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Since transition to higher education emerged as a research topic in the early 1970s, scholarly inquiry has focused on students without impairments and, what is more, little attention has been paid to the role of digital technologies. This article seeks to address this knowledge gap by looking at the university experiences of a group of first-year students with vision impairments from New Zealand, and the way they use digital tools, such as social media and mobile devices, to manage their transition-related challenges. The article summarises the findings from a longitudinal qualitative project which was methodologically informed by action research (AR). The article explores and discusses scholarly inquiry of transition to university and introduces a conceptual framework which includes five overlapping stages, the transition issues faced by the students and the roles played by digital technologies. The article updates and expands the theoretical understanding of transition to higher education and provides empirical evidence for practitioners to support the needs, inclusion, and participation of young people with disabilities in the tertiary setting., 25 pages

This chapter reviews the quality of life in European societies, drawing on sociological theories of the quality of life, and specifically touching upon the areas of housing, the environment, health, and time use. One major theme is the social stratification of quality of life, both within and between European societies. The chapter was published in Steffen Mau and Roland Verwiebe, European Societies. Mapping Structure and Change, Policy Press 2010. A Stata replication file that recreates all the Figures in the chapter is available.

Humans invest in fantastic stories—mythologies. Recent evolutionary theories suggest that cultural selection may favour moralising stories that motivate prosocial behaviours. A key challenge is to explain the emergence of mythologies that lack explicit moral exemplars or directives. Here, we resolve this puzzle with an evolutionary model in which arbitrary mythologies transform a collection of egoistic individuals into a cooperative. We show how these otherwise puzzling amoral, nonsensical, and fictional narratives act as exquisitely functional coordination devices and facilitate the emergence of trust and cooperativeness in both large and small populations. Especially, in small populations, reflecting earlier hunter-gatherers communities, relative to our contemporary community sizes, the model is robust to the cognitive costs in adopting fictions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for social research. However, little is known about the impact of social distancing measures on research with hard-to-reach populations. This paper provides methodological reflections on the efficacy of socially distanced recruitment and interviewing methods for research with disabled young people, drawing on our experience from the Educational Pathways and Work Outcomes longitudinal study, which started in March 2021 during the third national lockdown in England. We discuss difficulties in gaining access to disabled young people and argue that the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding barriers implicated in the recruitment of hard-to-reach populations who are typically seen as vulnerable by gatekeepers. In contrast, our experience suggests that flexible online/virtual interviews can overcome pitfalls inherent in the face-to-face interviewing of disabled young people and could therefore be utilised to make their voices heard in a variety of contexts and scenarios after the end of the ongoing pandemic.

Upland regions in the United Kingdom (UK) are increasingly under consideration as potential areas for thecreation of woodlands. This is driven by a combination of factors, including the aims of UK forestry and environmentalpolicy to increase woodland cover, meeting international greenhouse gas emission reduction targets,agro-environment schemes in national and international policy, and an increasing public awareness of theecosystem service benefits landscapes can deliver for society. Creating new woodlands in upland areas is challenging,partly due to concerns of the potential impacts from a change in land use and due to stakeholderperspectives. In the UK, the upland landscape is in multiple ownership and currently managed by multiple landmanagers and stakeholders with contrasting aims and objectives. This research adds a much-needed qualitativeelement to the overall understanding of this complex topic, by carrying out a Q-methodology investigation ofstakeholder perspectives of upland woodland creation. Three characteristic groups of stakeholders are identifiedas 1. ‘Not enough is done to protect the environment’, 2. ‘Changing the landscape is changing us’ and 3. ‘let’s not let ouremotions get in the – seeing the bigger picture’. The clear potential for antagonism, and even conflict, in ideologiesand approaches between these groups highlights the importance of engaging with stakeholders and employingapproaches rooted in mutual understanding, participation and collaboration. Stakeholder perspectives are a powerful influence on if, and how, woodlands are created and maintained, thus understanding emotions andattitudes is a vitally important part of the challenge of creating new woodlands in the uplands of Cumbria

Has disease stigma declined? Our ability to answer this question has been hampered by the lack of comparable data across diseases and over time. Using word embeddings, we analyze 4.5 million news articles to create new measures of stigma for 107 health conditions. We find that in the 1980s, most diseases were marked by strong connotations of disgust, danger, impurity, and negative personality traits. Since then, stigma has declined dramatically for most physical illnesses; cancers, neurological conditions, genetic diseases, and many other conditions have shed most of their negative connotations. But this decline was uneven: mental illnesses, eating disorders, and addictions saw no stigma declines, and stigma declined more slowly for infectious diseases than for chronic conditions. Using multivariate regression, we find that patients’ activism explains some but not all of the variation in stigma. Stigma has transformed from a sea of negative connotations surrounding most diseases to a narrower set of judgments targeting conditions where the primary symptoms are aberrant behaviors.

Despite established recommended standard definitions, measures, and methods by the UN Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to assess dimensions of disability, national censuses vary widely in the questions used to identify people with disabilities. Although many seek to conform ex-ante to ICF definitions, they also deviate from this basic framework in different ways. This complicates ex-post harmonization and standardization for cross-national comparisons of disabilityprevalence and outcomes influenced by disability status, such as labor market participation. Addressing these issues, this study uses IPUMS International Census microdata since 2,000 to examine disability mea- surement across 65 countries. We find that definitions, terminology, measurement, and instructions to both respondents and enumerators mat- ter for understanding disability prevalence cross-nationally. For instance, questions that included potentially stigmatizing language were associ- ated with lower rates of disability reporting, but questions that listed spe- cific limitations were associated with higher rates. Beyond disability, our findings also speak more broadly to ongoing challenges in survey har- monization for cross-national comparison.

Against a backdrop of extreme racial health inequality, the 1918 influenza pandemic resulted in a striking reduction of non-White to White influenza and pneumonia mortality disparities in United States cities. We provide the most complete account to date of these reduced racial disparities, showing that they were unexpectedly uniform across cities. Linking data from multiple sources, we then examine potential explanations for this finding, including city-level sociodemographic factors such as segregation, implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions, racial differences in exposure to the milder spring 1918 “herald wave,” and racial differences in early-life influenza exposures, resulting in differential immunological vulnerability to the 1918 flu. While we find little evidence for the first three explanations, we offer suggestive evidence that racial variation in childhood exposure to the 1889–1892 influenza pandemic may have shrunk racial disparities in 1918. We also highlight the possibility that differential behavioral responses to the herald wave may have protected non-White urban populations. By providing a comprehensive description and examination of racial inequality in mortality during the 1918 pandemic, we offer a framework for understanding disparities in infectious disease mortality that considers interactions between the natural histories of particular microbial agents and the social histories of those they infect.

After a period of general fervour for social capital, civil society and NGOs’ involvement, current literature is more cautious, trying to test the outcomes of networks’ participation on the quality of democracy. Third Sector political capabilities for voice, negotiation, lobbying and campaigning are very important variables. The article focuses on the formation of these capabilities in a contentious process of policymaking. Starting on a case study in the Lombardy Region, it shows how conditions, mechanisms and processes of Third Sector engagements play a role in the learning and gradual change of political capabilities. Particularly, it stresses the relevance of deliberative arenas for third sector coordination and reflexivity. Looking at the political outcomes in the implementation of the Social Care Reform at the Regional level, the article formulates a hypothesis about the policy dependency of Third Sector legitimate power.

This chapter draws on the literature reviews of 387 books and articles about sex differences to argue that the scientific authority of the sex binary is often rhetorically established through misleading, revisionist histories of the field.

Despite low levels of cycling to secondary education across the adolescent population in Ireland, there is, in addition, a pronounced inequality in rates of ridership between teenage girls and boys, with nearly 10 times as many boys cycling to school compared to girls. In light of this disparity, the Green-Schools #andshecycles campaign was created to explore and address the cycling gender gap among second-level students. Emerging from this campaign, this paper details qualitative research exploring this gender gap, drawing on focus groups with teenage girls and boys across Ireland. Using grounded theory methodology, a theory of cycling as 'A Boy's Thing' was generated. This theory makes sense of how cycling as a social practice is continually enacted, reproduced and regulated as a practice of and for boys among Irish adolescents, through related practices of exemplifying masculinity, incompatible femininity and processes of gender regulation.It has significant implications in considering the effects of gender as a configuration of social practice (Connell, 2005) or performance (Butler, 1990) on cycling, and how cycling is a uniquely gendered practice/performance in particular contexts. In light of this theoretical interpretation, two approaches for tackling the Irish second-level cycling gender gap are provided: first, promoting cycling among teenage girls by making cycling more compatible with dominant practices of femininity; second, promoting cycling among teenage girls by publicly rejecting and subverting dominant practices of femininity and processes of gender regulation relating to cycling in present day Ireland.&nbsp

Algorithms and society research has focused on algorithms used by private companies and governments (production algorithms), with comparatively little attention to how algorithms are being used for scientific discovery. This has led theories of how algorithms produce social harms to focus on inattention: production algorithm designers and users are focused on the utility of automating decisions and often overlook theoretical and measurement issues that result in harmful algorithmic systems. Indeed, replacing ‘theory’ with ‘data’ has long been a motivation for using quantification and algorithmic systems. As a result, increased attention to theory and measurement is often proposed as a solution to socially harmful algorithms. But algorithms for discovery are tools for scientists to critically examine theory and measurement, so their social effects may not be explained through the lens of inattention. Under current theories, we might guess that this increased reflection means algorithms for discovery do not have harmful social effects. However, using the case of neuroscience research that trains machine learning algorithms to predict sex from brain scans, I argue that increasing intentionality and theory-method alignment in algorithmic systems are not necessarily cures. Instead, scientists design and interpret classification algorithms to reinforce harmful notions of sex and gender.

Purpose of Review: Acceleration of biological processes of aging is hypothesized to drive excess morbidity and mortality in socially disadvantaged populations. DNA methylation measures of biological aging provide tools for testing this hypothesis.Recent Findings: Next-generation DNA-methylation measures of biological aging developed to predict mortality risk and physiological decline are more predictive of morbidity and mortality than the original epigenetic clocks developed to predict chronological age. These new measures show consistent evidence of more advanced and faster biological aging in people exposed to socioeconomic disadvantage and may be able to record the emergence of socially-determined health inequalities as early as childhood. Next-generation DNA-methylation measures of biological aging also indicate race/ethnic disparities in biological aging. More research is needed on these measures in samples of non-Western and non-White populations.Summary: New DNA-methylation measures of biological aging open opportunities for refining inference about the causes of social disparities in health and devising policies to eliminate them. Further refining measures of biological aging by including more diversity in samples used for measurement development is a critical priority for the field.

Understanding how structural, social and psychosocial factors come to affect our health resulting in health inequalities is more relevant now than ever as trends in mortality gaps between rich and poor appear to have widened over the past decades. To move beyond description, we need to hypothesize about how structural and social factors may cause health outcomes. In this paper we examine the construction of health over the life course through the lens of influential theoretical work. Based on concepts developed by scholars from different disciplines, we propose a novel framework for research on social-to-biological processes which may be important contributors to health inequalities. We define two broad sets of mechanisms that may help understand how socially structured exposures become embodied: mechanisms of exogenous and endogenous origin. We describe the embodiment dynamic framework, its uses and how it may be combined with an intersectional approach to best capture how intermeshed oppressions affect social exposures which may be expressed biologically. We explain how this framework may be a tool for carrying out research and provide scientific evidence to challenge genetic essentialism, often used to dismiss social inequalities in health.

Medical sociologists and sociologists of disability study similar topics but, because of competing or conflicting theoretical paradigms, tend to arrive at different conclusions, engage with different audiences, and pursue different directions for social change. Despite diverging trajectories over the past 20 years, however, there remains clear potential overlap between both subfields in the study of disability and untapped opportunities for cross-fertilization. Our purpose here is to place these literatures in conversation with each other. Toward this end, we identify major themes in the last 20 years of medical sociology scholarship, gaps with regard to disability in those themes, and possibilities (including methodologies) we see at the intersection of medical sociology and the sociology of disability that could address these gaps.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed employment situations for workers everywhere. This is especially true among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions who face greater risks in contracting COVID-19 and experience larger disadvantages within the labor market. Drawing from original data gathered through a national online survey (N= 1,027) and integrated set of virtual interviews (N= 50) with Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions, our findings show that although the pandemic has not directly led to job losses for most people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, respondents who have lost employment due to COVID-19 are struggling. Even though employed workers have been faring better, half were concerned about losing their jobs within the next year, and these concerns were more prevalent among part-time and non-union workers. Our findings emphasize the potential for growing economic insecurity as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on employment situations among marginalized groups.

A growing body of evidence suggests that imbalanced local sex ratios are correlated with social consequences, including the pattern and timing of union formation, fertility and relationship stability. Scholars have argued that these findings can be understood as a result of imbalances in the bargaining power the respective sex holds in male- or female-skewed regions, but they remain vague on the underlying mechanisms. Specifically, the literature implicitly considers individual partner market experiences to be a function of local sex ratios. However, empirical evidence on the correspondence between subjective partner availability and local sex ratios remains scarce. This study addresses this gap by linking individual-level German longitudinal survey data (pairfam) with local sex ratios from population data for different entities (states, counties, and municipalities). Using multilevel regression models, this paper analyses the correlations between a subjective partner market indicator and a variety of local sex ratio measures. Moreover, an event history analysis explored how either indicator relates transitions into relationships. Results revealed that none of the local sex ratio measures, including those for narrow age ranges and/or lower level administrative entities, significantly predicted whether individuals predominantly met individuals of their own sex. Event history models yielded significant correlations between this subjective partner market indicator and relationship formation for both genders, substantiating the validity of the subjective indicator. For local sex ratios, results revealed an additional association between local sex ratios and female relationship formation when the sex ratios were adjusted for age hypergamy. Male relationship formation was uncorrelated with any local sex ratio. Both evolutionary and social scientific reasoning on the consequences of sex ratio imbalances rest on assumptions of subjective partner availability that may not be adequately represented by local sex ratios. Future research should be careful not to equate local sex ratios and conscious partner market experiences.

Human decision-making is affected by a diversity of factors including material cost–benefit considerations, normative and cultural influences, learning and conformity with peers and external authorities (e.g. cultural, religious, political, organisational). Also important are dynamically changing personal perceptions of the situation and beliefs about actions and expectations of others as well as psychological phenomena such as cognitive dissonance and social projection. To better understand these processes, I develop a unifying modelling framework describing the joint dynamics of actions and attitudes of individuals and their beliefs about the actions and attitudes of their groupmates. I consider which norms get internalised and which factors control beliefs about others. I predict that the long-term average characteristics of groups are largely determined by a balance between material payoffs and the values promoted by the external authority. Variation around these averages largely reflects variation in individual costs and benefits mediated by individual psychological characteristics. The efforts of an external authority to change the group behaviour in a certain direction can, counter-intuitively, have an opposite effect on individual behaviour. I consider how various factors can affect differences between groups and societies in the tightness/looseness of their social norms. I show that the most important factors are social heterogeneity, societal threat, effects of authority, cultural variation in the degree of collectivism/individualism, the population size and the subsistence style. My results can be useful for achieving a better understanding of human social behaviour and historical and current social processes, and in developing more efficient policies aiming to modify social behaviour.

Background School injuries are an important adolescent health problem. Previous research suggests that relevant risk behaviors for school injuries, risk-taking and aggression, are highly susceptible to peer effects. Specifically, evidence suggests that the ratio of men and women in peer groups (sex ratio) affects individuals’ propensity for aggression and risk-taking. However, potential associations of classroom sex ratios with adolescent school injury risks have not been studied so far. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of classroom sex compositions with adolescent school injuries. Methods We investigate the association of classroom sex ratios with school injuries in a longitudinal survey dataset containing 13,131 observations from 9,204 adolescent students (ages 13-16) from secondary schools in Germany. The data also allow us to identify injuries due to aggressive behavior and analyze these injuries in detail. We use multilevel logistic regression models to analyze risks of both overall and aggression-related school injuries. Results Adolescent students’ risk for school injuries is significantly and positively associated with male-skewed classroom sex ratios (OR = 1.012, p=0.012). Specifically, the risk of sustaining a school injury increases by 33.5 percent when moving from the 10th to the 90th classroom sex ratio percentile. Moreover, we find an even stronger positive association between male-dominated classrooms and aggression-related injury risks (OR = 1.022, p=0.010). Compared to classroom sex ratios at the 10th percentile, the risk of an aggression-related injury is 78 percent higher in classrooms with a sex ratio at the 90th percentile. Finally, we find that both boys’ and girls’ injury risks equally increase with a higher proportion of male students in their classroom. Conclusions Our findings indicate that sex composition of classrooms is an important contextual factor for adolescent school injuries, in particular school injuries resulting from aggression. These findings illustrate the need to integrate a contextual perspective on school injuries among adolescent students both into research and into intervention planning. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12370-8.

Background Although the COVID-19 pandemic has led to worsening mental health outcomes throughout the Canadian population, its effects have been more acute among already marginalized groups, including people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. This paper examines how heightened fears of contracting the virus, financial impacts, and social isolation contribute to declining mental health among this already vulnerable group. Objective/hypothesis This paper investigates how increases in anxiety, stress, and despair are associated with concerns about getting infected, COVID-19-induced financial hardship, and increased social isolation as a result of adhering to protective measures among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Methods This study uses original national quota-based online survey data (n=1027) collected in June 2020 from people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Threelogistic regressionmodels investigate the relationship between COVID-19’s effects on finances, concerns about contracting the virus, changes in loneliness and belonging, and measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19 and reports of increased anxiety, stress, and despair, net of covariates. Results Models show that increased anxiety, stress, and despair were associated with negative financial effects of COVID-19, greater concerns about contracting COVID-19, increased loneliness, and decreased feelings of belonging. Net of other covariates, increased measures taken to combat COVID-19 was not significantly associated with mental health outcomes. Conclusions Findings address how the global health crisis is contributing to declining mental health status through heightened concerns over contracting the virus, increases in economic insecurity, and growing social isolation, speaking to how health pandemics exacerbate health inequalities.

This study examines how people with disabilities and chronic health conditions—members of a large and diverse group often overlooked by Canadian public policy—are making sense of the Canadian federal government’s response to COVID-19. Using original national online survey data collected in June 2020 (N= 1,027), we investigate how members of this group view the government’s overall response. Although survey results show broad support for the federal government’s pandemic response, findings also indicate fractures based on disability type and specific health condition, political partisanship, region, and experiences with COVID-19. Among these, identification with the Liberal party and receipt of CERB stand out as associated with more positive views. Further examination of qualitative responses shows that these views are also linked to differing perspectives surrounding government benefits and spending, partisan divisions, and other social and cultural cleavages. La présente étude porte sur la façon dont les personnes atteintes de handicap ou de maladie chronique — appartenant à un vaste groupe diversifié, souvent ignoré des politiques publiques canadiennes — interprètent la réaction du gouvernement fédéral canadien à la COVID‑19. À l’aide de données nationales exclusives tirées d’un sondage en ligne effectué en juin 2020 (N= 1 027), nous analysons le point de vue des membres de ce groupe quant à la réaction globale du gouvernement. Bien que les résultats du sondage témoignent d’un large appui à la réaction du gouvernement fédéral à la pandémie, nos observations révèlent également des failles selon la nature du handicap et les particularités liées à l’état de santé, l’allégeance politique, la région et les expériences en ce qui a trait à la COVID‑19. Entre autres éléments, l’allégeance au Parti libéral et le statut de bénéficiaire de la PCU se signalent comme étant associés à des points de vue plus positifs. Un examen plus approfondi des réactions qualitatives montre que ces points de vue sont également liés à des perspectives divergentes entourant les prestations et les dépenses gouvernementales, les divisions partisanes et autres clivages sociaux et culturels.

Humanity's most pressing need is to learn how to live within our planet's boundaries --- something that likely means doing without economic growth. How, then, can we create a non-growth society that is both just and equitable? I attempt to address this question by looking at an aspect of sustainability (and equity) that is not often discussed: the growth of hierarchy. As societies consume more energy, they tend to become more hierarchical. At the same time, the growth of hierarchy also seems to be a key driver of income/resource inequality. In this essay, I review the evidence for the joint relation between energy, hierarchy and inequality. I then speculate about what it implies for achieving a sustainable and equitable future.

Complex modern societies require an extended network of specialized workers and organizations (social entities) that play an active role in satisfying the demands of the community. Social entities compete with each other for specific resources (e.g., commercial companies for customers, politicians for votes, TV programs for rating, scientists for funding) with rules that mimic Darwinian natural selection. Social entities explore the landscape of possible strategies to survive (variation principle). Unsuccessful entities disappear as the winning ones drain the available resources (fitness principle). Fruitful strategies are copied and improved by competing entities (heredity principle). The struggle for resources forces the entities to explore all sorts of strategies that do not always follow ethical principles. Without clear limitations to the acceptable survival tactics, entities will explore fruitful unethical approaches depleting the available resources. Therefore, it is necessary to promote the elaboration of ethical codes for each specific social entity to limit the available strategies for competition.

Why do people adorn themselves with elaborate body piercings or tattoos, wear obstructing garbs, engage in life-threatening competitions and other wasteful and harmful but socially stipulated practices? Norms of cooperation and coordination, which promote the efficient attainment of collective benefits, can be explained by theories of collective action. However, social norms prescribing wasteful and harmful behaviours have eluded such explanations. We argue that signalling theory constitutes the basis for the understanding of the emergence of such norms, which we call signalling norms. Signalling norms emerge as a result of the uncertainty about who is a friend and who is a foe. The need to overcome this uncertainty arises when different groups compete for scarce resources and individuals must be able to identify, trust and cooperate with their fellow group members. After reviewing the mechanisms that explain the emergence of cooperation and coordination norms, we introduce the notion of signalling norms as markers of group distinction. We argue that adherence to signalling norms constitutes a commitment promoting parochial cooperation rather than a quality-revealing signal facilitating partner choice. We formalize our argument in a game-theoretic model that allows us to specify the boundary conditions for the emergence of signalling norms. Our paper concludes with a discussion of potential applications of our model and a comparison of signalling norms with related concepts.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

Synthetic biology and gene editing opens new possibilities for human enhancement requiring ethical, societal and biopolitical considerations to evaluate its implications on the biopower and the human species. In this article, from a critical and exploratory analysis, we advocate that recent biotechnological developments allowed by synthetic biology (including gene editing) are transforming the line of forces of biopower and biopolitics. After having described the paradigm of life as an engineering discipline conveyed by synthetic biology, we first analyze using the concept of somatechnology that this technoscience is transforming the figure of the cyborg towards the biocyborg blurring the distinctions natural/artificial and man/machine. In second, we investigate the bioeconomy of enhancement and its effect on how the individuals developed new modes of subjectivation and how they consider their own bodies. We end the article by analysing the transformations of biopower with gene editing and the use of technologies of genetic self-modification by self-experimenters.

Population ageing is presented as one of the ‘grand challenges’ of the twenty-first century. Yet, policies designed to offset these challenges seem to be a jumbled, disjointed mix with no clear, overarching narrative. One of the successes of climate change science is the development of a clear, distinguishable framework to plan action: adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. This framework can be applied to designing better policy for ageing: adapting to support people in need today; mitigating future challenges by ensuring that people and institutions ‘age better’; and building resilience by developing both a longer-term perspective and policy learning framework.

Cryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and the subsequent thawing of these at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. The article presents some initial ideas and central theses of a research project recently funded by the European Research Council (ERC). The CRYOSOCIETIES project is based on the thesis that in contemporary societies, cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES examines the creation of “suspended life” through three ethnographic studies that investigate various sites of cryopreservation. The first deals with cord blood banking with the promise to store vitality and ensure health; the second addresses oocyte freezing to extend fertility and rearrange reproductive futures, while the third case study focusses on the emergence of “frozen zoos”, that is to say cryobanks which seek to preserve organic material of endangered or extinct animal species. The conclusion will rehearse the central aspects of the proposed project and point to further directions of research.

If you lose a leg, you will feel undignified in public places; that is to say, a body organ is a dignity of humans. If you are penniless, you will feel undignified everywhere; that is to say, money is a dignity of humans as well. Scientifically, therefore, the word ``dignity'' should be a countable noun; you have many concrete dignities, including your body organs, your children, your wealth, your privacy, your image, and so on; in addition, you need to defend these concrete dignities of yours all your life. With this scientific concept of dignity, this paper can smoothly solve a series of hard problems, including (1) how human ancestors stood up from four-legged animals; (2) why humans got dressed; (3) how humans acquired wisdom; (4) why humans commit suicide; and (5) why humans have developed into what you see today.

Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively associated with the success of religious organizations. We present the first evidence that this association is causal. We employ a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the length of fasting time vary from year-to-year and by latitude. We find that an hour increase in fasting during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by about 6.5 percentage-points in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018. This effect is weaker in provinces where the proportion of non-orthodox Muslims is higher, but stronger in provinces where the number of per capita mosques and of religious personnel is higher. Further analyses suggest that the main mechanism underlying our findings is an increased commitment to religion induced by costlier practice. By showing that the success of religious organizations is causally related to the sacrifice demanded by religious practices, these results strengthen a key finding of the science of religion.

The ability to work at older ages depends on health and education. Both accumulate starting very early in life. We assess how childhood disadvantages combine with education to affect working and health trajectories. Applying multistate period life tables to data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the period 2008-2014, we estimate how the residual life expectancy at age 50 is distributed in number of years of work and disability, by number of childhood disadvantages, gender, and race/ethnicity. Our findings indicate that number of childhood disadvantages is negatively associated with work and positively with disability, irrespective of gender and race/ethnicity. Childhood disadvantages intersect with low education resulting in shorter lives, and redistributing life years from work to disability. Among the highly educated, health and work differences between groups of childhood disadvantage are small. Combining multistate models and inverse probability weighting, we show that the return of high education is greater among the most disadvantaged.

In order to solve complex problems or make difficult decisions, people must strategically combine personal information acquired directly from experience (individual learning) and social information copied from others (social learning). The game of football (soccer) provides a wealth of real world data with which to quantify managers' use of personal and social information in selecting team formations. I analyse a 5-year dataset of all games (n=9127, 2012-2017) in the five top European leagues (English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A) to quantify the extent to which a manager's initial match formation is guided by their personal past use or success with that formation, or other managers' use or success with that formation. I focus in particular on the use of the 4231 formation, which was the dominant formation at the start of this period but showed a gradual decline in use over time. I find that, as predicted, a manager's choice of whether to use 4231 or not is influenced by both their recent use of 4231 (personal information) and the use of 4231 in the entire population of managers in that division (social information). Contrary to expectations, managers appeared to rely more on personal than social information, although this estimate was highly variable across managers and divisions. Serie A managers, in particular, showed a much stronger use of personal information, likely due to the rarity of 4231 in that division. Finally, there did not appear to be an adaptive tradeoff between social and personal information use, with the relative reliance on each failing to predict managerial success.

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure.

Evolution is a process pertaining to the material world that shapes the course of everything, both animate and inanimate, belonging to this planet and the universe. Here, we focus on understanding as to how evolution gets going through the Hegelian dialectical paradigm and the way it influences the trails of knowledge development and social dynamic changes. In congruent endeavours, the meaning of evolution in biological systems is explored. An elaboration, with illustration, is attempted in the field of science and technology to show the optimistic influence of evolution. That, the society is prone to evolutionary changes for uplifting its state, is discussed and following of the views and concepts of natural sciences, in social dynamic changes, is emphasized.

Review essay about genomics and social science, focusing especially on science, policy, and moral issues related to polygenic scores.

This qualitative study explores the understanding and perspectives of faculty in US library and information science (LIS) programs about teaching web accessibility. “Web accessibility” can be defined simply as making websites accessible for all, including people with disabilities. Eight LIS professors and two graduate LIS students or recent alumni with interests in accessibility were interviewed for the study. Results showed that, although some faculty were novices, most interviewees thought it would be beneficial to teach web accessibility in a variety of LIS courses. However, despite the seeming consensus, discussion of incorporating web accessibility into curricula was rare. This study explores possible reasons for the marginalization of web accessibility in LIS. The authors contend that greater support for initiatives to integrate web accessibility into LIS curricula is essential for enabling LIS practitioners to comply with legal standards and with LIS values of inclusion.

Agritourism has become popular in Vietnam, in which agriculture plays an important role in the economy and provides great condition for this tourism form. The development of agritourism, in turn, has benefited the agriculture, helping to enrich tourism services and improve the living conditions of local residents. This article presents a comprehensive assessment of potential for agritourism in Bach Dang hamlet, concluding that Bach Dang hamlet has valuable natural and cultural resources, and suitable policies for agritourism but lacks qualified human resource and sufficient tourism products to exploit this tourism form effectively.

Smell is typically considered the least of the senses, the lowest in a hierarchy privileging sight since the Enlightenment. The experience of olfaction is highly emotion-laden and tightly bound to memory and personal history, and Western smell vocabularies are notoriously poor: scentful experience seems poorly suited as a basis to enroll others in political projects, especially in contexts that privilege rational public debate. But smells can also spur us to immediate action. When do they prompt us to enroll others in that action, and how do we turn individual sensory experiences into convincing arguments? How does olfaction leave the realm of individual experience and generate consequential social change? This article shows how social processes of olfaction can be used to prompt social action. With an analysis of the complaints that legitimated the 2015 destruction of a shanty town in southern Sweden and a historical inquiry into the shared beliefs that allowed those complaints to make sense, I show how olfactory claims – claims based on personal experiences of smell – can leverage broadly shared norms, values, and meanings to demand social action. Despite the personal, emotional, and fleeting nature of olfactory experience (or perhaps thanks to those features, which disallow independent confirmation) it can easily be weaponized as a political tool. This article asks how individual sensory experience can have social impact, and shows how a fit between local olfactory cosmologies and the particular features of olfactory claims can allow them to be used to demand action.

“Care? Why should I care about care?” This question, raised by one of María Puig de la Bellacasa’s colleagues, is one that could be reasonably posed by any critical scholar. Care is, after all, a deeply fraught concept. Historically, the ideal of caretaking has been used to justify women’s domestic confinement and their lack of remuneration. More recently, it’s been coopted by corporations in their altruistic marketing strategies (think “CBS Cares” or “Chase Cares” or “Nordstrom Cares”). Taking seriously care’s ambivalent, non-innocent character, Matters of Care offers a praiseworthy posthumanist intervention into the politics of caring, working to recuperate care from the trappings of neoliberal biopolitics.

This collection offers a rich diversity of perspectives on what has come to be known as “biological citizenship,” or “biocitizenship.” Quoting Nikolas Rose, editors Johnson, Happe, and Levina define biocitizenship as comprising “all those citizenship projects that have linked their conceptions of citizens to beliefs about the biological existence of human beings, as individuals, as men and women, as families and lineages, as communities, as populations and as species” (P. 1). On the one hand, biocitizenship entails the positive, active efforts of human beings demanding their rights to health and well-being. On the other hand, biocitizenship is also understood as an extension of ‘biopolitics’ in the Foucauldian sense, so that biocitizenship disciplines and controls subjects even as it affords them certain rights. While this duality and its various complexities have generated a sizeable body of literature, there has to date been no edited volume on the subject of biocitizenship. Johnson, Happe, and Levina helpfully fill this gap, bringing together disparate voices from various disciplines into a volume that is provocative and insightful.

Dunkel et al. (2019) observe higher MTAG polygenic scores for educational attainment among the 53 Jewish respondents with available genomic data in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. They interpret their ensuing analysis as evidence that genetic differences "mediate" the association between being Jewish and higher cognitive test scores and higher educational attainment. We demonstrate instead--and perhaps counterintuitively--that the difference between Jewish and non-Jewish polygenic scores are much too large for their analysis to offer any evidentiary value for this conclusion. Instead, the data show clear evidence of the problems with comparing polygenic scores across ethnic groups that others have noted.

Theodor W. Adorno’s 1951 essay, “A Freudian analysis of Fascist Propaganda,” is a fertile ground for comparison with the work of feminist existential philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, which was published just a couple of years earlier in 1949. The following exposition of Adorno’s essay and the “Introductory" and “Independent Woman” chapters in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex examines how Adorno’s application of Freudian psychoanalytic theory of mass psychology and the modern authoritarian state aligns with Beauvoir’s theoretical dialectic of the man as transcendent Subject versus the woman as immanent Other. The connective thread in both contexts is a hegemonic teleology of dominance. This hegemony is the apparatus and function of both predominately male fascist dictators and sexist social actors who pander to collective entities of followers captivated by the ostensible auspices of the Father-Leader. The following use of the term Father-Leader will be used as a symbolic gesture and catch-all term to simplify the analogy between Adorno’s fascist dictator and the historically paternalistic man. The symbolic authority of the Father-Leader lies in his ability to generate an affect-driven, hypnotic libidinal bond through the mechanisms of identification and idealization with a mass ancillary entity, in this case either a fascist following of a nation or a large majority of the population, thus maintaining social and political privilege, influence, and control.

Objectives. Hispanic/Latino children have substantially lower prevalence of neurodevelopmental disabilities than other groups (Boyle et al., 2011; Froehlich et al., 2007; Pedersen et al., 2012). The explanation for variations in prevalence are complex, but are generally thought to be related to language barriers and lack of access to and utilization of healthcare services. Previous research focused on how language barriers and lack of access to and utilization of healthcare services affects children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD), but no research has examined whether these factors predict NDD. This study extends prior research by examining if social and environmental factors explain low prevalence of NDD in this population. Methods. This study uses nationally representative Integrated Public Use Microdata Series National Health Interview Survey data and multivariate analyses to compare NDD prevalence in whites and Hispanics/Latinos and examines whether healthcare access, healthcare utilization, language barriers, and length of time living in the United States (U.S.) explains this disability disparity. Results. Findings reveal that the H/L NDD disparity is not explained by differences in access to or utilization of healthcare, or as a result of spoken language differences that may create barriers to NDD diagnosis. However, while H/Ls born in the U.S. have lower rates of NDD than whites, H/Ls who were not born in the U.S. have even lower probability of NDD than H/Ls who were born in the U.S. Conclusions. These findings may be a result of cultural differences in understanding of disability knowledge, differential treatment within the U.S. healthcare system, avoidance of the U.S. healthcare system out of mistrust, or difficulty navigating the complex U.S. healthcare system. These findings underscore the importance of accessible and culturally appropriate health and clinical care interventions among H/L families, and emphasize the importance of ongoing, culturally responsive education for parents, childcare providers, and healthcare professionals to ensure early and culturally appropriate intervention among H/L children.

Cognitive ability is one of the most potent and contentious human traits. Many issues surrounding cognitive ability especially those related to heredity is highly charged. Yet, all of the discussion on heredity has been based on non-DNA evidence. It is largely neglected that DNA and environmental data at individual level are indispensable for understanding the development of cognitive ability. In this article, we report findings from a study that uses both ability-related polygenic scores (PGSs) and a rich set of socioeconomic measures from Add Health. In an all-ethnicity sample excluding blacks, a social-science model predicts verbal ability well yielding an R2 of 17.5%. Adding two ability-related PGSs increases this R2 by 1.7%. Such models yield more accurate estimates of the effects of the PGSs and those of SES context, and provide an estimated degree to which SES context is influenced by parental genomes. Schooling and neighborhood remain important to verbal ability even after an early measure of verbal ability is adjusted in the model. Although the influence from the genome is evident, the influences of SES context are critical and cannot be dismissed.

Consisting of formal and informal rules, cultural-cognitive schema, and routinized processes, institutions are the foundation of social life. Yet we do not have a systematic understanding of resistant roots of institutional diversity across societies. Following an evolutionary framework, we review the literature and discuss how a series of mutually exclusive and sequential “replicators” have come to jointly predispose human behaviors. Through social transmission, these replicators form lineages, which contribute to different levels of societies. We suggest that our review can provide a new research agenda regarding human behaviors in the social sciences.

Recently, several genome-wide association studies of educational attainment have found education-related genetic variants and enabled the integration of human inheritance into social research. This study incorporates the newest education polygenic score (Lee et al., 2018) into sociological research, and tests three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7599), I report three findings. First, a standard deviation increase in the education polygenic score is associated with a 58% increase in the likelihood of advancing to the next level of education, while a standard deviation increase in parental education results in a 53% increase. Second, supporting the Saunders hypothesis, the genetic effect becomes 11% smaller when parental education is one standard deviation higher, indicating that highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation. Finally, the genetic effect is slightly greater for the younger cohort (1942–59) than the older cohort (1920–41). The findings strengthen the existing literature on the social influences in helping children achieve their innate talents.

America has a culturally accepted norm of what makes someone beautiful. A standard that is hard to meet. Being light-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed is the benchmark of beauty, of what is most desirable. But is that really what it takes to be attractive in America? This research examines the relationship between race, birth-place, ethnicity and self-rated attractiveness. The General Social Survey (2016) provides the quantitative data for this study. While past literature explores the connections between identity, self-esteem, and attractiveness, it does not explore the intersection of different identifying characteristics. Group position and Colourism approaches provide the theoretical foundations for the hypothesis and the research conducted in this paper. These theories also help explain why certain physical attributes are more valuable in American society. So how does the privileging of White America, specifically when measuring beauty, influence one’s opinion of their own attractiveness? This study has 1,622 respondents—non-institutionalized, English or Spanish speaking adults, who live in the country. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the individual and collaborative relationships between the variables. The results from this study concur with some of findings from the literature. Yet, they do not support the hypotheses. The results concluded that being Non-White had little influence on one's self-rated attractiveness. Similarly, birthplace and ethnicity had no statistical significance. However, the controls, age and sex, are significant. This research explores the role identity plays in one’s view of their own beauty. Especially during a period of controversial leadership and drastic shifts in the social norms of society.

The average starting time for US workers is 08:00, and many workers experience chronic sleep deprivation. A novel survey was used to determine when workers were at their best in each hour of the 24-hour circadian cycle as well as related life-course variables. Results indicated a 10:00 start would be better for performance and sleep. Analysis by chronotypes demonstrated the Definitely Evening chronotype group showed negative impacts of early US work start times on their education, employment, and subjective health and life satisfaction that were as great as being born into the poorest 25% of US families. Circadian analysis showed synchronizing work to biological timing in each chronotype group was possible with a wide range starting times (07:00 to 16:00), 8 hours for sleep, and optimized performance. Taken together, these circadian patterns revealed possible functional benefits of chronotypes for social groups

In this chapter we review the application of neutral theory to archaeological case studies. In particular, we focus on commonly used neutrality tests and discuss the interpretation of their results. We argue that one needs to be careful with interpreting the consistency (or inconsistency) of archaeological data with theoretical neutral expectations as evidence for the absence (or presence) of selective force in the population. While neutral theory does very well in replicating various population-level frequency patterns, many alternative processes of cultural transmission may do so, too, making the pattern-matching approach a fairly weak approach for inferring underlying transmission processes. We advocate the use of generative inference frameworks as one possibility to go beyond the hypothesis testing approach. These frameworks do not only allow for the identification of the most likely underlying learning process given the empirical data but for a description of the breath of processes that could have produced these data equally well. This brings us a step closer to understanding the limits to inferring underlying transmission processes from population-level frequency data and therefore the kinds of questions can be answered with which kinds of data.

Billard raises important questions about the nature of “deception” and status of “deceiver,” analyzing media discourses surrounding instances of transgender “passing.” These discourses position transgender people as deceivers who live out their genders to seduce heterosexuals, scrutinizing their appearances for signs of their “true gender.” Contradictorily, the successful attainment of cisgender aesthetics deemed “passing” legitimates a transgender person’s gender identity, but also renders them more malicious in their deception. As such, media discourses surrounding transgender people who “pass” justify punishment for their deception through violence. In this chapter, Billard explores these tensions, challenging the application of the label “deception” by the social majority to those of marginal identities, particularly inconspicuous ones, as it serves to delegitimate authentic identities and police the boundaries of social hierarchies.

A source of continued tension within the evolutionary human behavioural / social sciences, as well as between these fields and the traditional social sciences, is how to conceptualise ‘culture’ in its various manifestations and guises. One of the earliest criticisms of E O Wilson’s sociobiology project was the focus on presumed genetically evolved behavioural universals, and lack of attention to cultural diversity and cultural (as opposed to genetic) history. As sociobiology split into different fields during the 1980s, each developed their own approaches and assumptions. Human behavioural ecologists employed the ‘phenotypic gambit’, assuming that culture is a proximate means by which natural selection generates currently-adaptive behavioural strategies. Evolutionary psychologists distinguished between transmitted and evoked culture, the former involving the social transmission of information, the latter involving the triggering of genetically-prespecified behaviours in response to different environmental cues (typically ancestral cues, such that behaviour may no longer be currently adaptive). Evoked culture has been the focus of most research in evolutionary psychology. Cognitive anthropologists have a similar notion of ‘cultural attraction’, where universal aspects of cognition evoke predictable responses due to individual learning. Finally, cultural evolution (or gene-culture coevolution) approaches stress the causal role of transmitted culture. Here, human cognition is assumed to be relatively domain-general and content-free, with genetic evolution having shaped social learning processes to allow the rapid spread of locally adaptive knowledge (although occasionally allowing the spread of maladaptive behaviour, due to the partial decoupling of genetic and cultural evolution). All the while, the traditional social sciences have remained steadfastly unwilling to accept that evolutionary approaches to human behaviour have any merit or relevance, and indeed have abandoned the scientific method in favour of more politically motivated interpretive methods. Most curiously, the social sciences have abandoned the concept of culture, as they define it. I will discuss all of these approaches in terms of (i) the extent to which they give causal weight to genetic inheritance, individual learning and social learning, and how these process interact; (ii) their assumptions about the domain-specificity of human cognition; (iii) ultimate-proximate causation; (iv) specific debates over language evolution, cooperation and the demographic transition; and (v) prospects for reconciliation and integration of these tensions across the evolutionary human sciences and the social sciences more broadly.