The Transformation of the Self: Competing Moral Repertoires in Contemporary Java

Character and virtue are changing rapidly in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population. The long-praised preference for communal harmony over individual advancement is under great stress. The dominant force behind this is thought to be secular consumerism. Our project aims to assess the impact of commercialization and modern Islamic religious education on the Javanese preference for communal harmony. An extensive survey of Javanese parents and their children and close ethnographic studies of individuals will provide insights into the changing nature of Javanese morality, which is the heart of Indonesian culture. Rather than focus on self-reported values, we will focus on the morality stories that people tell. We hypothesize that the new moral repertoires of consumerism and religiosity are not in competition but are rather working in tandem to undermine the preference for communal harmony in Javanese culture.https://youtu.be/TYNDDIJVLRcN

Collateral behavior of the pigeon during conditioned suppression of key pecking

Ethological recording procedures measured collateral behavior in pigeons whose key-pecking performance was suppressed during a tone that ended with unavoidable electric shock. Independent recordings of gross behavior were made by two observers throughout 60-sec intervals immediately before, during, and after tone presentation. Results indicated significant reductions in the frequency of collateral movements and an increase in the time between successive movements during tone presentations. These effects were observed in all subjects, despite differences in the sequential patterns of behavior. Only partial recovery of the behavior evidenced before tone presentation was found during a 60-sec interval following shock. It was concluded that conditioned suppression procedures caused the bird to “freeze” during tone presentation and in this fashion produced a general inhibitory effect on ongoing overt activity, including key pecking