Sharing Strangers’: Strangers in the Village

The idea of strangers in American culture is not a new one. While they tolerated them for their manpower, early 17th Century Puritans referred to Anglican and non-religious settlers as “strangers”. The later arrival of Baptists, Lutherans, and the “dreaded” Quakers was also grudgingly tolerated. But Puritan tolerance was limited in the same manner of later generations who privileged certain groups of immigrants, mostly Anglo people, while barricading American shores against less “desirable” groups, a policy which resulted in the Emergency Immigration Acts of 1921 & 1924. No matter the need, Catholics, Jews and “infidels” (Native Americans) were never accepted into the larger community. In fact, some historians suggest that the infamous Salem Witch Trials may have been a reaction to the perceived threat from “strangers” outside the Puritan church (Mitchell 2008: 25). The most current manifestation of strangers in American culture are of course undocumented immigrants who, like the homeless, have become part of the wallpaper of the urban environment, creatures we experience merely as part of the urban landscape through which we pass daily on our way to our “legitimate” business. Should these creatures make their way into our consciousness by accident, our experience of them is too often limited by the social filter to actually recognize them as fellow human beings. They retreat rapidly from our awareness, once again obscured by the stereotype created to preserve our identity, one carefully constructed on the concept of “other”. Invisibility among strangers is not limited to immigrants, as the work of contemporary artist and immigrant himself, Kryzsztof Wodiczko demonstrates. In a project he has titled Xenology, his term for “the immigrant’s art of survival” (Deutsche 2002: 27), Wodiczko employs his training as an industrial designer to fabricate equipment for those immigrants and refugees who “seek protection from the threat of violence and injustice (Ibid.). His now iconic homeless vehicle can certainly be counted among this work. My paper is not a sociological treatise on immigration. It is rather an essay on “stranger” as perceived outsider in American (and European) Culture. Opening with a brief power point accompanied by Neil Diamond’s America, the text will consider some commonalities between the role of undocumented immigrants and other variations of stranger in culture. It will close with a brief discussion of an installation by Columbian artist, Doris Salcedo, her Shibboleth, sliced into the floor of the Great Turbine Hall at the new Tate Modern in London

Menorah Review (No. 9, Winter, 1987)

The Bible as Literature -- The Kindness of Strangers? -- Resurrection and Divine Warfare: The Biblical Connection -- Selfhood and Dialogue: The Modern Legacy of Martin Buber -- Balancin

The effect of relationship status on communicating emotions through touch

Research into emotional communication to date has largely focused on facial and vocal expressions. In contrast, recent studies by Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006) and Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, and Keltner (2009) exploring nonverbal communication of emotion discovered that people could identify anger, disgust, fear, gratitude, happiness, love, sadness and sympathy from the experience of being touched on either the arm or body by a stranger, without seeing the touch. The study showed that strangers were unable to communicate the self-focused emotions embarrassment, envy and pride, or the universal emotion surprise. Literature relating to touch indicates that the interpretation of a tactile experience is significantly influenced by the relationship between the touchers (Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). The present study compared the ability of romantic couples and strangers to communicate emotions solely via touch. Results showed that both strangers and romantic couples were able to communicate universal and prosocial emotions, whereas only romantic couples were able to communicate the self-focused emotions envy and pride

Unaffected Strangers Affect Contributions

Several recent experimental studies have confirmed that social sanctioning can enforce cooperation in public good situations. These studies consider situations where the participants, who have monetary interest in the outcome of the public good game, inflict social sanctioning. The present experimental study, however, considers behavioral effects of social sanctioning from observers with no monetary interest in the outcome of the public good game. The experiment has two treatment effects. First, each participant’s identity and contribution to the public good is revealed to the observers. Second, we introduce information likely to affect participants’ expectations regarding the observers’ approval or disapproval of contributions to the public good. The data provides some evidence that indirect social sanctioning from these monetarily unaffected observers can increase voluntary contributions to public goods, provided that the participants have reason to believe that the observers have themselves contributed substantially in a similar situation. However, the effect on cooperation is not as strong as effects found in previous studies where participants themselves, and not only monetarily unaffected observers, are able to inflict social sanctioning.cooperation, public good, social approval, social norms

The Community of Nursing: Moral Friends, Moral Strangers, Moral Family

Unlike bioethicists who contend that there is a morality common to all, H. Tristan Engelhardt (1996) argues that, in a pluralistic secular society, any morality that does exist is loosely connected, lacks substantive moral content, is based on the principle of permission and, thus, is a morality between moral strangers. This, says Engelhardt, stands in contrast to a substance-full morality that exists between moral friends, a morality in which moral content is based on shared beliefs and values and exists in communities that tend to be closely knit and religiously based. Of what value does Engelhardt’s description of ethics as moral friends and moral strangers have for nursing? In this essay, I attempt to show how Engelhardt’s description serves to illustrate how the nursing community historically had been one of moral friends but has gradually become one of moral strangers and, hence, at risk of failing to protect patients in their vulnerability and of compromising the integrity of nursing. Building on Engelhardt’s concepts, I suggest we might consider modern nursing like a moral family to the extent that members might at times relate to one another as moral strangers but still possess a desire and a need to reconnect with the common thread that binds us as moral friends. Nursing is a practice discipline. Given the challenges of modern bioethics, an applied ethic is needed to give moral direction to clinicians as we strive to conduct ourselves ethically in the practice of our profession. To that end, nursing should reflect upon and seek to reconnect with the content-full morality that is historically and religiously based

Shut Up and Fish: The Role of Communication when Output-Sharing is used to Manage a Common Pool Resource

Schott et al. (2007) have shown that the “tragedy of the commons” can be overcome when individuals share their output equally in groups of optimal size and there is no communication. The assignment of individuals to groups as either strangers or partners does not significantly affect this outcome. In this paper we investigate whether communication changes these results. Communication reduces shirking, increases aggregate effort and reduces aggregate rents, but only when communication groups and output-sharing groups are linked. The effect is stronger for fixed groups (the partners treatment) than for randomly reassigned groups (the strangers treatment). Performance is not distinguishable from the no- communication treatments when communication is permitted but subjects share output within groups different from the groups within which they communicate. Communication also tends to enhance the negative effect of the partnered group assignment on the equality of individual payoffs. We use detailed content analysis to evaluate the impact of various categories of communication messages on behaviour across treatments.Common pool resources; Communication; Coordination; Cooperation; Free-riding Behaviour in Teams; Partners and Strangers; Experiments

Social Ties and Coordination on Negative Reciprocity: The Role of Affect

This is an experimental study of a three-player power-to-take game where a proposer is matched with two responders. We compare a treatment in which subjects are anonymous to each other (strangers) with one in which responders know each other from outside the lab (friends). We focus on the responders’ decisions, beliefs, and emotions. We find that friends punish the proposer more than strangers, and that they are more likely to coordinate their punishment (without communication). Both punishment and coordination are explained by the responders’ emotional reactions. Furthermore, the responders’ expectations are better predictors of emotions and destruction than their fairness perceptions.

Postage Due: Stewardship, Stamps and a Watch Pocket

Why do we forget that people are human? I\u27ve been asking myself that question more and more lately. Partially it\u27s driven by a laundry list of things happening in the world, vitriolic attacks on humanity, both strangers and friends. I just see cruelty looming sometimes, particularly over the lowest in our society. [excerpt