Racial Identity Among Mixed Adolescents in Hawaii: A Research Note

The islands of Hawaii are well-known for their unique level of racial heterogeneity and admixture, overt norms of racial tolerance and harmony, and temperate climate. Of central interest to the social scientist is the manner in which racial and cultural blending take place in such a complex society, particularly among those of mixed racial origin; Hawaii provides a social laboratory in which to study such processes in depth. This paper, viewing racial identity as an important index of intergroup relations, examines the racial identities and related reasons of forty high school adolescents in Hawaii in order to highlight controlling factors of the social environment

Ant Tribe

Ant Tribe describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China\u27s major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling elites have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups. The real world is always different from the ideal world of the Ant Tribe in China. They often lose their purposes in a complex society. It is more important for them to recognize the distance between the real and imaginary in order to rethink whether it is a right choice to stay in a big city and try to realize their dreams. The intention of the Ant Tribe installation is to explore the process and concept of changing between the real and fantasy. In the installation, I hope to portray the Ant Tribe phenomenon widely and deeply from an artist\u27s perspective. The most important thing for me is using my artistic practice to investigate the power of the media over the contemporary subject in order to activate the viewers to question some Social issues regarding humanity consciousness. My artwork should be thought - provoking for them. I would like to use my visual language to convey specific Social issues to inquire how far the viewers are from their dreams. I hope they think about themselves in their complex society physically and psychologically when they go through my work

Property in the Moral Life of Human Beings

AbstractLiberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.</jats:p

Ethnicity

As developed in the fields of anthropology and sociology, the concept of ethnicity offers one possible approach to analyzing diversity in the population of ancient Egypt. However, it is important that ethnicity not be elided with foreign-ness, as has often been the case in Egyptological literature. Ethnicity is a social construct based on self-image, and thus may be difficult to identify in the ancient sources, where a monolithic uniformity of “Egyptian” versus “other” prevails. A range of sources does suggest that ethnic difference operated within the indigenous population throughout Egyptian history, as would be expected in any complex society. This discussion explores these sources and suggests ways of thinking about the negotiation of ethnic identity in ancient Egypt

Robustness of the European power grids under intentional attack

The power grid defines one of the most important technological networks of our times and sustains our complex society. It has evolved for more than a century into an extremely huge and seemingly robust and well understood system. But it becomes extremely fragile as well, when unexpected, usually minimal, failures turn into unknown dynamical behaviours leading, for example, to sudden and massive blackouts. Here we explore the fragility of the European power grid under the effect of selective node removal. A mean field analysis of fragility against attacks is presented together with the observed patterns. Deviations from the theoretical conditions for network percolation (and fragmentation) under attacks are analysed and correlated with non topological reliability measures.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Time Allocation in Economics and the Implications for Economic Development

In a modern and more complex society, in which there are not borders between the professional family and social life of individuals, time should be viewed as an economic resource and it has to be optimized, rationalized and controlled.In this paper I will try to identify the main coordinates and the dominant points of view of economic thinking focused on time allocation, at both national and international level. The paper also presents an analysis of the correlation between time use and economic development, on the basis of some regression models.time allocation, working time, economic development

Complex society: one of the possible Luhmannite theories of sociology

In the first part of the study a version of Luhmann's theory of differentiation is undertaken. Luhmann took Parson's analytical systems approach away and sees the systemic social mechanisms as real and concret. In the sixties and seventies it was a great problem for him to find the structures of empirical delimitation of subsystems of society above the organisational systems level. Recently he was able to work out this with theoretical sharpness. A subsystem of society can be delimited by its being organized around a binary code. The modern science is organized around the binary code of true/ false, the law around the code "lawful/ unlawful", the economy around the code "profitable/ non-profitable". The above-mentioned is the starting point of the paper but there are undertaken some corrections on this theorem. In the reality the binary codes of truefalse, lawful/ unlawful etc. dominate only the communications of the professional scientists, lawyers etc. and this domination is forced through the special recruting-, socialisation-, rewarding-, and sanctioning mechanisms created in each professional system of institutions. Hence the structural differentiations of society above the organizational systems level have to be reduced to the level of the professional institutions. In this way the category of "everyday life" emerged for the diffuse, non-specialized communications and in this formulation the modernisation of european societies can be grasped as the differentiation of systems of professional institutions out of the diffuse everyday life. With this correction the theory of Luhmannn came closer to Habermas's theory but the paper does not share his aversion against the systemic formations. On the basis of Karl Polanyi's distinction of economy into material production and formal market economy the paper takes out the latter of the simple professional systems and makes evident that the market mechanisms play important role in organising a lot of professional systems. Markests within the university-scientific system, within sports, arts etc. These are the cases of double rationalities. Furthermore the study corrects Luhmann's starting-point that the communications in the professional systems of institutions are only dominated by the special binary code and it is emphasized they are formed through a lot of other aspects of evaluations. But after the differentiation of the professional systems these aspects of evaluation other than the own binary code can form the professional communications only through the domination of the central binary code of each professional system. This correction brings Luhmann's theory closer to Richard Munch's theory of interpenetration. And last but not least these corrections draws attention to Parson's theory of professions. Although his analytical systems approach was found as insufficient. In the second part of the study the theoretical framework of the professional system of institutions is applied to the political system, the legal system and the social system of science

Detection of Deception in a Virtual World

This work explores the role of multimodal cues in detection of deception in a virtual world, an online community of World of Warcraft players. Case studies from a five-year ethnography are presented in three categories: small-scale deception in text, deception by avoidance, and large-scale deception in game-external modes. Each case study is analyzed in terms of how the affordances of the medium enabled or hampered deception as well as how the members of the community ultimately detected the deception. The ramifications of deception on the community are discussed, as well as the need for researchers to have a deep community knowledge when attempting to understand the role of deception in a complex society. Finally, recommendations are given for assessment of behavior in virtual worlds and the unique considerations that investigators must give to the rules and procedures of online communities.</jats:p