“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life

Divided, they win? a case study of the new political generation in Egypt since 25th January 2011

This dissertation explores the political culture of the new political generation in Egypt after 25th January 2011. It aims at examining the reasons behind generational conflicts on the new political landscape. It defines political generation as â a group of people who have been subject to common social and political (â ¦) influences and circumstances\u27 that shape their political values, attitudes, and signify their sharing of an essential destiny\u27 . Hence, generations are defined in terms of political culture, rather than age groups. The study examines six suggestive cases: The National Movement for Changeâ Kefayaâ , the 6th of April, the We Are All Khaled Saed, the Egyptian Current Party, the Salafyo Costa movement and Ultras Ahlawy football community. Through examining formative experiences, ideological composition and organizational forms, values, symbols, strategies, and inter-relationships, I aim at resolving one research problem: The significant variation within the political culture of the new generation deepens conflicts both within the emergent Generation and with the Muslim Brotherhoodâ on various ideological issues and political strategies. Also, it stimulates ideological transformation and threatens to upgrade political authoritarianism. In order to develop a \u27grounded\u27 , knowledge of the subject, the study, first, examines reasons behind the MB\u27s failure to co-opt the new generation both before and after the 25th January. Secondly, It examines the formative socio-political experiences of each generational unit. Thirdly, I report the interview findings on ideological and organizational manifestations and, finally, I analyze the results in order to understand the reasons behind generational conflicts and how they might lead into upgrading Mubarak\u27s authoritarianism. This research provides future studies with elementary background on the situation, its main actors, their inter-relationships and possible means of resolving their conflicts. I use two integrative methods of qualitative research: ethnographic semi-structured interviews with members of the new political generation and â participation as observer\u27. Data culled from primary and secondary sources is analyzed through conceptual analysis tool to examine the undergoing transformation and possible means to resolve the conflict. The study concludes that there are four intertwined lines through which generational conflicts evolved: a) problems either withered away or got replaced by new problems, b) a change and/or loss of leadership, mobilizable resources and sympathy, c) the rise of unexpected generational cooperation, and d) one generation topple or liquidate the other

Tragedy of Confusion: The Political Economy of Truth in the modern history of Iran (A novel framework for the analysis of the enigma of socio-economic underdevelopment in the modern history of Iran)

This study entails a theoretical reading of the Iranian modern history and follows an interdisciplinary agenda at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and politics and intends to offer a novel framework for the analysis of socio-economic underdevelopment in Iran in the modern era. A brief review of Iranian modern history from the constitutional revolution, to the oil nationalization movement, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the recent Reformist and Green movements demonstrates that Iranian people travelled full circle. This historical experience of socio-economic underdevelopment revolving around the bitter question of “why are we backward?” and its manifestation in perpetual socio-political instability and violence is the subject matter of this study. Foucault’s conceived relation between the production of truth and production of wealth captures the essence of hypothesis offered in this study. Michel Foucault (1980: 93-4) maintains that “In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth, indeed we must produce truth in order to produce wealth in the first place”. Based on a hybrid methodology combining hermeneutics of understanding and hermeneutics of suspicion, this study proposes that the failure to produce wealth has had particular roots in the failure in the production of truth. At the heart of the proposed theoretical model is the following formula: The Iranian dasein’s confused preference structure culminates in the formation of unstable coalitions which in turn leads to institutional failure, creating a chaotic social order and a turbulent history as experienced by the Iranian nation in the modern era. The following set of interrelated propositions elaborate further on the core formula of the model: Each and every Iranian person and her subjectivity and preference structure is the site of three distinct warring regimes of truth and identity choice sets (identity markers) related to the ancient Persian empire (Persianism), Islam, and modernity. These three historical a priori and regimes of truth act as conditions of possibility for social interactions, and are unities in multiplicities. They, in their perpetual state of tension and conflict, constitute the mutually exclusive, contradictory, and confused dimensions of the prism of the Iranian dasein. The confused preference structure prevents Iranian people from organizing themselves in stable coalitions required for collective action to achieve the desired socio-economic change. The complex interplay between the state of inbetweenness and the state of belatedness makes it impossible to form stable coalitions in any areas of life, work, and language to achieve the desired social transformations, turning Iran into a country of unstable coalitions and alliances in macro, meso and micro levels. This in turn leads to failure in the construction of stable institutions (a social order based on rule of law or any other stable institutional structure becomes impossible) due to perpetual tension between alternative regimes of truth manifested in warring discursive formations, relations of power, and techniques of subjectification and their associated economies of affectivity. This in turn culminates in relations of power in all micro, meso, and macro levels to become discretionary, atomic, and unpredictable, producing perpetual tensions and social violence in almost all sites of social interactions, and generating small and large social earthquakes (crises, movements, and revolutions) as experienced by the Iranian people in their modern history. As such, the society oscillates between the chaotic states of socio-political anarchy emanating from irreconcilable differences between and within social assemblages and their affiliated hybrid forms of regimes of truth in the springs of freedom and repressive states of order in the winters of discontent. Each time, after the experience of chaos, the order is restored based on the emergence of a final arbiter (Iranian leviathan) as the evolved coping strategy for achieving conflict resolution. This highly volatile truth cycle produces the experience of socio-economic backwardness. The explanatory power of the theoretical framework offered in the study exploring the relation between the production of truth, trust and wealth is tested on three strong events of Iranian modern history: the Constitutional Revolution, the Oil-Nationalization Movement and the Islamic Revolution. The significant policy implications of the model are explored

Borders and Margins

The theory and concept of multi-level governance (MLG) is a fairly recent one, emerging from the deepening integration of the European Union in the early 1990s and the development of free trade agreements around the world. MLG enlarges the traditional approaches, namely those of neo-institutionalism and multinational federalism, by offering a better understanding of the role of the state, regions and provinces. The book analyses the changes that have taken place as well as those that might take place in the future

Borders and Margins

The theory and concept of multi-level governance (MLG) is a fairly recent one, emerging from the deepening integration of the European Union in the early 1990s and the development of free trade agreements around the world. MLG enlarges the traditional approaches, namely those of neo-institutionalism and multinational federalism, by offering a better understanding of the role of the state, regions and provinces. The book analyses the changes that have taken place as well as those that might take place in the future