The Luwu Palace serves as a cultural emblem of the Bugis people, representing their traditional social hierarchy and political power. This study seeks to analyze the historical and physical evolution of the palace and its function in preserving Bugis identity in the context of colonial impact and contemporary development. The research utilizes a qualitative-descriptive methodology, incorporating literature review, visual analysis, and field observation. Data were gathered from historical documents, archival records, and direct observations. Research demonstrates that despite alterations in the palace's structure and purpose, its fundamental cultural values persist. The creation of the Langkanae replica and the adaptive repurposing of the palace into a museum demonstrate continuous endeavors to reinterpret and safeguard the Bugis cultural environment and identity in a modern setting.

Studies dating back several decades have suggested that humans prefer potential mates with dissimilar HLA genotypes. Evidence for actualized disassortative mating based on the human-specific MHC remains inconclusive. For instance, cosmopolitan populations have often exhibited the opposite trend whereby assortative mating at the MHC is observed, indicating that social stratification may overwhelm potential biological mate preferences. However, small-scale, endogamous populations–whose social structures more closely resemble those throughout most of human evolution–have been largely overlooked. Here, we assess HLA dissimilarity among Himba pastoralists from Namibia, where socially accepted concurrency allows individuals to maintain both arranged marital and self-selected (“love match”) partnerships. This provides a rare opportunity to directly test HLA similarity across contrasting partnership types (arranged vs chosen) within the same social system (n = 249 observed partnerships). We find no difference in HLA dissimilarity (neither at the genotype nor protein divergence level) between partnership types, nor in their fitness benefits to potential offspring as assessed via computationally predicted pathogen binding affinities. The effects of the partnership types likewise do not differ from a random, background distribution of 18,487 possible unrelated pairings. Finally, we detect extensive haplotype sharing across the HLA region, suggesting that episodes of fluctuating positive selection may be a stronger force maintaining HLA polymorphism than disassortative mating, even in an evolutionarily relevant social context.

This article argues for a concept of misogyny as socially produced negative affects and emotions mobilized towards women that normalize not only hierarchical binary relations between men and women but also hierarchical relations between men. The article draws upon Samantha Wrisley's critique of Kate Manne's influential definition of misogyny as a patriarchal enforcement mechanism. Manne dismisses as naïve the commonplace definition of misogyny as hatred of women because, she claims, it focuses on individual psychology. However, sociological analysis of affect and emotion does not require concern with the individual psyche. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work on racist affects and emotions, this article argues that misogynist affects and emotions produce masculine subjects in opposition to feminine subjects and a masculine hierarchy that ranks men according to their ability to dominate women and resist their wiles. Misogynist affects and emotions may be directed at anything or anyone coded feminine, not only at women who challenge patriarchal privilege. As illustrative examples of how misogynist texts produce male supremacist subjects and social hierarchies, this article analyses two texts by mainstream public figures: JD Vance's infamous ‘childless cat lady’ comments, and Jeremy Clarkson's call for Meghan, Duchess of Sussex to be paraded naked through British streets and pelted with excrement. The article also analyses texts by prominent manosphere figures Paul Elam and Andrew Tate. In line with Wrisley's suggestion that misogyny implicates an amalgam of emotions, this analysis shows how misogyny combines contempt, fear and desire. Furthermore, anxiety about falling for women's wiles and contempt for men who do so proved an equally important theme. Thus, these texts show how media, political leaders and influencers propagate misogynist affects and emotions that normalize hierarchical relationships between men and women, and between men.

Access to sanitation is a fundamental human necessity; however, in India, it remains unevenly distributed, influenced by social hierarchies, the urban-rural divide, and gender-specific vulnerabilities. This study utilizes data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) (2019-21) focusing on Uttar Pradesh and its district Lucknow, to explore how sanitation access is intertwined with health, nutrition, gender equality, and sustainable development, particularly in relation to Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) and other related goals. A sociological approach is employed, incorporating conflict theory, feminist viewpoints, and structural functionalism to analyze the quantitative data. The research reveals that despite advancements in sanitation, notable disparities continue in Uttar Pradesh and Lucknow, as evident in varying health and nutritional outcomes, gender-specific sanitation shortcomings, and urban-rural disparities. The policy recommendations emphasize the need for profound behavioral changes, governance at the community level, and addressing structural inequalities beyond merely providing the necessary infrastructure

The Macau Public Bond Patriotic Movement（澳门公债救国运动） was a patriotic campaign launched between 1937 and 1939, in which Macau's overseas Chinese community responded to the Nationalist Government's call by mobilising local Chinese residents to purchase Patriotic Bonds and National Defence Bonds. Under mainland directives and led by local Chinese figures, Macau established two specialised institutions for bond solicitation: the Macau Branch of the National Salvation Bond Promotion Association（澳门救国公债劝募会分会）and the Macau Branch of the Guangdong Provincial National Defence Bond Association（粤省国防公债会澳门分会）. Amidst nationwide mobilisation for bond purchases and national salvation, Macau developed a multi-tiered, multidimensional subscription system that spanned social strata, alongside distinctive solicitation mechanisms. Drawing upon newspaper archives published between 1937 and 1939, this study traces the developmental trajectory, organisational characteristics, and patterns of public participation in Macau's bond-saving movement. Finally, it places the Macau case within the temporal and spatial context of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, conducting comparative research with bond-saving models in mainland China and Hong Kong.

This paper argues for a reconceptualisation of migrant work as a critical site for negotiating borders and belonging, focusing on highly skilled Syrian migrants in the UK, a group often overlooked in migration scholarship. Through 17 narrative conversations, the study examines how borders are embodied, negotiated, carried and crossed in the everyday professional lives of this group. Grounded in affect and bordering theories and guided by a decolonial methodology, the study explores how these professionals navigate racial, political and social hierarchies within the UK’s socio-political context. Our study asks: What does it mean to cross a border when mobility gives way to emplacement? How do borders persist within racialised migrant bodies as they navigate work and belonging? Findings highlight the affective dimensions of migrant work, revealing tensions between imposed identities and the agency to redefine the self beyond victimhood. Work functions as both an anchor and a contested terrain where identities are negotiated, transformed, and, at times, placed at risk. As the first study of its kind on highly skilled Syrian migrants in the UK, this research contributes to migration scholarship by foregrounding work as a critical space where selfhoods are actively negotiated, with significant implications for migration scholarship and the politics of identity and belonging.

中文： 宋代是儒、释、道三教关系走向深度融合的关键时期，“三教合一”思潮不仅体现在思想层面，更在视觉艺术领域产生了极具代表性的文化产物——“三教图”。首先，从思想史背景来看，学界对宋代三教融合之理论内涵、各阶层实践及其社会文化影响的探讨，为理解三教图提供宏观语境。其次，学界聚焦于三教图本身，针对《三教图》《虎溪三笑图》等经典画作的个案研究，涵盖其图像志、风格流变、意识形态隐喻及艺术本体分析。再次，学界考察三教图在后世的题咏、地域文化建构以及在朝鲜、日本等东亚地区的传播与接受情况，展现其跨时空的文化影响力。总之，当前研究在整体性观照、社会维度分析及跨学科整合方面存在不足，未来可系统考察宋代三教图作为一种视觉叙事体系，如何主动参与并塑造了宋人的信仰秩序与文化观念。 English： The Song Dynasty marked a pivotal period in the profound integration of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. The “Three Teachings in Unity” movement manifested not only intellectually but also produced highly representative cultural artefacts in the visual arts: the “Three Teachings Diagrams”. Firstly, from the perspective of intellectual history, scholarly discussions on the theoretical underpinnings of the Three Teachings synthesis in the Song Dynasty, its practice across social strata, and its socio-cultural impact provide a macro-context for understanding the Three Teaching Paintings. Secondly, academic focus has centred on the paintings themselves, with case studies of classic works such as the Three Teaching Paintings and the Tiger-Creek Three-Laughter Picture covering iconography, stylistic evolution, ideological metaphor, and artistic analysis. Thirdly, scholarship examines the Three Teachings paintings' subsequent poetic inscriptions, their role in regional cultural construction, and their dissemination and reception across East Asia—including Korea and Japan—demonstrating their trans-temporal cultural influence. In summary, current research exhibits shortcomings in holistic observation, socio-historical analysis, and interdisciplinary integration. Future studies may systematically investigate how the Song Dynasty's Three Teachings paintings, as a visual narrative system, actively participated in and shaped contemporary Song beliefs and cultural concepts.

The purpose of this study is to determine how the social behavior of the Margoagung Village Community, especially Ngino Hamlet, in preserving local wisdom inherited from the ancestors of Mbah Bregas, especially in building community harmony. This field research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive method. This research was conducted by taking a case study in Ngino Hamlet, Margoagung Village, Seyegan Sub-district, Sleman Regency from June to July 2025. The informants of this study were the leaders, committees, traditional figures and all parties involved and witnessed directly the Merti activities of Margoagung Village. Data collection was carried out through observation, interviews and documentation. Data analysis was carried out through four stages, namely: data documentation, data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions/verification. The study findings show that the entire series of Merti activities of Mbah Bregas Village, Margoagung Village build community harmony through participation, cooperation and mutual cooperation without distinguishing religion, ethnicity, race, social strata and profession.

This study investigates the use of politeness strategies in the Bahasa Inggris textbook for Indonesian twelfth-grade students. It aims to identify statements explicitly expressing politeness within the textbook’s conversation exercises. Considering the cultural significance of politeness in Indonesian society, particularly within educational settings, the study highlights the importance of integrating culturally appropriate communication practices into English language teaching (ELT) materials. Employing a descriptive qualitative method, six chapters (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, and 14) were analyzed, resulting in 128 instances of politeness strategies. Among these, positive politeness emerged as the most dominant (50%), followed by negative politeness (25%), off-record strategies (11.7%), bald-on-record strategies (7.8%), and “Don’t do the FTA” (5.5%). The findings reveal that the conversational texts reflect Indonesian cultural norms by emphasizing respect, indirectness, and sensitivity to social hierarchy. This research evaluates ELT materials by promoting the integration of linguistically and culturally appropriate politeness strategies. It also encourages educators and textbook developers to prioritize politeness in instructional materials, enhancing students’ pragmatic competence in English communication.

In Nigeria, where access to affordable housing remains a persistent challenge, public servants in tertiary institutions are increasingly turning to community-driven solutions. This study quantitatively examines the role of staff cooperative societies as crucial enablers of housing aspirations, using data from a large-scale cross-sectional survey of 2,178 members across nine public tertiary institutions in Oyo State, Nigeria. The findings reveal high homeownership rates (>70%), confirming cooperatives as effective, self-reliant systems in meeting housing aspirations of members. However, a multivariate interaction model demonstrates that this success is highly conditional and unevenly distributed across different groups. The analysis reveals a significant academic advantage at lower-middle income thresholds (specifically, N100,000–N200,000), as the probability of homeownership for academic staff increases substantially, whereas it declines for their non-academic peers in the same income bracket. This conditional disparity based on professional status exists alongside a significant and persistent gender gap that disadvantages female members. We conclude that staff cooperative societies function as a potent but imperfect engine of housing aspiration, reflecting how broader institutional and social hierarchies shape outcomes. The study highlights the need for policies that support these cooperatives and address the intersecting inequalities within their ranks and operations.

ABSTRACT Drawing on Persian travelogues, diaries, letters, cookbooks, endowment records, and inventories, this article explores the variations in everyday rhythms of food consumption, the centrality of food hospitality to status, honor, and hierarchy, and the social functions of votive offerings and festive meals. Methodologically, it engages with theories of everyday life, the gift, and conspicuous consumption to understand culturally significant forms of social exchange around food. This article argues that the exchange of food hospitality was one of the main ways through which society reproduced itself. At one end of the spectrum, food offered by those of inferior status to those of superior status was a tribute, implying domination. On the other hand, food offered by superiors to inferiors embodied a redistribution of resources, largess, and legitimacy. In both cases, food hospitality instantiated and reinforced social hierarchy.

This study explores the perception of English as a symbol of prestige among Pakistani university students and examines how their language attitudes reflect broader social hierarchies and identity formations. Drawing on the framework of sociolinguistics and language ideology, the research investigates how students’ linguistic preferences and attitudes toward English and indigenous languages manifest in educational and social domains. Data were collected through a mixed-method approach involving a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with 100 undergraduate students from both public and private universities in Pakistan. Findings revealed that English is widely perceived as a language of power, education, and upward mobility, while indigenous languages are associated with cultural identity but lower socioeconomic status. The study highlights how the dominance of English reinforces linguistic inequality and shapes students’ aspirations, self-perceptions, and social belonging. Implications for language policy and education in multilingual societies like Pakistan are also discussed.

Between care and contagion: Insights from the endotoxin model into the social facets of sickness.

ABSTRACT What political significance do widely-shared sources on social media carry? Efforts at documenting media content have produced useful insights about political phenomena, including right-wing populist movements that have recently been theorized as comprising defensive publics which seek to preserve social, economic, and cultural hierarchies that privilege white “nationals.” In France, the concept of defensive publics is particularly useful for understanding how right-wing identitarian and nationalist actors use social media to mobilize publics to defend hierarchies framed as under siege by immigration, multiculturalism, and global liberal elites. Building on literature about illiberal communication and the illiberal public sphere, we argue that patterns of sources’ visibility – not just content – also serve defensive purposes. Using computational analysis of 1.16 million French language immigration-related posts on Twitter/X and ideological embeddings of 44,810 of these users, we show how far-right-leaning users flood feeds with hyper-partisan sources, particularly on immigration, although they also share ideologically varied sources. Then, interviews with 13 high-profile far-right-affiliated posters who include senior French politicians reveal how these practices support defensive political aims. Sharing hyper-partisan sources outside the “elitist” mainstream redresses perceived censorship by mainstream media, while sharing mainstream sources signals credibility and respectability, even as these actors maintain critiques of the very same media. Meanwhile, reposting sources with statistical and quantitative evidence serves to obscure overtly white supremacist ideologies while advancing anti-immigration agendas. We conclude that sharing practices themselves function as rhetorical resources that highly-visible members of defensive publics use to reassert symbolic and political dominance in a contested media environment.

Introduction . In the context of the rapid digitalization of Russian society, digital inequality has transformed into a systemic factor of social stratification, requiring comprehensive diagnostics based on the integration of quantitative and qualitative data. Methodology and sources . The research methodology is based on a three-level model of sociological diagnostics (operational, subject-adaptive, general methodological levels), combining 12 key indicators from official statistics (Rosstat, Ministry of Finance) and academic research (HSE, RANEPA), which allows us to identify not only explicit but also latent forms of inequality. Results and discussion . The results of the analysis revealed the paradox of “false inclusion”, the cumulative advantage effect, and critical points of no return at which groups lose their adaptive potential, which confirms Bourdieu's hypothesis about digital capital as a key mediator of social mobility. The results demonstrate that traditional infrastructure solutions exacerbate inequality, requiring a transition to digital emancipation and algorithmic transparency policies, especially for regions with low levels of digital inclusion. Conclusion . The formation of the diagnostic methodology highlights the universality of the proposed model, which has proven predictive accuracy and adaptability to various social processes, from educational inequality to migration trajectories, which opens up new prospects for evidence-based policies in the digital age.

We characterize the way human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) stigma hinders HIV conversations and testing. Using grounded theory principles, we analyzed in-depth interviews of the experiences of select Philippine key populations (groups with high HIV burden) and their families: 19 men who have sex with men (KPM), 16 transgender women (KPW), and 16 parents of KPM/W. Results show how KPM/W protect the state of being respected by others (management of social standing), a task they engage in by strategically modulating behavior in different life domains, including when considering HIV conversations and testing. Our results specify the management of social standing as an object being threatened by stigma and as a process making KPM/W behavior susceptible to the influence of HIV stigma, even for KPM/W who may not possess the mark of positive serostatus. This raises questions about the theorizing of stigma, which traditionally has focused on the susceptibility of marked but not unmarked individuals.

ABSTRACT Relational egalitarians oppose social hierarchy. Or, more precisely, they oppose intolerable social hierarchy. Stigma is often included among those unequal forms of relating that relational egalitarians ought to oppose, but there are circumstances in which stigmatizing behaviors or group identities might be strategically important for opposing social inequalities. Working through different responses to this puzzle, in this paper I advance the view that stigma is neutral, such that relational egalitarians should only oppose forms of it that are unwarranted.

Language attitudes are a central topic in sociolinguistics since they reveal how people feel, think, and behave toward different languages, dialects, or speech varieties. These attitudes can influence language use, policy, identity, and even social hierarchy in a sociolinguistic setting. Language attitudes refer to the beliefs, feelings, and predispositions people have about a language or its speakers, and they can be positive, negative, or neutral, which often shape social interactions, educational outcomes, and linguistic change. By analyzing scholars' perspectives on the analysis of human behavior in sociological settings, this paper will identify significant reasons why two generations from the same background behave differently and examine the influence of sociopolitical issues.

This article examines digital inequalities in Italy through a sociological lens, arguing that the digital divide is not merely a technological issue but a manifestation of broader social stratification. Drawing on data from ISTAT (2023–2024), the analysis explores disparities in Internet access and computer use among families with minors and young people aged 6–24. While connectivity has reached near universality, significant territorial, educational, and social gaps persist, reflecting enduring inequalities in resources and opportunities. The study interprets these patterns through the framework of first-, second-, and third-level digital divides, linking them to theory of cultural capital and digital capital. Results indicate that inequalities extend beyond access, encompassing differences in digital skills, motivation, and the capacity to translate online participation into educational or social advantages. Gendered expectations further influence these dynamics, shaping distinct patterns of engagement with technology. The discussion highlights how digitalization acts as a mechanism of social reproduction, where access and competence are mediated by pre-existing disparities in education and culture. From a policy perspective, the paper calls for a shift from infrastructure-oriented strategies toward capability-based digital education that fosters critical, ethical, and future-oriented digital citizenship.

This study critically analyzes how the Address-Based School Enrollment System, introduced in Türkiye in 2009, reproduces socio-economic inequalities in education. It shows how the discourse of equal opportunity in education creates as a class-based illusion and how school choice is constrained by spatial limitations. The study employed a phenomenological design and draws on semi-structured interviews with 27 parents from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. Findings indicate that parents from lower socio-economic backgrounds perceive the system as a source of inequality, injustice, and exclusion. In contrast, parents from higher socio-economic groups tend to view it positively in terms of safety, convenience, and access to services. The system is also frequently circumvented through informal practices such as false address registration and favoritism, resulting in ethically and socially problematic outcomes. Spatially based school enrollment restricts access to quality education along class lines and weakens cultural diversity. Overall, the Address-Based School Enrollment System functions less as a mechanism for ensuring equal opportunity than as a driver of deeper class divisions.