In-Plant Strategies & The Social Contract

[Excerpt] Your recent discussion of In-Plant Strategies (LRR 7, Fall 1985) is of vital importance for the labor movement. I would like to raise several issues for discussion. Both Tom Balanoff (B), in The Cement Workers\u27 Experience and Jack Metzgar (M), in Running the Plant Backwards, assume that a return to the status quo—or the pre-Reagan period—of collective bargaining is desirable. That might be true, but neither B nor M discusses the content of the status quo nor takes it into account when assessing in-plant strategies

“’So that they are not killed and robbed every day’”: The construction and use of popular discourse in Florentine Tuscany, c. 1250-1350

My project is a social history of the emergence and use of popular identity and popular discourse in late medieval Florence and its territory. Its central theme is the role that the Florentine popolo’s discursive identity-a set of norms and associational models based on the core values of social peace and the rule of law-played in the commune’s consolidation of its institutional power in city and countryside. My main sources are the voluminous records of medieval Florence’s foreign-staffed courts: the Executor of the Ordinances of Justice, the Capitano del Popolo, and the Podestà, in addition to the Notarile Antecosimiano, tax records (estimi), and the commune’s legislative corpus. The Italian Renaissance state is a venerable topic in medieval and early modern historiography, yet rarely has the question been asked: how did rural non-elites, the majority of the population, receive the categories of popular identity and solidarity that successive popular regimes elaborated over the period 1250-1350? Recent scholarship on the topic has incorporated mountaineers and rural elites into the narrative, without moving beyond a conceptual binary of acceptance-resistance: later medieval states either deployed enough coercion and enticements to achieve their ends, or non-elites responded to these states in the most dramatic way possible, open rebellion. This schema does not reflect the complexity of mundane reality: case studies of urban non-elites’ and rural peoples’ interactions with Florentine popular institutions and their discursive imaginary reveal their provisional and tactical quality. Florentine public courts played an important role in legitimizing public power in city and countryside, and residents of Florence’s countryside used these courts in large numbers, deploying the language of the commune’s popular regime to initiate legal action and impugn their enemies. Non-elites’ assent to public power did not exclude a calculating, instrumentalist view of the Florentine courts as an ambiguous source of authority, able to improve or damage one’s standing in the community. The density and variety of the Florentine archives allows me to study the contradictions and evasions at the heart of the Florentine state’s relationship with rural society in some detail. I thus move beyond a binary in which premodern non-elites are either docile victims of hegemony, or are always already resisting their landlords and public officials. The project bridges Florentine historiography with wider questions surrounding the emergence of the Italian communes, rural life, and the intersection between society and the law in the late Middle Ages. More broadly, the project offers a socio-cultural approach to understanding premodern state formation, non-elite self-organization, and rural life and society in an exceptionally well-documented corner of Mediterranean Europe

Here We Come Ready or Not: Occupational Therapy Program to Help Prepare Prisoners for Reentry into Society

poster abstractAbstract Background: In 2013 about 10 million people were involved in various stages of imprisonment world-wide. In that same year there were about 1,574,700 persons in state and federal prisons in the United States, and 29,905 in Indiana (state and federal) prisons. Most of those people will return to society, but for how long? According to the most recent data available, a little over two-thirds (67.8%) of those released were arrested for a new crime within 3 years and over three-quarters (76.6%) were arrested for a new crime within 5 years. Education is one of the most effective reducers of recidivism, but it is unclear what kinds of education best prepare people to not only return to society, but to thrive in society. Objectives: The first of a two-part study explored how 27 residents of a minimum security prison responded to an Occupational Therapy Community Living Skills Program (OTCLS) developed to help prepare residents for successful reentry into society. Method: Using a participatory action research (PAR) approach, we interviewed 27 residents who completed the program. Once the semi-structured interviews were transcribed, the PAR team conducted a summative content analysis of the data. Results: Initial content analysis yielded five concepts: doing; information; re-entry fears (socialization); technology; and self-worth. Participants seemed to gain a sense of self-worth by doing activities related to information gathering, socialization, and technology. Further interpretation yielded three overlapping themes: 1) validation of self-worth (participants expressed how self-validating it is to have “real people” come in to help), 2) doing (role playing, a common activity, “…was kind of nerve-wracking at first then [I] began to slowly ease into it…”), and 3) concerns about the future (one resident summed up the value of the program: having “…something real positive you’re looking forward to…helps in dissipating the fears perhaps in reentry.”). Conclusions: This retrospective study identified potentially powerful elements of a successful re-entry program. In the second part of the study we will evaluate a revised program using a pre-test; post-test and follow-up approach to learn more about what kinds of education best prepare people to not only return to society, but to thrive in society

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers a Single Dimension of Complexity that Structures Global Variation in Human Social Organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

There or not there? A multidisciplinary review and research agenda on the impact of transparent barriers on human perception, action, and social behavior

Contains fulltext : 145066.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Through advances in production and treatment technologies, transparent glass has become an increasingly versatile material and a global hallmark of modern architecture. In the shape of invisible barriers, it defines spaces while simultaneously shaping their lighting, noise, and climate conditions. Despite these unique architectural qualities, little is known regarding the human experience with glass barriers. Is a material that has been described as being simultaneously there and not there from an architectural perspective, actually there and/or not there from perceptual, behavioral, and social points of view? In this article, we review systematic observations and experimental studies that explore the impact of transparent barriers on human cognition and action. In doing so, the importance of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to inform the use of glass in contemporary architecture is highlighted and key questions for future inquiry are identified.17 p

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.This work was supported by a John Templeton Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled “Axial-Age Religions and the Z-Curve of Human Egalitarianism,” a Tricoastal Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled “The Deep Roots of the Modern World: The Cultural Evolution of Economic Growth and Political Stability,” Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant REF RES-060-25-0085 entitled “Ritual, Community, and Conflict,” an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 694986, and Grant 644055 from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ALIGNED; www.aligned-project.eu). T.E.C. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement 716212).Peer Reviewe