Eirene Mort: Artist, Artisan and New Woman

Eirene Mort: Artist, Artisan and New Woman Eirene Mort (1879 – 1977) was an Arts and Crafts practitioner and teacher whose work reflected transitions in twentieth century Australian art and culture, and in the opportunities available to women artists in changing patterns of taste, art markets and education. This thesis examines the factors that shaped Mort’s career and contribution as a – for a time – prominent artist and artisan who was emblematic of independent womanhood. I assess the ways in which her struggles and achievements extend our understanding of the significance of gender in the art world of twentieth century Australia. Analysing Mort’s wide-ranging body of art, together with her memoirs, family histories, financial documents, teaching records, social networks and contemporary reports of her life and work, I draw out the patterns that emerged in her life and work. Mort’s significance as an historical figure is twofold. Firstly, the course of her long career illustrates the interdependency of art with a range of social and political influences, including gendered identities, patronage, education, class-based networks and aesthetic movements. Secondly, the relative neglect of Mort’s work highlights the importance of restoring these dimensions to studies of artists in their context, and of dissolving an often-artificial distinction between ‘art’ and a range of craft- based practices in their social contexts. My biographical approach is informed by methodologies using qualitative and quantitative data – often fragmentary, but revealing even in that state – to reconstruct the social and personal contexts of her art practice, and to relate her work to changes in taste, patronage and education, and placing Mort in the wider cultural social, and economic patterns of her times

Geographical co-location, social networks and inter-firm marketing co-operation : the case of the salmon industry

This study looks at the factors that influence the development of marketing co-operation among cluster-based firms. It examines data from SMEs operating within the salmon farming industry in two different regions: Scotland and Chile. Analyses indicate that informal social networks help explain the observed relationship between geographical proximity and inter-firm marketing co-operation, especially for firms located in peripheral rural communities. A theoretical model is proposed for further research in the field that, until recently, has been traditionally analysed only by economists. Practical implications are suggested for practitioners and policymaker

A Network Model of Alcoholism and Alcohol Policy

The evolution of alcohol dependence in populations of people on different social networks is studied. Two models are studied. One is the evolution of the states of individuals on hypothesized social structures from a rewired connected caveman model. This model spans a range of social structures (networks) from very ordered to effectively random with small world structures in between. The second model is a zip-code-level model which uses data from a recent survey in Delaware. The model is a discrete model using 10 zip codes. The results show that the evolution of alcohol dependence, as governed by the simple rules that we use, depends sensitively on the network structure and a hypothetical treatment regime

Community Influences on Individual Philanthropy: The Impact of Social Capital, Perception, and Demographics on Charitable Giving

Why do people donate money? The phenomenon of donation is rarely questioned, and yet remains an integral part of society. Studying philanthropy, described as “private action for the public good” by Brown and Ferris (2007:85), is informative because it shows how well individuals can identify and fight social problems. With 1 million charities in the United States in 2008, the nonprofit sector employing 7 percent of the workforce, and donations making up 2.2 percent of the GDP, philanthropy is a visible presence in US society (NPT 2008). Because of this, it is important to call into investigation the elements that influence financial donations, such as social, human and financial capital, as well as perceptions of donation behavior demographics. The concept of social capital, defined by Dillon (2010) as “individuals’ ties or connections to others” (255), is essential to understanding how donation occurs (Brown and Ferris 2007). Additionally, perceptions of others donation behaviors are also important in influencing an individual’s participation in donation as well as how much they donate. Human and financial capital are associated with ability to donate. Demographics like education and gender have also been shown to be strongly associated with philanthropic behavior (Andreoni Brown and Rischall 2003; Lee and Chang 2007). I hypothesize that in order for donation to occur, a person needs both inclination and capacity to give, inclination to give being formed by social capital and perceptions of other’s donation behaviors, and capacity to give coming from human and social capital. I also believe that social capital will have the strongest influence on donation behavior. Finally, I hypothesize that certain demographics will have higher associations with donation behavior than others

Adoption as a Social Marker: Innovation Diffusion with Outgroup Aversion

Social identities are among the key factors driving behavior in complex societies. Signals of social identity are known to influence individual behaviors in the adoption of innovations. Yet the population-level consequences of identity signaling on the diffusion of innovations are largely unknown. Here we use both analytical and agent-based modeling to consider the spread of a beneficial innovation in a structured population in which there exist two groups who are averse to being mistaken for each other. We investigate the dynamics of adoption and consider the role of structural factors such as demographic skew and communication scale on population-level outcomes. We find that outgroup aversion can lead to adoption being delayed or suppressed in one group, and that population-wide underadoption is common. Comparing the two models, we find that differential adoption can arise due to structural constraints on information flow even in the absence of intrinsic between-group differences in adoption rates. Further, we find that patterns of polarization in adoption at both local and global scales depend on the details of demographic organization and the scale of communication. This research has particular relevance to widely beneficial but identity-relevant products and behaviors, such as green technologies, where overall levels of adoption determine the positive benefits that accrue to society at large.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure

Individualization as driving force of clustering phenomena in humans

One of the most intriguing dynamics in biological systems is the emergence of clustering, the self-organization into separated agglomerations of individuals. Several theories have been developed to explain clustering in, for instance, multi-cellular organisms, ant colonies, bee hives, flocks of birds, schools of fish, and animal herds. A persistent puzzle, however, is clustering of opinions in human populations. The puzzle is particularly pressing if opinions vary continuously, such as the degree to which citizens are in favor of or against a vaccination program. Existing opinion formation models suggest that "monoculture" is unavoidable in the long run, unless subsets of the population are perfectly separated from each other. Yet, social diversity is a robust empirical phenomenon, although perfect separation is hardly possible in an increasingly connected world. Considering randomness did not overcome the theoretical shortcomings so far. Small perturbations of individual opinions trigger social influence cascades that inevitably lead to monoculture, while larger noise disrupts opinion clusters and results in rampant individualism without any social structure. Our solution of the puzzle builds on recent empirical research, combining the integrative tendencies of social influence with the disintegrative effects of individualization. A key element of the new computational model is an adaptive kind of noise. We conduct simulation experiments to demonstrate that with this kind of noise, a third phase besides individualism and monoculture becomes possible, characterized by the formation of metastable clusters with diversity between and consensus within clusters. When clusters are small, individualization tendencies are too weak to prohibit a fusion of clusters. When clusters grow too large, however, individualization increases in strength, which promotes their splitting.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure