Social Subjugation Research Articles

Socio-Economic Status and Living Condition of Widows in Rural Bangladesh

This paper aims to understand the socio-economic status and living conditions of rural widows in Parila Union, Paba Upazila, Rajshahi District, Bangladesh focusing on their socio-cultural deprivation, social security, and community participation. The research covered 16 villages and included social surveys that captured the experiences of 201 widows. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, the study reveals the multifaceted challenges widows face, including social isolation, financial instability, and vulnerability to harassment and criticism. The transition from wifehood to widowhood marks a significant shift in a woman's status within the community, often leading to reduced social participation and economic hardship. The findings indicate that while a majority of widows maintain some degree of community involvement, their participation in social and cultural events diminishes post-widowhood due to stigmatization and financial constraints. The study examines the economic, social, and emotional support systems available to these widows, revealing a lack of comprehensive formal support in Bangladesh, with most assistance coming from family and community members. Many widows lack regular financial support, and the government’s widow allowance is insufficient. The study shows that aged widows, while able to coexist within families, are often excluded from decision-making processes and are deprived of respect and medical facilities, increasing their vulnerability. These socio-economic challenges, including economic deprivation, social subjugation, and humiliation, underscore the critical needs of widows and highlight the necessity for improved support systems to enhance their quality of life. Social and cultural participation diminishes post-widowhood due to stigmatization and financial constraints, while security concerns restrict their mobility, especially at night. Additionally, the study highlights the adverse impact on children of widows, who often suffer from bullying and lack of support. Despite these challenges, some widows exhibit resilience, leveraging community ties for support. The study underscores the urgent need for comprehensive support systems to improve the quality of life for widows in rural Bangladesh, addressing both their economic needs and social reintegration.

Похід Максима Кривоноса у Поділля й Південно-Східну Волинь та його воєнно-політичні наслідки (червень-липень 1648 року).

The purpose of the article is to find out the biography of Maksym Kryvonis at the beginning of the Cossack uprising of 1648, the campaign on the territory of Podillia and South-Eastern Volyn, its course, military actions, the political self-awareness of the participants of the expedition and its consequences for the development of the Ukrainian National Revolution in the summer of 1648. The methodological foundation is based on the concepts of the "Annals" and "New Social History" schools, as well as the principles of historicism, objectivity, reliance on historical sources, systematicity, and comprehensiveness. The main research methods were narrative, reconstructive, chronological, comparative, historical-genetic, and synchronous. The scientific novelty lies in an attempt for the first time in historiography to reconstruct a complete picture of the liberation campaign of M. Kryvonis in Podillia and South-Eastern Volyn, the program requirements of its participants, and the military-political consequences for the development of the revolutionary struggle in the summer of 1648. Conclusions. The study of the discovered complex of sources and scientific literature gives reason to see M. Kryvonis as an outstanding leader of the national liberation, religious and social struggle of the population of Right-bank Ukraine, which began to transform into the National Revolution. The campaign began at the end of the first decade of June with his capture of Pogrebyshchi and ended at the end of July with B. Khmelnytsky’s recall to his camp. It went through two stages in its development: the 1st (approx. June 7-8 - early July) was marked by successful military actions with Polish hostages in the cities of Bratslav Region and the liberation of its territory from Polish rule; The 2nd (beginning of July - end of July) was mainly characterized by the struggle with magnate and government units, which ended with the successful battle of Starokostiantyniv on July 26-28, the retreat of the troops of Prince I. Vyshnevetskyi and the liberation of the territories of Southwestern Zhytomyr region and Southeastern Volyn. Thanks to his military and organizational talents, M. Kryvonis managed to transform the 400-th Cherkasy regiment at the beginning of the campaign into a 28-30-thousand-strong army at the time of its completion. Fully sharing the revolutionary sentiments of the Cossack commoners, who sought liberation from national-religious oppression and social subjugation, to achieve personal freedom, land ownership, and independence of Russia ("on the Vistula") from the Polish Crown, he became the informal leader of a radical group of elders, which transformed into the Ukrainian political proto-elite.

Epistemic Diversity and Epistemic Advantage: A Comparison of Two Causal Theories in Feminist Epistemology

AbstractFeminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories.

Moments of shame in the figural history of trans suicide

ABSTRACT This is an article about trans suicide – a longstanding consequence of a necropolitical order that perpetuates the disposability of trans life as a strategy of social subjugation and institutional maintenance. Although having become a more widely publicized crisis in recent years, trans suicide is not a new problem. Evidence of trans suicide dates to the early twentieth century, verifying its status as a malady that victimizes both youth and adults, stretches beyond American borders, and populates a range of discourses since well before the popularization of more contemporary identity categories, such as ‘transsexual’ or ‘transgender.’ In this article, I trace the historical circulation of trans suicide, with a primary focus on its movement across U.S. public culture. I show how trans people have long shaped meanings of trans suicide using a variety of communication channels. I argue that recurrent public renderings of trans suicide accrue force as potent articulations of trans shame, which arise directly from embodied experiences of gender dysphoria and other often hidden intersecting systems of oppression that make trans lives less livable. Thus, the figural history of trans suicide is a multi-generational structure of feeling constituted by an ongoing series of moments of shame that have shifted in tandem with evolutions in media culture and changing norms of trans visibility. These moments of shame open possibilities for challenging transnormative logics of representation and dismantling the necropolitical foundations of anti-trans death worlds.

Agonistic experience during development establishes inter-individual differences in approach-avoidance behaviour of crickets

Members of numerous animal species show consistent inter-individual differences in behaviours, but the forces generating animal “personality” or individuality remain unclear. We show that experiences gathered solely from social conflict can establish consistent differences in the decision of male crickets to approach or avoid a stimulus directed at one antenna. Adults isolated for 48 h from a colony already exhibit behavioural differences. Prior to staging a single dyadic contest, prospective winners approached the stimulus whereas prospective losers turned away, as they did also after fighting. In contrast, adults raised as nymphs with adult males present but isolated from them as last instar nymphs, all showed avoidance. Furthermore, adults raised without prior adult contact, showed no preferred directional response. However, following a single fight, winners from both these groups showed approach and losers avoidance, but this difference lasted only one day. In contrast, after 6 successive wins or defeats, the different directional responses of multiple winners and losers remained consistent for at least 6 days. Correlation analysis revealed examples of consistent inter-individual differences in the direction and magnitude of turning responses, which also correlated with individual aggressiveness and motility. Together our data reveal that social subjugation, or lack thereof, during post-embryonic and early adult development forges individuality and supports the notion of a proactive–reactive syndrome in crickets.

바이러스와 인공지능이 만날 때 : 팬데믹 시대의 기계적 노예화와 사회적 복종을 중심으로

팬데믹이 1년 넘어 지속되면서 이제까지 없었던 새로운 배치의 요인으로 인공지능과 바이러스가 무대에 등장하였다. 바이러스에 대한 방역 당국의 조치는 바이러스 자체를 관리함과 동시에 인간 개체를 예속화하고 인구와 사회를 통제하는 세 가지 차원에서 이루어진다. 팬더믹의 지속됨에 따라 규율사회적 강제가 강화되는 한편, 수치화로 인구에 대한 생명관리를 도모하는 ‘제4의 공간’이 확대되었다. ‘제4의 공간’에서는 몸의 ‘수치화(numeric)’를 통한 ‘양화된 자아(quantified self)’와 ‘가분체화(dividualization)’가 이루어진다. 질병관리청이라는 국가 기구를 중심으로 이루어지는 사회적 통제는 규율 준수를 앞세운 물리적 강제와 더불어 디지털 수치를 활용하는 통제 방식을 결합한다. 이 과정에서 개인에 대한 규율과 인구에 관한 통제가 혼합되면서 ’규율권력‘과 ’생명권력‘이 통합된 ’규율생명권력‘이라는 통치성이 나타난다. 이러한 통치성의 변화는 예속성의 성격과 그것이 이루어지는 방식에 영향을 미친다. 팬데믹 시대의 규율생명권력에서 나타나는 통치성과 예속성은 새로운 저항성이 출현하는 조건이자 환경이 된다. 이 논문에서는 팬데믹 시대의 예속성, 통치성, 저항성이 어떻게 이루어지며, 각각의 특징은 무엇인가를 살펴볼 것이다. 이를 통해 바이러스와 인공지능이 결합된 독특한 형태의 예속성과 통치성이 결합되면서 나타나는 규율생명권력 문제를 드러내고자 한다.

Syndemic statuses: Intersectionality and mobilizing for LGBTQ+ Latinx health equity after the Pulse shooting

As a theoretical framework, syndemics offers a way to examine interactions between two or more pathogens or social phenomena that interact synergistically to exacerbate poor health. The concept allows for interrogating the social, political, and economic circumstances responsible for disease clusters, but it insufficiently considers how social factors themselves interrelate to create complex forms of social subjugation. Failing to examine intersecting inequalities that produce the social contexts in which syndemic interactions occur will inhibit efforts to correct the root causes of poor health. To address this shortcoming, I argue there is a need for research on syndemics to be informed by intersectionality—a framework that considers how multiple interlocking types of oppression create distinct structural inequalities and life experiences. Advancing this argument, I draw from ethnographic fieldwork in Orlando, Florida, following the Pulse nightclub shooting, which disproportionately affected LGBTQ+ Latinx individuals who experience intersecting forms of social marginalization and are part of a population at risk for an HIV and psychopathology syndemic. Key informant interviews (n = 13) revealed how LGBTQ+ Latinx organizations emerged after the shooting to mobilize for greater health equity and health programs that directly respond to populations who experience unique inequalities related to their intersecting LGBTQ+ and Latinx identities. Findings from this article show how attention to intersectionality can inform efforts to mitigate existing syndemics and prevent future syndemics. Such efforts are needed to adequately examine the social contexts in which syndemics arise and to respond to the social and political phenomena that interact to inform health-related vulnerability.

Automobility and the politics of development under Miguel Primo de Rivera: a historicized reading of Antonio Espina’s Luna de copas

ABSTRACT This article explores the sociopolitical significance of automobility during the Miguel Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a means to historicize Antonio Espina’s novel Luna de copas. Devoting special attention to the class antagonisms brought about by Primo de Rivera’s economic policy and vision for Spain, the article shows that Espina engages this historical context by fictionalizing the growth of motorized tourism and industrial development in the country. The novel’s depiction of automobility advances a critique of the capitalist elites who achieved social and political prominence under Primo de Rivera but whose participation in modernization efforts was self-serving and not meant to bring about effective change for most Spaniards. Drawing on sociological theory and archival material, this article contends that Luna de copas recognized how automobiles afforded their owners a modern instrument of social distinction, dehumanization, subjugation and deterritorialization, thereby strengthening oligarchical structures at the height of the Machine Age. Historicization of Espina’s novel suggests that scholarship has overly exaggerated the autonomous nature of avant-garde fiction.

Assam as a New Economic Space: Colonial Annexation in the Region and its Implications

The current social and political processes of Assam in terms of demographic aspect and frontier area policies cannot be seen to be a development in isolation from British colonial policies. The entire system is linked to a historical process of ownership and inheritance. The British entry into the North-Eastern region of India, at the end of the Anglo-Burmese war, marked the beginning of colonial penetration with the consequence of unanticipated transformation of socio-economic and demographic profile in the region. The profound commercial significance of Assam explored by British colonialism led to the development of the Brahmaputra valley into a new economic space. Accordingly, the colonialists consolidated political interventions through the construction of frontier policies that created a divide between ‘Hills’ and ‘Plains’. The policies of social and cultural subjugation, followed by the colonialists, brought the neighbouring hill tribes under colonial control, and the entire region was being turned into a politico-economic jurisdiction of colonial subjects. Such policies envisaged by the British with a commercial motive, however, anguished the ethnic strife- the existing social landscape, the economic space and the political set-up of the region. The current problem of foreigners’ issue and the frontier issue is, in fact, the continuation of the colonial traditions. An understanding of the colonial pattern of exploitation of resources through social and political control would provide an apprehension of the past causes and present effect relationship. Hence, this study attempts to understand the implications of the colonial era political developments in Assam considering its economic potentiality that has given a whole new dimension to the entire regional set-up.

Pre-adult aggression and its long-term behavioural consequences in crickets.

Social experience, particularly aggression, is considered a major determinant of consistent inter-individual behavioural differences between animals of the same species and sex. We investigated the influence of pre-adult aggressive experience on future behaviour in male, last instar nymphs of the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. We found that aggressive interactions between male nymphs are far less fierce than for adults in terms of duration and escalation. This appears to reflect immaturity of the sensory apparatus for releasing aggression, rather than the motor system controlling it. First, a comparison of the behavioural responses of nymphs and adults to mechanical antennal stimulation using freshly excised, untreated and hexane-washed antennae taken from nymphs and adults, indicate that nymphs neither respond to nor produce sex-specific cuticular semiochemicals important for releasing aggressive behaviour in adults. Second, treatment with the octopamine agonist chlordimeform could at least partially compensate for this deficit. In further contrast to adults, which become hyper-aggressive after victory, but submissive after defeat, such winner and loser effects are not apparent in nymphs. Aggressive competition between nymphs thus appears to have no consequence for future behaviour in crickets. Male nymphs are often attacked by adult males, but not by adult females. Furthermore, observations of nymphs raised in the presence, or absence of adult males, revealed that social subjugation by adult males leads to reduced aggressiveness and depressed exploratory behaviour when the nymphs become adult. We conclude that social subjugation by adults during pre-adult development of nymphs is a major determinant of consistent inter-individual behavioural differences in adult crickets.

Biocentrism as one of the main categories of everyday biopolitical discourse

The main aim of the article is the conceptualization of the categorical apparatus of biopolitics. The focus is on biocentrism as one of the main categories of modern biopolitical discourse. It is stated that biopolitics today offers a variety of research directions and a specific categorical apparatus, while fluctuations in the interpretations of the main terms and categories should be noted. The main terms are considered: «biopolitics», «political man», biopower and biocentrism. The definition of the above terms in the biopolitics is systematized and proposed author’s definitions. «Homo Politicus» as a phenomenon was a complicated and problematic subject of scientific conceptualization. Proposed particulars of the biopolitical view on «Homo Politicus»: «Homo Politicus» is genetically related with another biological species and this definitely has influence to his behaviour in social and political sphere. For instance, any human being as any social primates has genetic inclination to adaptation, domination, subjugation. In case with «Homo Sapiens» this has a form of genetic and social adaptation, political domination and subjugation. The inclination to the domination from one side to the subjugation to another side is genetically «imprinted» in to the nature of the «Homo Politicus». However it is important to be mentioned that nevertheless the «Homo Sapiens» shares inclination of social primates for hierarchical social organization, at the same time he developed capabilities which are unique in animal world, such as: language, culture and morale. Thus, ideas and values created by the human being commenced changing of his behavior in social and political sphere. Author’s definitions: «Political man» as an individual with innate properties of the brain and the psyche that affects his social and political behavior can be adjusted in the process of socialization and education and change in accordance with the challenges of the twenty-first century. Biopolitics as a new evolutionary paradigm of contemporary political science that explores the «political man» as a biological species with an emphasis on psycho-physiological mechanisms of political behavior and their influence on the political process. Biopower as a new model of power relations, enshrined at the legislative level, designed to protect life in all its forms and manifestations. Biocentrism is aimed at protecting life in all spheres, understanding that a person is only part of the overall biodiversity, and therefore has no right to destroy the biosphere guided by economic benefits.

Chronic social defeat induces long-term behavioral depression of aggressive motivation in an invertebrate model system.

Losing a fight against a conspecific male (social defeat) induces a period of suppressed aggressiveness and general behaviour, often with symptoms common to human psychiatric disorders. Agonistic experience is also discussed as a potential cause of consistent, behavioral differences between individuals (animal “personality”). In non-mammals, however, the impact of single agonistic encounters typically last only hours, but then again studies of repeated intermittent defeat (chronic social defeat) are seldom. We report the effect of chronic social defeat in adult male crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus), for which all known behavioral effects of defeat last only 3 h. Firstly, after 48 h social isolation, crickets that experienced 5 defeats at 24 h intervals against the same, weight-matched opponent exhibited suppressed aggressiveness lasting >24 h, which was still evident when the animals were matched against an unfamiliar opponent at the last trial. Secondly, this longer-term depression of aggression also occurred in 48 h isolated crickets that lost 6 fights at 1 h intervals against unfamiliar opponents at each trial. Thirdly, crickets isolated as larvae until adult maturity (>16 days) were significantly more aggressive, and less variable in their aggressiveness at their very first fight than 48 h isolates, and also significantly more resilient to the effects of chronic social defeat. We conclude that losing an aggressive encounter in crickets has a residual effect, lasting at least 24 h, that accumulates when repeated defeats are experienced, and leads to a prolonged depression of aggressive motivation in subordinates. Furthermore, our data indicate that social interactions between young adults and possibly larvae can have even longer, possibly lifelong influences on subsequent behavior. Social subjugation is thus likely to be a prime determinant of inter-individual behavioral differences in crickets. Our work also opens new avenues for investigating proximate mechanisms underlying depression-like phenomena.

Afrikaners in post-apartheid South Africa: Inward migration and enclave nationalism

South Africa’s transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, ‘the Afrikaner’, was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community (‘the volk’) onto a national territory (‘white South Africa’). The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of ‘the Afrikaner’, following Massey’s (2005) understanding of space as (1) political, (2) produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, (3) potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and (4) continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall’s ‘return to the local’ (1997a). Although Afrikaner nationalism’s territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called ‘inward migration’. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones.

Afrikaners in post-apartheid South Africa: Inward migration and enclave nationalism

South Africa’s transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, ‘the Afrikaner’, was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community (‘the volk’) onto a national territory (‘white South Africa’). The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of ‘the Afrikaner’, following Massey’s (2005) understanding of space as (1) political, (2) produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, (3) potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and (4) continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall’s ‘return to the local’ (1997a). Although Afrikaner nationalism’s territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called ‘inward migration’. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones.

Rehearsing Social Justice: Temporal Ghettos and the Poetic Way Out in “Goblin Market” and “The Song of the Shirt”

Prosodists don't call stress stress for nothing, Herbert Tucker claims. [I]ndeed, they might as well, on good Victorian premises ... call prosody itself stress management. (1) Poetry began to demand more effort from readers in the mid-19th century, Tucker claims; reading it required virtual effort, mental exertion. Popular poets like Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning understood the reader's need for equity--for oscillation between moments of focus and moments of relaxation, between labor and leisure. They practiced a kind of stress management when they built a pleasurable sine wave of energy expenditure into their prosody, balancing new figures that the reader must imaginatively realize with moments of repetition that allow readers to relax. In his discussion of EBB's Cry of the Children, Tucker makes explicit the parallel between the virtual labor of reading poetry and the actual labor of the child workers EBB speaks for in the poem. It is no coincidence, he suggests, that poetry imbued with merciful alternation between effort and rest preceded social reform concerned with shorter work weeks, weekends off, and paid holidays. Two of Tucker's implied premises in his discussion of fatigue--that the temporality of prosody is akin to the experience of labor, and that social and political power is located not just in the content hut in the form of poetry--lay the groundwork for an investigation of a particular kind of social subjugation, which will call temporal and which, will argue, poetry is particularly well suited to address. Temporal oppression, propose, goes beyond the deprivation of rest or free time; it can take multiple forms, because social time takes multiple forms. focus on two modes of time--one that is conceived to be progressive or linear, associated with the time of industrialization and modernity, and another that is characterized by repetition or cyclicality, associated both with natural rhythms and with industrial repetitiveness. Neither is intrinsically better than the other. In parallel ways, each can be used to create temporal ghettos. (2) am borrowing this phrase from Jeremy Rifkin, but repurposing it to describe the disenfranchisement of those who are marginalized through their experience of time. In these ghettos, individuals are not just deprived of free time, but are denied access to whole practices and organizations of time that are available to more privileged others. These ghettos are modeled in the content and the form of the two poems examine: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Thomas Hood's of the Shirt. But, the poems also model a way out of these ghettos, offering a poetic solution to a injustice. Like EBB's Cry, Thomas Hood's immensely popular poem Song of the Shirt presents unjust working conditions to the public in poetic form. He wrote the poem in 1843 in response to the growing controversy raised by The Perils of the Nation (1842), Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's novel about the abuses of the dress trade, and the governmental Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission published in 1843. The poem was published in Punch magazine and quickly became one of the best-known poems in the nineteenth century. (3) It describes the plight of a poor seamstress, struggling to sew fast enough to keep up with her hunger. The repetition in the poem echoes her repetitive, mind-numbing work: Work! Work! Work! While the cock is crowing aloof. And work--work--work, Till the stars shine through the roof! (11. 9-12) (4) It also echoes, as Peter Simonsen points out, the labor of its composer, Hood, who, during the time he was working on this poem, was essentially living paycheck to paycheck, scrambling to publish enough poetry in literary periodicals to feed himself. In a letter to his friend Philip de Franck, Hood describes his work conditions as a struggling writer for literary magazines in terms not unlike those he uses to describe the plight of the seamstress: I have to write, till am sick of the sight of pen, ink and paper (Simonsen, pp. …

Soggettività somatica e soggiogamento somatico

This article (originally published in the English version of my book Body Consciousness) critically examines the value of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy for the project of somaesthetics. In contrast to most philosophers who view embodied experience as a universal given that is essentially the same for all human subjects, Beauvoir highlights how somatic subjectivities distinctively differ through different subject positions determined by the subject’s social roles and status. Her detailed exploration of the somatic subjectivities of women and the elderly (which are shaped by forms of social subjugation) constitutes the focus of my study. I show how Beauvoir fails to recognize the extent to which somatic training can address some of the problems of subjugated somatic subjectivities and can thus help contribute to wider sodcial efforts for greater freedom.

Social Neuroendocrinology of Status: A Review and Future Directions

Status hierarchies are universal across human and non-human animal social groups. Hormones and status interact with one another in a reciprocal manner. The present paper reviews the current literature on the interaction between testosterone (T), cortisol (C) and status in humans, with reference to non-human animal research. We discuss the complexity of the social neuroendocrinology of status with a focus on stable status, competitions for status, and the effects of severe social subjugation. Importantly, we conclude that the relationship between these hormones and status is not direct. We address moderators of the relationship between hormones and status, such as sex, individual differences, context, and T x C interactions, to get a more nuanced under- standing of this relationship. Future directions include suggestions for examining this relationship longitudinally, including more females in status research, additional focus on social context and hormonal interactions, as well as non-competitive routes to status.

Chronic social stress in puberty alters appetitive male sexual behavior and neural metabolic activity

Repeated social subjugation in early puberty lowers testosterone levels. We used hamsters to investigate the effects of social subjugation on male sexual behavior and metabolic activity within neural systems controlling social and motivational behaviors. Subjugated animals were exposed daily to aggressive adult males in early puberty for postnatal days 28 to 42, while control animals were placed in empty clean cages. On postnatal day 45, they were tested for male sexual behavior in the presence of receptive female. Alternatively, they were tested for mate choice after placement at the base of a Y-maze containing a sexually receptive female in one tip of the maze and an ovariectomized one on the other. Social subjugation did not affect the capacity to mate with receptive females. Although control animals were fast to approach females and preferred ovariectomized individuals, subjugated animals stayed away from them and showed no preference. Cytochrome oxidase activity was reduced within the preoptic area and ventral tegmental area in subjugated hamsters. In addition, the correlation of metabolic activity of these areas with the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and anterior parietal cortex changed significantly from positive in controls to negative in subjugated animals. These data show that at mid-puberty, while male hamsters are capable of mating, their appetitive sexual behavior is not fully mature and this aspect of male sexual behavior is responsive to social subjugation. Furthermore, metabolic activity and coordination of activity in brain areas related to sexual behavior and motivation were altered by social subjugation.

Isolation Associated Aggression – A Consequence of Recovery from Defeat in a Territorial Animal

Population density has profound influences on the physiology and behaviour of many animal species. Social isolation is generally reported to lead to increased aggressiveness, while grouping lowers it. We evaluated the effects of varying degrees of isolation and grouping on aggression in a territorial insect, the Mediterranean field cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus . Substantiating early observations, we show that dyadic contests between weight-matched, adult male crickets taken from groups rarely escalate beyond threat displays, whereas interactions between pairs of previously isolated crickets typically escalate to physical fights lasting several seconds. No significant differences were found between 1, 2 and 6-day isolates, or between individuals grouped for a few hours or lifelong. Unexpectedly, crickets grouped in immediate proximity within individual mesh cages that precluded fighting while permitting visual, olfactory and mechanical, antennal contact, were as aggressive as free isolates. This suggests that reduced aggression of grouped animals may be an acquired result of fighting. Supporting this notion, isolated crickets initially engage in vigorous fights when first grouped, but fighting intensity and duration rapidly decline to the level of life-long grouped crickets within only 10 min. Furthermore, grouped crickets become as aggressive as life-long isolates after only 3 hours of isolation, and on the same time course required for crickets to regain their aggressiveness after social defeat. We conclude that the reduced aggressiveness of grouped crickets is a manifestation of the loser effect resulting from social subjugation, while isolation allows recovery to a state of heightened aggressiveness, which in crickets can be considered as the default condition. Given the widespread occurrence of the loser effect in the Animal Kingdom, many effects generally attributed to social isolation are likely to be a consequence of recovery from social subjugation.

Sexually dimorphic patterns of neural activity in response to juvenile social subjugation

After experiencing juvenile social subjugation (JSS), adult female rats display more severe depression- and anxiety-like behaviors than adult males, suggesting that JSS is encoded in a sex-specific manner. To test this hypothesis, prepubertal rats (P28–33) were subjected to 10 aggressive acts in ≤10min from an aggressive adult male, a 10min encounter with a non-aggressive adult male, or to 10min in an empty, clean cage (handled control) and were sacrificed one hour later. We then used unbiased stereology to estimate the total number and proportion of neurons immunoreactive for the immediate early gene product Fos bilaterally in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), the anterior and posterior subdivisions of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN). Overall, females’ Fos responses were less selective than males’. The BLA in males displayed a selective Fos response to the non-aggressive male, whereas no such selectivity occurred in the BLA of females. Additionally, there were more neurons overall in the left BLA than the right and this lateralization was specific to males. The principal subdivision of the BST (BSTpr) in males responded selectively to JSS, whereas the BSTpr in females responded to both the non-aggressive and aggressive males. We also found that the regional volume and neuron number of the BSTpr is greater in males than in females. Finally, the PVN in males was, like the BLA, selective for the non-aggressive male, whereas none of the experiences elicited a selective response in females. The greater selectivity for non-threatening stimuli in males in three stress-responsive brain regions may be a clue as to why males are less susceptible to the anxiogenic effects of JSS.