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Multitudes : how crowds made the modern world
In 'Multitudes', Dan Hancox celebrates the history of the crowd. The crowd is the human embodiment of democracy. It is a testament to the incredible things that happen when we gather with strangers in pursuit of a common goal - whether that is to throw a rave, or overthrow a dictator. We will see how crowds have the power to change history, and how joining crowds changes us for the better, too.
BOOK
Non Sibi, Sed Omnibus: Influence of Supplier Collective Behaviour on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Bangladeshi Apparel Supply Chain
Local supplier corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries represents a powerful tool to improve labour conditions. This paper pursues an inter-organizational network approach to the global value chain (GVC) literature to understand the influence of suppliers' collective behaviour on their CSR engagement. This exploratory study of 30 export-oriented and first-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, a developing country, makes three relevant contributions to GVC scholarship. First, we show that suppliers are interlinked in a horizontal network that restricts unilateral CSR engagement. This is justified in that unilateral CSR engagement is a source of heterogeneity in labour practices; consequently, it triggers worker unrest. Second, we present and discuss an exploratory framework based on four scenarios of how suppliers currently engage in CSR given their network's pressure toward collective behaviour: unofficial CSR engagement, geographic isolation, size and competitive differentiation, and external pressure. Finally, we show the need to spread CSR homogeneously among suppliers and to reconceptualize the meaning of CSR in developing countries, encouraging more scrutiny toward horizontal dynamics.
Journal Article
The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks
Numerous studies indicate that civil society organizations create cultural change by deploying mainstream messages that resonate with prevailing discursive themes. Yet these case studies of highly influential organizations obscure the much larger population that have little or no impact. It is therefore unclear whether civil society organizations create cultural change by deploying mainstream discourses or if they become part of the mainstream because of their success. I present an evolutionary theory of how discursive fields settle after major historical ruptures that highlights framing, social networks, and emotional energy. To illustrate this theory, I use plagiarism detection software to compare 1,084 press releases about Muslims produced by 120 civil society organizations to 50,407 newspaper articles and television transcripts produced between 2001 and 2008. Although most organizations deployed pro-Muslim discourses after the September 11th attacks, I show that anti-Muslim fringe organizations dominated the mass media via displays of fear and anger. Institutional amplification of this emotional energy, I argue, created a gravitational pull or \"fringe effect\" that realigned inter-organizational networks and altered the contours of mainstream discourse itself.
Journal Article
Far-field hydrodynamic interaction in a group of swimmers
Three-dimensional schools of hydrodynamically axisymmetric swimmers self-propelling at a constant velocity are studied. We introduce a low-order model for the induced velocity based on the far-field approximation. We inquire if, by holding suitable relative positions in the three-dimensional space, the swimmers can reduce the overall energy consumption of the school in comparison with the same number of isolated individuals at the same velocity. We find a considerable (several per cent) energy saving achievable by chain formations. The benefit increases asymptotically with the number of individuals, towards a finite limit that is a function of the minimum allowed spacing between each pair of neighbours.
Journal Article
Juveniles of a biparental cichlid fish compensate lack of parental protection by improved shoaling performance
Parental brood care greatly affects offspring’s fitness, but the specific effects of care on the collective behaviour of independent offspring are less well understood. It has been suggested that the loss of care induces increased sibling cooperation to compensate parental contributions. However, the empirical evidence is ambiguous. Here, we examined how the loss of early parental care affects the collective behaviour, i.e. shoaling performance of independent juveniles in a genetically heterogeneous lab-population of the biparental cichlid fish Pelvicachromis pulcher. Applying a split-clutch design, we reared in- and outbred offspring with or without parents. In the experiment, we examined shoal density (inter-individual distance) in relation to body size of the shoaling fish. Dense shoaling reduces predation risk and small fish may benefit strongest because they are particularly vulnerable to predation by gape-limited predators. Juveniles reared without parents formed denser shoals and they adjusted shoaling behaviour depending on own body size compared to juveniles reared with parents; especially smaller fish formed dense shoals. Inbreeding did not significantly affect shoaling performance. This indicates that juveniles compensate missing parental care by adjusting their shoaling behaviour depending on own vulnerability. Our study contributes to the understanding of the co-evolution of brood care and sibling cooperation.Significance statementLiving in groups reduces individual predation risk and in fishes, tighter shoals provide better protection than more lose shoals. Here, we examined how the loss of parental care influences the shoaling behaviour of the independent juveniles in the biparental cichlid fish Pelvicachromis pulcher. We show that juveniles that were reared without parents, and especially the most vulnerable, small fish, formed denser shoals compared to juveniles that received care. The results suggest that parental deprivation leads to more pronounced shoaling in the offspring, which may contribute to compensate missing care.
Journal Article
Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements
This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; uncertain/ambiguous moments and events; behavioral/emotional priming; and certain ecological/spatial factors. We conclude by elaborating why the activation of spontaneous actions matters in shaping the course and character of protest events and movements, and we suggest that spontaneity be resuscitated in the study of collective action and everyday life more generally.
Journal Article
Rational Ritual
Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge.
Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form \"common knowledge.\" Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, knowledge of the knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. For instance, people watching the Super Bowl know that many others are seeing precisely what they see and that those people know in turn that many others are also watching. This creates common knowledge, and advertisers selling products that depend on consensus are willing to pay large sums to gain access to it. Remarkably, a great variety of rituals and ceremonies, such as formal inaugurations, work in much the same way.
By using a rational-choice argument to explain diverse cultural practices, Chwe argues for a close reciprocal relationship between the perspectives of rationality and culture. He illustrates how game theory can be applied to an unexpectedly broad spectrum of problems, while showing in an admirably clear way what game theory might hold for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are not yet acquainted with it.
In a new afterword, Chwe delves into new applications of common knowledge, both in the real world and in experiments, and considers how generating common knowledge has become easier in the digital age.
eBook
Coordination of movement via complementary interactions of leaders and followers in termite mating pairs
In collective animal motion, coordination is often achieved by feedback between leaders and followers. For stable coordination, a leader's signals and a follower's responses are hypothesized to be attuned to each other. However, their roles are difficult to disentangle in species with highly coordinated movements, hiding potential diversity of behavioural mechanisms for collective behaviour. Here, we show that two Coptotermes termite species achieve a similar level of coordination via distinct sets of complementary leader–follower interactions. Even though C. gestroi females produce less pheromone than C. formosanus , tandem runs of both species were stable. Heterospecific pairs with C. gestroi males were also stable, but not those with C. formosanus males. We attributed this to the males' adaptation to the conspecific females; C. gestroi males have a unique capacity to follow females with small amounts of pheromone, while C. formosanus males reject C. gestroi females as unsuitable but are competitive over females with large amounts of pheromone. An information-theoretic analysis supported this conclusion by detecting information flow from female to male only in stable tandems. Our study highlights cryptic interspecific variation in movement coordination, a source of novelty for the evolution of social interactions.
Journal Article
Communal Reverie: A Wisdom Technology for Collective Imaginal Attunement
Communal Reverie, a group practice designed to facilitate the cultivation of collective imaginal attunement, has been framed a “collective wisdom technology.” It draws significant influence from the philosophy and practical protocols informing Collective Presencing, a modality of “we-space” practice developed by Ria Baeck. It is further informed by philosophical, mystical, and psychological traditions that advance various conceptions concerning the autonomous imagination’s value, both as a source of knowledge and a crucial element in transformative practice. Communal Reverie, to my present knowledge, is a distinctive practice modality insofar as it applies the technique of sourcing in service of a collective modality of imaginal encounter. The aspirations guiding the continual refinement of Communal Reverie’s theoretical and practical foundations are informed, most fundamentally, by thought traditions emphasizing engagement with the imaginal as a means toward advancing the evolutionary emergence of a modality of consciousness capable of assuming a co-creative and participatory role in relationship with transrational influences of a spiritual nature. The achievement of such participation may, furthermore, entail fundamental transformations in the phenomenal experience of both selfhood and time.
Journal Article
Mass panic and social attachment : the dynamics of human behavior
How do humans behave when under threat of attack or disaster? How does the social context affect individual behavior? Anthony Mawson provides an illuminating examination of individual and collective behavior under conditions of stress and danger, in response to both natural and manmade threats and disasters.
eBook