthening for content aspects and learning instructions/guidelines for pedagogical aspects.

A hybrid approach for optimizing software defect prediction using a gray wolf optimization and multilayer perceptron

PurposeSoftware defect prediction (SDP) is a critical aspect of software quality assurance, aiming to identify and manage potential defects in software systems. In this paper, we have proposed a novel hybrid approach that combines Gray Wolf Optimization with Feature Selection (GWOFS) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) for SDP. The GWOFS-MLP hybrid model is designed to optimize feature selection, ultimately enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of SDP. Gray Wolf Optimization, inspired by the social hierarchy and hunting behavior of gray wolves, is employed to select a subset of relevant features from an extensive pool of potential predictors. This study investigates the key challenges that traditional SDP approaches encounter and proposes promising solutions to overcome time complexity and the curse of the dimensionality reduction problem.Design/methodology/approachThe integration of GWOFS and MLP results in a robust hybrid model that can adapt to diverse software datasets. This feature selection process harnesses the cooperative hunting behavior of wolves, allowing for the exploration of critical feature combinations. The selected features are then fed into an MLP, a powerful artificial neural network (ANN) known for its capability to learn intricate patterns within software metrics. MLP serves as the predictive engine, utilizing the curated feature set to model and classify software defects accurately.FindingsThe performance evaluation of the GWOFS-MLP hybrid model on a real-world software defect dataset demonstrates its effectiveness. The model achieves a remarkable training accuracy of 97.69% and a testing accuracy of 97.99%. Additionally, the receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC-AUC) score of 0.89 highlights the model’s ability to discriminate between defective and defect-free software components.Originality/valueExperimental implementations using machine learning-based techniques with feature reduction are conducted to validate the proposed solutions. The goal is to enhance SDP’s accuracy, relevance and efficiency, ultimately improving software quality assurance processes. The confusion matrix further illustrates the model’s performance, with only a small number of false positives and false negatives.

Becoming a European prisoner: penal reforms and European belonging in Georgia and Estonia

ABSTRACT Over the past three decades many former Soviet states introduced reforms to the penal systems they inherited from socialist regimes. In most countries of the post-Soviet space, these reforms have been depicted by policy-makers as projects of ‘Europeanization’. This article investigates the discursive construction of penal reform in Georgia and Estonia after these countries gained independence. We examine images and practices of punishment and answer two questions: how are post-Soviet penal reforms framed by policy-makers and experienced by prisoners? How is Europeanization of punishment understood in the post-Soviet space? We conduct an analysis of policy discourse and of narratives of people who witnessed these changes while serving prison sentences. We treat images of ‘Europe’ as a discursively produced ideational structure, and analyze how different understandings of punishment are linked to, or pitted against, ideas of Europeanness. We locate our study within the framework of critical approaches to European integration, and introduce the study of punishment to these debates. We show that punishment is not simply another case study of the relations between a European ‘centre’ and its ‘peripheries’, but argue rather that images and practices of ‘European punishment’ create new social hierarchies and fractures in post-Soviet societies.

Enhanced chimp hierarchy optimization algorithm with adaptive lens imaging for feature selection in data classification

Feature selection is a critical component of machine learning and data mining to remove redundant and irrelevant features from a dataset. The Chimp Optimization Algorithm (CHoA) is widely applicable to various optimization problems due to its low number of parameters and fast convergence rate. However, CHoA has a weak exploration capability and tends to fall into local optimal solutions in solving the feature selection process, leading to ineffective removal of irrelevant and redundant features. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the Enhanced Chimp Hierarchy Optimization Algorithm for adaptive lens imaging (ALI-CHoASH) for searching the optimal classification problems for the optimal subset of features. Specifically, to enhance the exploration and exploitation capability of CHoA, we designed a chimp social hierarchy. We employed a novel social class factor to label the class situation of each chimp, enabling effective modelling and optimization of the relationships among chimp individuals. Then, to parse chimps’ social and collaborative behaviours with different social classes, we introduce other attacking prey and autonomous search strategies to help chimp individuals approach the optimal solution faster. In addition, considering the poor diversity of chimp groups in the late iteration, we propose an adaptive lens imaging back-learning strategy to avoid the algorithm falling into a local optimum. Finally, we validate the improvement of ALI-CHoASH in exploration and exploitation capabilities using several high-dimensional datasets. We also compare ALI-CHoASH with eight state-of-the-art methods in classification accuracy, feature subset size, and computation time to demonstrate its superiority.

Проблема приватности в цифровом обществе роевого интеллекта

Introduction. The development of digital technologies requires the specification of the type of the emerging digital society. One of the development scenarios is the formation of a digital society of swarm intelligence. Theoretical analysis. The concept of swarm intelligence means an optimization algorithm that imitates the behavior of swarms or colonies of insects and bird flocks. Human society is characterized by the manifestation of swarm intelligence as a condition of joint organized activity, but the development of digital technologies brings swarm intelligence to a higher level. Creation of private swarms causes risks in the form of “Byzantine robot” – a hacked particle of the swarm, transmitting false information and jeopardizing the whole swarm. The solution is to incorporate elements of the economic game that support the values of honesty, cooperation and solidarity into the particle interactions. This leads to making privacy a “process” and changing its value status. Protecting privacy in swarm intelligence society has the potential to cause labor to lose its public status and acquire a private, hidden status and anonymize employment. Conclusion. The possible scenario of human society development towards the digital society of swarm intelligence can become a source of profound social changes and, above all, a rethinking of the social stratification based on the division of labor and social hierarchy in general.

Corruption as a factor in the delegitimization of justice

The article examines the phenomenon of judicial corruption as a factor that negatively affects the legitimacy of the judiciary, which is based on the public's trust in the court and judicial protection.
 It was established that the fight against corruption in the judiciary is a global trend, as evidenced by numerous international documents. They, in particular, emphasize the priority of eradicating judicial corruption, as it undermines the rule of law, which is the cornerstone of pluralistic democracy, calls into question equality before the law and the right to a fair trial, and undermines the legitimacy of all state authorities. Judicial corruption stands in the way of the stable functioning of the rule of law.
 It was noted that corruption discredits any power institution, and as for the judiciary, it destroys its basic value - a person's faith in the justice of the court, the justice of the court process and the court decision. It not only undermines trust in the judiciary, negatively affecting its authority. Judicial corruption causes social stratification, causing sharp negative reactions in society in relation to the professional community of judges.
 Based on the analysis of scientific sources, it was concluded that there are no unified approaches to the definition of judicial corruption or a standardized understanding of its manifestations. At the same time, according to the authors, the priority for research should be issues of praxeological direction: the causes of judicial corruption, its typical manifestations, consequences, measures of counteraction and struggle.
 In conclusion, it is stated that judicial corruption, characterized by the specificity and nature of a special danger for the stable functioning of the state, has many manifestations (bribery, extortion, nepotism, etc.) and reasons (structural, economic, political, social, personal). Therefore, all researchers are united in the issue of the need for a consistent and comprehensive policy of countering and fighting judicial corruption. All three key subjects must be involved in its implementation: the state, society and the judicial system, whose actions depend on the legitimacy of the judiciary in the state.

LIFE CHANCES AND STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY

The article delves into the historical trajectory of global inequality, tracing the transition from an era of relative equality to the emergence of profound disparities following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West. It scrutinizes the Eurocentric narrative of progress, emphasizing the pivotal role of scientific advancements, technological innovations, and capitalist expansion in shaping the Western ascendancy. Furthermore, it explores the concept of life chances as a lens through which to analyse structural inequality and the distribution of resources among individuals. The discourse extends to the revaluation of values in the context of sustainability, advocating for a shift towards a more sustainable and equitable societal framework. The paper underscores the enduring challenges posed by durable inequality and the allure of the Western lifestyle to less privileged regions. Through a multidisciplinary lens encompassing historical, sociological, and ecological perspectives, it offers insights into the complexities of global development, social stratification, and the quest for a more just and sustainable world order.