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Heterogeneous collective actors often select the same form of action, but there is no academic investigation into how and when this happens. This article does so focusing on direct social action, that is, a form of collective action that does not primarily focus upon claiming something from the state but instead focuses upon directly transforming some specific aspects of society. Building on conceptual categories developed by social movements’ scholars (context, organization, and identity) and relying on rich qualitative and quantitative data from collective actors in Italy in a time of crisis, this article identifies four paths toward direct social actions (DSA): the social path, the political-social path, the social-political path, and the political path. In doing so, our analysis shifts from the search for causal factors to the reconstruction of the dynamic, patterned sequences of events by which collective actors progress in adopting a certain form of action. The implications of these findings extend beyond studies of DSA in times of crisis in Italy, to an analysis of collective action in general. Capturing these multiple paths also has important implications for understanding how the same form of action is differently implemented and received when it is adopted by different actors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In today’s online markets, the reputation mechanism undergoes its most successful propagation in human history. Online reputation systems substitute informal sanctioning mechanisms at work in close-knit groups and enable complete strangers to trade with each other across large geographic distances. The organizational features of online markets support actors in solving three problems that hamper mutually beneficial market exchange: the value, competition, and cooperation problems. However, due to the plethora of trading opportunities available online, actors face a problem of excess, i.e., the difficulty of choosing a trading partner. Imitation of other actors’ choices of trading partners (i.e., herding) can solve the problem of excess but at the same time lead to the neglect of information about these trading partners’ trustworthiness. Using a large set of online-auction data (N ≈ 88 k), we investigate whether herding as a strategy for solving the problem of excess undermines the reputation mechanism in solving the cooperation problem. Our analysis shows that although buyers follow others in their decisions of which offers to consider, they do not follow others at any price and refer to sellers’ reputations to establish seller trustworthiness. Our results corroborate that reputation systems are viable organizational features that promote mutually beneficial exchanges in anonymous online markets.

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.

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.

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.

God plays a central role in Spinoza’s philosophy, directly shaping his views of ethics and politics. His theology is examined in light of contemporary perspectives in process philosophy. Analysis of the claim that “The more we understand singular things the more we understand God” (E5p24), shows that Spinoza advances a participatory theology that prioritizes a developmental process that fosters loving-kindness and intellectual generosity. Religion is the virtue enabling our participation in divine power. The key characteristics of participation in divine power are that these powers are (1) non-scarce/open-source/sharable, (2) regenerative, (3) propagate from one context to another, and (4) potentiate novel, unforeseeable discovery and invention. It is through community with other singular beings and via social affects that we understand divinity: by participating in powers that are sharable and continue to intensify and evolve when made openly accessible. His ideas can inspire our current problematic in beneficial ways.