Social Reorganisation Research Articles

ПОЛИТИКО-ПРАВОВЫЕ ТРАДИЦИИ КАЗАХОВ В XV-XVIIIВВ.

Political and legal traditions of Kazakhs in XV-XVIII centuries constituted an integral continuity of all the preceding eras, regardless of substantial differences in terms of structural transformation of civil power and the systemic social reorganisation according to the statehood formula –society –personality. Therefore, within study of the problems of legal traditions and political and legal culture of traditional Kazakh society should be noted essential layers of historical practiceof state formation on the territory of Kazakhstan, as well as the stages of lengthy processes starting from institutionalisation, then legitimisation and functionalisation, that include such very significant protestant-political and ethno-mental categories such as: perception of the state and its functions; authority in the Kazakh Khanate and its specificity; form of government and components of state power; methods and mechanisms for the implementation of state power; political and territorial organisation of state power; structure and specifics of political system; concept and tradition of legal recognition in Kazakh society.

Comparative perspectives on educational inequalities in Europe: an overview of the old and emergent inequalities from a bottom-up perspective

ABSTRACT Educational inequalities remain a major challenge to the social cohesion of modern societies. They affect the younger generations in the society throughout their development and are also becoming more varied and entrenched. Although most inequalities are linked to socio-economic factors such as income, access to material resources, educational attainment, and social class, new emergent types of inequalities are developing rapidly: spatial segregation, residence status (native-born or immigrant) (Barnes, J. (2007). Down our way: The relevance of neighbourhoods for parenting and child development. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 9780470030721; Lareau, A. (2014). Schools, housing and the reproduction of inequality. In A. Lareau & K. A. Goyette (Eds.), Choosing homes, choosing schools (pp. 169–206). New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural knowledge and social inequality. American Sociological Review 2015, 80(1), 1–27. doi:10.117/0003122414565814); and the digital divide (Bynner, J., & Heinz, W. R. (2021). Youth prospects in the digital society: Identities and inequalities in an unravelling Europe. Bristol: Policy Press; Melhuish, E. (2019). House of commons education committee (2019). Tackling disadvantage in the early years. London: HMSO. Tackling disadvantage in the early years (parliament.uk)). The use of in-depth evidence about the nature and variations in experiences of inequalities by individuals, families, communities within and across European countries is an effective way to provide up-to-date insights into evolving inequalities and the social problems that arise. This paper shifts the focus of the debate about the changing nature of inequalities in modern societies by drawing upon qualitative and mixed methods advances in studying socially disadvantaged groups. Their chances to integrate into society through the educational channels are not likely to be fully achieved without significant change in the current social environment and re-organisation of education systems. The paper draws its conclusions based on recent research and analytical reports with a focus on Europe.

The earliest water buffalo in the Caucasus: shifting animals and people in the medieval Islamic world

The expansion of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates (seventh to ninth centuries AD) brought diverse regions from the Indus Valley to the Eurasian Steppe under hegemonic control. An overlooked aspect of this political process is the subsequent translocation of species across ecological zones. This article explores species introduction in the early Islamic world, presenting the first archaeological evidence for domestic water buffalo in the Caucasus—identified using zooarchaeological and ZooMS methods on material from the historical site of Bardhaʿa in Azerbaijan. We contextualise these finds with historical accounts to demonstrate the exploitation of medieval marginal zones and the effects of centralised social reorganisation upon species dispersal.

Authority Beyond State and Tribe in the Early Medieval Maghrib: The Impact of Climate on the Economic, Social and Political Reorganisation of the Maghrib al-Aqṣā in the Eighth–Ninth Centuries: The Case of Sijilmāsa (Morocco)

ABSTRACT The rise of Islam in the Maghrib al-Aqṣā in the eighth and ninth centuries and the simultaneous onset of deep and lasting political, economic, cultural and social upheavals across the region have led historians to focus on Islamisation as the principal cause of this revolution. This article will explore the possible contribution of environmental factors to economic change, and consequently to social and political development. This discussion relates to the field of historical climatology which has been limited in Africa, and especially in the western Maghrib. It focuses on a case study of the caravan city of Sijilmāsa (Morocco) and argues that an important climate oscillation between the eighth and ninth centuries may have been a decisive factor in its foundation. Finally, it suggests that this climate fluctuation may have been a driving factor in the urbanisation that the Maghrib al-Aqṣā experienced more widely in this period.

The body of Milan in Gabriele Basilico and Michelangelo Antonioni

Gabriele Basilico and Michelangelo Antonioni shared an interest in urban landscape and each developed a distinct aesthetics inspired by this constant dialogue with architecture and urban spatial forms. Antonioni’s ability to take advantage of different geometrical lines of the city to create a montage inside the shot, or to use urban buildings as optical devices for framing things and people, led him to transform the human body into a mechanical tool able to penetrate the sublime beauty of the modern. Gabriele Basilico, on the other hand, revealed cities as sites of tension generated by the global process of political, economic, and social reorganisation. His dialectical explorations between centre and periphery, new and old, and human and non-human, translate the urban landscape into images of emptiness and absence. This article will compare Basilico’s approach to Milan, as conveyed in his Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche (1980), with Antonioni’s portrait of the same city in La Notte (1961) and demonstrate that while Basilico anthropomorphised Milan, Antonioni made it emerge as a non-human entity, cold and beautiful in its own way.

Widening Wicksell’s conception of political economy: his “thoroughly revolutionary programme”

Knut Wicksell’s opinion that political economy is a “thoroughly revolutionary programme” has often been neglected in the literature. Actually, Wicksell aimed at implementing such a programme in order to enlarge political economy as a “practical science”. It is articulated around three main features: a criticism of the marginal theories, the redefinition of society as a whole, and the advent of social justice. Indeed, Wicksell claimed that economic and social problems may be solved only by a complete social reorganisation. Hence, I show that Wicksell’s social reform programme drives his particular view of and approach to political economy.

Refocusing and Redefining Cybersecurity: Individual Security in the Digitalising European High North

This article introduces cybersecurity in the discussion on security in the European High North in a redefined and refocused form. Instead of scrutinising the technical measures taken to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in systems and networks (information security) or the criticality of a number of digitally operated infrastructures to the functioning of society (national cybersecurity), it concentrates on the human being. It examines cybersecurity from an individual’s perspective by asking what kind of personal security concerns people may have with regard to digitalisation and how those are or are not present in the discussion on health and social security re-organisation in the Finnish Lapland. The theoretical foundation of this article rests within the human security framework. Individuals living their everyday lives in particular cyber-physical environments are taken as the referent object of security. In the digitalising European High North, multiple aspects of everyday security depend upon cybersecurity, including economic, environmental, and food securities. This article concentrates on health and social security. It examines linkages between the re-organisation of health and social security in Finland and personal security concerns with a particular focus on the case of Länsi-Pohja area in south-western Lapland. The overall aim is to create room for bottom-up influence on the primarily top-down processes of security production in the cyber-physical environment.

Dualisms shaping human-nature relations: discovering the multiple meanings of social-ecological change in Wayanad

This paper reflects on the impacts of agrarian change and social reorganisation on gender-nature relations through the lens of an indigenous group named the Kuruma in South India. Building upon recent work of feminist political ecology, I uncover a number of dualisms attached to the gender-nature nexus and put forward that gender roles are constituted by social relations which need to be analysed with regard to the transformative potential of gender-nature relations. Three main themes are at the centre of the empirical inquiry: gender subjectivities, rural off-farm employment and the human-nature nexus. I seek to show that, first, the production of gendered subjectivities cannot be simplified through essentialist assumptions that romanticise women’s relationships with nature; second, off-farm employment strategies both reinforce the social hierarchy in gender and contradict the Kuruma’s moral economies; and, finally, environmental and agrarian change redefine the use of agrobiodiversity and are related to ideas on progressive versus nonprogressive cultivation practices. The research is informed by qualitative research methods and offers a conceptual approach to the deconstruction of gender-nature relations from a poststructuralist feminist perspective.

Murderous returns: armed violence, suicide and exhumation in the Emberá Katío economy of death (Chocó and Antioquia, Colombia)

Since the early 1990s, armed actors have invaded territories in the Chocó and Antioquia departments of Colombia, inhabited by Afro-Colombians and Indians whose collective rights in these territories had recently been legally recognised. Based on long-term fieldwork among the Emberá Katío, this article examines social, cosmological and ritual alterations and re-organisation around violent death. Following a national policy of post-conflict reparations, public exhumations and identifications of human remains reveal new local modes of understanding and administration. In particular, suicide, hitherto completely unknown to the Emberá, broke out in a multitude of cases, mostly among the youth. Local discourse attributes this phenomenon to the number of stray corpses resulting from the violence, who are transformed into murderous spirits which shamans can no longer control. The analysis focusses on the unprecedented articulation of a renewed eschatology, the intricate effects of an internal political reorganisation and the simultaneous inroad into their space of new forms of armed insurrectional violence. Thus the article will shed light on the emergence of a new transitional moral economy of death among the Emberá.

On the Material and Immaterial Architecture of Organised Positivism in Britain

Positivism captured the Victorian imagination. Curiously, however, no work has focused on the architectural history and theory of Positivist halls in Britain. Scholars present these spaces of organised Positivism as being the same in thought and action throughout their existence, from the 1850s to the 1940s. Yet the British Positivists’ inherently different views of the work of their leader, the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), caused such friction between them that a great schism in the movement occurred in 1878. By the 1890s two separate British Positivist groups were using different space and syntax types for manifesting a common goal: social reorganisation. The raison d’etre of these institutions was to realize Comte’s utopian programme, called the Occidental Republic. In the rise of the first organised Positivist group in Britain, Richard Congreve’s Chapel Street Hall championed the religious ritualism and cultural festivals of Comte’s utopia; the terminus for this theory and practice was a temple typology, as seen in the case of Sydney Style’s Liverpool Church of Humanity. Following the Chapel Street Hall schism of 1878, Newton Hall was in operation by 1881 and under the direction of Frederic Harrison. Harrison’s group coveted intellectual and humanitarian activities over rigid ritualism; this tradition culminated in a synthetic, multi-function hall typology, as seen in the case of Patrick Geddes’ Outlook Tower. Thus though seeking the same end – to transform society for the better – the two Positivist groups went about their work in inherently different ways.

The politics of standardising and subordinating subjects: the nomadic settlement project in Tibetan areas of Amdo

Abstract Since 2006, Tibetan nomads have been resettled into centralised urban settlement towns as part of China's effort at 'Building a New Socialist Countryside' in Tibetan areas. The official narrative of this new policy falls very much within the ambit of neoliberal mantras, such as bringing modernisation, economic efficiency, market-oriented personhood, comfortable living and, most importantly, environmental protection and national security to its west. At the heart of such policies is the idea that the west would remain 'backward' and 'unruly' if left alone or uncared for. In this context, this paper aims to elucidate how a sense of backwardness that ostensibly poses a threat to social and political stability is transformed into the spatial and social reorganisation of Tibetan pastoral regions. Drawing on my ethnographic research in the summer of 2012, this paper takes the newly built resettlement village in Jentsa (established in 2009), Amdo, as a case study to explore how a multitude of actors on the ground have come to view, respond, and cope with this new policy by simultaneously relying on and incorporating the new space, and by constituting alternative forms of participation and social space. I argue that, if we are to understand the multiplicity of interactions and actors at play in the process of implementing nomadic settlement project in Tibetan areas in general, and in Jentsa in particular, we need to develop models of understanding these relationships that acknowledge their complexity.

No longer tracking greenery in high altitudes: Pastoral practices of Rupshu nomads and their implications for biodiversity conservation

Nomadic pastoralism has thrived in Asia’s rangelands for several millennia by tracking seasonal changes in forage productivity and coping with a harsh climate. This pastoralist lifestyle, however, has come under intense transformations in recent decades due to socio-political and land use changes. One example is of the high-altitude trans-Himalayan rangelands of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India: major socio-political reorganisation over the last five decades has significantly impacted the traditional pasture use pattern and resources. We outline the organizational transformations and movement patterns of the Rupshu pastoralists who inhabit the region. We demonstrate the changes in terms of intensification of pasture use across the region as well as a social reorganisation due to accommodation of Tibetan refugees following the Sino-Indian war in 1961 to 1962. We focus in particular on the Tso Kar basin - an important socio-ecological system of livestock herding and biodiversity in the eastern Ladakh region. The post-war developmental policies of the government have contributed to these modifications in traditional pasture use and present a threat to the rangelands as well as to the local biodiversity. In the Tso Kar basin, the number of households and livestock has almost doubled while pasture area has declined by half. These changes have potentially negative consequences for the long-term resilience of nomadic pastoralism as well as for the survival of rare local wildlife. To increase the pastoralist standard of living, having fewer pastoralists may be the only solution, and alternative livelihood options may bring this about. Development programmes should concentrate on enhancing opportunities for herders so that there is a greater diversity of employment opportunities and potentially better chances for the persistence of biodiversity.

Transcriptomic analysis of the stress response to weaning at housing in bovine leukocytes using RNA-seq technology

BackgroundWeaning of beef calves is a necessary husbandry practice and involves separating the calf from its mother, resulting in numerous stressful events including dietary change, social reorganisation and the cessation of the maternal-offspring bond and is often accompanied by housing. While much recent research has focused on the physiological response of the bovine immune system to stress in recent years, little is known about the molecular mechanisms modulating the immune response. Therefore, the objective of this study was to provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the physiological response to weaning at housing in beef calves using Illumina RNA-seq.ResultsThe leukocyte transcriptome was significantly altered for at least 7 days following either housing or weaning at housing. Analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed that four main pathways, cytokine signalling, transmembrane transport, haemostasis and G-protein-coupled receptor (GPRC) signalling were differentially regulated between control and weaned calves and underwent significant transcriptomic alterations in response to weaning stress on day 1, 2 and 7. Of particular note, chemokines, cytokines and integrins were consistently found to be up-regulated on each day following weaning. Evidence for alternative splicing of genes was also detected, indicating a number of genes involved in the innate and adaptive immune response may be alternatively transcribed, including those responsible for toll receptor cascades and T cell receptor signalling.ConclusionsThis study represents the first application of RNA-Seq technology for genomic studies in bovine leukocytes in response to weaning stress. Weaning stress induces the activation of a number of cytokine, chemokine and integrin transcripts and may alter the immune system whereby the ability of a number of cells of the innate and adaptive immune system to locate and destroy pathogens is transcriptionally enhanced. Stress alters the homeostasis of the transcriptomic environment of leukocytes for at least 7 days following weaning, indicating long term effects of stress exposure in the bovine. The identification of gene signature networks that are stress activated provides a mechanistic framework to characterise the multifaceted nature of weaning stress adaptation in beef calves. Thus, capturing subtle transcriptomic changes provides insight into the molecular mechanisms that underlie the physiological response to weaning stress.

The monkey puzzle: a systematic review of studies of stress, social hierarchies, and heart disease in monkeys.

BackgroundIt is often suggested that psychosocial factors, such as stress, or one's social position, may play an important role in producing social gradients in human disease. Evidence in favour of this model of health inequalities has relied, in part, on studies of the health effects of the natural social hierarchies found among non-human primates. This study aimed to assess the strength of this evidence.Methodology/Principal FindingsA systematic review was carried out to identify all studies of psychosocial factors and coronary artery disease (CAD) in non-human primates. We searched databases (MEDLINE, PsycInfo, EMBASE, and Primatelit from inception to November 2010) to identify experimental and observational studies of the impact of social reorganisation, social instability, and disruption of dominance hierarchies on primate CAD outcomes. We also handsearched bibliographies and examined the citations to those studies in public health articles. Fourteen studies were found which presented evidence on CAD and social status and/or psychosocial stress. These suggested that the association between social status and disease may be sex-specific: in female monkeys dominant status may be protective, with subordinate females having a greater extent of atherosclerosis. In male monkeys the reverse may be the case.Conclusions/SignificanceOverall, non-human primate studies present only limited evidence for an association between social status and CAD, Despite this, there is selective citation of individual non-human primate studies in reviews and commentaries relating to human disease aetiology. Such generalisation of data from monkey studies to human societies does not appear warranted.

Centre and Periphery of Nano—A Norwegian Context

This work describes the nano field in Norway as currently emerging in the dynamics between two forms of nano research activities described along a centre-periphery axis. 1) There are strategic research initiatives committed to redeem the envisioned potential of the field by means of social and material reorganisation of existing research activities. This activity is seen as central as it is one of our premises that the standard circulating nano vision implies such a work of reorganisation. The fact that nano is often taken as a paradigmatic example of the shift from Mode-1 to Mode-2 research, supports this assumption. 2) In parallel to this activity, a wide variety of research projects pursuing nano strategies are being funded. We regard such research activity as peripheral in so far as the activity is not marked by being committed to the circulating nano vision, as may often be the case. In the process of reorganising, this article argues, the research activity at the periphery provides a crucial arena for discussing and validating what is to be achieved through the work of reorganisation that takes place at the centre. Our analysis is informed by two Norwegian cases. We examine a major nano research initiative at a Norwegian university as a centre and a research project utilising nanoparticles in fish vaccines as a periphery.

Time, space and touch at work: body work and labour process (re)organisation

With 'efficiency savings' the watchword for health and social care services, reorganisation and labour rationalisation are the order of the day. This article examines the difficulties involved in (re)organising work which takes bodies as its object, or material of production. It shows that working on bodies ('body work') systematically delimits possibilities for labour process rationalisation which, in turn, constrains reorganisation of the health and social care sector. It does this in three main ways. First: rigidity in the ratio of workers to bodies-worked-upon limits the potential to increase capital-labour ratios or cut labour. Secondly: the requirement for co-presence and temporal unpredictability in demand for body work diminish the spatial and temporal malleability of the labour process. Thirdly: the nature of bodies as a material of production--complex, unitary and responsive--makes it difficult to standardise, reorganise or rationalise work. A wide-ranging analysis of body work in health and social care, as well as other sectors, fleshes out these three constraints and shows that attempts to overcome them and reorganise the sector in pursuit of cost savings or 'efficiency', generate problems for workers and the patients, whose bodies they work upon.

Un mecenazgo fronterizo: El protector de indios Juan de Gándara y los ópatas de Opodepe (Sonora) a principios del siglo XIX

This study analyses the relations between the protector of Indians, Juan de Gandara and the villages of Sonora under his protection. This relationship is understood here as an effective mechanism of social reorganisation which allowed the Indians to confront the dismantling of their communities in the context of the collapse of the missions. At the same time, the relationship is identified as fundamental to the consolidation of the political capital of the new regional elites. Eventually this response would contribute decisively to the shaping of the political factions that dominated the scene in Sonora during the middle of the 19 th century, whose existence cannot be explained without this type of alliance.

The changing abundance of backed artefacts in south-eastern Australia: a response to Holocene climate change?

The timing of the introduction, proliferation and decline of backed artefacts in Australia has been much debated. In south-eastern Australia, after initially appearing at least 8500 years ago, backed artefacts greatly increased in number between 4000 and 3500 years ago to the extent that they are found in numerous sites and are recorded in large numbers in individual sites from that time. From about 1500 years ago they declined markedly in number and had seemingly disappeared by the time of British colonization. Models explaining their proliferation advance the proposition that increased backed artefact production was triggered by heightened foraging risk and/or social re-organisation brought about by a change in climate to a regime which was cooler and drier than any other time during the Holocene combined with intensified ENSO climatic conditions. Our study develops this hypothesis by inferring the use of backed artefacts at Mussel Shelter in the Sydney Basin through an integrated use-wear and residue analysis. These inferences provide new insights into the nature of the evolutionary changes in tool production and use in response to the period of altered climatic conditions.

Model Communities and Respectable Residents? Home and Housing in a Low-income Residential Estate in the Western Cape, South Africa

Recent work on the post-apartheid city has paid little attention to how people grapple with new opportunities for urban living. This article explores the ways in which housing provision precipitated complex moral reasoning and social reorganisation among impoverished residents of a Cape Town shantytown as they attempted to actualise their ideals of respectability. These ideals overlapped with those of the state and planners associated with the housing project, but also differed in significant respects. For residents, ordentlikheid (decency, respectability) is concerned with appearances and with cementing reciprocal relationships, while for bureaucrats, respectability is an individual characteristic, fostered and manifested via education, responsibility and appearances. Tracing out the relationship between material conditions and ideational constructs, this article argues that, at certain moments, ongoing processes crystallise discursive forms and material practices in ways that draw attention to the grounds of their making and simultaneously make clear their unfinished nature.

De-Development in Eastern Kyrgyzstan and Persistence of Semi-Nomadic Livestock Herding

Abstract This article discusses postcollective herding practices of Kyrgyzstan's seminomadic pastoralists illustrated by case studies of herders in the highland areas of eastern Kyrgyzstan in 2004. After independence in 1991, the privatisation of all livestock meant the burden of risk devolved onto individuals rather than networks, such as collectives or clan units, for the first time in the history of these pastoralists. The ongoing process of social reorganisation which followed livestock privatisation has resulted in a wide variety of coping strategies being employed by herders, including both short- and long-distance migration as partnerships, individual families, extended families or reorganised herding cooperatives. At the same time, reduced livestock numbers since independence have left vast areas of grazing lands vacant. In spite of the many dramatic changes of the last 150 years, migration patterns and cultural identity among Kyrgyz herders have persisted.