Abstract This article examines conflicts over the meaning and organization of work on the waterfront of Georgetown, Guyana. In the Anglophone Caribbean, “free” wage labor was a key component of the post-emancipation civilizing mission. Afro-Caribbean peoples, however, had their own ideas about the place of wage labor in their individual and collective lives. For many freed peoples and their descendants, wage labor was often one “livelihood strategy” among many, and it did not always take priority over other individual needs, or familial and communal concerns. This article investigates how these different understandings of wage labor shaped the multifaceted worlds of Georgetown’s Afro-Guianese waterfront workers. The first part examines the social relations and hierarchies that mediated the organization of work on the waterfront, influenced waterfront workers’ attitude toward wage labor and its relationship to other aspects of their lives, and facilitated episodes of industrial protest, including strikes when Afro-Guianese and Indo-Guianese workers co-operated in defiance of British Guiana’s racialized political economy. The second part focuses more narrowly on the workplace and the colonial authorities’ ongoing search for answers to the labor question. The article contends that decasualization—which complemented the wider post-1945 development and welfare agenda—represented a new iteration of the post-emancipation project to organize Afro-Guianese peoples’ lives around wage labor. Against the backdrop of rising anti-colonial sentiment and the subsequent split within the nationalist movement, the article demonstrates that although the colonial authorities had some success in creating a cohort of regular waterfront workers, decasualization was no panacea for the labor question.

The study focused on educational inequality, its influence on social stratification, and policies concerning access to higher education, while considering educational opportunities equity among students. Adopting a quantitative methodology, data were collected from a pool of 384 individuals of varying ages, genders, academic levels, and social-economic standings. Subsequent data analyses employed correlational, regression, and ANOVA techniques. As for demographic data, the sample was diverse and almost balanced concerning the representation of masculine and feminine students, though there was a high concentration of students to be found within the undergraduate tier, and from public institutions as well. The findings from the correlational analysis were consistent with Hypothesis 1 and revealed the existence of a substantial negative relationship between educational inequality and the access to higher education, indicating that as educational inequality increases, the access to higher education opportunities decreases. The Regression results verified Hypothesis 2, showing that the absence of social mobility negatively impacts educational attainment, confirming that social divisions hinder educational achievement. The results of the ANOVA confirmed Hypothesis 3. Thus, the impact of educational policies is significant in the equalization of opportunities at the higher educational level, demonstrating that policies whose design is inclusive and equitable minimize disparities. The results, therefore, signify the necessity of narrowing demographic disparities, the removal of inequitable social structures, and the adoption of policies that provide equal opportunities. The study posits that such targeted reforms will minimize social inequities and enhance social mobility through education.

BackgroundResearch on intersectional inequalities in wellbeing over the life course remains scarce. This study assessed inequalities in perceived health from adolescence to early adulthood across multiple social background characteristics.MethodsData from 2548 participants in the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC1986) during the 16- and 33-year surveys were included. We employed a novel approach, the Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (MAIHDA), to investigate social intersectional inequality in perceived health. The intersectional social strata were formed across dimensions of sex, family type, parental education, parental income, and the number of close friends, all measured during adolescence.ResultsGirls without close friends and with varying family characteristics (family type, parental education, and income) were less likely to report higher health ratings during adolescence and adulthood (variance partitioning coefficient (%) of 3.72 with a 95% credible interval of 1.62 - 6.91). Notably, girls from low-income families who did not live with two parents experienced the steepest decline in perceived health from adolescence to adulthood. In contrast, girls from higher-income, two-parent families experienced an increase in perceived health during this time. The variation observed across social strata was primarily explained by additive main effects, as indicated by a substantial (93.75%) proportional change in variance, with no significant intersectional interactions identified.ConclusionsOur findings have significant implications for future research and policy by identifying disadvantaged groups (i.e., those who experienced lower perceived health from adolescence to early adulthood), such as girls and boys from low-income families who lack close friends. This helps in developing targeted wellbeing interventions throughout the life course.Key messages• Health inequalities vary significantly across social strata during adolescence and early adulthood.• Girls and boys from low-income families who lack close friends report lower health ratings.

Abstract Birthweight is associated with the social determinants of health and has long-term effects on health and socioeconomic outcomes. During crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, we may observe stronger effects of social determinants on birthweight because of the unequally shared socioeconomic and health-related burden across social strata. Importantly, if crises change the association between social determinants and birthweight, this may cause differences in social inequalities in life course outcomes between exposed and unexposed cohorts. We used register-based data covering births in Brazil, Ecuador, Finland, Spain, and the United States between 2015-2021. To estimate social inequalities in birthweight before and during the pandemic, we used multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy. Strata were based on parental socioeconomic circumstances, maternal age, partnership status, and parity. In our analysis, we distinguished between exposed cohorts conceived before and during the pandemic. Across countries and periods, strata-covariates accounted for 1.5% to 3.2% of the variation in birthweight. Comparing unexposed births with those exposed to the pandemic in utero, change in social inequalities in birthweight measured by the variance partition coefficient ranged from +0.4%-points [95%CI:0;0.8] among male babies in Brazil to -0.3 [95%-0.5;-0.11] among male babies in Spain. Parental socioeconomic circumstances, maternal age, partnership status, and parity accounted for only 1.5% to 3.2% of the variation in birthweight across included countries with little to no change caused by the pandemic. Our results thus suggest that the pandemic has not noticeably changed social inequalities in birthweight. This indicates that in utero exposure to pandemic mitigation measures did not unequally affect birthweight despite the unequally distributed burden of the pandemic across social strata. Key messages • Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, parental socioeconomic circumstances, maternal age, partnership status, and parity accounted for only 1.5% to 3.2% of the variation in birthweight. • Social inequalities in birthweight among in utero exposed births conceived before and during the COVID-19 pandemic did not change compared to babies born before the pandemic.

The British Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth-century endangered a great deal of contemporary concern about the dissolution of social norms in the trauma of war. This included not only the social hierarchy but also binary gender roles: which contemporary observers feared where being blurred by the conflict. However, this period also saw the maturation of print as a propaganda medium, and concern about gender was a valuable polemical tool in the newsbooks’ struggle for popular opinion. The Parliamentarian newsbook Mercurius Britanicus was particularly prone to this, repeatedly using the term “hermaphrodite” to describe enemies ranging from the royalist press to Parliamentarian turncoats. In the hands of Britanicus, as well as in rival Royalist publications, the hermaphroditic trope was used to collapse opponents’ gentle masculine or feminine honour, imply their politics’ monstrous nature, and as a tool of mockery against other “intelligencers”.

Neural mechanism of the sexually dimorphic winner effect in mice.

Caste, often understood as a social category, has economic implications in the labour market and stands for the division of labourers, as per Mandal (2013) . Caste in India has thereby determined the position that one has in the social hierarchy, and at the same time the labour that one can be considered suitable for. Similarly, the gender-based strict separation of spheres between the public realm and the private realm has consistently determined the nature of work women are considered apt and suitable for. The intersection of these two identities of caste and gender and the experiences therein form a predominant part of the discourse around dalit women. The site for production of these discourses and reproduction of knowledge systems can be aptly traced to that of the workplace in which dalit women work, as their labour constitutes an important part of what they think about themselves, how they are perceived within the society and the larger debate on social exclusion. This article aims to comprehend the layered and multi-dimensional experiences of social exclusion and the narratives of the dalit women employed in the organised sector, specifically the education sector of the Chandigarh region.

Abstract Background In Sweden, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among pregnant women has increased and there are signs of growing social inequalities. Intersectionality-informed approaches have become common in epidemiology, as they provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of health inequalities by considering the combined impacts of multiple intersecting identities. Therefore, we investigated intersectional inequalities in body mass index (BMI) among Swedish pregnant women. Methods This study utilized data from the Swedish Medical Birth Register, focusing on pregnancies among women aged 18 years and older between 2014 and 2017. The final analytical sample comprised 218,783 women. BMI was measured during the first antenatal care visit. Five dimensions of social identity-age, education, income, place of birth, and cohabitation status-were used to construct 108 intersectional social strata. Intersectional MAIHDA analysis was conducted using multilevel linear regression models. Results Predicted BMI for each social stratum ranged from 19 kg/m² to 22.5 kg/m². Being over 35 years old and having lower educational levels were associated with higher BMI. However, women born outside Sweden had lower BMI than those born in Sweden. 4.5% of the variation in BMI was attributed to differences across social strata. Education accounted for 52% of the between-stratum variance, age for 15.1% and place of birth for 6.4%. The fully adjusted model reduced between-stratum variance by 81.5%. Thus 0.8% of the variance was attributable to intersectional interaction effects. Conclusions This study highlights the value of considering multiple intersecting social identities for a more nuanced understanding of BMI inequalities. However, considering the low degree of clustering, our findings suggest an emphasis on universal rather than targeted interventions to effectively reduce overweight and obesity among pregnant women. Key messages • An intersectional approach provides a detailed mapping of socioeconomic and demographic inequalities in BMI among pregnant women. • Universal interventions that account for intersecting social identities may be effective to reduce overweight and obesity among pregnant women.

The exponentially increasing capability of data engineering has radically redefined the interaction between individuals and their personal information, subjecting privacy to unprecedented threats as well as informed consent and democratic governance in digital environments. Modern enterprise analytics infrastructures illustrate unrivalled computational power, allowing a distributed architecture to enable real-time processing of behavioral data while supporting holistic digital profile formation through advanced integration methods. Stream processing platforms like Apache Kafka and Apache Flink, along with distributed computing designs like Apache Spark, make petabyte-level analytics possible that operate at the speed and level of complexity threatening traditional consent models. Technical data collection systems running on JavaScript tags, tracking pixels, and integrated software development kits operate below the thresholds of user awareness, making older consent models untenable because privacy policies demand comprehension capabilities beyond reasonable human ability. Enterprise analytics-driven automated decision-making systems create new social stratification mechanisms via black-box algorithmic processes that decide access to banking services, jobs, insurance, and criminal justice outcomes based on non-observable and unchallengeable analytical models. Governance norms like GDPR and CCPA are social attempts to reclaim democracy over data engineering practices, placing technical demands of data portability, erasure, access, and correction that challenge established architectural paradigms. Still, much remains unmatched between a legislative purpose and technical application reality, with technology developing faster than regulation has adapted, and enforcement still under-invested compared to a modern scale of data processing operation intensity.

This article reconstructs the biographies of hammersmiths at the Yekaterinburg plant in the first half of the 18th century. The subject of the study is the professional and social group of hammersmiths at the Yekaterinburg plant in the first half of the 18th century as a key element of the industrial structure of the Ural mining and metallurgy sector. The study covers the formation and functioning of the hammersmith community, their labor and social relations, and the conditions for professional growth. Particular attention is paid to the individual biographies of the hammersmiths, which reflect the specifics of factory life, the dynamics of career trajectories, and the influence of administrative and economic factors on the workers' situation. Through an analysis of personal destinies, patterns of development in the industrial environment and social organization of Ural factories in the 18th century are revealed. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the biographies of representatives of this professional group and identify the factors that determined their social status, professional connections, and role in the production process. The methodological basis is formed by the principles of the "new biographical history," focused on the study of individual destinies as a tool for understanding the social and cultural processes of the era. The novelty of the study lies in its systematization of disparate factual data on the lives and work of hammersmiths and the identification of mechanisms of self-government among the artisan community. This study, using archival documents, identified the profile and career paths of more than twenty craftsmen. Working conditions, the structure of craftsmen's teams, the payment system, and disciplinary control were analyzed. Labor dynasties that determined the continuity of craft traditions were identified, as well as elements of internal self-regulation within the professional community, expressed in the independent election of inspectors and elders. The average age of a craftsman was determined to be approximately 45 years, reflecting the maturity of the professional workforce and the stability of the production environment. The obtained results provide a more detailed description of the social structure of 18th-century factory society, demonstrating the relationship between administrative control and internal corporate ethics. The findings complement existing understanding of social stratification and work culture in the 18th-century Ural mining industry. The study's findings allow us to consider hammersmiths as a key element of the industrial and social organization of the Ural mining industry, and the "new biographical history" method as an effective tool for studying the microhistorical aspects of Russia's industrial development.

Institutional change and health equity: Tracing the impact of market transition on health inequalities in China, 1993-2015.

Social hierarchy stereotypes play an important role in triggering intergroup prejudices. However, few researchers explored how people with different power and status perceive the differences in the social hierarchy stereotypes of ingroup and outgroup. We used the probe recognition paradigm to examine the ingroup-outgroup effect of implicit social hierarchy stereotypes on warmth and competence. The results showed that the high-power groups showed an implicit ingroup preference on competence but no warmth-based bias, whereas low-power groups showed an implicit outgroup preference on competence and an implicit ingroup preference on warmth; the high-status groups showed implicit ingroup preferences on both competence and warmth, and low-status groups showed an implicit outgroup preference on competence and an implicit ingroup preference on warmth. This suggests that power and status play different roles in predicting the implicit stereotypes of warmth and competence.

Unveiling the epigenetic signatures: DNA methylation patterns in the social hierarchies of male giant freshwater prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii)

Emergence of social hierarchies in a society with two competitive groups

Molecular and neural control of social hierarchy by a forebrain-thalamocortical circuit.

Plasticity of brain sexual dimorphism as revealed by sex changing fish.

Religious Authority and the Reinforcement of Social Hierarchy in Mulk Raj Anand’s The Village

Collective memory and history textbooks.

Basavanna (1105–1167), a 12th-century philosopher, poet, and social reformer from Karnataka, laid the foundations of the Lingayat movement, which sought to challenge social hierarchies, ritualism, and caste-based discrimination. As a minister in the court of King Bijjala of the Kalachuri dynasty, Basavanna promoted equality, rational devotion, and social reform, emphasizing personal spiritual experience over ritualistic practices. He encouraged women’s participation in religious and social life, promoted labor as dignified work, and denounced caste-based oppression. Basavanna’s philosophy, expressed through Vachanas—short, pithy poems in Kannada—combined devotion with social critique, making complex spiritual ideas accessible to the masses.This paper examines Basavanna’s contributions to social reform, egalitarian philosophy, and the development of the Lingayat community. It also explores the contemporary relevance of his teachings in addressing caste inequality, gender discrimination, and social exclusion in modern India. Basavanna’s insistence on equality, rational devotion, and social responsibility continues to inspire movements for social justice, democratization of religious practice, and gender empowerment. His life and work provide a historical lens to understand the enduring struggle for social reform and spiritual egalitarianism in Indian society.

Peer tutor preparations' impact on tutor-tutee-congruence: Insights from expert interviews.