Sentiment

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

Kinds of Sentiment

  • investor sentiment
  • moral sentiment

  • Terms modified by Sentiment

  • sentiment indicator

  • Selected Abstracts


    THE IMPORTANCE OF NEUTRAL EXAMPLES FOR LEARNING SENTIMENT

    COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 2 2006
    Moshe Koppel
    Most research on learning to identify sentiment ignores "neutral" examples, learning only from examples of significant (positive or negative) polarity. We show that it is crucial to use neutral examples in learning polarity for a variety of reasons. Learning from negative and positive examples alone will not permit accurate classification of neutral examples. Moreover, the use of neutral training examples in learning facilitates better distinction between positive and negative examples. [source]


    Market Sentiment and Macroeconomic Fluctuations under Pegged Exchange Rates

    ECONOMICA, Issue 292 2006
    PIERRE-RICHARD AGÉNOR
    The effects of an adverse change in market sentiment, defined as a temporary increase in the premium faced by domestic borrowers on world financial markets, are studied in an intertemporal optimizing framework with imperfect capital mobility. Firms' demands for working capital are financed by bank credit. The shock leads to a rise in domestic interest rates, capital outflows and a drop in official reserves, a reduction in bank deposits and loans, a contraction in output, and an increase in unemployment. These predictions are consistent with Argentina's economic downturn in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican peso crisis of December 1994. [source]


    Economic Sentiment and Yield Spreads in Europe

    EUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2008
    Eva Ferreira
    G12; E43 Abstract According toHarvey (1988), the forecasting ability of the term spread on economic growth is due to the fact that interest rates reflect investors' expectations about the future economic situation when deciding their plans for consumption and investment. Past literature has used ex post data on output or consumption growth as proxies for their expected value. In this paper, we employ a direct measure of economic agents' expectations, the Economic Sentiment Indicator elaborated by the European Commission, to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that a linear combination of European yield spreads explains a surprising 93.7\% of the variability of the Economic Sentiment Indicator. This ability of yield spreads to capture economic agent expectations may be the actual reason for the predictive power of yield spreads about future business cycle. [source]


    Explaining Pro-Immigrant Sentiment in the U.S.: Social Class, Cosmopolitanism, and Perceptions of Immigrants1

    INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
    Jeannie Haubert
    In the U.S., research on attitudes toward immigrants generally focuses on anti-immigrant sentiment. Yet, the 1996 General Social Survey indicates that half the population believes that immigrants favorably impact the U.S. economy and culture. Using these data, we analyze theories of both pro- and anti-immigrant sentiment. While we find some support for two theories of intergroup competition, our most important finding connects a cosmopolitan worldview with favorable perceptions of immigrants. We find that cosmopolitans , people who are highly educated, in white-collar occupations, who have lived abroad, and who reject ethnocentrism , are significantly more pro-immigrant than people without these characteristics. [source]


    Retail Investor Sentiment and Return Comovements

    THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 5 2006
    ALOK KUMAR
    ABSTRACT Using a database of more than 1.85 million retail investor transactions over 1991,1996, we show that these trades are systematically correlated,that is, individuals buy (or sell) stocks in concert. Moreover, consistent with noise trader models, we find that systematic retail trading explains return comovements for stocks with high retail concentration (i.e., small-cap, value, lower institutional ownership, and lower-priced stocks), especially if these stocks are also costly to arbitrage. Macroeconomic news and analyst earnings forecast revisions do not explain these results. Collectively, our findings support a role for investor sentiment in the formation of returns. [source]


    Investor Sentiment and Return Predictability in Agricultural Futures Markets

    THE JOURNAL OF FUTURES MARKETS, Issue 10 2001
    Changyun Wang
    This study examines the usefulness of trader-position-based sentiment index for forecasting future prices in six major agricultural futures markets. It has been found that large speculator sentiment forecasts price continuations. In contrast, large hedger sentiment predicts price reversals. Small trader sentiment hardly forecasts future market movements. An investigation was performed into various sentiment-based timing strategies, and it was found that the combination of extreme large trader sentiments provides the strongest timing signal. These results are generally consistent with the hedging-pressure theory, suggesting that hedgers pay risk premiums to transfer nonmarketable risks in futures markets. Moreover, it does not appear that large speculators in the futures markets possess any superior forecasting ability. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:929,952, 2001 [source]


    Rousseau: the Sentiment of Existence , David Gauthier

    THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 228 2007
    Timothy O'Hagan
    First page of article [source]


    ADAM SMITH AND THE POSSIBILITY OF SYMPATHY WITH NATURE

    PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2006
    PATRICK R. FRIERSON
    However, Smith's "all important emotion of sympathy" (Callicott, 2001, p. 209) seems incapable of extension to entities that lack emotions with which one can sympathize. Drawing on the distinctive account of sympathy developed in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as well as his account of anthropomorphizing nature in "History of Astronomy and Physics," I show that sympathy with non-sentient nature is possible within a Smithian ethics. This provides the possibility of extending sympathy, and thereby benevolence and justice, to nature. [source]


    Smith's Sentiments (1759) and Wright's Passions (1601): the beginnings of sociology

    THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2005
    Jack Barbalet
    Abstract Treatments of sources of Adam Smith's sociological theory of the self and associated ideas in The Theory of Moral Sentiments typically refer to classical antecedents or the work of his teacher Francis Hutcheson or his contemporary David Hume. During the seventeenth century, however, many books on the passions were published in London that arguably constitute an important but neglected source of Smith's treatment of moral sentiments. These works are largely forgotten today but at the time were widely read. They are not philosophical, partly devotional and predominantly psychological. Although Smith does not refer to these works his argument resembles theirs in many places. The importance of the seventeenth-century books on the passions, apart from their role in the history of psychology, is their bearing on contemporary economic practices. In this paper the connections between Smith and one of these books, Thomas Wright's The Passions of the Minde in Generall, are indicated. [source]


    THE IMPORTANCE OF NEUTRAL EXAMPLES FOR LEARNING SENTIMENT

    COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 2 2006
    Moshe Koppel
    Most research on learning to identify sentiment ignores "neutral" examples, learning only from examples of significant (positive or negative) polarity. We show that it is crucial to use neutral examples in learning polarity for a variety of reasons. Learning from negative and positive examples alone will not permit accurate classification of neutral examples. Moreover, the use of neutral training examples in learning facilitates better distinction between positive and negative examples. [source]


    SENTIMENT CLASSIFICATION of MOVIE REVIEWS USING CONTEXTUAL VALENCE SHIFTERS

    COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 2 2006
    Alistair Kennedy
    We present two methods for determining the sentiment expressed by a movie review. The semantic orientation of a review can be positive, negative, or neutral. We examine the effect of valence shifters on classifying the reviews. We examine three types of valence shifters: negations, intensifiers, and diminishers. Negations are used to reverse the semantic polarity of a particular term, while intensifiers and diminishers are used to increase and decrease, respectively, the degree to which a term is positive or negative. The first method classifies reviews based on the number of positive and negative terms they contain. We use the General Inquirer to identify positive and negative terms, as well as negation terms, intensifiers, and diminishers. We also use positive and negative terms from other sources, including a dictionary of synonym differences and a very large Web corpus. To compute corpus-based semantic orientation values of terms, we use their association scores with a small group of positive and negative terms. We show that extending the term-counting method with contextual valence shifters improves the accuracy of the classification. The second method uses a Machine Learning algorithm, Support Vector Machines. We start with unigram features and then add bigrams that consist of a valence shifter and another word. The accuracy of classification is very high, and the valence shifter bigrams slightly improve it. The features that contribute to the high accuracy are the words in the lists of positive and negative terms. Previous work focused on either the term-counting method or the Machine Learning method. We show that combining the two methods achieves better results than either method alone. [source]


    Market Sentiment and Macroeconomic Fluctuations under Pegged Exchange Rates

    ECONOMICA, Issue 292 2006
    PIERRE-RICHARD AGÉNOR
    The effects of an adverse change in market sentiment, defined as a temporary increase in the premium faced by domestic borrowers on world financial markets, are studied in an intertemporal optimizing framework with imperfect capital mobility. Firms' demands for working capital are financed by bank credit. The shock leads to a rise in domestic interest rates, capital outflows and a drop in official reserves, a reduction in bank deposits and loans, a contraction in output, and an increase in unemployment. These predictions are consistent with Argentina's economic downturn in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican peso crisis of December 1994. [source]


    Differential impact of state tobacco control policies among race and ethnic groups

    ADDICTION, Issue 2007
    John A. Tauras
    ABSTRACT Aims This paper describes patterns of racial and ethnic cigarette use in the United States and discusses changes in state-level tobacco control policies. Moreover, this paper reviews the existing econometric literature on racial and ethnic smoking and discusses the limitations of that research. Finally, this paper outlines an agenda for future research. Methods Patterns of racial and ethnic smoking and changes in state-level tobacco control policies in the United States were obtained from a variety of sources, including surveys and government and private documents and databases. After an extensive literature search was completed, the existing research was scrutinized and recommendations for much-needed future research were put forth. Findings Despite the fact that certain racial and ethnic minorities bear a disproportionate share of the overall health burden of tobacco, less than a handful of econometric studies have examined the effects of state-level public policies on racial and ethnic smoking. The existing literature finds Hispanics and African Americans to be more responsive to changes in cigarette prices than whites. Only one study examined other state-level tobacco policies. The findings from that study implied that adolescent white male smoking was responsive to changes in smoke-free air laws, while adolescent black smoking was responsive to changes in youth access laws. Conclusions While much has been learned from prior econometric studies on racial and ethnic smoking in the United States, the existing literature suffers from numerous limitations that should be addressed in future research. Additional research that focuses on races and ethnicities other than white, black and Hispanic is warranted. Furthermore, future studies should use more recent data, hold sentiment toward tobacco constant and control for a comprehensive set of tobacco policies that take into account not only the presence of the laws, but also the level of restrictiveness of each policy. [source]


    Toward a US Shift from Agricultural to Rural Development Policy: Forces of Challenge and Change Auf einen Wechsel von der US-Agrarpolitik zu einer Politik des ländlichen Raums hinarbeiten: Die Triebkräfte der Herausforderung und des Wandels Vers une transition des politiques agricoles vers des politiques de développement rural aux États-Unis: Les forces du défi et du changement

    EUROCHOICES, Issue 1 2008
    Charles W. Fluharty
    Toward a US Shift from Agricultural to Rural Development Policy: Forces of Challenge and Change On the 5th of November 2007, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Nutrition, in opening the floor debate on the 2007 Farm Bill, urged a new US commitment to rural policy, keeping in mind that nearly 85 per cent of total farm household income is now generated off-farm. Recent institutional developments, moreover, evidence the success of a decade-long effort to increase focus on the rural development Title of the Farm Bill. One result was the formation of the Alliance for Sensible Agriculture Policies (ASAP), a loose federation of over 30 national organizations, representing the entire political spectrum. It remains highly active in support of Farm Bill reform. Currently, the Senate Bill contains a US$ 400 million increase in mandatory rural development funding. As we move toward an end-game, however, members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives will face the unbridled power of commodity organizations. It is likely that this will again overwhelm public sentiment and wise public choice. Despite overwhelming odds, a new commitment to a more innovative rural policy framework is emerging in the United States. I believe that this Farm Bill will ultimately be viewed as the beginning of a landscape-changing legislative framework for rural people and places in America. Vers une transition des politiques agricoles vers des politiques de développement rural aux États-Unis: Les forces du défi et du changement Le 5 novembre 2007, le Sénateur de l'Iowa Tom Harkin, Président du Comité du Sénat des États-Unis sur l'Agriculture, la Forêt et la Nutrition, en ouverture du débat sur la loi agricole 2007, a appeléà un nouvel engagement pour la politique rurale, en gardant à l'esprit que presque 85 pour cent du revenu total des ménages agricoles provient de sources non agricoles. En outre, les évolutions institutionnelles récentes on mis en évidence les succès d'une décennie d'efforts pour attirer l'attention sur le Titre "développement rural" de la loi agricole. Un résultat a été la formation d'une alliance pour des politiques agricoles raisonnables (Alliance for Sensible Agriculture Policies, ASAP), une fédération large de plus de 30 organisations nationales représentant la totalité du spectre politique. Elle reste très active pour soutenir la réforme de la loi agricole. A l'heure actuelle, la loi proposée par le Sénat prévoit une hausse de 400 millions de dollars des fonds obligatoirement destinés au développement rural. Cependant, à mesure que l'on s'approche de la décision finale, les membres du Sénat et de la Chambre des représentants seront confrontés au pouvoir sans frein des organisations de soutien des produits agricoles. Il est probable que cela va de nouveau dominer les sentiments du public et les choix sensés en matière d'action. En dépit des conditions dominantes, émerge aux États-Unis un nouvel engagement pour un cadre plus innovant pour les politiques de développement rural,.Je crois que cette loi agricole sera considérée comme un point d'inflexion dans le paysage pour les populations et les territoires ruraux aux États-Unis. Auf einen Wechsel von der US-Agrarpolitik zu einer Politik des ländlichen Raums hinarbeiten: Die Triebkräfte der Herausforderung und des Wandels Am 5. November 2007 forderte Tom Harkin, US-Senator aus dem Bundesstaat Iowa und Vorsitzender des Komitees für Landwirtschaft, Forstwirtschaft und Ernährung (US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Nutrition), ein größeres Engagement der USA im Hinblick auf die Politik des ländlichen Raums, als er die Plenardebatte über das Landwirtschaftsgesetz von 2007 eröffnete. Dabei hatte er vor Augen, dass mittlerweile beinahe 85 Prozent des gesamten Haushaltseinkommens der landwirtschaftlichen Betriebe aus außerlandwirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten stammt. Zudem belegen die jüngsten institutionellen Entwicklungen den Erfolg der jahrzehntelangen Bemühungen, die Aufmerksamkeit auf den Titel über die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums im Landwirtschaftsgesetz zu lenken. Als Folge dessen wurde u.a. die Allianz für vernünftige Agrarpolitikmaßnahmen (Alliance for Sensible Agriculture Policies, ASAP) ins Leben gerufen, ein freier Verband von über 30 nationalen Organisationen, die das gesamte politische Spektrum vertreten. Die Allianz setzt sich immer noch sehr für die Reform des Landwirtschaftsgesetzes ein. Derzeit sieht das Gesetz im Senat eine Budgeterhöhung von $ 400 Millionen zur Finanzierung der verbindlichen Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums vor. Da wir jedoch auf die Endphase zusteuern, werden sowohl Mitglieder des Senats als auch des Abgeordnetenhauses der ungezügelten Macht der Rohstofforganisationen gegenüberstehen. Wahrscheinlich wird dies wieder einmal die Stimmung und die weise Entscheidung der Öffentlichkeit maßgeblich beeinflussen. Ungeachtet dessen entwickelt sich in den USA zurzeit ein neues Engagement hin zu einem innovativeren Rahmenprogramm in Bezug auf die Politik des ländlichen Raums. Ich bin der Ansicht, dass dieses Landwirtschaftsgesetz der Landbevölkerung als Zeitpunkt des Landschaftswechsels in Erinnerung bleiben wird. [source]


    Understanding pressures on fishery resources through trade statistics: a pilot study of four products in the Chinese dried seafood market

    FISH AND FISHERIES, Issue 1 2004
    Shelley Clarke
    Abstract This study investigates the dried seafood trade, centred in Chinese markets, in order to better understand the pressures its demand exerts on global marine resource stocks. Using Hong Kong, the region's largest entrepôt, as a focal point, the trade in shark fins, abalone, bêche-de-mer and dried fish is characterized in terms of product history, volume, source fisheries and species composition. Trends identified in the Hong Kong market are interpreted in the context of the larger Chinese market. Shark fin imports grew 6% per year between 1991 and 2000, most likely because of market expansion in Mainland China, posing increasingly greater pressures on global shark resources. In contrast, the quantities of dried abalone traded through Hong Kong remained steady, but inferences based on this trend are discouraged by suggestions of increasing preferences for fresh product forms and growing domestic production in Mainland China. Hong Kong's imports of dried bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) have decreased, while the percentage of imports re-exported has remained steady, suggesting that Hong Kong continues as an entrepôt for Mainland China despite declining domestic consumption. Few conclusions can be drawn regarding dried fish products, including whole fish and fish maws, because of a lack of product differentiation in customs data, but a market survey was conducted to provide information on species composition. Comparison of Hong Kong dried seafood trade statistics to those of other key trading partners indicates that, in general, Hong Kong's duty-free status appears to encourage more accurate reporting of traded quantities. Under-reporting biases ranged from 24 to 49% for shark fin and bêche-de-mer, respectively. Comparison to United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) databases indicates additional under-reporting for shark fin such that an alternative minimum estimate of world trade is at least twice the FAO estimates in 1998,2000. The results of a survey of Hong Kong traders provide insight into their attitudes toward harvest, economic and regulatory factors, and suggest that conservation efforts are unlikely to emerge from, or be actively supported by, dried seafood trade organizations. The market's apparent sensitivity to economic sentiment, however, reveals an opportunity for consumer education to play a role in shaping future market growth and resource conservation. Recommendations are provided for improving trade statistics and for developing better analytical techniques to complement traditional methods for monitoring the exploitation and management of fisheries resources. [source]


    Corporate Domesticity and Idealised Masculinity: Royal Naval Officers and their Shipboard Homes, 1918,39

    GENDER & HISTORY, Issue 3 2009
    Quintin Colville
    This article explores the interrelationship of masculine identity and corporate domesticity through the example of Royal Naval officers and the quarters they occupied on board ship during the 1920s and 1930s. Through a case study of a surviving warship, it establishes the linkages of this environment to a wider upper-middle-class world of public school common rooms, gentlemen's clubs and family homes. It analyses the role of this shipboard domesticity in defining the idealised and class-specific persona of the naval officer: constructed through foregrounding approved qualities (such as dutifulness, restraint and self-discipline), and suppressing characteristics considered problematic (for instance, introspection, individualism and intellectualism). The article also evaluates the tensions generated by these impersonal and unreachable standards, and the simultaneous ability of the naval home to support corporate and individual behaviours at odds with the officer ideal. The final section explores the gendered nature of these spaces. It argues that while the shipboard home was essentially a male one, the dynamic it engineered between rival ,male' and ,female' domesticities was invariably relational. Officers' communal quarters were routinely used to support and intensify oppositional understandings of masculinity and femininity. Nonetheless, attempts to dispute these boundaries and to internalise feminised qualities of sentiment, attachment and dependency can be detected in the privatised domesticity of the cabin. [source]


    Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia

    GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 1 2006
    RACHEL SILVEY
    In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant-sending community in West Java, I focus on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low-income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam. [source]


    Explaining Pro-Immigrant Sentiment in the U.S.: Social Class, Cosmopolitanism, and Perceptions of Immigrants1

    INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
    Jeannie Haubert
    In the U.S., research on attitudes toward immigrants generally focuses on anti-immigrant sentiment. Yet, the 1996 General Social Survey indicates that half the population believes that immigrants favorably impact the U.S. economy and culture. Using these data, we analyze theories of both pro- and anti-immigrant sentiment. While we find some support for two theories of intergroup competition, our most important finding connects a cosmopolitan worldview with favorable perceptions of immigrants. We find that cosmopolitans , people who are highly educated, in white-collar occupations, who have lived abroad, and who reject ethnocentrism , are significantly more pro-immigrant than people without these characteristics. [source]


    Switching Between the Banking and Metals and Mining Sectors of Australia,

    INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 4 2009
    Tariq Haque
    ABSTRACT Using the Australian banking and metals and mining industries as the categories in the Barberis and Shleifer model, this study demonstrates switching in the Australian stock market. Switching occurs when investors move into an industry by selling off stocks of an alternate industry, thus causing negative lagged cross-correlation between those industries. Our results, based on daily returns, suggest that category-level investor sentiment may drive observed switching patterns in the Australian stock market and not fundamental risk factors. Our results also show that switching does not necessarily only occur between value and growth stocks or large-cap and small-cap stocks. [source]


    Post-IPO Operating Performance, Venture Capital and the Bubble Years

    JOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 9-10 2007
    Jerry Coakley
    Abstract:, We analyse the post-issue operating performance of 316 venture-backed and 274 non-venture UK IPOs 1985,2003. The finding of a statistically significant five-year, operational decline exhibited over the full sample period is not robust. Rather it is driven by the dramatic underperformance during the 1998,2000 bubble years while IPOs perform normally in the remaining years. Cross-section regression results indicate support for venture capital certification in the non-bubble years but a significantly negative relationship between operating performance and venture capitalist board representation during the bubble years. The bubble year underperformance is explained by market timing and by low quality companies taking advantage of investor sentiment. [source]


    Can consumer sentiment and its components forecast Australian GDP and consumption?

    JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 8 2009
    Chew Lian Chua
    Abstract This paper examines whether the disaggregation of consumer sentiment data into its sub-components improves the real-time capacity to forecast GDP and consumption. A Bayesian error correction approach augmented with the consumer sentiment index and permutations of the consumer sentiment sub-indices is used to evaluate forecasting power. The forecasts are benchmarked against both composite forecasts and forecasts from standard error correction models. Using Australian data, we find that consumer sentiment data increase the accuracy of GDP and consumption forecasts, with certain components of consumer sentiment consistently providing better forecasts than aggregate consumer sentiment data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Re-Thinking the ,Origins Debate': Race Formation and Political Formations in England's Chesapeake Colonies

    JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
    Chris Smaje
    The debate over the ,origins' of racism in colonial North America has been dominated by the view that racism was a consequence of the enslavement of African-origin labour, or alternatively that it was a prior , perhaps primordial , sentiment that shaped the process of enslavement. This paper offers an alternative reading of the evidence in suggesting that race formation can be understood in relation to the emergence of new forms of imagining political communities in early modern England, and Europe more generally. This argument can not only help refine understanding of race formation in early colonial America, but also sociological theories of race more generally, while helping avoid some of the theoretical problems entailed in attempting to trace the ,origins' of social phenomena. [source]


    ,Outlandish Love': Marriage and Immigration in City Comedies

    LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2010
    Scott Oldenburg
    This article questions the orthodox reading of early English city comedies that such plays exhibit intense national or proto-national fervor, especially articulated in terms of anti-alien sentiment. A close examination of The Dutch Courtesan and Englishmen for My Money shows that English playgoers were keen to see their cosmopolitan city staged. Moreover, these plays suggest that when it came to European immigrants to England, status and wealth were far more important to the English than considerations of birthplace and ethnicity. [source]


    Cognitive adaptations for n -person exchange: the evolutionary roots of organizational behavior

    MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 2-3 2006
    John Tooby
    Organizations are composed of stable, predominantly cooperative interactions or n -person exchanges. Humans have been engaging in n -person exchanges for a great enough period of evolutionary time that we appear to have evolved a distinct constellation of species-typical mechanisms specialized to solve the adaptive problems posed by this form of social interaction. These mechanisms appear to have been evolutionarily elaborated out of the cognitive infrastructure that initially evolved for dyadic exchange. Key adaptive problems that these mechanisms are designed to solve include coordination among individuals, and defense against exploitation by free riders. Multi-individual cooperation could not have been maintained over evolutionary time if free riders reliably benefited more than contributors to collective enterprises, and so outcompeted them. As a result, humans evolved mechanisms that implement an aversion to exploitation by free riding, and a strategy of conditional cooperation, supplemented by punitive sentiment towards free riders. Because of the design of these mechanisms, how free riding is treated is a central determinant of the survival and health of cooperative organizations. The mapping of the evolved psychology of n -party exchange cooperation may contribute to the construction of a principled theoretical foundation for the understanding of human behavior in organizations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    The Promise of Sonic Translation: Performing the Festive Sacred in Morocco

    AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2008
    DEBORAH A. KAPCHAN
    ABSTRACT, How do international music festivals produce experiences of the sacred in multifaith audiences? What is their part in creating transnational communities of affect? In this article, I theorize what I call "the promise of sonic translation": the trust in the ultimate translatability of aural (as opposed to textual) codes. This promise, I assert, produces the "festive sacred," a configuration of aesthetic and embodied practices associated with festivity wherein people of different religions and nations create and cohabit an experience of the sacred through heightened attention to auditory and sense-based modes of devotion conceived as "universal." The festive sacred is a transnational (thus mobile) phenomenon inextricable from the enterprise of sacred tourism. Such festive forms not only produce a Turnerian communitas but also create new transnational categories that mediate religious sentiment and reenchant the world. [source]


    New types of cooperation between museums and countries of origin

    MUSEUM INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1-2 2009
    Paolo Giorgio Ferri
    This article examines the changes in sensibility and in international opinion on the subject of the illicit circulation of cultural goods. The emergence of a new, modified international public policy means alterations in normative and jurisprudential inputs, at least in terms of good faith and proof of diligence, bolstered by the contingencies of each specific case and by collective social sentiment. Harmony and balance are achieved by the assimilation of different legal systems and by honouring the overriding requirements of the country of origin. As a result it is now possible to envisage a final, unified result, namely, the creation of an integrated system of legislation. [source]


    Between love and property: Voice, sentiment, and subjectivity in the reform of daughter's inheritance in Nepal

    AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009
    LAURA KUNREUTHER
    ABSTRACT In this article, I trace the relation between the figure of voice and subjectivity by examining a Nepali reform movement that sought to give daughters a birth right to ancestral property. At its heart was a contest over emerging class and gender subjectivities that were repeatedly defined through the figure of the voice and related practices of address, hailing, and recognition. The competing formations of voice I discuss here entail shifting notions of intimacy. To challenge property relations thus meant to change existing practices of speech, sentiment, and the meaning of voice itself. [voice, sentiment, property, subjectivity, Nepal, gender, class distinction] [source]


    Neoliberal associations: Property, company, and family in the Argentine oil fields

    AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2008
    ELANA SHEVER
    ABSTRACT The transformation of Argentina's state-owned oil company into a transnational joint-stock corporation and a series of worker-owned subcontracting microenterprises in northwestern Patagonia provides an example of an actually existing neoliberal project. In this article, I illustrate how this project was as much a process of sustaining affective relationality as it was a process of fostering calculative rationality. The privatization process generated corporate subjects attached through familial associations of property, company, and family. Kinship sentiment was also the crucial force that incorporated former state oil workers into the inequitable circuits of the global petroleum industry. I argue that this neoliberal process was effective inasmuch as it worked affectively. [neoliberal, kinship, property, affect, corporations, structural adjustment, petroleum, Argentina] [source]


    Russia flexes muscles over oil and gas

    OIL AND ENERGY TRENDS, Issue 10 2006
    Article first published online: 13 OCT 200
    A new militancy is emerging from Moscow in dealings with foreign companies operating in Russia. The government has severely criticized a number of international oil companies engaged in major oil and gas developments, including Shell, ExxonMobil, BP and Total. In several cases, the companies have been told that their environmental plans covering the development of new fields are unsatisfactory. The latest arguments concern two large oil and gas developments on the Pacific island of Sakhalin. The environmental criticisms, however, are simply the outward sign of a growing sentiment inside Russia that foreign companies have been granted lucrative upstream opportunities on terms that are much too favourable to them. [source]


    Anton Chekhov and English Nostalgia

    ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2001
    Svetlana O. Klimenko
    Anton Chekhov is the most frequently performed foreigner on the British stage, and, significantly, he is also the most often rewritten playwright in British drama. However, we still seem to be lacking a scholarly insight into this established phenomenon, dubbed in modern theatre history ,British Chekhov'. The remarkable quantity and quality of reincarnations of Chekhov in English are still interpreted by the academic community in terms of either sheer statistics or pure sentiment. Even more significantly, there appears to be no link between the ever revolutionary, and dispersed, developments in modern British drama , with playwrights finding ever new modes of looking back in anger, and the proliferation of British Chekhov, a body of a few repeatedly recycled plays, produced by the same playwrights, looking back in nostalgia. The present article offers a textually based and contextually informed analysis of Chekhov's metamorphoses in English. The analysis demonstrates the ways in which the transmigration of Chekhov's grammar, syntax and discourse structure from Russian to English brings out the essential nostalgic motif in his drama and elevates it to the level of universal human longing. The consideration of Anton Chekhov's fate in Britain, thus, transgresses the limits of a mere case study in the impossibility of translation, and opens up a discussion of the impossibility of representation itself as a common, and growing, concern of all twentieth century art. [source]