Alternative societies

A distinctive characteristic of sociology is that it’s a critical discipline. But a question that criticisms of society imply is - what’s the alternative? This lecture will look at alternative societies implied by criticisms of existing ones. What is the role of utopianism? After the collapse of socialism in the late 20th century and the spread of capitalism and liberalism, is communism an alternative? Can we envisage a world with much less work, or no borders in the way of free movement? What alternative types of living are possible, economically, socially, educationally, politically, ecologically and that overcome divisions of class, gender and race

Governing Pluralistic Societies

Societies can be held together in many ways. Historically, many groups were linked by a common history, common ethnicity, and common religious and social values. These societies shared a unified set of norms dictating right and wrong. Other groups have been held together by charismatic leaders who present a unifying vision, but modern pluralistic society, uniquely, accepts a diversity of views about what is appropriate and reasonable, which makes these forms of authority difficult to enact. The form of authority emerging in western democratic states has been, instead, authority based upon the processes of government: people recognize democratic procedures as legitimate and defer to authorities because of the manner in which they manage. Here, Tyler discusses several social-psychological contributions in managing ethnic diversity

On (2,3)-agreeable Box Societies

The notion of $(k,m)$-agreeable society was introduced by Deborah Berg et al.: a family of convex subsets of $\R^d$ is called $(k,m)$-agreeable if any subfamily of size $m$ contains at least one non-empty $k$-fold intersection. In that paper, the $(k,m)$-agreeability of a convex family was shown to imply the existence of a subfamily of size $\beta n$ with non-empty intersection, where $n$ is the size of the original family and $\beta\in[0,1]$ is an explicit constant depending only on $k,m$ and $d$. The quantity $\beta(k,m,d)$ is called the minimal \emph{agreement proportion} for a $(k,m)$-agreeable family in $\R^d$. If we only assume that the sets are convex, simple examples show that $\beta=0$ for $(k,m)$-agreeable families in $\R^d$ where $k<d$. In this paper, we introduce new techniques to find positive lower bounds when restricting our attention to families of $d$-boxes, i.e. cuboids with sides parallel to the coordinates hyperplanes. We derive explicit formulas for the first non-trivial case: the case of $(2,3)$-agreeable families of $d$-boxes with $d\geq 2$.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure

The Language Attitude of Border Peoples Insular Riau, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, and the Eastern Sunda Islands

This research aims at describing (1) the language use of border area societies (Insular Riau, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, and the Eastern Sunda Islands) in terms of local language (BD), Indonesian (BI), and foreign language (BA) in the domains of family, society, and occupation, (2) language activity of border area societies relating to news observation, language attention, and language constraints in mass media, (3) language attitude of border area societies towards BD, BI, and BA. The findings are as follows. First, within the family and society at large, BD is more frequently used than BI and BA. This shows that BD functions in non-formal situations. In the professional field, however, BI is more frequently used than BD. Second, people in border provinces widely observe mass media, whether printed or electronic. They also often pay attention to the language the mass media uses. Third, border societies have a positive attitude towards BD as is shown (agree/totally agree) by the answers to eight questions relating to BD. The language attitude of border societies towards BI is positive based on the answers (agree/totally agree) to seven questions concerning BI. This also means that BI is prestigious for border people, especially in formal communication. The language attitude of border societies towards BA is mixed. In as far as it is negative it implies a positive evaluation of BD and BI because people appreciate them as part of their local and national identities

Missional Churches in Secular Societies: Theology Consults Sociology

The church is missionary by nature. But what about public church mission in secular societies? Furious religion mobilizing against rebarbative secularity? Withdrawal to seek exemplary perfection? To the contrary, theologically principled consultation with the sociology of J. Casanova on deprivatized religion leads to public witness in modern societies. Public theology can interpret deprivatized religion as an expression of prophetic and kingly elements in church mission. However, sociology leaves the priestly element as if private. What might ecclesiology, missiology, and public theology say about a public aspect of the priestly element in the church’s witness in modern societies

Approval Voting in Product Societies

In approval voting, individuals vote for all platforms that they find acceptable. In this situation it is natural to ask: When is agreement possible? What conditions guarantee that some fraction of the voters agree on even a single platform? Berg et. al. found such conditions when voters are asked to make a decision on a single issue that can be represented on a linear spectrum. In particular, they showed that if two out of every three voters agree on a platform, there is a platform that is acceptable to a majority of the voters. Hardin developed an analogous result when the issue can be represented on a circular spectrum. We examine scenarios in which voters must make two decisions simultaneously. For example, if voters must decide on the day of the week to hold a meeting and the length of the meeting, then the space of possible options forms a cylindrical spectrum. Previous results do not apply to these multi-dimensional voting societies because a voter's preference on one issue often impacts their preference on another. We present a general lower bound on agreement in a two-dimensional voting society, and then examine specific results for societies whose spectra are cylinders and tori.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures; to appear, Amer. Math. Monthl

Equalitarian Societies are Economically Impossible

The inequality of wealth distribution is a universal phenomenon in the civilized nations, and it is often imputed to the Matthew effect, that is, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Some philosophers unjustified this phenomenon and tried to put the human civilization upon the evenness of wealth. Noticing the facts that 1) the emergence of the centralism is the starting point of human civilization, i.e., people in a society were organized hierarchically, 2) the inequality of wealth emerges simultaneously, this paper proposes a wealth distribution model based on the hidden tree structure from the viewpoint of complex network. This model considers the organized structure of people in a society as a hidden tree, and the cooperations among human beings as the transactions on the hidden tree, thereby explains the distribution of wealth. This model shows that the scale-free phenomenon of wealth distribution can be produced by the cascade controlling of human society, that is, the inequality of wealth can parasitize in the social organizations, such that any actions in eliminating the unequal wealth distribution would lead to the destroy of social or economic structures, resulting in the collapse of the economic system, therefore, would fail in vain

Leadership in Small Societies

Multi-agent simulation was used to study several styles of leadership in small societies. Populations of 50 and100 agents inhabited a bounded landscape containing a fixed number of food sources. Agents moved about the landscape in search of food, mated, produced offspring, and died either of hunger or at a predetermined maximum age. Leadership models focused on the collection and redistribution of food. The simulations suggest that individual households were more effective at meeting their needs than a simple collection-redistribution scheme. Leadership affected the normative makeup of the population: altruistic leaders caused altruistic societies and demanding leaders caused aggressive societies. Specific leadership styles did not provide a clear advantage when two groups competed for the same resources. The simulation results are compared to ethnographic observations of leadership in Pacific island societies.Leadership, Reciprocity, Pacific Island Societies, Norms

The Explanatory Potential of Artificial Societies

It is often claimed that artificial society simulations contribute to the explanation of social phenomena. At the hand of a particular example, this paper argues that artificial societies often cannot provide full explanations, because their models are not or cannot be validated. Instead, artificial societies may sometimes provide potential explanations. It is shown that these potential explanations, if they contribute to our understanding, considerably differ from the standard kind of potential causal explanations. Instead of possible causal histories, simulations offer possible functional analyses of the explanandum. The paper discusses how these two kinds of potential explanations differ, and how possible functional analyses can be appraised