Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Sociality'
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1
Rat, Ramona. "Un-common Sociality : Thinking Sociality with Levinas." Doctoral thesis, Södertörns högskola, Filosofi, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-30907.
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The present investigation develops the notion of sociality based on Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, and proposes an understanding of sociality that resists becoming a common foundation: an un-common sociality which interrupts the reciprocal shared common, and thereby, paradoxically, makes it possible. By engaging in the larger debate on community, this work gives voice to Levinas on the question of community without a common ground, a topic and a debate where he has previously been underestimated. In this way, the aim is to reveal new directions opened up by Levinas’s philosophy in order to think an un-common sociality.
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Roberts, Susan C. "Sociality in rabbits." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1985. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c7345d17-d1f7-40c8-911a-ac4477826d1e.
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Two populations of rabbits (Oryctolaqus cuniculus) were investigated to see whether polygynous, multi-male groups formed in the absence of large multi-entranced warrens. They did not. Rabbits neither gathered in space nor time. The small warrens were spread out evenly across homogeneous patches and the females were well spaced out. Monogamy, distinguished by a battery of tests, was prevalent, with the more dominant males as 'mate' rabbits. That the polygyny frequently mentioned in the literature was a result of male dominance and female defense was considered. The genetic structure of each population was investigated by taking blood from rabbits and having it analysed electrophoretically and for immunoglobulins. A method for assessing relatedness between groups of pairs of animals was implemented, then validated and developed with Monte Carlo simulations. With the seven polymorphic allele obtained, no non-zero relatedness was found but it was sometimes possible to exclude high relatedness. The bearing of sociality on vigilance during feeding was investigated. Although a rabbit's vigilance decreased as its 'mate' approached, the presence of other rabbits was correlated with increased vigilance. It was concluded that the need for social vigilance outweighed the benefit of 'many eyes' watching for predators. This conclusion was tested by experiment, using stuffed animals as stimuli. Rabbits increased their vigilance during grazing bouts both by increasing the length and frequency of scans. Scans could be short or long: the probability of ending a scan decreased sharply at a certain point; a form of positive feedback. The durations of short 'maintenance' scans were dependent on chewlength (the amount of food in the mouth). This fitted a timesharing definition as supported by experiment. Long scans in response to a visible threat did not involve chewing.
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Buzzanca, Marco. "Sociality in Complex Networks." Doctoral thesis, Università di Catania, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10761/3766.
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The study of network theory is nothing new, as we may find the first example of a proof of network theory back in the 18th century. However, in recent times, many researchers are using their time to investigate networks, giving new life to an old topic. As we are living in the era of information, networks are everywhere, and their complexity is constantly rising. The field of complex networks attempts to address this complexity with innovative solutions. Complex networks all share a series of common topological features, which revolve around the relationship between nodes, where relationship is intended in the most abstract possible way. Nonetheless, it is important to study these relationships because they can be exploited in several scenarios, like web page searching, recommender systems, e-commerce and so on. This thesis presents studies of sociality in complex networks, ranging from the microscale, which focuses the attention on the point of view of single nodes, to the mesoscale, instead shifts the interest in node groups.
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Marsh, Natalie. "Missanthrobot: Machines of Automated Sociality." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1262.
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My final thesis project analyzes self-branding, online influencers, and microcelebrity culture that contribute to shaping self-identity on social media. The project focuses on online identity through the lens of digitally created or cyborg accounts made for the purpose of promoting consumer culture lifestyle. Cultural notions around celebrity culture as a means of profit are expanding and are more inclusive due to social media formats that nurture self-branding and self-promotion. Companies take advantage of personalized media creation and distribution by using online influencers to promote products because of the minimal payouts and labor required. Therefore, ideologies of buying and selling become deeply rooted online and have come to change its users’ conceptions of themselves and shape an identity linked almost exclusively with the internet across platforms. Self-branding, online influencers, and microcelebrity culture are distinct forms of labor on social media that generate value through branding and shaping a profit driven self-identity that leads to the erosion of a meaningful distinction between notions of the self and the production and consumption imperatives that benefit digital entrepreneurialism.
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Shipton, Ceri Ben Kersey. "Cognition and sociality in the Acheulean." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.612311.
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Bandinelli, Carolina. "Social entrepreneurship : sociality, ethics, and politics." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2017. http://research.gold.ac.uk/20533/.
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Social entrepreneurship is a growing cultural phenomenon that involves a variety of actors – politicians, academics, business men and women, private citizens - across a range of interconnected fields – e.g. social work, sustainable development, the sharing economy and technological innovation. Notwithstanding its heterogeneous manifestations, social entrepreneurship is characterised by the attempt to re-embed social and ethical dimensions within the individualised conduct of the entrepreneur of the self. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how this process is thought of and negotiated on a subjective level by young social entrepreneurs in London and Milan. Based on an understanding of social entrepreneurs as individuals who perceive work as a means for self-expression, I contextualise this enquiry within the field of cultural studies on the changing nature of labour in neoliberal societies. This thesis draws on an 18-month period of multi-sited and reflexive fieldwork that involved recorded interviews, participant observation and action research. Combining thick ethnographic descriptions and theoretical analysis, I focus on social entrepreneurs’ understanding of sociality, ethics, and politics, in so far as they are intertwined with the discourses and practices of entrepreneurship. My argument develops in three stages: to begin with, I show that social entrepreneurs engage in opportunistic and compulsory sociality; then, I dwell on social entrepreneurs’ individualised form of ethics; finally, I contend that social entrepreneurs enact and embody a post-political subjectivity. This subjectivity is defined by discourses and actions whose scope and significance are restrained within the bounds of individuals’ experience and influence. What remains inevitably excluded from this conception of politics is the possibility to of formulating a structural analysis of social issues. In this respect, my research may be regarded as a study on how the neoliberal subject par excellence – the entrepreneur of the self – attempts to retrieve and reclaim her political and ethical agency, and what the implications and limits of this endeavour are.
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Lukinova, Evgeniya. "Behavioral and Neurobehavioral Features of "Sociality"." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12989.
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Standard models of decision making fail to explain the nature of the various important observed patterns of human behavior, e.g. "economic irrationality," demand for "sociality," risk tolerance and the preference of egalitarian outcomes. Moreover, the majority of models does not account for the change in the strategies of the human beings playing with other human beings as opposed to playing against a machine.
This dissertation analyzes decision making and its peculiar characteristics in the social environment under conditions of risk and uncertainty. My main goal is to investigate why human beings behave differently in a social setting and how the social domain affects their decision-making process. I develop the theory of "sociality" and exploit experimental and brain-imaging methodologies to test and refine the competing theories of individual decision making in the context of the social setting. To explain my theory I propose an economic utility function for a risk facing decision-maker that accounts for existing theories of utility defined on the outcomes and simply adds another term to account for the decision-making process in the social environment. For the purposes of my dissertation I define "sociality" as the economic component of the utility function that accounts for social environment, a function of a process rather than of an outcome. I follow on the breakthrough work by evolutionary psychologists in emphasizing the importance of the substantive context of the social decisions.
The model I propose allows one to think about situations in which individuals may care for more than their narrowly-defined material interest and their decision may be driven by "sociality" and other non-monetary considerations. The "sociality" component of the economic utility function demonstrates the fact that individuals do not only care about outcomes but also about the processes which lead to these outcomes. In my empirical chapters I put the theory to the test in a series of laboratory experiments carried out in the United States, New Zealand and Russia and a series of fMRI and computer experiments executed at the University of Oregon.
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Dalerum, Fredrik. "Sociality in a solitary carnivore, the wolverine." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Dept. of Zoology, Univ, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-544.
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Salm, Kathryn. "Cooperation and conflict : sociality in salticid spiders." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Zoology, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/5852.
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By studying salticid spiders from East Africa I look at sociality from an unusual perspective. These particular salticids form mixed-species groups, with more than one species and even more than one genus routinely living together within any single nest complex. The primary occupants of these nest complexes are three species of Menemerus, two species of Pseudicius, Myrmarachne melanotarsa (Wesolowska and Salm, 2002), Parajotus cinereus (Wesolowska, 2004), and an unidentified species that I call the 'Nun'. Adult males and females, along with juveniles of different age classes, share nest complexes. The highly varied composition of these groups suggests that the benefits to the salticids of grouping extend beyond species boundaries. Relatedness may not be so critical for understanding the dynamics of these inter-spider relationships. This suggests a departure from how social spiders have been studied in the past.
Often Portia africana (Simon, 1886) is also a part of the nest-complex community. Although solitary as an adult, P. africana has a social juvenile phase, and juveniles of P. africana sometimes even share prey. The cues that P. africana use when making decisions to join others and cooperate in prey ambush suggests at least rudimentary numerical ability in these spiders. Myrmarachne melanotarsa, a new species described during this study, is a myrmecomorphic salticid that lives in close proximity to the ant it mimics, a species of Crematogaster. Links between the biology of the ant the ant mimic are investigated. Access to honeydew and defence by collective mimicry appear to be unusual, but especially important, aspects of this species' biology. M melanotarsa is also routinely found living close to other salticid species, and it has a preference for juveniles of other salticids as prey. Clustering with reproductive groups of other salticids appears to be important as a means by which M melanotarsa gains access to this unusual prey.
Yet another social salticid species, Menemerus sp. A, has a special relationship with ants. It steals prey from foraging ants. Besides ants, two assassin-bug species (Reduviidae), Scipinnia repax and Nagusta sp., associate with the social salticids. Both feed by preference on salticids. S. repax also singles out Nagusta sp. as prey. For the salticids, one advantage of living in nest complexes appear to be that the large silk edifice a group of salticids may build provides partial protection from predators such as ants and reduviids.
Experiments show that social salticid species actively choose to group with other conspecifics and with social salticids from other species and genera. However, aside from M melanotarsa, all of the social salticid species are averse to joining nest complexes containing ants.
The adaptive significance of the array of different relationships and interactions within the nest complexes is discussed.
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Mohlin, Erik. "Essays on belief formation and pro-sociality." Doctoral thesis, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, Samhällsekonomi (S), 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hhs:diva-975.
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This thesis consists of four independent papers. The first two papers use experimental methods to study pro-social behaviors. The other two use theoretical methods to investigate questions about belief formation. The first paper “Communication: Content or Relationship?” investigates the effect on communication on generosity in a dictator game. In the basic experiment (the control), subjects in one room are dictators and subjects in another room are recipients. The subjects are anonymous to each other throughout the whole experiment. Each dictator gets to allocate a sum of 100 SEK between herself and an unknown recipient in the other room. In the first treatment we allow each recipient to send a free-form message to his dictator counterpart, before the dictator makes her allocation decision. In order to separate the effect of the content of the communication, from the relationship-building effect of communication, we carry out a third treatment, where we take the messages from the previous treatment and give each of them to a dictator in this new treatment. The dictators are informed that the recipients who wrote the messages are not the recipients they will have the opportunity to send money to. We find that this still increases donation compared to the baseline but not as much as in the other treatment. This suggests that both the impersonal content of the communication and the relationship effect matters for donations. The second paper, “Limbic justice – Amygdala Drives Rejection in the Ultimatum Game”, is about the neurological basis for the tendency to punish norm violators in the Ultimatum Game. In the Ultimatum Game, a proposer proposes a way to divide a fixed sum of money. The responder accepts or rejects the proposal. If the proposal is accepted the proposed split is realized and if the proposal is rejected both subjects gets zero. Subjects were randomly allocated to receive either the benzodiazepine oxazepam or a placebo substance, and then played the Ultimatum Game in the responder role, while lying in and fMRI camera. Rejection rate is significantly lower in the treatment group than in the control group. Moreover a mygdala was relatively more activated in the placebo group than in the oxazepam group for unfair offers. This is mirrored by differences in activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and right ACC. Our findings suggest that the automatic and emotional response to unfairness, or norm violations, are driven by amygdala and that balancing of such automatic behavioral responses is associated with parts of the prefrontal cortex. The conflict of motives is monitored by the ACC. In order to decide what strategy to choose, a player needs to form beliefs about what other players will do. This requires the player to have a model of how other people form beliefs – what psychologists call a theory of mind. In the third paper “Evolution of Theories of Mind” I study the evolution of players’ models of how other players think. When people play a game for the first time, their behavior is often well predicted by the level-k, and related models. According to this model, people think in a limited number of steps, when they form beliefs about other peoples' behavior. Moreover, people differ with respect to how they form beliefs. The heterogeneity is represented by a set of cognitive types {0,1,2,...}, such that type 0 randomizes uniformly and type k>0 plays a k times iterated best response to this. Empirically one finds that most experimental subjects behave as if they are of type 1 or 2, and individuals of type 3 and above are very rare. When people play the same game more than once, they may use their experience to predict how others will behave. Fictitious play is a prominent model of learning, according to which all individuals believe that the future will be like the past, and best respond to the average of past play. I define a model of heterogeneous fictitious play, according to which there is a hierarchy of types {1,2,...}, such that type k plays a k time iterated best response to the average of past play. The level-k and fictitious play models, implicitly assume that players lack specific information about the cognitive types of their opponents. I extend these models to allow for the possibility that types are partially observed. I study evolution of types in a number of games separately. In contrast to most of the literature on evolution and learning, I also study the evolution of types across different games. I show that an evolutionary process, based on payoffs earned in different games, both with and without partial observability, can lead to a polymorphic population where relatively unsophisticated types survive, often resulting in initial behavior that does not correspond to a Nash equilibrium. Two important mechanisms behind these results are the following: (i) There are games, such as the Hawk-Dove game, where there is an advantage of not thinking and behaving like others, since choosing the same action as the opponent yields an inefficient outcome. This mechanism is at work even if types are not observed. (ii) If types are partially observed then there are Social dilemmas where lower types may have a commitment advantage; lower types may be able to commit to strategies that result in more efficient payoffs. The importance of categorical reasoning in human cognition is well-established in psychology and cognitive science, and one of the most important functions of categorization is to facilitate prediction. Prediction on the basis of categorical reasoning is relevant when one has to predict the value of a variable on the basis of one's previous experience with similar situations, but where the past experience does not include any situation that was identical to the present situation in all relevant aspects. In such situations one can classify the situation as belonging to some category, and use the past experiences in that category to make a prediction about the current situation. In the fourth paper, “Optimal Categorization”, I provide a model of categorizations that are optimal in the sense that they minimize prediction error. From an evolutionary perspective we would expect humans to have developed categories that generate predictions which induce behavior that maximize fitness, and it seems reasonable to assume that fitness is generally increasing in how accurate the predictions are. In the model a subject starts out with a categorization that she has learnt or inherited early in life. The categorization divides the space of objects into categories. In the beginning of each period, the subject observes a two-dimensional object in one dimension, and wants to predict the object’s value in the other dimension. She has a data base of objects that were observed in both dimensions in the past. The subject determines what category the new object belongs to on the basis of observation of its first dimension. She predicts that its value in the second dimension will be equal to the average value among the past observations in the corresponding category. At the end of each period the second dimension is observed, and the observation is stored in the data base. The main result is that the optimal number of categories is determined by a trade-off between (a) decreasing the size of categories in order to enhance category homogeneity, and (b) increasing the size of categories in order to enhance category sample size. In other words, the advantage of fine grained categorizations is that objects in a category are similar to each other. The advantage of coarse categorizations is that a prediction about a category is based on a large number of observations, thereby reducing the risk of over-fitting. Comparative statics reveal how the optimal categorization depends on the number of observations as well as on the frequency of objects with different properties. The set-up does not presume the existence of an objectively true categorization “out there”. The optimal categorization is a framework we impose on our environment in order to predict it.Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2010. Sammanfattning jämte 4 uppsatser.
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Bruni, Luigino. "Economics, sociality and happiness : an historical perspective." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.429613.
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Gadsby, N. A. "Sociality and materiality in World of Warcraft." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2016. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1522334/.
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The focus of my thesis is the role and status of control in the MMO World of Warcraft where one of the primary motivations for player engagement was to eliminate and marginalise contingency at sites across the game that were perceived to be prone to the negative effects of contingency, a process that its developers were to a significant degree complicit in. My field sites traced the activities and lives of gamers across the physical location of London and the south east of the United Kingdom and their online game locations that constituted World of Warcraft and occasionally other online games which included the guild they were a member of that was called ‘Helkpo’. It examines how the transparency attributed to the game’s code, its ‘architectural rules’, framed the unpredictability of players as problematic and how codified ‘social rules’ attempted to correct this shortcoming. In my thesis I dive into the lives of the members of Helkpo as both guild members and as part of the expansive network that constituted their social lives in London. It demonstrates how the indeterminate nature of information in the relations in their social network contrasted with the modes of accountability that World of Warcraft offered, defined by different forms of information termed ‘knowing’ and ‘knowledge’. This chapter considers how the certainties of the game produced a more reliable space for the enactment of English culture’s social dualism of public and private. I develop the argument that control should be considered as a legitimate issue of concern for studies of games and more broadly within processual anthropologies. I suggest that where contingency is ascribed cultural classification there is always the possibility that cultural forms of control may be employed to eliminate it. Importantly, I argue that as anthropologists the recognition of control as a meaningful product of culture, even under the indeterminate conditions of modernity, remains critical for the discipline.
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Yasui, Saki. "Behavioral Study of Sociality in Captive Elephants." Kyoto University, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/252974.
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Baker-Rogers, Joanna. "Autism, sociality and friendship : a qualitative enquiry." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2018. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21506/.
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In my thesis, I report on my qualitative enquiry into the meaning of sociality and friendship from the perspective of persons with autism. I sought to make a contribution to knowledge by describing: 1) the meaning that persons with autism attach to sociality and friendship; 2) the barriers that persons with autism encountered in experiencing sociality and friendship; and 3) how persons with autism see these barriers being overcome. Data was gathered from three primary data sources: video blogs, online interviews, and autobiographical accounts published in books. The narratives I reviewed had been posted or written by persons with autism and were subjected to thematic analysis. The enquiry methodology reflected my commitment to emancipatory disability research and my theoretical position of possibilities for an enabling narrative of sociality and friendship for persons with autism. My analysis of the data evidenced that my sources desired to socialise, make friends, and maintain friendships. Despite their successes in making friends and maintaining friendships, the sources distrusted their sociality that I labelled autistic sociality. The sources regarded predominant neurotype (PNT) sociality as the only trusted pathway to making friends and maintaining friendships. The sources positioned their sociality as a distinct pathway that they described as lacking PNT social skills and personal qualities that didn’t enable friends to be made and friendships to be maintained. The PNT meaning of sociality had been internalised by the sources as the correct, obtainable, and only way of being that resulted in their disadvantaged outcome. For me, the task of overcoming social barriers was regarded by the sources as being their responsibility alone, and could only be achieved by developing PNT social skills and personal qualities. Sources didn’t expect the PNT to gain an understanding of their sociality. I argue that this binary of autistic and PNT sociality resulted from encountering the disabling social barriers of normalcy and ableism. I also argue that overcoming these social barriers requires broader constructions of sociality and friendship that include the meaning described by persons with autism. An enabling narrative of sociality and friendship for persons with autism is, therefore, required that deconstructs the binary of autistic and PNT sociality for persons with autism and argues for a range of sociality and friendship possibilities across being human. There is I conclude one sociality that enables friends to be made and friendships to be maintained by both persons with autism and the PNT.
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Ghidoni, Riccardo <1986>. "Experiments on Pro-Sociality and Environmental Issues." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2015. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/6948/1/tesi.pdf.
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The thesis comprises three essays that use experimental methods, one about other-regarding motivations in economic behavior and the others on pro-social behavior in two environmental economics problems.
The first chapter studies how the expectations of the others and the concern to maintain a balance between effort exerted and rewards obtained interact in shaping the behavior in a modified dictator game. We find that dictators condition their choices on recipients' expectations only when there is a high probability that the the recipient will not be compensated for her effort. Otherwise, dictators tend to balance the efforts and rewards of the recipients, irrespective of the recipients' expectations.
In the second chapter, I investigate the problem of local opposition to large public projects (e.g. landfills, incinerators, etc.). In particular, the experiment shows how the uncertainty about the project's quality makes the community living in the host site skeptical about the project. I also test whether side-transfers and costly information disclosure can help to increase the efficiency. Both tools succesfully make the host more willing to accept the project, but they lead to the realization of different types of projects.
The last chapter is an experiment on climate negotiations. To avoid the global warming, countries are called to cooperate in the abatement of their emissions. We study whether the dynamic aspect of the climate change makes cooperation across countries behaviorally more difficult. We also consider inequality across countries as a possible factor that hinders international cooperation.
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Ghidoni, Riccardo <1986>. "Experiments on Pro-Sociality and Environmental Issues." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2015. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/6948/.
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The thesis comprises three essays that use experimental methods, one about other-regarding motivations in economic behavior and the others on pro-social behavior in two environmental economics problems.
The first chapter studies how the expectations of the others and the concern to maintain a balance between effort exerted and rewards obtained interact in shaping the behavior in a modified dictator game. We find that dictators condition their choices on recipients' expectations only when there is a high probability that the the recipient will not be compensated for her effort. Otherwise, dictators tend to balance the efforts and rewards of the recipients, irrespective of the recipients' expectations.
In the second chapter, I investigate the problem of local opposition to large public projects (e.g. landfills, incinerators, etc.). In particular, the experiment shows how the uncertainty about the project's quality makes the community living in the host site skeptical about the project. I also test whether side-transfers and costly information disclosure can help to increase the efficiency. Both tools succesfully make the host more willing to accept the project, but they lead to the realization of different types of projects.
The last chapter is an experiment on climate negotiations. To avoid the global warming, countries are called to cooperate in the abatement of their emissions. We study whether the dynamic aspect of the climate change makes cooperation across countries behaviorally more difficult. We also consider inequality across countries as a possible factor that hinders international cooperation.
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Ramanankirahina, Rindrahatsarana [Verfasser]. "Sociality and communication in woolly lemurs / Rindrahatsarana Ramanankirahina." Hannover : Bibliothek der Tierärztlichen Hochschule Hannover, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1046736817/34.
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Costa, Paulo Savio da Silva. "Explorations in insect sociality : towards a unified approach." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.320364.
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Zenerian, Eleftherios. "Work and sociality in Brighton's new media industry." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2014. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/51606/.
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This study explores the relationships that form among practitioners in the new media industry – focussing on a particular locale, Brighton, UK. An aim is to understand the meanings that work and peer relationships have for practitioners. Another is to explore how peer relationships affect practitioners' careers. Through the use of qualitative methods – semi-structured and unstructured interviews, and ethnographic observation – the research highlights the importance of locality and of interaction in shaping the meanings and practices around work and sociality in the new media industry. Drawing on Bourdieu's ideas on field, habitus and capital it is suggested that the meanings practitioners attach to work are reflected in the aspirations inscribed in their habitus and the position they occupy within a geographically specific new media field. It is also suggested that social relationships among peers are constructed through interaction within Brighton's new media community where personal biographies, industrial and local cultures structure and reproduce each other. The importance of interpreting practices within intersections of fields, in which people are embedded, is also emphasised. Drawing on Goffman's ideas on the social organisation of co-presence, the logic of the new media field and the strategies that practitioners utilise – which are reflected in the ways practitioners manage their personal preserves inside a co-working organisation – is described. How career opportunities differ based on the position people occupy in the industry and how the use of different types of capitals effect career changes is also demonstrated. This study contributes to the research literature on the clustering of new media industries, to research looking at work and employment in the new media industry and, finally, to the literature on the networking practices of new media practitioners.
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Feldman, Hilary Naïve. "Sociality and cooperative maternal care in domestic cats." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/270405.
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Quque, Martin. "Coevolution of sociality and ageing in animal societies." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/316028.
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In order to improve our knowledge of the mechanisms of ageing in animals, the main objective of the thesis was to understand the modulation of such mechanisms by the individual social role, within different social organisations. This objective thus addresses two main questions: i) describing the covariation of the degree of social complexity with ageing patterns; ii) highlighting the underlying cellular and molecular processes. Thanks to complementary and diversified studies (behavioural observations, dosage of the oxidative balance, qPCR measurement of telomere length, proteomics, metabolomics), the present thesis showed that sociality plays a role on ageing at many levels. In the zebra finch, social stress caused by aggression of the conspecifics induces oxidative stress and reduces telomere length in adults. In the sociable weaver, the social environment is of crucial importance during pre- and post-hatch development on the medium term survival of the chicks. Finally, in ants, we were able to show a positive relationship between the degree of sociality and maximum potential life span: this link was caste specific, being only significant for the most social queens. This is inline with a recent review by Lucas and Keller (2020) which concluded that the benefits of sociality are most sensitive for high levels of sociality and particularly in reproductive individuals. With regard to the molecular mechanisms of ageing,we were able to establish a causal chain between social stress, oxidative response and telomere erosion in zebra finches.The role of telomeres as a predictor of offspring survival has been confirmed (over at least 5 years) in the sociable weaver,a cooperative breeder bird. However, this link was not true in queen ants where the longest lived were those with the shortest telomeres. The co-evolution of anti-cancer mechanisms and longevity seems to be conserved since similar strategies are found in taxa as diverse as ants and rodents. On the other hand, and contrary to previous studies conducted on ants, we found that oxidative stress might be a marker of individual ageing. We suggest that the proxies of oxidative stress used so far in ants have been misleading or at least incomplete. Thus, understanding the physiological ageing particularities of ants and other social insects might require finding new relevant and specific markers. Finally, the sirtuins and mTOR signalling pathways, key precursors of which we have detected in ants, are molecular crossroads capable of activating or inhibiting cellular metabolism depending on the cell energy state. According to the studies carried out to date, these signalling pathways are among the first to be able to slow down the effects of ageing and extend life expectancy.However, specific studies need to be carried out to understand their fine regulation and thus assess the universality of these mechanisms in animal ageing. Based on our findings, we propose three points to be further addressed to better understand the mechanisms of ageing in social insects: i) the setup of experiments testing the effectiveness of energy trade-offs involving immunity or digestion metabolism; ii) measuring the telomerase activity among castes of various species in order to explore the telomere and telomere independent roles played by this enzyme in ageing; iii) the need to think about individual longitudinal follow-up and to study wild populations, after the first necessary stages in laboratory.Doctorat en Sciences
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Loebenberg, Abby. "Play, risk and children's sociality in urban Vancouver." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1d3965dc-f97b-48a5-bb9a-55dd58a56c20.
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This thesis demonstrates how children challenge the boundaries adults place on them, out of concern for their safety, through child-specific cultural practises. The thesis argues that these boundaries emerge from contemporary changes in the perception of risk to children and have driven the systematic limitation of spaces that children are allowed to experience on their own. Based on data collected among elementary school-age children during twelve months of fieldwork (2008-2009), across multiple sites in the city of Vancouver, Canada, I argue that children creatively adapt to spatial and social limits imposed on them through play, consumption and exchange. Moreover, the research demonstrates that through gathering social knowledge and experimenting with self-presentation and systems of social order, children create a sophisticated peer culture. This incorporates social differentiations and hierarchies that differ from those of adult society however, are interdependent with it. My work thus challenges the position of children as objects and ‘anecdotes’ in anthropology: considered ‘works in progress’ and lacking full status as persons in society. Rather, I argue that they should be treated as competent social actors in their own right with their own social meanings and cultural practises.
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Madya, Sidiq Hari. "Mobile sociality : backpacker interaction in a digital world." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-144888.
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The rise of the internet, social networking sites, and mobile devices have transformed the way backpackers experience travel. Social sphere of traveling is not merely a physical space but is now extended through digital social media in which backpackers can interact, post, share, and present their corporeal travel activities online. This study aims to explore social affordances of digital technologies including mobile devices, social networking sites, and the internet as means of extended social interaction, and how it affects the way backpackers experience travel. The affordances perspective assumes that the linkage between human and technology is relational, meaning that it creates the possibilities for human actions as well as constrains depending on the context of the user and the capacity of technological artefact. One of the largest Indonesian backpacker community is selected as the research site. The community is managed both online and offline through an online forum and conducting routine gatherings for its members. An approach in qualitative research known as netnography combined with interviews were employed to collect research materials. Analysis was performed to identify patterns of backpacker interaction afforded by digital technologies. The findings indicated that the presence of digital technologies was seen beneficial for the creation of network capital, presentation of identity, and performing mobile social interactions demonstrating a form of network sociality. Furthermore, digital mobile interactions increasingly became a central element in the making of the backpacking experience. The use of digital technologies among backpackers reflected the convergence of corporeal mobility and digitally mediated communication which can help explain patterns of sociality and interaction on the move.
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KOHLER, Stefan. "Bargaining and human sociality : an experimental economic approach." Doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/7015.
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Defence date: 5 February 2007Examining Board: Jordi Brandts, (Instituto de Análisis Económico (CSIC) ; Simon Gaechter, (University of Nottingham); Pascal Courty, (European University Institute); Karl Schlag, (European University Institute)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis adheres to the fundamental principle of maximizing behavior and equilibrium and shows how behavioral economic assumption of preferences, which go beyond self-interest, makes microeconomic theory applicable to a broad field of social behavior, where traditional models fail. All three thesis chapters are self contained but the thesis evolves from modelling social preferences and an analysis of their behavioral consequences in bargaining situations to an empirical test of their prevalence.
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Guevara, Jennifer Carlota. "Ecological correlates and community-wide consequences of spider sociality." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43630.
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Understanding the suite of ecological conditions that favor sociality —the tendency of organisms to form groups and cooperate— is key to understanding the origin, maintenance and contribution of social groups to biodiversity. The ecological dynamics of sociality can in turn have many consequences that feed back to influence the way species use the available resources, interact with other species, and persist in nature. The causes and consequences of sociality thus arise from the interplay of organisms and ecological processes. My thesis includes three studies that provide insight into some of the ecological processes that influence sociality and in turn the consequences that sociality may have in resource use and community structure. In the first study (Chapter 2), I use ecological niche modeling to predict the geographical distribution of social and subsocial New World Anelosimus spiders and explore their ecological correlates across latitude and elevation. Using a comparative approach, I further show that elevational patterns are strongly associated with differences in climatic conditions between social systems. In the next study (Chapter 3), I explore the role of group living and cooperation in resource use in a natural community of Anelosimus spiders of similar body size, but with behaviors ranging from near-solitary to fully social. I conduct surveys of prey capture in four sympatric Anelosimus species in Brazil and find that level of sociality and cooperation greatly shape resource use and act to separate different species into different ecological niches. Finally, I conduct feeding experiments to analyze in more detail the emergent patterns of resource use in two sympatric spiders with similar level of sociality but different body size (Chapter 4). I find that differences in resource use arise through differences in foraging efficiency emerging from the interplay of sociality and individual traits (e.g. body size). My thesis highlights the importance of ecological processes in the broad-scale spatial distribution of sociality and its potential consequences in resource use, community structure and ultimately the maintenance of local diversity. These studies also emphasize the work that remains to be done in such exciting area of research.
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Dimitriu, Tatiana. "The coevolution of gene mobility and sociality in bacteria." Phd thesis, Université René Descartes - Paris V, 2014. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00993436.
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Bacteria are social organisms which participate in multiple cooperative and group behaviours. They moreover have peculiar genetic systems, as they often bear mobile genetic elements like plasmids, molecular symbionts that are the cause of widespread horizontal gene transfer and play a large role in bacterial evolution. Both cooperation and horizontal transfer have consequences for human health: cooperative behaviours are very often involved in the virulence of pathogens, and horizontal gene transfer leads to the spread of antibiotic resistance. The evolution of plasmid transfer has mainly been analyzed in terms of infectious benefits for selfish mobile elements. However, chromosomal genes can also modulate horizontal transfer. A huge diversity in transfer rates is observed among bacterial isolates, suggesting a complex co-evolution between plasmids and hosts. Moreover, plasmids are enriched in genes involved in social behaviours, and so could play a key role in bacterial cooperative behaviours. We study here the coevolution of gene mobility and sociality in bacteria. To investigate the selective pressures acting on plasmid transfer and public good production, we use both mathematical modelling and a synthetic system that we constructed where we can independently control public good cooperation and plasmid conjugation in Escherichia coli. We first show experimentally that horizontal transfer allows the specific maintenance of public good alleles in a structured population by increasing relatedness at the gene-level. We further demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that this in turn allows for second-order selection of transfer ability: when cooperation is needed, alleles promoting donor and recipient abilities for public good traits can be selected both on the plasmid and on the chromosome in structured populations. Moreover, donor ability for private good traits can also be selected on the chromosome, provided that transfer happens towards kin. The interactions between transfer and cooperation can finally lead to an association between transfer and public good production alleles, explaining the high frequency of genes related to cooperation that are located on plasmids. Globally, these results provide insight into the mechanisms maintaining cooperation in bacteria, and may suggest ways to target cooperative virulence.
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Bottery, Michael J. "The sociality and evolution of plasmid-mediated antimicrobial resistance." Thesis, University of York, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/19016/.
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Overuse and misuse of antibiotics has led to the global spread of antimicrobial resistance, threatening our ability to treat bacterial infections. The horizontal acquisition of multidrug resistance (MDR) plasmids, from other bacterial lineages, has been instrumental in spreading resistance. Newly acquired plasmids are often poorly adapted to hosts causing intragenomic conflicts, reducing the competitiveness of plasmid-carrying strains. Costs can be overcome by positive selection for plasmid-encoded adaptive traits in the short-term, or ameliorated by compensatory evolution in the long-term. How the selection and adaptation of MDR plasmids varies with antibiotic treatment remains unclear. First, I demonstrate that the selective conditions for the maintenance of an MDR plasmid are dependent upon the sociality of resistance it encodes. Selection for efflux of antibiotics, a selfish trait, occurred at very low concentrations of antibiotic, far below the minimum inhibitory concentration of sensitive plasmid-free strain. In contrast, selection for inactivation of antibiotics, a cooperative trait, increased the amount of antibiotic required to select for the MDR plasmid, allowing sensitive plasmid-free bacteria to survive high levels of antibiotic. These selection dynamics were only accurately predicted when mathematical models included the mechanistic details of antibiotic resistance. Secondly, I show that the trajectory of evolution following MDR plasmid acquisition varies with antibiotic treatment. Tetracycline treatment favoured a distinct coevolutionary trajectory of chromosomal resistance mutations coupled with plasmid mutations impairing plasmid-borne resistance. This led to high-level, low-cost antibiotic resistance, but also produced an integrated genome of co-dependent replicons that may limit the onward spread of co-adapted MGEs to other lineages. This evolutionary trajectory was strikingly repeatable across independently evolving populations despite the emergence of multiple competing lineages within populations. The results presented here demonstrate that the interaction between positive selection and compensatory evolution can help to explain the persistence of MDR plasmids in the clinic and the environment.
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Tuncgenc, Bahar. "Movement synchrony, social bonding and pro-sociality in ontogeny." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b766e5a0-9cbe-4af2-b545-3e87c3d6d573.
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Human sociality, with its wide scope, early ontogeny and pervasiveness across cultures, is remarkable from an evolutionary perspective. We form bonds with other individuals and live in large social groups. We help, empathise with and share our resources with others, who are unfamiliar and genetically unrelated to us. It has been suggested that interpersonal coordination and rhythmic synchronisation of movements may be one proximate mechanism that enables such widespread human sociality and facilitates cooperation. In the last decade, considerable research has examined the effect of movement synchrony on social bonding and cooperation. However, when this thesis started, there was virtually no experimental study investigating the ontogeny of the movement synchrony-social bonding link, which is proposed to have deep evolutionary roots and important, long-lasting consequences in social life. This thesis aims to investigate the effects of movement synchrony on social bonding and cooperative behaviour across different time points in ontogeny. Three experimental studies were conducted examining infancy, early childhood and middle childhood. Each study explored a different aspect of social bonding and cooperation based on the motor, social and cognitive developments that mark that age group. Study 1a found that at 12 months of age, infants prefer individuals who move in synchrony with them, when the individuals are social entities, but not when they are non-social. Study 1b showed no preferences for synchrony at 9 months in either social or non-social contexts, however. Study 2 revealed that in early childhood, performing synchronous movements actively with a peer facilitates helping behaviour among the children, as well as eye contact and mutual smiling during the interaction. Finally, Study 3 showed that the social bonding effects of movement synchrony applied to inter- group settings and that performing synchronous movements with out-groups increased bonding towards the out-group in middle childhood. This thesis followed an interdisciplinary, integrative and naturalistic approach, where (i) literature from a wide range of disciplines motivated and guided the present research; (ii) links between motor, social and cognitive aspects of development, which are often investigated separately, are formed; and (iii) the experiments were designed in ways that represent the real-life occurrences of the investigated phenomena. The current findings provide the first substantial evidence that movement synchrony facilitates social bonding and cooperation in childhood and thereby provides a foundation for future research.
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Kappes, Greg. "Navigating Instruction, Interface, and Sociality in Participatory Network Music." Thesis, Mills College, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10822047.
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This thesis is a discussion and analysis of the piece I presented at Signal Flow, the graduate music festival at Mills College, on March 8th, 2018 called pls don’t(!) silence ur cellphones. This analysis will be punctuated with various theoretical asides meant to shed light on different aspects of the work and to present a clearer view of my own artistic mission. Since one of the hardest parts of doing work similar to mine is finding the right ways to do it, I hope this paper will at least serve as a resource for those with similar goals. In the spirit of open source, I want the tools and the processes to be as transparent as possible in order to encourage other artists and to expand a now relatively small community. My piece uses only the audience’s cellphones as sound sources. I use a centrally-located projected display supplemented by the cellphone displays themselves to choreograph the audience’s movements around the space. The piece aims to encourage interesting, fulfilling interactions for the audience while producing a complex sonic result through these interactions. In doing this, there arose many intersecting (and often extramusical) concerns and issues that I needed to address. This paper then serves largely to examine the failures and successes of this pursuit in the hopes of outlining future directions for the project. For this piece, audience members are invited to log onto a website on their cellphone. This website contains a brief set of instructions as well as a “start” button which, when pressed, activates a Web Audio app which produces sound. Each phone then basically becomes a mobile speaker in a large speaker array composed of the aggregate of all of the audience members’ phones. The interface on the phones is intentionally spare and minimal in order to encourage audience members to keep their focus elsewhere; it merely displays a solid block of color indicating which group the audience member belongs to at different parts of the piece and flashes white briefly when a new instruction is sent out. The main interface which all audience members react to is a projected image which acts as a sort of topographical map of the performance space. The audience is directed through a sequence of different spatial orientations which are accompanied by changes in the sonic material presented on their phones. The main goals of the piece are 1) to quickly and cheaply create an accessible “high-tech” listening experience, 2) to encourage and foster social contact (while problematizing and questioning the role of instruction and suggestion), and 3) to present various compositional ideas which are inherent to the work’s form and sonic affect.
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Stanulewicz, Natalia Katarzyna. "Guilt and the emotional underpinnings of human pro-sociality." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50149/.
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Pro-social acts are at the core of human relationships and proper functioning of society. Still, human pro-sociality is seen as unique, reaching beyond the kinship-based helping that is found in other species, such as primates. This uniqueness of human pro-sociality is recognised as closely related to another phenomenon specific to humans, and crucial for the maintenance of social relationships; namely, the presence of moral emotions. This thesis investigated emotional underpinnings of human pro-sociality after moral or social transgressions. The particular focus was placed on guilt – the emotion seen as most prototypical morally, and anger, its’ often under-studied relative. These two emotions have a unique standing in the context of the pro-sociality following from transgressions. They are associated with the perception of harm, injustice and norm violation that are core to transgression situations, and an action tendency to improve such situation, which behaving in a pro-social manner can be seen as. Nevertheless, only a few studies have examined guilt and anger jointly, in the context of pro-sociality, which stresses the need for an investigation of their relative influences. This thesis aimed to fill this gap in the literature. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of emotions and its role for pro-sociality, starting with the initial concept of emotions as the continuum of positive and negative affect, followed by more recent conceptualisation of emotions, in terms of their specificity and uniqueness. A particular emphasis is placed on the place of guilt and anger in the family of moral emotions, and their specific characteristics. Moreover, the role of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method is discussed, which might be used to suggest that guilt-based pro-sociality might not be so strongly relationship-focused, as presented in the literature. Chapter 2 presents a meta-analytical investigation of guilt and its role for pro-sociality. In this section, 112 studies were combined, providing an estimation of the medium effect size for the relationship between guilt and pro-sociality. Potential moderators were investigated as well, with a majority of them demonstrating no significant effects. Interestingly though, religiosity was found as a significant moderator of the guilt-pro-sociality relationship, with less religious countries showing a stronger effect size. The potential factors explaining this finding were presented. The link between guilt and self-punishment was also considered, providing more evidence that actions following from guilt might be seen as a mood enhancing strategy (at least when there is no option for repayment of one’s wrongdoing). Chapter 3 describes an experimental study investigating the association between moral transgression and subsequent pro-sociality. The charity dictator game was used as the opportunity for moral transgression. It was shown that moral transgression could lead to both increased and decreased pro-sociality, depending on the underlying emotional mechanism. Specifically, moral transgression via guilt led to increased pro-sociality, whereas via anger, to decreased pro-sociality. Some contextual factors (e.g., eyes prime, earning for oneself versus a charity) that could moderate which effect would prevail were examined. This result explains inconsistent findings reported previously in the literature. Additionally, it was shown that guilt does not always directly affect pro-sociality, as it might be followed by anger, and this sequential mechanism might negatively affect subsequent pro-sociality. Lastly, it was demonstrated that the effect of guilt and anger, following from a transgression, did not expand beyond the first pro-social opportunity, in line with the notion of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method. Chapter 4 introduces an experimental study aimed at the further exploration of the mechanism between guilt, anger, and subsequent pro-sociality. A context of failing one’s partner in a computer game was used to trigger moral emotions. The role of self-blame was also explored. Self-blame was predicted to act as the mechanism linking guilt with increased pro-sociality, whereas anger (a proxy of other-blame) was found to be the mechanism linking guilt with decreased pro-sociality. Some contextual factors, related to the perception of fairness, which could moderate which effect would prevail, were examined. Lastly, it was demonstrated that the effect of guilt did not expand beyond the first pro-social opportunity, in line with the notion of pro-sociality as a mood-enhancing method. Chapter 5 builds on the results in the previous section, by introducing manipulative intent as a factor determining the mechanism underlying the association between guilt, anger, and subsequent pro-sociality. A context of blood donation appeal was used to trigger moral emotions, making this study more applicable to the outside world. Contrary to the predictions, low rather than high manipulative intent in the appeal was shown to be the context where guilt led to decreased pro-sociality, via anger. The relationship between guilt and increased pro-sociality via responsibility (a proxy of self-blame) was significant under both levels of the manipulative intent present. Factors potentially explaining these findings are presented. This study provides evidence that the links between guilt and responsibility (self-blame) are not readily affected, whereas the connection between guilt and anger depends on situational context. Chapter 6 presents findings of the investigation into the lab-field correspondence in the pro-sociality domain, together with an examination of the possibility of a significant association of trait guilt and cost/risk perception of pro-social behaviours. Following from Piliavin’s cost-reward model, it was predicted that higher propensity of guilt-prone individuals to help might be based on their lowered appraisal of cost-risk of pro-social behaviours. Trait guilt was not related to cost-risk appraisals of pro-social behaviours though, suggesting that other mechanisms might be underlying the relationship between trait guilt and pro-sociality. Secondly, the issue of generalising findings from lab studies to real-life instances of pro-sociality was explored. The results have shown that pro-social behaviours used in labs were not equivalent (i.e., less costly and risky) to those in the real world. Pro-sociality appeared to be a non-unidimensional construct, which should be taken into account when investigating it in the future. Chapter 7 provides a general discussion of the results presented in this thesis, with the emphasis on their role in the field of emotions and human pro-sociality. Some implications of the present findings for charitable organisations and some avenues for future studies were presented as well. The findings presented in this thesis provide novel and exciting insight into the field of emotions and pro-sociality, in the context of transgression. The results suggest that even though guilt is widely studied in the context of pro-sociality, and has a robust effect on pro-sociality, anger should not be treated with less interest and attention in this regard. It was also shown that these two emotions are highly interrelated, co-occur in the context of transgression, and both have the potential to affect pro-sociality subsequent to transgression. The contextual factors, such as manipulative intent, appear to have a particular role in determining whether decreased or increased pro-sociality would occur after a violation, and which emotional mechanism would unfold. Therefore, neglecting one of these emotions in studies undermines the possibility of better understanding the emotional underpinnings of human pro-sociality. Thus, more research is warranted in the future.The similar research effort is needed for better understanding of the construct of pro-sociality itself, as human pro-sociality takes many forms which, as was shown, do not create a unidimensional construct. Thus, generalising findings from single instances of pro-social behaviour to general pro-sociality seems biased (especially to the high-cost behaviours), and this issue should be tackled in future research.
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QUINTAVALLE, PASTORINO GIOVANNI. "PERSONALITY AND SOCIALITY IN CAPTIVE ANIMALS: IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT." Doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2434/488937.
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Personality and sociality in captive animals: implications for management
Dr. Giovanni Quintavalle Pastorino
Matr. n. R10497
ABSTRACT
Interactions that animals experience can have a significant influence on their health and welfare. These interactions can occur between animals themselves, but also between animals and keepers, and animals and the public. Human and non-human animals come into contact with each other in a variety of settings, and wherever there is contact there is the opportunity for interaction to take place. Interaction with companion animals are well known, but human–animal interaction (HAR) (Hosey, 2008) also occurs in the context of farms (Hemsworth and Gonyou, 1997; Hemsworth, 2003), laboratories (Chang and Hart, 2002), zoos (Kreger and Mench, 1995) and even the wild (e.g. Cassini, 2001). This PhD proposes an articulated monitoring scheme to record animal-human interactions and animal-animal interactions in selected zoos and farms. This was accompanied by a survey of animal personality in several institutions in the UK and Italy for welfare, husbandry, breeding programs and reintroduction purposes. The methodological approach was based on direct monitoring of animal behaviour, videos of keeper-animal interactions and animal personality questionnaires completed by experienced keepers and animal handlers. The goal of this project is to create a network between zoos to explore the aforementioned interactions to produce husbandry protocols and explore personality and behavioural traits in multiple species. We present data regarding African lions, Asiatic lion, Sumatran tigers, Brown bears and sloth bears (ZSL London and Whipsnade zoo) interactions with humans and conspecifics and personality profiles from five different dairy cattle breeds. This data is collected across a broad range of environmental conditions and outlines the monitoring protocols developed to collect this data. The data show the great adaptability of these species to ex situ environments, low or absent negative impact of visitors’ presence and the relevance of individual personality in these interactions.
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Rosberg, Alexandra. "Rollstil och välbefinnande : -En socialpsykologisk studie av rollstilens betydelse för välbefinnande i receptionistyrket." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för hälsa och samhälle (HOS), 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-17846.
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Denna socialpsykologiska studie handlar om receptionistens mående och hur måendet påverkasberoende på olika faktorer i arbetsklimatet grundat i receptionistens rollstil. Studien är gjord på ettträningsföretag i en större stad i Sverige. Studien är en kvalitativ studie där metoden som använts ärsemistrukturerade intervjuer. Fyra receptionister har blivit intervjuade på företaget. Studien ärfrämst grundad i Goffmans rollteori samt Asplunds teorier kring konkret och abstrakt socialitet.Andra teoretiska ansatser är Karaseks krav och kontrollmodell kring stress, Maturanas och DávilaYánez förståelse kring emotioner samt Alvessons teorier kring organisationskultur. Jag har utgåttfrån hermeneutiken som min vetenskapliga teoretiska ansats. Genom dessa socialpsykologiskateorier samt resultaten av intervjuerna önskade jag besvara uppsatsens syfte kring vilken betydelserollstilen har i utövandet i arbetet som receptionist. Jag kom fram till att receptionistens välmåendehelt klart påverkas av dennes personstil. Receptionistens personstil påverkas av personligheten menockså på grund av det som händer omkring dem, såsom organisationskulturen. Jag kom fram till attreceptionisten har ett stort ansvar över sitt välmående genom att denna kan välja att vara stressadeller inte genom sitt utövande i de olika delarna av att vara receptionist.This socialpsychological study regards the receptionists wellbeing and how that wellbeing depends on various factors in the work environment caused by the receptionists rolestyle. The study is made in a fitnesscompany in a major city of Sweden. The study is based on a qualitative method which is semi-structured interwievs. Four receptionists in the fitnesscompany has been interviewed. The study is mainly based on Goffmans roletheory and Asplunds theory on concrete sociality and abstract sociality. Other theoretical approaches are Karaseks demand and controle model on stress, Maturana och Dávila Yánez understanding in emotions and Alvessons theories of organizational culture. I have used a hermeneutic approach as the scientific theoretical approach for the study. Through These socialpsychological theories together with the results from the interviews I wanted to answer what the importance of the rolestyle for the work as a receptionist is. I concluded that the receptionists wellbeing influenced by their rolestyle. The receptionists rolestyle is influenced by of course their own personality but also by the work environment. I concluded that the receptionists has a great responsibility over their own wellbeing because of their own choice to be stressed or not in their practice of the different parts of being a receptionist.
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Logan, Corina. "The sociality, ontogeny, and function of corvid post-conflict affiliation." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/241706.
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Humans and non-humans alike seek support after conflicts by making up with their former opponent (former opponent affiliation) or by affiliating with a bystander (thirdpartyaffiliation). Post-conflict behaviour has been studied in many mammals but only in two bird species: rooks and ravens. Consequently, the prevalence and function of avian post-conflict affiliation is unknown. My objectives were to expand the study of post-conflict affiliation to more bird species and examine two potential functions of this behaviour. I hypothesised that differences in sociality would influence corvid postconflict affiliation, and that this behaviour would change as individuals developed from juveniles to adults. I predicted that social rooks (Corvus frugilegus) and jackdaws (C. monedula), but not the less social Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius), should have post-conflict affiliation because this behaviour should be dependent on the presence of high quality social bonds. Affiliation should only occur with their mate because they are monogamous; the pair-bond being by far the highest quality relationship in the group. My results showed that the social species have third-party affiliation with their mate, while the less social jays have third-party affiliation with anyone. This behaviour became more frequent and lasted longer as jackdaws went from the pair formation stage to sexual maturity. Exploring the function of third-party affiliation, I found that it decreased the likelihood of receiving non-conflict aggression, thus buffering postconflict aggression for jackdaw and rook aggressors, as well as for rook victims. Hypotheses about post-conflict affiliation primarily concern former opponent affiliation and primates. I reviewed post-conflict affiliation across taxa and proposed a broad hypothesis that includes all forms of post-conflict affiliation: former opponent, thirdparty, quadratic, inter-group, and inter-species.
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Zarri, Luca. "Social preferences and beyond : modelling pro-sociality in game theory." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.437835.
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Banks, Alexander N. "The implications of sociality for navigation in the homing pigeon." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.393363.
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Cushing, Matthew K. "Between Biology and Sociality: An Evolutionary Perspective on Linguistic Modularity." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1396601796.
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Lorenz, Jan Jakub. "Remaking Jewish sociality in contemporary Poland : haunting legacies, global connections." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/remaking-jewish-sociality-in-contemporary-poland-haunting-legacies-global-connections(da2ff5a5-5ea4-4dc7-bb13-87e9ed6df44d).html.
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The Holocaust and post-war anti-Semitism-propelled migration changed the face of Poland, a country that for centuries has been the heartland of the Jewish diaspora. Remnants of the Polish Jewry that did not emigrate, regardless of whether they considered themselves Poles, Poles of Jewish descent or Polish Jews, often felt fearful about speaking of their ancestry, let alone acting upon it. Jewish organizations and social life did not disappear, but religious congregations in particular gradually diminished in number and activity. Post-socialist Poland has become an arena of profound transformation of Jewish communal life, fostered by stakeholders with distinct agendas and resources: empowered and politically emancipated Jewish Religious Communities, now-marginalized secular organizations of the communist era, a nascent generation of Polish Jewish activists and volunteers, and transnational Jewish non-governmental organizations. My thesis explores Polish Jewish communal life and experiences of being and becoming Jewish. It is a study after the ‘revival’, but revealing its looming presence in unsolved predicaments over a Jewish future, global structural dependencies, and temporal dynamics of programs of socialization. I argue that the post-socialist reality not only witnessed the coming of a new Polish Jewish generation, but also the emergence of a new sociality, shaped in two decades of continuous friction between ontologies, agendas and hopes originating in different locations within, and on different scales of, the Polish Jewish contemporaneity. This new Polish Jewish reality invites us to rethink the impact of globalization on the Jewish diaspora in Eastern Europe, and also offers a new perspective on the role of global NGOs in the contemporary world.
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Cacho, Lisa Marie. "Disciplinary fictions : the sociality of private problems in contemporary California /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3055779.
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Melbourne, Joyce Anne. "The sociality of learning with regard to computers in the classroom." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq42932.pdf.
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Purcell, Jessica. "Ecological influences and the biogeographic distribution of sociality in Anelosimus spiders." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7678.
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The puzzle of how complex and costly social behaviours have evolved in so many diverse organisms has challenged many generations of biologists. This thesis focuses on interactions between sociality and ecology. My empirical work investigates South American Anelosimus spiders. This genus provides an ideal system for investigating the ecology of social evolution because the species are easy to manipulate and possess social behaviours ranging from nearly solitary to highly social. Social species cooperate to build communal nests, capture prey, and raise young, and groups may persist for many generations. Most Anelosimus species exhibit subsocial behaviours, in which siblings cooperate for a portion of their life cycle, but disperse each generation prior to sexual maturity.
I investigate four distinct questions regarding the role of ecology in spider sociality and more generally. First, I ask whether sociality varies between populations of a social species along an altitudinal gradient. I then experimentally transplant small subsocial groups across this altitudinal gradient to investigate the ecological factors that may contribute to this pattern. Third, I examine how sociality may shape community structure in an area where social and subsocial Anelosimus species coexist. Finally, I explore the co-evolutionary dynamics between different social behaviours and dispersal in an individual-based simulation model.
I document an intraspecific gradient of decreasing sociality with increasing elevation within the social spider Anelosimus eximius in Ecuador. Through a transplant experiment, I demonstrate that ecological factors including intense rainfall and predator abundance likely contribute to the absence of small groups or solitary Anelosimus spiders from the lowland tropical rainforest. In one area containing at least five sympatric Anelosimus species, I find that social and subsocial species utilize different local habitats. Within those habitats, co-occurring species show different phenologies and construct nests in different positions on a common plant substrate. My modelling study shows that less costly social traits are less sensitive to selection on dispersal than more costly ones, thus extending previous research emphasizing the interplay between dispersal and costly altruistic behaviours. Overall, this thesis shows that ecological factors can influence the origin and maintenance of sociality, both in current communities and over evolutionary time.
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Gager, Yann [Verfasser]. "Causes and consequences of sociality in a neotropical bat / Yann Gager." Konstanz : Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz, 2016. http://d-nb.info/1112944761/34.
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Killick, Evan. "Living apart : separation and sociality amongst the Ashéninka of Peruvian Amazonia." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2005. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/843/.
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This thesis is an ethnographic study of the Ashéninka, an indigenous Amazonian group of eastern central Peru. While situating the Ashéninka ethnographically within Amazonian anthropology the project specifically seeks to understand the nature of Ashéninka society, notions of sociality and forms of self-identification. It also examines how these forms of thought and practice shape the Ashéninka’s continuing interactions with Peruvian national society. My research first seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms that help Ashéninka householders to maintain their independent lifestyles. In common with other Amazonian groups, the Ashéninka are most concerned with how to achieve a peaceful existence and ‘live well’. Unlike other groups, however, they believe that this is best achieved by living apart from each other, in autonomous households. Attempting to illustrate what this means in practical terms, my thesis notes the importance of social gatherings centred on the consumption of masato (manioc beer) in maintaining flexible links between disparate individuals and households. I argue that these gatherings, which are open to everyone (including strangers), provide the Ashéninka with a bounded and defined area in which general sociality can occur without infringing on individuals’ autonomy. Analysis, based on ethnographic descriptions from fieldwork, is related to wider theoretical debates centring on Amazonian notions of the person, society and relations of affinity and consanguinity. My thesis also seeks to understand how these ideas affect the way the Ashéninka interact with the rest of Peruvian national culture. It examines the Ashéninka’s reactions to the government’s promotion of formal education, land rights and officially recognised ‘Comunidades Nativas’ (‘Native Communities’). It also examines the reactions of Ashéninka to the timber industry and their contemporary and historical relationship with Christianity. Rather than examining the Ashéninka’s current situation in terms of ideas about ‘cultural change’ my thesis seeks to understand the intrinsic diversity and flexibility of Ashéninka sociality, and to apply this understanding to the manner in which members of this group are interacting with the non-Ashéninka world.
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Crowther, Norman Alexander. "Excessive gifts : towards the possibility of a transcendental ground for sociality." Thesis, University of Essex, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.292521.
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Haines, Sophie Laura. "An ecology of politics : environment, sociality and development in southern Belize." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2011. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1147771/.
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This thesis addresses the problematic relationships between ecology and politics that have proved so hard to pin down in studies of environment and development, and related policy responses. By exploring the mutual constitution of resources and meanings in three rural villages of southern Belize, it examines resource-related issues, focussing on how local people perceive and engage with decision-making over highway construction, electricity provision, community forestry and the disputed national border, in a sensitive political climate in which the nation-state, indigenous groups and others are urgently debating land security within broader contestations of ‗marginality‘ and ‗modernity‘. Using qualitative data collected during 18 months of fieldwork among Mopan, Q‘eqchi‘ and mestizo people I combine interpretive ethnography with arguably more empirical themes of ‗development‘ and ‗ecology‘. Political relations at multiple scales are embodied and engaged in the environment, as people practically and discursively navigate places and paths, entwined in historical patterns of human migration and settlement. Environment constitutes both means and ends in contemporary struggles in which lands, livelihoods, and their associated meanings are at stake. The ‗village as community‘ – so often the target of development projects - has a complex history, influenced by colonial and post-colonial contexts of imagined, acknowledged and lived citizenship, as described in compelling narratives of refugees and pioneers. Significant groupings and connections exist within and between villages; their mechanisms of formalization and ephemerality are dynamic. Toledo‘s frontier areas (particularly the Guatemalan border) are not merely marginal territories, but resource-full and meaningful locales of connection, affirmation and anxiety. A proposed cross-border highway distils many of these hopes and fears. Such interactions, border processes and negotiations – comprising what I envision as an ecology of politics - are at the heart of a more nuanced, contextualized approach to studies of environment, sociality and development.
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Berger, Vérane. "Senescence and sociality : the example of the alpine marmot (Marmota marmota)." Thesis, Lyon 1, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015LYO10257.
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Quels sont les facteurs qui peuvent retarder ou accélérer la sénescence? Les chercheurs tentent d'y apporter des réponses à différents niveaux moléculaires, cellulaires et également au niveau des traits d'histoire de vie. Tl est établi que différents facteurs ont un impact significatif sur les patrons de sénescence tels que le continuum lent-rapide, la sélection sexuelle, ou encore la disponibilité en ressources. De façon surprenante, peu d'intérêt a été porté sur l'influence de la socialité sur les patrons de sénescence. L'objet de cette thèse est de combler cette lacune et d'étudier l'influence de la socialité sur la sénescence grâce à un suivi exceptionnel d'une population de marmottes alpines (Marmota Marmota), mammifère hautement social et longévif. En effet, cette espèce est organisée en groupes familiaux, composés d'un couple dominant reproducteur socialement monogame despotique, et de subordonnés des deux sexes. La marmotte alpine pratique l'élevage coopératif. En effet, les subordonnés mâles participent à l'élevage des jeunes, ils sont aussi appelés helpers. Nous avons mis en évidence une sénescence de la taille de portée à partir de 10 ans et du succès reproducteur vers 8 ans chez les femelles dominantes et une sénescence de survie à partir de 6 ans chez les dominants mâles et femelles. Nous avons montré que le nombre de helpers durant l'année de naissance et durant la vie adulte étaient indépendants et augmentaient additivement le succès reproducteur sur toute la vie et la longévité des femelles dominantes. Nous avons apporté la preuve que les helpers présents l'année de naissance avaient une influence sexe-spécifique sur les patrons de sénescence de survie des dominants. En effet, les mâles nés avec des helpers vieillissaient plus vite et plus tôt que ceux nés sans helpers. Les femelles ayant bénéficié de helpers l'année de naissance présentaient une sénescence tardive et moins intense que celles sans helpers. Également, les helpers présents durant la vie adulte retardait la sénescence des dominants des deux sexes et diminuaient son intensité. Les coûts et bénéfices liés à l'élevage coopératif expliquent en partie la variabilité de la sénescence de survie chez la marmotte alpine. Pour finir, nous nous sommes placés à l'échelle interspécifique et nous avons montré que la socialité chez les mammifères retardait l'âge de début de sénescenceWhat are factors that can delay or accelerate senescence? Researchers are seeking these factors at molecular, cellular and life history traits level. Recent studies have firmly showed that the slow-fast continuum, sexual selection and food availability are factors shaping variability in senescence patterns. Surprisingly, the influence of sociality on senescence has been less investigated. The aim of this thesis is to fill this gap and to study the influence of sociality on senescence thanks to an extensive dataset spanning 25 years of study on free-ranging Alpine marmots (Marmota Marmota), a long-lived and highly social mammal. Alpine marmots live in family groups typically composed of a dominant pair, of sexually mature and immature (yearling) subordinates, and of pups of the year. Male subordinates help to raise pups, they are also called helpers. We showed in dominant females that litter size declined at 10 years of age and reproductive success at 8 years of age. In both sexes, survival was constant with age until dominants were between 6 and 8 years of age and declined markedly thereafter. We also showed that the number of helpers at birth and during adult life were independent and additively increased female dominant longevity and lifetime reproductive success. Moreover, we provided evidence that the presence of helpers at birth and during adult life strongly influenced survival senescence and that this influence was sex-specific. Indeed, females benefiting from the presence of helpers at birth showed a delayed and less intense senescence while males born with helpers showed a earlier and faster senescence. The presence of helpers during adult life was beneficial for both sexes by delaying senescence and decreasing its intensity. Sociality, more specifically cooperative breeding and its benefits and costs associated, is an important predictor of the diversity of survival senescence in Alpine marmot. Finally, we worked at the interspecific level and showed that sociality in mammals delayed the onset of senescence
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Dupont, Pierre. "The Influence of sociality on population dynamics in the Alpine Marmot." Thesis, Lyon, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017LYSE1011/document.
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La dynamique des populations peut être définie comme l'étude des forces responsables de la taille et de la structure d'une population. Plusieurs facteurs influençant la dynamique des populations ont déjà été identifiés. Ces facteurs peuvent être classés de par leur niveau d'influence, d'une influence à l'échelle de la population toute entière, comme par exemple les changements climatiques ou la densité de population, jusqu'à des facteurs individuels comme l'âge ou le sexe. Récemment, de nombreuses études ont insisté sur l'importance de la structure en âge pour cette dynamique.Chez les espèces sociales, un niveau supplémentaire de structuration de la population est le groupe. Cependant,les conséquences de cette structuration en groupes sociaux est encore mal connue.Au cours de ma thèse, j'ai tenté de répondre a cette question de différentes manières. J'ai tout d'abord étudié comment les paramètres démographiques individuels étaient influencés par la taille et la composition du groupe. J'ai pu notamment mettre en évidence un effet négatif du nombre de juvéniles femelles présent lors du développement sur la probabilité de devenir dominant une fois à l'age adulte. Dans une deuxième temps, j'ai étudié l'importance des interactions entre groupes en quantifiant l'impact d'un changement de dominant sur la dispersion des subordonnés. Enfin, j'ai également quantifié l'influence des différents groupes au sein de la population démontrant que les grands groupes contribuent relativement moins au taux de croissance de la population. Ces différents résultats sont ensuite discuté dans un cadre de démographie évolutive et de nouvelles pistes de recherche sont proposéesPopulation dynamics can be defined as the study of the forces responsible for the size and structure of a population. Several factors influencing population dynamics have already been identified. These factors can be categorized according to their level of influence. Some factors have a population-wide influence, such as climate change or population density, while others affect the individual level such as age or sex. Recently, many studies have emphasized the importance of this age structure for population dynamics.In social species, an additional level of structuring of the population is the group. However, the consequences of this social group structuring are still poorly understood.In this thesis, I try to answer this question in different ways. I first studied how the individual demographic parameters were influenced by the size and composition of the group. I was able to highlight in particular a negative effect of the number of juvenile females present during development on the probability of becoming dominant once in adulthood. In a second step, I studied the importance of interactions between groups by quantifying the impact of a change of dominant on the dispersion of subordinates. Finally, I also quantified the influence of different groups within the population showing that large groups contribute relatively less to the population growth rate. These various results are then discussed in a context of evolutionary demography and new avenues of research are proposed
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Powers, Kimberly Susan. "Prey abundance and the evolution of sociality in Anelosimus (Araneae, Theridiidae)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280791.
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Social spiders most likely evolved from subsocial-like ancestors, species in which siblings remain together for part of their life cycle but disperse prior to mating. Understanding the ecological conditions that favor small colony sizes and periodic dispersal in subsocial species vs. large multigenerational colonies in the social species may provide insight into this evolutionary transition. The biogeography of these spiders and the ability of prey supplementation to delay dispersal in subsocial species implicate prey abundance as an important ecological factor influencing this process. I propose a conceptual framework in which environmental prey abundance determines the rate at which prey contact webs per unit web area, colony size determines web area and prey capture success, and per capita prey capture affects when spiders disperse. To further understand how prey abundance may have influenced the evolution of sociality, I have empirically explored aspects of this framework. Within the genus Anelosimyyus, I studied two social species inhabiting an Ecuadorian lowland rain forest, a subsocial species along the edge of an Ecuadorian cloud forest, and another subsocial species occupying a temperate riparian area of Arizona. In a comparative study examining relationships among sociality, prey availability, and prey capture rate across these species, the environments of social species tended to have relatively large prey and high overall prey biomass, but not the highest numbers of prey items. Relationships among colony size, web size, and prey capture within three of these populations revealed significant foraging-related costs of increasing colony size that could be offset by the availability of high prey biomass in the form of large prey items. Finally, I conducted an experiment manipulating prey capture rate in a subsocial species that resulted in higher prey levels delaying dispersal within and among colonies. This effect often led to a single, relatively large individual remaining in nests of colonies that had been provided more prey. Overall, these findings indicate that, while the availability of high prey biomass may have allowed sociality to evolve, the concentration of prey biomass into large, but not necessarily more prey may have selected for the larger, longer-lived colonies characteristic of social species.
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Federspiel, Ira Gil. "Sociality, social learning and individual differences in rooks, jackdaws and Eurasian jays." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/226742.
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Social intelligence is thought to have evolved as an adaptation to the complex situations group-living animals encounter in their daily lives. High levels of sociality provide individuals with opportunities to learn from one another. Social learning provides individuals with a relatively cheap and quick alternative to individual learning. This thesis investigated social learning in three corvid species: gregarious rooks (Corvus frugilegus) and jackdaws (Corvus monedula) and nongregarious, territorial Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius). In addition to that, the species' social structure was analysed and individual differences between members of each species were determined. Introducing the field of social learning research, I presented a new framework for investigating social learning, combining ecology, ethology and evolution. Experiments were conducted within that framework. I found that rooks and jackdaws develop social bonds and dominance hierarchies, whereas Eurasian jays do not. This is most likely related to their territoriality. In two experiments using two-action tasks, jackdaws learned socially. The underlying social learning mechanism was enhancement, which fits in with their feeding ecology. Rooks did not show social learning when presented with videos of conspecifics opening an apparatus. This might have been due to the difficulty of transferring information from videos or due to an ingrained 'affinity' to innovation and/or rapid trial-and-error learning overriding social learning processes. Individual differences along the bold/shy axis existed in all three species, but they were not stable across contexts. Thus, it seemed that the individuals perceived the two seemingly similar contexts that were designed to investigate neophobia and exploration (novel object in familiar environment; novel environment) as two different situations. The information may therefore have been processed by two distinct underlying mechanisms, which elicited different responses in each of the contexts. The implications of the findings of this thesis are discussed with regard to the new framework, integrating sociality, social learning and individual differences with the species' ecology.
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Ruland, Gillian Barbara. "Stitching Together: An Exploration of Women's Sociality Through an Urban Knitting Group." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2010. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/anthro_theses/41.
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The phenomenon of knitting groups is an increasingly widespread trend in urban settings. In this thesis, I argue that the resurgence of knitting groups in contemporary urban areas is the result of a nostalgic search for a sense of community within an otherwise complex and sometimes alienating urban landscape. Through ethnographic research in Atlanta, GA, I examine how women knitters whom I interviewed theorize their own interactions in the knitting community and the ways in which technology serves to facilitate these interactions. With lives revolving mainly around family and careers, the women who join knitting groups seek an escape from everyday life, friendship without strings, and the communal gathering focused around a leisure activity which holds social significance in daily life.
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Rubio, Javier Carrera. "Fertile words : aspects of language and sociality among Yanomami people of Venezuela." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1003.
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In the first part of the thesis (Chapters I to 7)1 discuss two Yanomami myths of origin, namely the myth of the origin of the night, and the myth of the master of banana plants. While drawing heavily on Lizot's ethnographical and linguistic work, my analysis of the myth will be embedded within two interconnected debates of present concern to anthropology: On the one hand, the strong linkage between the poetics of myth narration and the poetics of the everyday life. To better explore this relationship I will also drawn on Overing's recent work on the fundamental importance of understanding the political philosophy that pervades such linkage. On the other hand there is also the important role that the world of the felt, the senses and passions play in Yanomami conceptions and practices of sociality. In part 2 of the thesis, I deal with the issue of Yanomami warfare by describing Yanomami people's understanding of warfare. In doing this, I endeavour to develop a shift from the anthropologist's theories of war among the Yanomami to the Yanomami's own theories about both peace and its failure. War and conflict are addressed here from the point of view of the Yanomami aesthetics of their own convivial relations and sociality, along with its multiple oral expressions. I demonstrate that Yanomami people have their own (strong) theories about what is conducive to peace and war and how these theories are grounded in moral and political values attached to a particular Yanomami aesthetics of egalitarianism. In doing this, I explore the way Lizot emphasises the dialectic between Yanomami conceptions of peace and warfare. Furthermore, through an exploration of the linkage Lizot establishes between Yanomami warfare and their morality, I wish to shed new light on the political dimensions of their conflicts and the place of warfare in their culturally specific aesthetics of egalitarian relationships. Part 3 of the thesis (chapters 9, 10, 11) deals with the Yanomami elders' speech, a mode of communication that has been almost neglected in other previous works. After having discussed various topics (myth and the everyday, Yanomami warfare) through which various aspects of Yanomami moral and political philosophy can be grasped, in this last part of the thesis I show the strong linkage between such philosophy and this type of speech. The elders' speech is dealt with in various parts of the thesis and also in various ways. First, and departing from the way a myth of origin explicitly makes references to it, I illustrate, the way Yanomami people conceive of this type of speech. I do this by describing, following Hymes' (1981,2003) insights, the way in which the myth teller "describes" this speech in his narrative. Second, in Chapter 3, I make a brief description of the speech and in Chapters 9, 10, and 11 I provide fragments of the speech of an elder that I transcribed and analysed.