Collective Behavior

Introduction to See You On The Other Side podcast, episode 133, 28 February 2017 (interview by Mike Huberty and Allison Jornlin, Madison, Wisconsin).
Online at http://othersidepodcast.com/blog/2017/02/28/133-popobawa-dr-martin-walsh-idea-virus/.

The Minority Game is a simple model for the collective behavior of agents in an idealized situation where they have to compete through adaptation for a finite resource. This review summarizes the statistical mechanics community efforts to clear up and understand the behavior of this model. Our emphasis is on trying to derive the underlying effective equations which govern the dynamics of the original Minority Game, and on making an interpretation of the results from the point of view of the statistical mechanics of disordered systems.

The World Trade Center attack, though constituting an unprecedented disaster, nevertheless generated many of the features seen in other disasters in the U.S. Such features include the convergence of volunteers and donations of supplies, which are well- documented in the literature. Their appearance typically is problematic, since they both introduce needed resources and present additional management challenges for public officials

To investigate the existence of an autonomous system justification motive that guides human behavior, we tested the dissonance-inspired strong system-justification thesis: that the cognitive effort expended to justify societal systems on which people depend, is greater amongst the disadvantaged than amongst the advantaged when their group identities are weak in salience/strength. Using a novel pupil dilation paradigm to tap cognitive effort, we exposed an ethnic minority group (Ntotal = 263) to depictions of their ingroup as disadvantaged or advantaged after they had stated four things they liked about their ethnic group (strong group identity salience) or grandmother (weak group identity salience). We then measured fluctuations in their pupil diameter as they contemplated support for societal systems that were either relevant (high dependency) or irrelevant (low dependency) to their ethnic group. Results revealed that pupil sizes were larger in the group disadvantage condition than in the group advantage condition—indicating greater cognitive effort—but only when group identity was salient (Experiment 1) or when group identification was strong (Experiment 2). These effects occurred only for high dependency systems. Combined, this evidence contradicts the system-justification thesis, and questions the existence of an autonomous system justification motivation in humans.

This paper exhibits a short-run correspondence method appropriate for swarm versatile robots application. Infrared is utilized for transmitting and accepting information and obstruction location. The infrared correspondence code based swarm signaling is utilized for an independent versatile robot communication system in this research. A code based signaling system is developed for transmitting information between different entities of robot. The reflected infrared sign is additionally utilized for separation estimation for obstruction evasion. Investigation of robot demonstrates the possibility of utilizing infrared signs to get a solid nearby correspondence between swarm portable robots. This paper exhibits a basic decentralized control for swarm of self-collecting robots. Every robot in the code based swarm signaling is completely self-governing and controlled utilizing a conduct based methodology with just infrared-based nearby detecting and correspondences. The viability of the methodology has been checked with simulation, for a set of swarm robots.

Autores (p.o. de firma): Páez, D., Fernández, I. y Martín Beristain, C.
Título: Catástrofes, traumas y conductas colectivas: Procesos y efectos culturales
Ref.  0revista : 0  Libro: C. SANJUAN (Coord.) Catástrofes y Ayudas de Emergencia.
Clave: CL Volumen: Páginas, inicial: final: Fecha: 2001
Editorial (si libro):  Icaria                                                                     
Lugar de publicación: Barcelona


Autores (p.o. de firma): Páez, D., Fernández, I. y Martín Beristain, C.
Título: Apoyo Social en las catástrofes: Implicaciones prácticas
Ref.  0revista : 0  Libro: C. SANJUAN (Coord.). Catástrofes y Ayudas de Emergencia
Clave: CL Volumen: Páginas, inicial: final: Fecha: 2001
Editorial (si libro):  Icaria                                                                     
Lugar de publicación: Barcelona

The emergence of self-similarity and modularity in complex networks raises the fun- damental question of the growth process according to which these structures evolve. The possibility of a unique growth mechanism for biological networks, WWW and the Internet is of interest to the specialist and the laymen alike, as it promises to uncover the universal origins of collective behavior. Here,

Le theme de l’individuation et de la persistance des entites vivantes constitue l’une des problematiques centrales de la philosophie de la biologie. Dans les sciences du vivant, l’organisme represente traditionnellement l’exemple paradigmatique de l’individu biologique. Toutefois, malgre le lien intuitif entre l’organisme et l’individu, la biologie contemporaine a su faire un usage plus large du concept d’individu. Ainsi, la circonscription de ce qui etait apprehende comme appartenant au vivant a ete elargie par la reconnaissance de plusieurs types d’individus biologiques, parmi lesquels nous trouvons non seulement les organismes dits « traditionnels », mais egalement toute une variete d’entites telles que des protistes, des molecules d’ARN, des prions, des virus et des bacteries de toutes sortes. Par ailleurs, cette nouvelle vision de l’individu biologique a ete utilisee afin d’illustrer les differents niveaux de l’organisation biologique. En ce sens, la discussion porte principale...

The future of human computation (HC) benefits from examining tasks that agents already perform and designing environments to give those tasks computational significance. We call this natural human computation (NHC). We consider the possible future of NHC through the lens of Swarm!, an application under development for Google Glass. Swarm! motivates users to compute the solutions to a class of economic optimization problems by engaging the attention dynamics of crowds. We argue that anticipating and managing economies of attention provides one of the most tantalizing future applications for NHC.

In an effort to carve a distinct place for social facts without lapsing into a holistic ontology, John Greenwood has sought to define social phenomena solely in terms of the attitudes held by the actor(s) in question. I argue that his proposal allows for the possibility of a “lone collectivity” that is (1) unpalatable in its own right and (2) incompatible with the claim that sociology is autonomous from psychology. As such, I conclude that the relevant beliefs need to be held by more than one person.

The research topic we propose to present concerns the issue of collective behavior within a Global Information System, and a relating question of human rationality. The first issue is still new and unexplored. The interests in the area of information systems have concentrated mainly on technological aspects. If the human component was at all taken into account, it has been analyzed from the level of an individual. So have all new concepts of rationality. However, globalization and virtualization of human activity denote the growth of dispersed collectivities, the nature of which has yet to be fully comprehended. The detailed project objectives are included in three basic groups: theoretical, methodological and empirical, and arise from the following research questions: 1. Is collective behavior a phenomenon of exclusively qualitative nature, impossible to structure? 2. Does irrationality and unpredictability of individual actions determine irrationality and unpredictability of the w...

The focus of the study are the prison riots that have been taking place in the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City which is managed by the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor). Being the largest maximum security facility in the Philippines and being one of the largest correctional institutions in the world, NBP has numerous accounts of prison riots and disturbances. Given its situation; overly crowded by more than 300%, outdated, underfunded, existence of various gangs (Jones, 2014), the NBP provides a very conducive environment for prison riots to take place. In line with this, the researcher is interested as to the root of such events.

This is the pre-print working paper version, see the full printed version: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v025/25.3.onuch.html

The protests that began in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on 21 Novem- ber 2013 and became known as the EuroMaidan took even seasoned observers of East European politics by surprise. By December, around 800,000 “ordinary” Ukrainians were demonstrating in Kyiv and other cities across the country. The rapid rise of mass protests, especially at a time when the world’s established democracies are struggling with growing political apathy and declining voter turnout, appears as what Timur Kuran has called one of those moments “when out of never you have a revolution.”1 These episodes may help the cause of democ- racy, but they can also destabilize countries by polarizing citizens and boosting extremists. In order to gauge what a protest outbreak will mean for a country’s democratic prospects, it is crucial to understand who the bulk of the protesters are and what goals they hope to achieve. Here follows original survey data that may help to shed light on Euro- Maidan protest participation and its implications for democratic hopes in Ukraine.

"This book is a state-of-the-art review on the Physics of Emergence. The challenge of complexity is to focus on the description levels of the observer in context-dependent situations. Emergence is not only an heuristic approach to complexity, but it also urges us to face a much deeper question — what do we think is fundamental in the physical world?

This volume provides significant and pioneering contributions based on rigorous physical and mathematical approaches — with particular reference to the syntax of Quantum Physics and Quantum Field Theory — dealing with the bridge-laws and their limitations between Physics and Biology, without failing to discuss the involved epistemological features.

Physics of Emergence and Organization is an interdisciplinary source of reference for students and experts whose interests cross over to complexity issues.
"

This new edition of Tilly's excellent book is much more than a simple update. Castañeda very helpfully combines the historical and theoretical complexity of Tilly's original monograph with the accessibility of an undergraduate textbook to produce in one small space almost everything a course on social movements needs. The addition of new contemporary case studies-thoughtfully chosen and analyzed here and written collaboratively with Castañeda's students-brings to life Tilly's conceptual framework and provides a ready-made lesson plan to teach this framework for social movement analysis to graduate and undergraduate students. The cases are international in scope and include a focus on the role of social media and the internet where these new technologies have played important roles in movement mobilization. This new edition has also expanded the original chapter discussion questions and added a whole new set of research questions for the case studies that are guaranteed to generate good classroom discussions and interesting essays. Highly recommended! Rebecca Overmyer-Velázquez, Whittier College Charles Tilly (1929-2008) was one of our most insightful and imaginative analysts of social movements and related forms of political contention. His remarkable knowledge of contentious politics spanned centuries and continents. This accessible volume introduces readers to Tilly's ideas about the historical invention and global spread of social movements. And in this edition, Tilly's students (and their students) bring the story right up to the present, drawing on Tilly's concepts to make sense of collective protest in the twenty-first century, including the immigrant rights movement, the Indignados and Occupy movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement. This volume will interest readers new to social movements as well as practiced scholars. Jeff Goodwin, New York University This new edition of Social Movements builds on Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood's now-classic work. Tilly's position on what social movements are, how they operate, and why-and crucially, how they relate to other kinds of political action and what social movements are not-as ever provides needed clarity in an otherwise often-muddy field. Through a case-study approach, Ernesto Castañeda now builds a new story onto the already-impressive edifice: a guide for contemporary students to how Tilly's approach can help us to make sense of what's going on in contemporary movements, and also to see what might be changing in the landscape of contentious politics. John Krinsky

Popular explanations of riots as political manipulation of the ‘masses’ whereby shrewd politicians and elites enthuse community sentiments for electoral gains, as well as the explanatory thesis of communalism as masking deeper socio-economic interests, overlook deeper structural processes such as the specific historicity of Islam in India.

Given the hybrid and heterogeneous nature of Indian Islam, this article looks at two  contemporary structural processes of change – modernization and subsequent  secularization – to construct a theoretical framework to understand the dynamics of  religious identity mobilizations particularly in the light of the Gujarat Carnage in 2002.  This paper critically reviews the immediate context of Gujarat 2002, and the syncretic  traditions of localised Islam. It then overviews postmodern discussions of a super imposed modernity, to finally begin to make a case for approaching culture with a critical and historical perspective and view conflict and identity mobilizations as open ended phenomenon having context specific politics.

http://wiscomp.org/pubn/wiscomp-peace-prints/3-2/asha.pdf

http://wiscomp.org/

http://wiscomp.org/peace-prints/

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

Even though I coordinate an adolescent leadership training program based on cooperative values, I realized that I meant something different with these two words – cooperative leadership. The program was not only about acquiring values, but about a completely different way of approaching leadership and social development. Then, two things happened: first, one of the trainers told me that it was impossible to think of leadership without an individual leader; then, one of my fellow wasanies asked me what I meant by “cooperative leadership”.

Since then, I have been thinking about it, and this article tries to show some starting points of that journey.

A discussion is presented that explores the reason as to why humanity has been seemingly condemned to lurk within the low-consciousness dimension of the 3rd for such a long time without having expanded much in consciousness. In fact, it may easily be deduced that humanity has merely begun to advance its state of consciousness for the past few centuries, which has only been accelerated in the past century. It has been suggested by the author elsewhere that the consciousness of humanity was jump-started only within the last century via our space brethren that include the Arcturians, Pleaidians, Sirians, Andromedans, etc. by a way of giving us new technologies. The list of such technologies that include laser, acoustics, communication, computers, internet, photography, movie and television, holography, among others, has mostly been to facilitate our understanding of ourselves and the nature of our reality and consciousness. In particular, these technologies have led to a better understanding of the nature of crystalline light that is coherent and precise much like our light of consciousness; the discrete nature of frame-by-frame movie making via the advent of photography that mimics the quantum and discrete nature of our consciousness; the projection and broadcast of live and pre-recorded programs via television that is reminiscent of the multidimensional nature of our reality; holography that explicates the nature of our vision and tangible physical reality deciphering ALL THINGS; vibration mechanics that aids the process of understanding our sequential jumping into the parallel dimensions; communication via sound and light frequency that sheds some light into the nature of our genetics; the advent of computers that resembles the nature of our neural network functioning as a quantum holographic bio-computer; etc. It is further explicated herein that our matrix of reality is geared to what transpires within our Consciousness Grid in the Omni Earth. It is further elucidated that these programs of reality that have formed the matrix of the majority’s collective consciousness are very much dictated by our ego that, in essence, binds us to this 3rd dimension of consciousness. It is further elucidated that ego, in turn, is driven by a belief system that is governed by the grid’s matrix of reality, that is the result of collective consciousness of the majority. And, this matrix of reality has been particularly manipulated by a horde of malevolent entities for at least the past 13 millennia to persuade and accentuate separateness arising from fear, a futile sense of survivalism, and from greed, envy, competition, selfishness, outrageous concern for self-indulgence, lust, etc.  These traits leading to extreme separation from our true SELF and all other sentient beings, have encouraged such other highly deterrent maladies to humanity such as prejudice, rage, conflict, wars, etc. Finally, it is elucidated herein that the path to acquiring consciousness expansion is to abandon our current stale matrix of reality, and instead, replacing it with a new one that subscribes to unity consciousness governed by adopting the Unified Field that reflects the vibrations of the Divine Mind of our Prime Creator. It is achieved by forsaking separateness, and by adopting the science of unconditional love and compassion. It is initiated by abandoning ego and our stale belief system. It is made possible by going WITHIN, and self-reflecting, while being attuned to this Zero-Point Field of consciousness within the NOW moment, dispensing with the past, and avoiding the anticipatory anxiety of the future.

Two quasi-experimental and longitudinal studies examined positive effects of participation in positively valence collective
religious and secular activities. Collective emotional gatherings strengthen social cohesion, enhance personal and collective
self-esteem, positive affect, and positive shared beliefs among participants, through processes of emotional synchrony.
Furthermore, perceived emotional synchrony is associated with experiencing qualitatively different self-transcendent and enjoyment
emotions. In Study 1 we compared the effects of participating in Sunday Mass and other secular Sunday activities on
enhancement of transcendence beliefs and collective self-esteem and tested the mediational role of perceived emotional synchrony
and self-transcendent and enjoyment emotions. In Study 2 serial mediational analyses supported a model in which
perceived emotional synchrony increases self-transcendent and enjoyment emotions, which subsequently foster enhancement
of positive outcomes (controlling for the baseline) of participation in ritualized folkloric event. The results are discussed from the
perspective of neo-Durkheimian model of ritual, emphasizing the role of perceived emotional synchrony over self-trascendent
emotions, and from a socio-cultural approach to well-being.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

"Mots clés : métropolisation du temps, rythme social, rendez-vous collectif, urbanise temporaire, urbanité événementielle
Si la métropole est polychronique, l'isolement d'un de ses rythmes permet de nuancer les théories de la modernité liquide et de la ville en continu. A travers l'étude diachronique de trois événements festifs métropolitains à Paris et Bruxelles, nous proposons une lecture de l'histoire des villes par ses temps partagés, une description des mécanismes par lesquels les rythmes sociaux émergent et une analyse du rôle qu'ils jouent dans la production de l'espace et de la société.

Réinterrogé par le concept de rendez-vous collectifs, les rythmes sociaux urbains apparaissent comme une co-production entre un urbanisme temporaire et une urbanité événementielle. Ces deux éléments forment le couple explicatif du rôle spatial et social des rythmes événementiels dans la métropole. Les institutions municipales instrumentalisent l'urbanisme temporaire pour signifier des unités du temps social qui permettent d'organiser le rassemblement et de produire matériellement du lieu. L'urbanité événementielle est le résultat collectif des interprétations individuelles des événements comme signe temporel. Elle produit du lien social et construit un sens commun des lieux. La répétition calendaire de la rencontre entre l'urbanisme temporaire et l'urbanité événementielle provient d'une part, de la décision politique de maintenir et d'instrumentaliser le rendez-vous dans l'organisation de la métropole, d'autre part de la synchronisation rythmique des individus qui organisent leurs temps sociaux pour participer au rassemblement. La rationalité axiologique qui anime les participants est motivée par la valorisation des interactions de face-à-face et la production de liens sociaux associatifs, dans une société interrogée par la différenciation et la désynchronisation des modes de vie quotidiens. L'individu ne se passe toujours pas de rassemblements rituels, dans des lieux précis et selon des temporalités saisonnières.

En dépit de leurs racines historiques profondes, ces rythmes collectifs sont adaptés à la métropole, à la complexification de ses territoires, à l'hybridation de ses représentations culturelles et à l'individualisation de ses temporalités sociales. Au-delà, le concept de rythme est une théorie de morphologie sociale qui rend compte du fonctionnement des sociétés de façon multiscalaire et dynamique. Cette approche rythmique s'inscrit dans les théories sociologiques intermédiaires qui lient l'individu et le collectif, l'usager et l'habitant des villes et ses institutions, la morphologie spatiale et temporelle de groupements humains de toutes tailles. Le fait métropolitain, influençant et influencé par l'individu et le global, constitue une échelle mésociale heuristique pour l'analyse des sociétés modernes.

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Keywords: metropolization of time, social rhythms, planned gatherings, temporary urbanism, event sociability

The city is polychronic. We qualify liquid modernity theory and the twenty-four hour city model by isolating one of its rhythms. Based on a diachronic study of three festive urban events in Paris and Brussels, we propose a new reading of urban history through planned gatherings, a description of the mechanisms by which social rhythms emerge and the role they play in building urban space and society. The planned gathering concept is applied to urban social rhythms, which are seen as the product of an interaction between temporary urbanism and event sociability. Institutions instrumentalise temporary urbanism to signify units of social time, and implicitly plan gatherings by producing a conducive physical place. Event sociability is the collective result of individual interpretations of this sign, which produce social ties and create a corresponding social place. These places become periodic through political decisions to reproduce the sign, as well as individuals' efforts to organize and synchronize their time to participate. The resultant planned gatherings are in turn instrumentalized to organize the metropolis.

In a society whose groups are increasingly differentiated and desynchronized, face-to-face interaction and the production of discretionary social ties are highly valued. Individuals apply value rationality and thus continue to participate in ritual, seasonal gatherings at fixed places and times. Despite historical continuities, these rhythms are specifically modern in that they have adapted to the contemporary city's territorial complexity, cultural hybridization, and idividualized temporality. Using the semantic duality of rhythm (flowing / periodic) we outline a more general theory of social morphology which provides a multiscale, dynamic account of societies, covering interactions between the individual and the collective, inhabitants and institutions, the spatial and temporal patterns in human groups of varying size. The mesosocial metropolitan scale is situated between the indivual and the global."

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical perspective in sociology that addresses the manner in which society is created and maintained through face-to-face, repeated, meaningful interactions among individuals. This article surveys past theory and research in the interactionist tradition. It first provides an overview of three main trajectories in symbolic interactionist thought, focusing on the work of Herbert Blumer (the Chicago School), Manford Kuhn (the Iowa School), and Sheldon Stryker (the Indiana School). A brief summary of each figure's general perspective on symbolic interactionism is given, followed by a discussion of the research methodology that defines and distinguishes each. The article then reviews and assesses the empirical research that has emerged from these trajectories over the past decades, beginning with the classical studies of the mid-twentieth century and culminating in research programs that have emerged in the contemporary era. Specifically, this article surveys significant contributions to the symbolic interactionist literature in areas such as dramaturgy, cultural studies, postmodernism, gender/status/power, self and identity, collective behavior and social movements, and social context and the environment. It concludes with a discussion of future directions symbolic interactionists should take in continuing to develop the field.

At first the EuroMaidan, seemed like something we have seen before: the ‘Orange Revolution’. We were brought back to 23 November 2004, when observers of Ukrainian politics were shocked when they witnessed a sea of ‘ordinary’ Ukrainians, joined activists and opposition party members in a moment of mass mobilization. While Ukraine had previously experienced several smaller protest events, such as the 1986 Chornobyl disaster protests, the 1991 Revolution on the Granite, and the 2001 Ukraine Without Kuchma protests, the sheer size of the 2004 protests and the fact that participation quickly shifted to a majority made of ‘ordinary’ Ukrainians was unprecedented (Onuch 2014a). First heralded as a democratic awakening and the first step to Europeanization, but after the election of Viktor Yanukovych (the villain of the ‘Orange Revolution’) as president in 2010, academics agreed that for a variety of reasons, including protest fatigue, Ukraine would not see another mass-­‐‑mobilization any time soon (Meirowitz and Tucker 2013). Thus, when the November 2013 protests grew to 800,000, political scientists had to go back to the drawing board. It was happening again, and again they did not see it coming. While it seemed like déjà vu, it was very different and not least because it was happening with the events of 2004 as the precedent. This chapter’s aim is to analyse and contextualizes the EuroMaidan as a critical case of mass protest, by placing it in comparative reference to the ‘Orange Revolution’. First, the chapter will briefly outline the data used. Second, the chapter will highlight some key writing on mobilization and activism in Ukraine and identify potential contributions of this analysis to the literature. The majority of the text will assess the EuroMaidan mobilization. Employing interview and focus groups data collected by the author, we will be able to contrast and compare the parameters and trajectories of two protest waves (duration, location, and geographical diffusion); the central actors involved in the mobilization process and their main claims. At each step highlighting the convergence and divergence between the 2004 and 2013/14 mass mobilizations. Finally, once the main boundaries of the mobilization have been mapped out, the chapter will address the recent focus among the media and social scientists alike on: the rise of the right, the rise of violence, and the ‘new’ role of social media in the EuroMaidan mobilizations. This initial analysis seeks to provide a blue print for larger studies of the EuroMaidan mobilizations and in the conclusion will highlight key hypotheses for future testing.

“Fifty Baha’i Principles of Unity: A Paradigm of Social Salvation.”
Christopher Buck

Baha’i Studies Review 18 (2012): 3–44. (Published June 23, 2015)
(2017 update, with original Persian & Arabic primary sources added.)

[Presented at Princeton University (February 21, 2014).]

ABSTRACT
The Baha’i Faith, a young world religion, offers principles of unity—from family relations to international relations—as a paradigm for social salvation. These principles may be studied within the analytic prism of an ‘illness/cure’ approach to religious soteriologies—a conceptual model in the phenomenology of religions popularized by Stephen Prothero. World religions are systems of salvation, liberation or harmony. Their respective offers of salvation, liberation or harmony respond directly to the human predicament, as defined by each religion. If humanity is plagued by sin, then Christianity’s redemptive offer of salvation from sin makes perfect sense. Early Buddhism’s offer of liberation—from the fundamental problem of suffering—also fits perfectly in this model. In the Baha’i religion, the plight facing the world is profound estrangement at all levels of society. Therefore the social salvation that the Baha’i religion offers are precepts and practices that augment unity and harmony, as Baha’u’llah proclaims: ‘The distinguishing feature that marketh the pre-eminent character of this Supreme Revelation consisteth in that We have … blotted out from the pages of God’s holy Book whatsoever hath been the cause of strife, of malice and mischief amongst the children of men, and have … laid down the essential prerequisites of concord, of understanding, of complete and enduring unity’. After reviewing Raymond Piper’s typology, fifty (50) Baha’i principles of unity are enumerated and briefly described: types of unity propounded by Baha’u’llah in the Tablet of Unity (Lawḥ-i Ittiḥād); types of unity forecast by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the ‘The Seven Candles of Unity’; and types of unity articulated by Shoghi Effendi—a splendid array of understudied elements of the Baha’i social gospel. Since the present study is a first extended survey—of the notion of unity vis-à-vis the Baha’i Faith, based squarely on authenticated primary sources—results are preliminary, not definitive.

* This updated version (1 November 2017) is dedicated to the loving memory of the present writer’s eldest son, Jason Buck (b. August 20, 1978), who—suddenly, but peacefully—passed away on 26 October 2017, at the young age of 39. See https://www.facebook.com/jason.buck.180.

Although the theory of evolution was scientifically formulated only in the second part of the 19th century, the tradition of explaining and understanding humans as a (special, different) kind of animals dates back to the beginning of civilization. One of the oldest and most common definitions is the one describing a ‘man as a social animal’. While most notions of humans as animals have been effected by anthropocentrism (e.g. social cognition as specific to humans), some definitions have been, contradictory, emphasizing anthropodenial. Mathematically speaking, the “insert attribute” type of defining humans as animals is in its core- a function. While the nature of the relation changed, horizontally- over time and vertically- in different social settings, the idea of the function remained the same: underlining the differences. In this comparative study, we collected, extracted, analyzed and categorized definitions and depictions of humans through some form of correlation with animals from a variety of fields: natural sciences, social sciences, literature, philosophy, arts and culture. Results of the study include various classifications of definitions of humans as (social) animals, development and evolution in science as reflected in other fields as well as future tendencies. One of the conclusions of the research is the recognition of shifts in the society regarding understanding animals and humans. Some of the shifts were massive and quick, such as the theory of evolution, and as such reflected deeply in the understanding humans, animals and their social dimensions. However, recent advances in behavioral biology and animal cognition continue to show that there is increasingly less space for defining by differences.
"

The aggregate motion of a flock of birds, a herd of land animals, or a school of fish is a beautiful and familiar part of the natural world. But this type of complex motion is rarely seen in computer animation. This paper explores an approach based on simulation as an alternative to scripting the paths of each bird individually. The simulated flock is an elaboration of a particle system, with the simulated birds being the particles. The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is created by a distributed behavioral model much like that at work in a natural flock; the birds choose their own course. Each simulated bird is implemented as an independent actor that navigates according to its local perception of the dynamic environment, the laws of simulated physics that rule its motion, and a set of behaviors programmed into it by the “animator.” The aggregate motion of the simulated flock is the result of the dense interaction of the relatively simple behaviors of the individual simulated birds. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/37401.37406)